P.S.: I have absolutely no idea how that smiley got there - must’ve clicked on it by accident.
Yawn. Punter.
Cheers!
BA
Let us not forget, in the midst of all this, that in eight of the eleven states that passed anti-SSM amendments on Tuesday, the language went beyond banning SSM and prohibited to some degree other arrangements such as civil unions. Kentucky’s exact wording is “a legal status identical to or similar to marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized”, which to me implies that those pseudo-marriages that the conservatives say the homosexuals can easily cobble together for a few grand in legal fees could be challenged as well, as they are attempts to create “a legal status similar to marriage”.
In my mind, there is no reason to oppose civil unions that doesn’t boil down to a general disdain for homosexuals. I do not think for a second that there is a lot of sin-hating/sinner-loving going on. In fact, I think that in addition to the clear anti-gay rhetoric we see in society, there is a far greater reserve of it that bubbles just beneath the surface, held down by what they would call political correctness and we would call common decency. My big worry is that this victory is going to embolden the anti-gay forces in society enough that we’ll see more of that sentiment bubbling up to the surface.
Losing political capital with whom? He has a solid majority in both houses and never has to stand for election again in his life. Who exactly do you think he’s going to be answering to?
Yeah, I saw last Tuesday how widespread that acceptance was.
Again, there has been little or no concrete legislative movement toward securing the rights of same-sex couples absent a court ruling forcing the issue. Hawaii passed its “reciprocal beneficiaries” law only after the state supreme court ruled in favor of marital rights. Vermont passed civil unions only after the state supreme court ordered it. Only California acted without court action. There is only so long that we can sit by waiting for the hearts of the hetero-majority to open and deign to recognize us. My feeling is that the existence of civilly united couples in Vermont and married couples in MA will go a long way toward reducing future backlash as more and more people realize that their own marriages aren’t threatened by married gay couples.
Er, Lawrence was clearly decided on Due Process grounds, which is what I said.
Romer was decided on Equal Protection grounds.
History seems to back me up. I don’t think that’s the case at all, and sodomy is a good example.
Not only was I aware, I made the same point.
you initially seemed to agree that we didn’t have legislative momentum on the issue, now you’re saying that we did. Can’t have both sides of the argument.
Legacy, which is enormously important to the presidential ego. And to the reality that he doesn’t have an ideological majority in the Senate, or, on some issues, the House. That means he can’t indulge in the belief that he will achieve everything. And if the war in Iraq turns seriously sour - always a distinct possiblity, and I have little faith in his skills there - he’ll quickly find his party turning on him.
Stop being petulant. Where are the numbers going over time? Up. But we’ve got a very difficult road to slog, made much steeper by the impatience and insularity of gay leaders who mistakenly believed that a victory in the courts would be a political victory, too.
More petulance and more impatience. First you move the culture, and then you move the politics. “We only have so much time?” Good lord, what rot. We have all the time in the world.
Oh dear, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to go into this. You do recognize that the statement, “…extended the 14th Amendment’s Due Process clause to matters of sexual orientation” is a complete non sequitur, don’t you? We are speaking of procedure, not status, and the fundamental question is privacy, not sexual orientation-and, in fact, everything you quote from Kennedy, J. concerns privacy, not the status of one’s sexual orientation.
Oh, good god, would you read the time frames in which I was speaking? For about 20 years, from 1961 to about 1980, we made legislative progress because the majority of the American public already agreed that private, consensual sexual acts shoudn’t be criminalized. At that point, we turned to the courts, and lost at the national level with Bowers. Post-Bowers, we continued to focus more on the judiciary, but mainly at the state level - and then turned Bowers into Lawrence. And in the meantime, our leaders also started litigating the gay-marriage issue, an enormous tactical error because we didn’t have the culture on our side on the issue of “marriage” yet, and we won’t for a number of years. Our efforts would better have been devoted to get incremental changes, such as in California. We now find ourselves not only without the incremental changes in most places, but in states like Ohio, constitutionally blocked from obtaining those incremental changes. And that’s entirely because we got petulant and impatient, and decided we had to have everything now.
And with that, I’m done. I’m not saying that you should like any of what I’m saying - that’s not at issue. What I would like, however, is some recognition that the the political context in which we live is not nearly as awful as you would think. We have to look at how political systems evolve over time, and recognize that the cultural progress that we’ve already made will, to a great degree, protect us - it just won’t be enough to give us quick or easy victories.
Well if you’re done then I’m not going to waste my time on a point-by-point response. You continue to be wrong on several fronts, but if you’re not interested in discussing it further, that’s fine. Keep on believing wrong stuff.
No, we don’t. Some of us would like to have equal rights before we’re too dead to enjoy them.