Actually, he compared him to someone who supported Nazi rule. Not every supporter of the Nazi government was a Nazi, any more than everyone who supports George Bush is a Republican. If we’re going to call Godwin, let’s get it right, shall we?
For some reason you decided to SKIP my other Hillary link.
http://www.nypost.com/gossip/19209.htm
(FWIW…there are other links besides the Post Gossip page that cite Hillary for this…the Post was just the first I found).
So Hillary “maintains a marriage is between only a man and a woman” based on moral, traditional and religious grounds. It’s NOT just Hillary wishing for states to have the ability decide something (that she disagrees with). But again…she apparently gets a pass.
Good gravy man…I’ve only said this at least three times now. This is NOT about a simple policy disagreement, I don’t expect folks to point out every politician who holds a point similar to a poster. I said it before and I’ll say it again. This is about the LEVEL of vitriol. If politican X holds a position that makes him/her a “bigot”, equvalent to a “racist”, someone who “discriminates”, someone equivalent to a Nazi…that sounds like no small deal to me. Does it sound pretty significant to you?
Oh I get that…although I guess it’s truly amazing then, that other politicians of any stripe get pitted. Whats the “satisfaction”? 
Come on, Otto. Aren’t we splitting hairs here? On a message board, any message board, when someone makes any kind of reference to someone supporting Nazi Germany or Hitler, it’s a Godwin. Pure and simple.
Then again, lissener invoking Godwin’s Law? In a pit thread about gay marriage? I’m shocked! :eek:
Would a federally recognized civil union really be a crappy substitute? It’s far more protection than gay couples have now, and might be a springboard to future full recognition of the unions, once people saw the sky hadn’t fallen.
We won’t even get those civil unions, though, if their advocates don’t present a convincing case for them. And convincing people involves keeping emotions in check, and presenting cogent arguments instead of rage.
I’m afraid I missed GLWasteful’s point on adoption. Could you either recap or point me in the right direction to find it?
Portability:
I’ve said before that my proposed solution is civil unions, that by law confer all the rights, privileges, and incidents of marriage, enacted in every state, much the same as the present situation in which marriage laws are enacted in every state. Civil unions would thus be as portable as marriage within this country. Indeed, my REAL solution is to get the government out of the “marriage” business in its entirety; all “unions”, between same- and opposite-sex couples, should be subject to precisely the same level of recognition at law. We would then leave “marriage” to whatever any particular church, synagogue, temple, or coven wished to make of it.
- Rick
Sure…if you REALLY think that’s a meaningful distinction…then
Bricker is somebody who, if alive in Germany during the 1930s, would have had no problem with the extermination of Jews, gypsies and gays (even though he may not have actually owned a National Socialist Party card).
Bricker is somebody, who if alive during the 19th century, would have had no problem with slave owning and lynching.
Yeah. Meaningful distinction.
You’re getting confused about which side you’re on.
Yes, it is. Inequality is not equality. And I can just as easily contend that it could prove devastating to the cause of full equality, since unconcerned types will cease to care at all once gay people are seen to have something that’s “good enough”.
As for cogent arguments, these have been presented ad nauseam, to the point where we’re left with appeals to procedure, appeals to tradition and appeals to patience. None of these address the fundamental concern of equality, which is why I’m interested to see if equality is something that you would support, ignoring how it is achieved. Do you? Fundamentally, do you believe that gay people are deserving of the same rights you and your wife enjoy, or not?
Then go ahead, Mr. Moto. I’m still waiting for your cogent argument. I posted above and in other threads exactly the reason why civil unions are not an acceptable substitute for true marriage in the case of people who are in love.
You responded by saying “Oh yeah? Nice comeback!”
Let’s see if I can say it again in a sweet enough way to make you actually respond to it. Civil unions are valid in some cases, but not for people who are married. If I love a man enough that I want to commit the rest of my life to him, start a family, and celebrate our love, then he is my husband. He is not my roommate. He is not my longtime companion. He is not my domestic partner. He and I are not civilly joined. For me to say anything else would be a lie and an insult to our love. And the love that he and I share should not have to be proven by us, when it is assumed of every heterosexual couple.
If you want civil unions for people who need them, then fight for civil unions. Just don’t tell me that that’s what I want and that’s the most I can hope for. This is such a transparently stupid case of government and religious intrusion into personal relationships that is so completely unnecessary.
Does that make my point? Or are you going to make us go through another round of “All you homos just simmer down now!” and “Fuck you you fucking fuck!”
You know, Mr. Moto, it must be really difficult for you to be a conservative on this message board, since you’re clearly in a minority and we’ve seen time and time again that conservative threads suffer devastating losses.
I have sympathy, I really do.
Maybe you should just say that you’re a liberal to get people to like you. Then use that as a springboard to make your true opinions known.
Sure, it’d be a lie, but it’s the best you can hope for. Wouldn’t it be easier?
As we have seen, Bricker fetishizes the legal process to an astonishing degree. If he were alive in 1850, I’m sure that he would be arguing strenuously againt the illegal theft of property committed by the black chattels running away from their rightful owners. Slavery was legal, therefore interfering with the property rights of slaveowners would be for him a question that could only be settled by the states.
The Nuremberg laws made the resettlement of the Jews to the East legal. I’m sure Bricker might regret it, but the law is the law and therefore must be obeyed.
Isn’t marriage and family law in itself an intrusion into personal relationships?
I have stated that I support federal civil unions with equivalent rights with marriage. My support goes only so far, in that I believe pressing for more would be unrealistic. It would likely doom both gay marriage and civil unions, per the backlash being seen now.
I also believe that civil unions must be expanded beyond couples involved in a sexual relationship, to help people who want to set up households and share benefits who can’t be considered a “couple” by any definition.
Now, you might not like this position, and want more. Hunky-dory. Good luck getting all the support you need for more, though, because this backlash demonstrates that this level of change is too radical for most people to consider. And a prolonged fight over this won’t be good for the nation, nor would it help people who need benefits immediately.
BTW, you can call your husband anything you want to, SolGrundy. I’m not going to dictate what people can privately or publicly say. But the language of the law is a different matter, as is the language of political rhetoric. When I stress the civil union over expanded marriage rights, I do so fully aware of what the American public will actually support.
I’m sorry, it was MaxTheVool, here.
Well, that’s nice, but as noted, there is no existing comity agreement for civil unions (or domestic partnerships, or PACS, or what have you) that allows for this, or gives a legal basis to argue for it should you end up in a state that doesn’t recognize it. So you’d have to create it from scratch at the federal level. On the other hand, that mechanism already exists in the case of marriage, and has for a long time (and I’m confident that, for that reason, sooner or later the state DOMAs will be found unconstitutional).
Even if a particular state doesn’t permit SSM, the existing long-founded comity of marriage will provide a much, much firmer basis to argue for portability than that of a civil union. For a Canadian example, we just got SSM in Nova Scotia today; one of the couples who brought suit argued on the basis that their Ontarian SSM should be recognized in Nova Scotia. I’m not saying that the situations are necessarily analogous right down the line, but same-sex marriage, I believe, will prove to be a much bigger breach in the wall of those who want to deny us practical partner rights in general than an “equivalent” civil union status.
Furthermore, what about a couple who gets married in another country and then settles in the US? Does their marriage get downgraded to a civil union? Or do they have to get civilly unioned again? Neither of those statuses is equal to that enjoyed by heterosexuals, who in nearly all (if not all) cases have their foreign marriage recognized as a matter of course.
How would you feel if the SCotUS heard a case on same-sex marriage and issued a ruling something like this.
I realize the language is a bit sloppy, but the intent is all there. Force the state out of the marriage process entirely. The state can issue civil unions, but keep its grubby little hands out of that which is the province of religion, Marriage. This means Unitarians and any religious sects which wish to provide same-sex marriages can do so without running afoul of any laws. This seems much safer than the government setting down a definition of marriage when even the religious sects don’t agree on it. Unitarians and some religions believe same-sex marriage is perfectly fine. I don’t see a way to keep the state involved which will not lead to burdening religion with state edicts as to how to run their churches. It has long disturbed me that ministers had to jump through state hoops and be certified by the state before they could perform a marriage. I think this is an unnecessary intrusion by the state into a religious ceremony. I would guess there is at least as much constitutional support for a ruling along these lines as there would be for one which imposes a state definition of marriage on religious institutions which should be free to define it themselves(i.e. the Unitarians).
Enjoy,
Steven
“What the majority will support” is an exceedingly crappy basis to filter minority rights. In fact, I’d say it’s just about exactly backwards.
I think the idea is good. However, renaming all marriages would basically destroy all comity agreements presently extant, not only between states but between the US and other countries. It would throw everything into legal chaos for no good reason.
I offer you, contrariwise, the text (paraphrased) of the draft bill that the government referred to the Supreme Court with regard to SSM:
Upshot: A minister of religion can conduct religious marriage in whatever way and between whomever he or she likes. Those persons can also choose to become legally married at the same time, through a civil procedure which the religious official may be empowered to conduct. Should the people wish to be legally but not religiously married, or if their religion does not recognize their marriage (for some other examples, the case of a Catholic marrying a divorcé) other mechanisms (courthouses, etc.) are available to them with equal ease.
In other words, we have legal marriage, and we have religious marriage, which may or may not take place at the same time depending on the wishes of the couple and religious official involved.
You’re still dodging the question. Do you fundamentally believe that gays deserve equal marriage rights, or not? This has nothing to do with what you believe is achievable, but what you believe is right.
Said majority is currently changing state law and state constitutions around the country to make things much harder for gay couples.
I don’t regard this as a good thing. Do you?
And, for all the talk about civil rights movements and the work they have done, let’s not forget the role of Congress, which passed the relevant constitutional amendments in the first place, in addition to civil rights legislation.
State legislatures and the citizens of the various states have passed similar legislation.
Wouldn’t a legislative victory here be desirable? And wouldn’t the language of said legislation have to be carefully written so it would pass?
I think absolutists, as I’ve said before, are risking it all, rather than sullying their position by achieving a compromise, however temporary. I don’t believe this to be smart politics. Just my opinion, though I have ample backing for it.
I believe there should be a nationwide, federal and state recognized civil union benefit that affords all of the benefits and protections of marriage.
I believe said benefit should be open to other people who need to set up a household but aren’t in a sexual relationship. There is a need for this union for these people as well.
That’s my position. I’m not dodging any questions. I thought this was clear from my earlier posts.
I am all about throwing out existing comity agreements in favor of making marriage be a purely extra-legal affair, a phenomenon in which the government takes no position.
I guaranfreakintee you that if the US replaced all future marriages with civil unions within (say) a two-year period, and announced that all existing comity agreements would expire at the end of that two-year period, most nations would be falling over themselves to get new comity agreements written up before that expiration date. And these new comity agreements could be written in a way to act as a model for other countries, and could be written in a way to ensure the rights of SS couples from the US that move to other countries.
I seriously doubt that Saudi Arabia, China, or Peru is going to recognize the validity of a SSM from the US, just because a comity agreement drawn up when legal SSM didn’t exist seems to suggest they should. They’re much likelier to recognize the validity of a US SS civil union, if the recognition of their own marriages in the US hinges on such recognition.
Sometimes it’s nice to be the 800-pound gorilla.
Daniel