And where the Allies locked the gays back up once they figured out what the pink triangle stood for.
My answer to the OP:
Because marriage is, and ought to be, a fundamental right guaranteed all human beings of legal age.
And I find it very disturbing that people talk about drafting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution “protecting the sanctity of marriage” by defining it as between one man and one woman. Constitutional amendments should never, ever, be created to take away someone’s rights, or deny them a right that they didn’t legally have in most states.
I find it uplifting that the current trend in America seems to be towards legalization. But I think we’re a long ways away from making it legal nationwide. (Quite frankly I don’t have a lot of faith in some of the deep-red states, in that regard.)
researches
:eek::eek::eek: My God. Homosexuality remained a felony in West and East Germany for 24 years after the war. That is insane.
It’s really simple: Homosexuals are (or should be) socially and legally equal to heterosexuals.
I wrote, then deleted a long and rambling post about this, but it’s simpler just to say: homosexuals, by virtue of equal legal and social status, should be able to insist on anything that heterosexuals insist upon (or indeed, enjoy without any insistence at all).
Not that the OP is still reading, but:
I was in a domestic partnership in the US for several years.
Then we moved to Canada and are now legally married.
Though there are differences in rights, so far the main benefits are intangible. These are enormous and deeply meaningful. Because my marriage is federally recognized, I have no worries about introducing my husband to my boss, for example, whereas in the US it was not automatically a good idea: I had to feel out each individual person to see whether it was okay, and once it turned out to be a mistake that cost me my job (my boss was a nun: I was not fired, but my contract was not renewed). Likewise in social situations. I had very few problems in the US, as I lived in urban areas in a fairily liberal state, but the negative reactions I did see were held by people who felt they were in the right. In Canada, people might feel I’m morally on shaky ground, but at the same time they know that I’m legally 100% supported by the laws of the land, and in no way a second-class citizen.
TL;DR: From someone who has been on both sides, being married is way, way, way better than being in a “civil union”.
:eek: That’s awful.
Anyone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the Equal Opportunity for Housing and Employment posters I’ve seen have said that such things cannot be denied on the basis of gender, race, color, religion or national origin, but sexual orientation isn’t a nationally protected class. Some states have made it so, but obviously this is an oversight that has no business remaining in effect in 2012.
I just want to say I like this comparison a lot.
Quite right. It was in my state, though.
In this particular case (as in many discrimination cases), it would be difficult to impossible to prove—she may have just disliked me for entirely separate reasons, and of course that’s the benefit of contract workers: no obligation to re-hire, at least not in this case. It’s my husband who is convinced the orientation is a factor, but even if I were inclined to pursue it there’s no way I’d convince a jury.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Quote=SunGazer]
No need to get your knickers in a bunch.
[/quote]
Not wearing any, thanks.
[/QUOTE]
Way TMI for me!
I’ve never said this before, but I agree with Der Trihs <NP checks over shoulder for Eldritch abomination to materialize>, particularly his comments in post 23:
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Yes, because there are a multitude of legal issues that are relevant to the institution, which in turn is really just a formal recognition of the human tendency towards pair bonding.
[/QUOTE]
Laws aren’t made in the abstract; they are made to respond to the human condition. And one notable aspect of the human condition is the tendency to pair bond, with a sexual component, in some cases for a more than merely transient period. People in a pair bond live together; they share their stuff; they share their lives; they depend on each other for little things in life, and for big things.
And the law of marriage is not some major government intrusion into the personal lives of individuals; it’s evolved over the years to recognise that natural tendency and to provide supports, rights, and obligations for the couple.
It’s just like other areas of the law. The law of contract has evolved because people make deals with each other all the time; so you need a body of law that governs those principles. People occasionally get into accidents and hurt other people; so you need a law of torts and negligence to deal with those situations. People want to own stuff, sell stuff, buy stuff, give stuff away; so you need laws governing property rights. And people die; so you need laws governing wills and estates.
All of those are part of the human condition, and so we as society have laws governing them. Pair bonding is just one more aspect of the human condition, for which laws have evolved.
And that “relationship laws bundle” is exactly what marriage is, in law. There are all sorts of aspects of living together in a sexual relationship for a significant period of time that the average citizen doesn’t think about when they first meet the love of their life; but over the centuries, those issues have come up in court cases and in legislation. Marriage provides an off-the-shelf relationship laws bundle for a couple. When they get married, they automatically get that bundle of rights.
And, I don’t see how changing it the way Qwertol suggests would reduce the difficulties of ending the relationship. That’s what the law of divorce does already. It’s not the law of divorce that is complicated; it’s that human emotions can be very messy, and untangling a relationship of joint interaction over several years can be quite complicated.
If a judge marries two men under a gold-fringed flag, how many violations of the Constitution have occurred?
Moderating
If you want to open a separate thread to discuss the ways in which the U.S. has moved away from what you believe its ideals should have been, feel free to do so. We welcome all sorts of discussions in this forum.
However, I have only opened two threads, so far, today, and you have interjected into both of them off-topic rants that were only marginally related to the actual discussion.
That sort of hijacking will not go well, here.
= = =
That goes for references to Admiralty laws and related topics by everyone else, as well.
[ /Moderating ]
Dr. Drake, fuck, that’s horrible. This whole thread is making me want to vomit. Twenty-years from now we’ll look back on this like we did with the ban on interracial marriage and think, WTF?
So don’t get married. No one’s forcing you. Oh, and that site you gave us is very, shall I say, “entertaining”? (BTW, the guy who wrote that book was convicted of tax evasion)
And, of course, since the courts decided that herding people into camps and torturing them to death was illegal, the camps weren’t viewed as part of a legitimate justice system. So the time they spent in the camps was not counted against their sentences.
Well, bigamy, for one 
Shit, I never even knew that. Wow.
Now that your question has been answered there are a couple of things. Homosexuals are guilty, in biblical terms, of fornication, not adultery. The irony is that people who oppose SSM are participating in that sin. It’s akin to refusing to feed the hungry and then calling them a thief when they steal a loaf of bread.
Now that you’ve had this question answered you may want to ask why so many heteros feel that the institution of marriage will be damaged by SSM, when it makes zero sense.
And why does anyone want to spend the time and money to create a new classification called civil unions that have all the same rights when you can just allow SS couples to marry.
Last but not least. It is a civil rights issue and there are legitimate parallels to be drawn with other civil rights struggles. I’ve never heard anyone say they are exactly the same.
I disagree.
JMHO
The word Marriage over the years has been an accepted definition of the profession of public commitment in civil law. Over history, many cultures have accepted and recognized this. The inception of marriage is rooted in religion. Only recently in historical terms has marriage been monogamous but that is another discussion.
I believe the issue we have today is the Church vs State. The State essentially has accepted the definition as part of civil law. We have built a civil code system based on a religious precept. However, as we become less discriminatory in our treatment of others, we now have the issue of a discriminatory law.
To change the definition of marriage, the State is taking it upon itself to rewrite a Church definition. Bad juju follows when State starts defining Church.
On top of this, many Homosexuals are Atheist. I believe mainly because of the persecution they continue to suffer from obtuse Christians who only read parts of the Bible that they want to follow. Since these particular homosexuals consider religion to be a fantasy, they have no issue with State defining marriage. They have no problem with eliminating “Church” because to them, it is like eliminating the Easter Bunny, a fantasy.
History has shown that the conflicts between Church and State are fraught with peril. Bad history is bad and that is a road we really do not want to travel today.
The solution is really simple if you ask me. Under Civil Law, where ever you have the word Marriage, you replace it with Civil Union. This includes every reference to the word or idea of marriage in our law (IRC). Additionally, I would go to the point of saying a Church ceremonial marriage does not constitute a civil union. If we are going to separate Church and State, we must make a complete break. All previous unions will be grandfathered and redefined as civil union.
To be qualified as a civil union, one still has to get a license (Civil Union license instead of Marriage License).
All that being said, I have talked with numerous gays and they dont want Civil Union, they want Marriage. To them, its like stabbing back at the Church. As long as this continues, I think they do more harm to getting their relationships recognized then if we just go down the Civil Union road.
And what of everyone who then complains that gays really DID destroy marriage?
Seriously, this has been argued again and again and again. There already IS civil marriage. You don’t have to get married in a church. So why change the term?
See PP