Look, if you’re going to spend millions of dollars specifically to deny a group of citizens a specific right, they’re probably not going to feel respected and loved.
If we want respect and love, how about you respect my privacy? How about you say “I don’t approve of gay marriage, so we’re not going to do that at my church” and acknowledge that whether I, as a hypothetical Californian, marry a man or woman doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to you? How about you focus more on the part where your god-man did a lot of preaching about love and turning the other cheek, and not so much about denying others their rights? How about you stop trying to criminalize people for their sexual orientation?
Or if they can’t do that, how about they just shut the fuck up? Fine, you’ve got your victory, you convinced voters to impose your fucked-up, despicable, bigoted religion on an entire state. Congratulations. Go back to your fucking polygamist desert compounds and wear your magic underwear and have your secret church services and send your kids to go teach your idiocy and intolerance in every corner of the world. Just shut the fuck up.
Well I heard two bits of good news on NPR this morning.
Attorney General Jerry Brown has said that all existing same sex marriages will continue to be legal.
The court might be able to overturn prop 8 after all. Apperantly you can not add an amendment to the California constitution by ballot initiative if that ammendment directly contraticts another portion of the constitution. To add such an ammendment you have to go through the state legislature, and the ACLU is claiming that prop 8 is directly contradictory to a portion of the CA constitution that says all residents shall be treated equally under the law.
I don’t know the details, but this sounds good. My friends who just got married won’t have their marriage taken away* and my other friends who are planning a big blow out wedding might not have to go to Vermont.
*My wife and I got married a few weeks before them in August, and the idea that anyone could tell us that our marriage wasn’t valid made us both physically sick. I can not imagine how hard this must have been for couples who’s marriages might have acutally been in danger of being overturned.
Which, incidentally, the proponents of Prop 8 are up in arms about. Seems they intended the amendment to retroactively nullify those marriages. So, so loving and compassionate…
We weigh different rights all the time. We do it in the abortion debate. We do it with teenage drinking. A kid can go die for his country in Iraq, get married, have kids, but not have a drink. We look at what may be considered rights and weigh them as to how it might affect society. This is not new. What, precisely, are gays prevented from doing? They can love who they want. They can live with who they want. They can enjoy all the legal rights (in CA) as a married couple. They can even have a ceremony in which they publicly avow their deep and undying love for each other. But when it comes to marriage itself, society would like to preserve the meaning of the word for what it has traditionally meant. I see nothing wrong in this whatsoever. It seems perfectly reasonable. In the end, I think what it comes down to is the degree to which marriage is a “right”. If you can enjoy all the benefits of it without it, I don’t see how it can seriously be considered one.
The only thing that makes less sense to me than a religious person who is against same-sex marriage is a non-religious person who is against same-sex marriage. They don’t even have the excuse of blaming God for it.
I think he has a fair-to-middlin’ shot here. There’s enough ambiguity in the language and the principles of equity weigh heavily in favor of the existing marriages that he may well carry this.
Here… not so much. I’m sorry to say it, but no. This is a razor-thin argument, and I understand completely trying it, because … what else can they do? But no, the distinction is between an amendment and a “revision;” the latter is something that, if enacted, would change large swaths of the state constitution. This is simply not the case here.
Given the levels of hate and derision aimed at same-sex couples by the supporters of Prop 8 during the campaign, i’m at a loss as to why gay Californians and their friends should suddenly be willing to bury the hatchet and pretend that none of it happened.
No, because it would not have changed the levels of hate and derision that came from supporters of 8 during the campaign.
Also, and perhaps more pointedly, do you think these “We should all just get along” platitudes would have been forthcoming from the LDS if the measure had lost? Somehow i doubt it.
And yet you don’t see why gay people find your position grossly unreasonable? Interesting.
This is, perhaps, the most perplexing argument i hear from people like you.
You say that living with the person you love is “the thing that is so important.” Well, if this is true, and if the little matter of calling it “marriage” is so peripheral and irrelevant, then why the hell is it apparently so important to YOU, and to people like you, that you are willing to go to the lengths of amending the Constitution of the largest state in order to prevent same-sex couples from calling their unions “marriage”?
Either the use of the term marriage is important, or it isn’t. If it is important, then why shouldn’t gay people have the same rights to use it as anyone else? And if it isn’t, then why do you expend so much effort in denying it to them?
Because when the only result of a decision is to take something away from someone, a right they should have, just because you can, then it needs to be resisted. If calling same-sex unions “marriage” had any effect on the legitimacy or the benefits of heterosexual marriage, there might be some understandable reasons to oppose it (even though i personally would not), but as it is, i see no possible motive for this vote except hatred and bigotry. You can call it what you like, you can claim that you support gay rights as much as you want, but that’s how it is.
No you’re not. Don’t exacerbate your stupidity with lies.
You’ve made quite clear that this is how you would vote, no matter what. There’s nothing anyone could say to change your mind on the issue, because your position is rooted in unreason.
For one small example, not having a relationship that is recognized as a marriage by the federal government would cost me app. $1000 extra tax burden.
I have the option of putting my partner on my health insurance at work, which I don’t have to pay for. I do however have to pay federal taxes on the market value of that coverage because my partner is not recognized as a ‘qualified dependent’ by the IRS. My married co-workers can also cover their spouses for free, but they do not have the extra tax burden because the federal government DOES recognize their spouses as qualified dependents.
There are many other ways that we do not enjoy all the benefits, but this is one that is quantifiable.
That is, even if same-sex marriage remained legal in California, would those marriages be recognized by the IRS for the sort of taxation purposes you’re talking about here?
If the answer is No, then even if every state allows same-sex marriage, your federal tax burden won’t change until the federal government takes concrete steps to recognize them.
Not at this time, but it is a step. If we can get married in CA, then it opens up a stronger possibility that congress will reverse DOMA (and Obama has said he would support a repeal and would sign the legislation).
I swear to God, people like Clothahump and magellan01 would come into a thread about a Doper’s grandma’s funeral and post “Grandma was an old crack whore anyway, so no big loss”.
I don’t really understand the hate. I am not homosexual. I wish no homosexuals harm. I’ve a boss who was lesbian and worked with several openly homosexuals during my life and had no issues/problems with it…it was a nonissue. They want to marry, why the hell not?
I just don’t get it…but then I’ve always been a weird duck.
Before reading that article I was mainly sad, but after reading that, I got upset. This is the quote that pissed me off:
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being pro marriage between a man and a woman. I’m completely pro straight marriage. I’m a single straight woman but I hope that one day I’m married to a man. But, I’m also pro marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman.
In some ways I prefer the unrepentant bigots who will freely admit they hate gay people rather than those who supossedly hate the sin but love the sinner. As a Christian myself, there are plenty of things that I think are sins or that I think God frowns upon but that should be legal. Not that I’m saying that I think homosexuality is a sin, but that I think there should be more basis to laws than “my God says this is wrong, therefore it should be illegal.”
Anyway, I just wanted y’all to know that I’m a straight Christian woman in Texas who was heartbroken when she heard the results on Prop 8 (and the proposistions in Arizona and Florida) and hope that it gets overturned.
You seemed to not understand why some people found the Mormon’s idiotic request for ‘respect’ objectionable, and you asked what we would prefer. I absolutely intended that for you.