And unconstitutional on its face, if SCOTUS ever had the collective balls to grant cert. and say so.
Well, I tend to defer to the Supreme Court on what’s constitutional and what isn’t. I certainly agree, however, that there are excellent reasons to believe it is unconstitutional, however, and the Court tends not to like it when Congress tries to tell it what the Constitution requires. I’m not at all sure, however, that the Full Faith and Credit clause would require recognition of another state’s gay marriages in any event.
But enough pontificatin’ for the night. If you gentlement will pardon me, this motion for summary judgment is not going to write itself. I foresee many cups of coffee tomorrow. 
Sheesh, maybe this MSJ ought to write itself if I’m using “however” twice in the same darn sentence.
Good points, however.
::d&r::
Shit. So the Democratic party is lying. That’s better. At least the Republicans seem fairly uprfront about the hack job they’re doing on gay rights.
If I was gay, I’d rather have someone tell me they were my enemy than pretend they were my friend.
Gotta give the nod to the Reps for integrity.
Hey, at least you’re acknowledging that the Republican Party is anti-gay. If you want to change that policy, send a check to Mary Cheney and make your voice heard.
I think I kind of acknowledged that on page 1, and repeated it several times since then.
I can see where you might have missed it as your reading comprehension skills seem to indicate that “we support traditional marriage,” is code for “Fuck you queers.”
My point has all along been that neither party is particularly good about this issue, that intolerance is not a party issue as it crosses party lines.
Finally, I think if anyone is Democrat only because they believe the Republican party is promoting an anti-gay agenda and the Democrats are not, than they are badly deluding themselves.
It was rather a lot more than “We support traditional marriage,” as my line-by-line reading above amply demonstrates. Remember, it’s your party that implicitly labeled homosexuality a threat to democracy itself and says it wants to protect the right to fire gays and lesbians based on their sexual orientation. It’s my party that says it supports legislation to make such discrimination illegal, “an equitable alignment of benefits” (i.e., civil unions or other legal recognition of homosexual relationships), and “the full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of the nation.”
I’ve made my choice, you’ve made yours. :shrug: Guess that’s what politics is for.
Scylla, you seem to have missed one issue in your brilliant analysis of the GOP platform
(emphasis added). This sentence is not limited to marriage. This refers to discrimination in employment, housing, and the like. Your party’s position is that such discrimination against homosexuals should not be prohibited. And, BTW, this is distinctly a federal issue.
So, please explain how this platform plank fits into your “equal rights”.
Sua
P.S. Your “the Democrats are lying” had to be the most learned and incisive debate point I have ever read.
Minty, while this thread has devolved into a discussion of how the Republicans, according to various posters’ views, feel about gay marriage, I’d very much love to see a thread in which DOMA and Article IV are dealt with at length.
While I personally support the idea of gays being able to marry if they so choose, and the idea of marriage as an important social institution, I feel that what DOMA enacted is a major attack on the principles of federalist constitutional law, quite apart from any social agenda that any parties may be bringing to the table.
In short, IMHO it effectively repeals 199 years of constitutional law, and is a blatant attack on the very idea of government under a supreme law to which all statutes must conform. I would love to see that point addressed in a thread here.
Poly, I would be happy to discuss DOMA, although I’ll have to re-educate myself on the constututional standards to discuss it intelligently. I’m really busy with this darned MSJ today, but if you’ll start the thread tonight or tomorrow, I will contribute whatever I can.
This discussion is pretty far off the rails if party platforms are being discussed. Those are written at the conventions every four years, by a roomful of single-issue ideologues and other assorted hotheads, and are never really read again except by people looking to score points of some kind. That management method allows the aforementioned ideologues to think they’re special and appreciated and actually making policy, while really they’re just being removed from the view of cameras and kept out of the way of the real movers and shakers. There are some pretty unconventional things in both parties’ written platforms of recent decades, but that really doesn’t matter.
Now, if you want to understand what a party really believes in, look at what they do and who their members put in charge. The GOP leadership, both in Congress and the White House, has pretty well shown by its actions, as well as its words, that gays are at best tolerated but not influential, despite the presence of gay organizations that identify themselves as Republicans. Sorry, folks, they’re just not the mainstream, and have no likelihood of seeing the GOP mainstream expand that far in the near future either.
**
When people say “it’s implicit” or “this really means,” or “you’re party is using this to” they may very well be right, but that is a different thing from what it actually says. By making such statements you’re bringing something to the statement which isn’t there in the first place.
Of course the sentence is not limited to marriage. In fact, it’s not limited at all. It says no special protection or privileges based upon sexual preference. It applies equally well to straights as it does to gays, as it does to polygamists, fetishists, etc.
What it actually says is that nobody should be treated differently than anybody else based on their sexual preference in terms of privileges or protections.
That’s what it says.
If you look that quote, it’s really a pretty crafty piece of writing.
It’s wonderful really in that it seems to say what the fundamentalists want to hear, but it’s totally deniable and actually promoting equal treatment when you actually parse it.
Of course, once you read DOMA, the jig is up, and it’s easy to see what’s actually going on, but since DOMA passed with such an overwhelming bipartisan majority, there’s still plenty of wiggle room.
There’s also a bunch of wiggle room in DOMA, as the whole thing is couched as a protection of State laws, but that veil’s pretty thin.
Well thank you. It’s always the mark of a courteous and thoughtful opponent when they acknowledge a point well made. I appreciate it.
Now believe it or not, this whole thing doesn’t terribly bother me much.
I happen to think that the vicious and active opposition to gay marriage will bring the matter to a head, and its inevitable resolution very quickly indeed.
There’s really not much to stand on in opposition to the issue other than fear and reaction to a new and seemingly threatening idea.
There are actually some problems to be worked out with gay marriage that would entail and effect how we perceive and treat traditional marriage. The legal definition is going to have to get overhauled and there will have to be some changes. There’s no question that that’s scary and threatening to a lot of folks.
So, I understand the opposition to it, and I can even sympathize.
But, all this stuff brings it to a head, and it will have to be dealt with and ultimately it will happen a lot faster with this active resistance than it would with quiet stonewalling.
So once again we can point proudly at the Republican party for being the leading catalyst for change on important civil rights issues. 
We’ll have gay marriage equal to tradittional marriage within 7 years, probably sooner.
Elvis:
I’d say that’s a fair and pretty on-target analysis.
Just as Alabama and Arkansas were the states that were the catalysts for change on important civil rights issues back in the 1950s/
Let’s see, 14 is 1/3rd of about 45% (to be fair to 3rd parties we’ll say that neither the dems or repubs make up a whole 50% of voters)…I’ll be damned, the Liberals are correct, we are all Christian conservatives after all! If “they” find out I don’t id myself as Christian and I think gays should be able to marry (each other), do you reckon I’ll be required to become a democat? This just goes to show that it’s the craziest 1/3 of any party that’s the loudest…I bet we could figure out the craziest 1/3 of the Democrats and judge everyone in that party by them too, but that’s pretty pointless.
Puh-freakin’-leez. Did you even bother to read what I wrote? I said that fundamentalists are Republicans, not that Republicans are fundamentalists.
minty, your wish is my command. (Although it helps that I had a month-dormant thread on the topic accessible.)