Eve, I totally agree. I DO really resent the party’s stance on this. See, my problem is that I go back and forth between the right and the left, depending on the issue.
Gay rights? Whatever floats your boat and makes you happy as long as it doesn’t harm me and mine.
Abortion? I’m pro-life, anti-choice.
Death-Penalty? I’m anti-death penalty.
Welfare? Eh. Not crazy about it but recognize it as a necessary evil.
NEA? Definitely not.
Right to bear arms? Yes, unfortunately, I think people should have this right.
Religion/prayer in schools? Absolutely not, and I don’t want it on my money, either, thankyouverymuch.
So what party do I go with? I choose the Republicans (reluctantly), because I agree with their overall philosophy. And then I try to change the things I don’t like from within.
Also…I think I should add that I don’t really think the government should have anything at all to do with marriage. It’s not a topic I’ve put a whole lot of thought into re: how the taxes would work, etc. Just seems wrong to me to have the government regulate such a personal decision.
I agree: marriage as a legal bundle may be kind of outdated. Most of the benefits can be had piecemeal by other means, and giving it (as opposed to actual things like children) special tax treatment is well-recognized as problematic. But it is convienient way to get that bundle of rights and relationships.
Bruce, now you are descending into self-sealing nonsense. The argument is not about what the word should mean (dictionaries, in case you didn’t know, are tomes of popular usage), but what the legal situation should be. In our form of government, with equal protection and all, you can’t simply give special rights and powers to some people just because you feel like it, and deny it to others on an irrelevant basis.
The daycare example is too goofy and out-there to even bother discussing.
Bruce_Daddy, legislators are either intelligent enough to be able to distinguish between a gay marriage and a daycare center, or they’re too dumb to trust the country to. Pick one.
The laws that will be passed to legalize gay marriage will be specific, and will define the new terms of marriage precisely. What in the world made you think otherwise? We’ve had to fight for decades to get as close as we have to getting gay marriage legalized; you really think polygamy is going to be able to just ride into legitimacy on our coattails?
If you think that the definition of what qualifies as a gay marriage and what doesn’t won’t be specifically addressed in any laws pertaining to this issue, you’re deluding yourself.
Like I said… do you have any other arguments? Other than the idea that if legislators legalize gay marriage, they’re going to legalize unions of all sorts, no matter what? It’s not a very scary straw man.
Let me clarify my position. If the end result was that gay marriage was legal and gay couples got all the same rights as hetero and that was the end of the story, that would suit me just fine.
That is the end result; that’s been the intention of this movement from its beginning. That’s the one and only goal.
If it’s any reassurance, the Vermont Domestic Partnership legislation is being held up as an example of how such legislation might work. Here’s an excerpt from that state’s guide to planning a Civil Union, delineating in layman’s terms how such unions are defined:
I’m not adverse to dictionaries, I’m adverse to using them incorrectly. Anyone that thinks that definitions actually tell us substantive things about reality is going wrong in their thinking somewhere. Definitions are arbitrary selections of common usage that we use to communicate coordinate descriptive language things about the world: they, themselves, don’t tell us anything about the world. How people connotate the word “married” tells us zip zilch about whether gay couples should have the same spread of legal rights available to them as other couples.
Uh… BE two people (as opposed to employing or being owned by) that live together and, possibly has joint and primary legal guardianship over a child?
A “daycare center” is not a personal relationship between too people. It is a business.
Oops: that sentance should have been
“Definitions are arbitrary selections of common usage that we use to coordinate our descriptive language that we use to convey our thoughts about the world.”
Like anybody is going to vote for Howard Dean in Mississippi to begin with.
Not all Republicans are anti-gay - as often happens, the most bigoted people just make the most noise. Nor are all Democrats ‘pro-gay rights.’ I’m sure Joseph Lieberman’s record, for example, is pretty conservative on this count. [and on many others, but anyway…] Probably Zell Miller too, and some others.
Two men or two women doesn’t a family make, but then again, a man and a woman doesn’t necessarily make a family (a healthy one, that is) either. It’s when you suggest that a gay marriage is somehow less healthy or capable or raising children (etc.) than a normal marriage that I think bigotry enters the equation. I’m also left wondering why the opinion of straight people who don’t like the idea of gay ‘marriage’ (either as a concept or a term) counts more than the opinions of the gay people who want one. I’m tempted to raise the old maxim - if you don’t want a gay marriage, don’t get one.
By the way, from the “what can you do but laugh” department, a prominent Utah polygamist has ALSO lashed out at Rick Santorum for his comments the other day.
That’s part of the issue; some of those rights are rather hard to get. For example, if one partner is on life support, a lot of complications can come up…
You’re missing the point: The Log Cabin Republicans are there to reform the Republican Party’s stance. They are in agreement philosophically with most of the party’s beliefs. And when bigots like Santorium pop up, no one condemns them louder than the Log Cabin Republicans. Check out their website.
The LCR take the classic conservative position that government should have less say in our private lives, not more.
Also, when checking out the LCR website, note the photo on the main page of President Bush posing the LCR’s president. This is currying favor with the Christian Right?
The Democratics have quite a way to go too. Most of the Democrats in Congress voted for the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act”. Democrats talk the talk, but they often don’t walk the walk.
