“Dammit, why the hell can’t some of you accept a differing opinion on miscegenation?!”
Nope…I can’t see a difference…
In a sane world, just juxtaposing the statement in the title of the thread and the statement in this post should be enough to make everyone flock to the Side of the Light.
Because there’s no functional or philosophical difference between opposition to homosexuality and opposition to mixed-race relationships. Both types of opposition are founded on prejudice and supposed religious justification. Both type of opposition are logically, philosophically and legally unfounded.
And in 20 years, the folks who stood in the doorway of society’s marriage edifice with their bullhorns will be seen in exactly the same light as the people who stood in the doorway of the University of Mississippi and Little Rock high school. Give yourselves a break now, because you really don’t want to be seen in the same light as Bull Conner and George Wallace.
I didn’t know promiscuity and swinging were the sole domain of homosexuals. And consider the price of this “freedom” you percieve is having to deal with the sneering of people like you, not to mention institutionalized discrimination and outright murder.
As for the “with whomever they want” part, well, NO, not with whomever they want, only with people of the same sex! That IS what a homosexual sleeps with, after all…
And never mind all of your wild assertions about the AIDS epidemic not only being entirely the fault of gay men, but your apparent belief that that belief means that current AIDS sufferers are not deserving of any help. Yes, they’re in another country, and people have protested on that part alone, but seeing as how this is a GLOBAL epidemic, and rampant disease tends to destabilize countries and lead to desperation (ripe for terrorist promises), well, that might be a good argument to help…
Besides, of course, Bush is trying to make up for that whole “marriage is only between a man and a woman” thing…
Well, this is what I get for not visiting the Pit often enough. It took me all this time to stumble upon this thread and, it seems, even longer to read all the posts. Whew!
A few things strike me as obvious:
People whose belief systems are fundamentally rational have no problem expressing themselves rationally.
People whose belief systems are fundamentally irrational have a habit of ranting incoherently and self-righteously.
In the marketplace of ideas, natural selection rules: Good ideas thrive and multiply; bad ideas wither and become extinct. It’s only a matter of time.
I strongly suspect Laurie’s real name is Laurence (or Lawrence).
All the great intellects on this particular board who seem able advocates for homosexuality… well, it just plum boggles the mind.
Big deal.
Hey!! have you ever considered that there are MILLIONS of intellects as ‘bright and shiny’ as your own who think that males sticking their penis-es or peniii - into one another’s rectums is just plain BIZZARE and NOT cool , and are just as COOL as YOU?
Sure. But real “intellectuals,” as you would call them, would never let such feelings negatively affect their interactions with other people, nor would they use those feelings as the basis for laws. Because they would be smart enough to realize that another person’s sexual practices don’t affect them personally, don’t make gay people any less human than themselves, and don’t give them the right to try to change something that can’t be changed.
**
Is that the latest trendy word in intelligensia circles? Musta missed the memo.
And if people are “dipshits” for supporting a human being’s right to exist, well… I wouldn’t know whether to be proud or sad.
As Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe recently explained so well, this is a crock.
Race is a nonessential component of marriage. The difference between the sexes, however, is what marriage is all about. Make interracial marriage illegal or legal, you’re not altering the definition of marriage. Create a legal institution in which two partners of the same sex are called “married,” and you’re creating an entirely novel institution which coincidentally shares a name with a different one.
Think of it this way: I’ll bet (though I don’t know, and I’d be interested in seeing some quotations from the time) miscegenation opponents never would have said “oh, that black man and white woman, they’re not REALLY married.” They just would have said it should be illegal for the two to marry. But there are plenty of folks who understand that there can no more be a same-sex marriage than there can be a square circle.
In fact, I would wager that most interracial couples have no problem understanding this.
Care to explain that one to me? Why not? What is so special about marriage that means it must be preserved as a SPECIAL right for just heterosexuals (and bisexuals living in an opposite sex relationship)? And it can’t be just about procreation since most anti-gay groups seem to have no problem with perfectly sterile people of opposite sexes getting hitched. Heck, my widowed grandfather got remarried in his late 70s to a charming woman in a Catholic chapel. No way that they were going to have babies, but I didn’t see anyone protesting their nuptuials. And it sure isn’t about having both a male and female role model in the children’s lives since our society seems to have no problem allowing single moms and dads keep their kids, and they would only provide one of the two models. Besides, very few families exist in a vacuum where the children would not be able to interact with people of both male and female gender.
So, why don’t you opponents of gay marriage finally admit that it’s really all about keeping special rights for you, a “heterosexuals only” club. If you’re going to wage a war against the inevitable progress of our society, you owe it to everyone to at least be honest in your intentions.
How does extending marriage to same-sex couples create an entirely novel institution, rather than just enlarge an existing one? Are you talking about a situation where two same-sex people can be legally regarded as married but not have the same rights as opposite-sex couples in regard to, say, inheritance, medical decisions, taxes and court testimony?
I’m not sure I get this “definition of marriage” stuff. It seems like the closest buzzphrase that the social right could grab, but I can’t see how it makes much sense. Sex is also a non-essential component of marriage, no matter what the “definition” is. Married couples do not even have to have sex. The fact is, gay couples can play ALL of the essential roles of marriage just fine.
When the requirement that parties to a marriage must be of the same race is written into the law, then indeed the “definition” of marriage includes “must be of the same race.”
Quoting from Loving v Virginia, 388 US 1 (the case which struck down anti-miscegenation laws):
The members of that grand jury certainly agreed that there was no legal mixed-race marriage and the trial court agreed, handing down a 25-year exile from the state to a mixed-race couple for daring to marry.
Continuing from the opinion, now noting the statute itself:
So the legislature of the state of Virginia (along with the other 15 states which at the time Loving was handed down made miscegenation a crime) would certainly have said to the Lovings and any other mixed-race married couple that they were not married and no marriage existed between them.
