Amendment # 28 to ban Gay marriage!

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then why not call it a duck? If a civil union represents all the same rights and privledges of marriage, why not call it marriage?Honestly I don't want to be from the generation who's legacy is the first constitutional amendment to take rights away from people.

How come we can't ever get any of the fundies to defend this ridiculous amendment? Aren't fundy groups like the Focus on the Family group the major supporters here?Fundies: if the preservation of marriage is your goal (and it's a laudable one, to be sure), why not an amendment banning divorce? (Or at least banning joke marriages in Vegas?)

I don't think it is, though. Marriage has a civil meaning, too. I'm a married atheist. I want to be in a marriage, not in a civil union.I don't think that the government's connection to the civil institution of marriage has anything to do with the religious institution, except for some rules that make it a little more convinenent for those getting married - i.e. you can be married by a pastor or a civil authority, but you don't have to see both. Like I said, I don't think it does. The government institution of marriage merely enacts the protections that society thinks married people ought to have. But it's a separate thing from the religious institution.

Didn't you say you were married?Why? Why weren't you two content to remain boyfriend/girlfriend forever?I'm married, too. For a few reasons. Absolutely none of them were tax reasons. (This is maybe the first year either of us will have made enough to actually pay taxes.) Part of the reason is, I want to spend my life with her. And as a practical person, having listened when older people talked about marriage, I realize that there's probably going to be a time for us when tempers flare and the only thing that keeps a point of no return from being crossed is that piece of paper and these two rings.And there's another issue. A wedding ring is like a magic ticket. Is my wife in the hospital? I can go in and see her, because it's restricted to family. I can deposit her paycheck into our account. I can do plenty of stuff because legally, we're able to vouch and make decisions for the both of us. There's a legal legitimacy to our relationship. Now, I could have that as just her partner, but it would have taken a lawyer on retainer and about 10-100 times what the marriage license cost. The marriage license was one sheet of paper. Who knows how many sheets it would have taken to get power of attourney, rights of survivorship, co-custody of children, etc. And there's no piece of paper in the world that would get me past the nurses to see my girlfriend in emergency care (god forbid.)And it gives our relationship social legitimacy, too. Now our families and peers see us as adults in an adult relationship, not as teenagers playing at love. (Hell, there's a convenience issue - now we can sleep in the same room at my parent's house.)Marriage has positive social ramifications that I'm sure you're aware of, if you stop and think about it, because they're what drove you to seek that arrangement for yourself.And there's one more thing. The Supreme Court ruled that "separate but equal" was anything but equal. What is this "civil union/marriage" business if not "separate but equal" for gay people? They're going to have to god-dammed deal with it. There's no excuse to make gay people wait for the civil legitimacy they should already have, just because some bigots think it's icky. If black people had waited for apathy before pushing for civil rights they'd still be sitting in the back of the bus. Did you say you were in the service? I would have expected a serviceman to take the attitude that the possibility of failure is hardly a reason not to try.

Hey, you're back. Missed you. (In a purely platonic sense. )

You can pretty much stop right there, because that's as far as your slippery slope goes.You can have gay marriage (between two people) without having to change the marriage laws (except for the ones that say "no gay marriage," obviously) because the marriage laws don't make any reference to the genitals of the participants. (At my marriage, the pastor didn't ask "Got a penis? Check. Got a vagina? Check. ok, we can do this.") Marriage laws don't make reference to the ability to make children, simply the ability to raise them (it doesn't matter how you got them.)Change the number, and you really hav to redefine marriage - As Rrhain likes to ask, if A and B are married to C, are they married to each other?Who knows? The laws are written for two people. They're not scalable. But explain to me what changes for two adoptive parents if I tell you that they're both the same sex.Nothing. Too late. You live in a country with a "distorted sense of family", because unlike every single previous civilization before us, we define "family" to exclude grandparents and childless relatives living with us.Like always, society will define "family" any way that suits it. And people will define their families the way that suits them.The problem facing society isn't new kinds of families. It's people who are in no kind of family. Restricting gay marriage prevents people from being in the family they want. If you're so gung-ho about family, you should be supporting gay marriage, because of the new families it will create.Ultimately I see a lot of the "ick" factor in your arguments. You don't like gay marriage because you don't like gay sex. Well, that's fine. Gay marriage doesn't mean you have to marry a gay person. But I don't understand how, in the Land of the Free, you're comfortable restricting what other adults can do with each other simply because you think it's icky.

Well, I don't know all the laws, but when I look at my marriage license, there's no gendered terms. It lists us by name.The license application had boxes for bride and groom, and the ability for both of us to change our names if we wanted (I considered a name change to "Duncan MacAsskicker", but the wife veoted it).The laws may very well say "bride" and "groom" but that's hardly a gender requirement. And since the terms are interchangeable with each other - brides don't have any rights that grooms don't have, and vise-versa - then what's the difference if you have two brides or two grooms? What changes? That, or you just allow one of the participants to arbitrarily be "groom" and the other to be "bride". Does it matter? Infertile couples in the same states get the blood tests too, I imagine, as well as those with no desire for children. When a spouse divorces, there's an obligation for support if they supplied income to the family. If you divorce a man, and you were supporting him and his wives, who do you owe support to?It just seems more complicated to me. The examples of polygamous marriage I'm familiar with are exactly that - poly-gamy, or "many women." Where are the examples of polyandrous marriage? Polygamy is simply one subset of plural marriages. Where's the legal precident for a marriage of three guys and two women?Is plural marriage really relevant here? I don't see the slippery-slope argument being valid. It's like saying "we can't let those black folks vote, or else those hispanics will want to, as well." Well, yes it probably will. As it turns out, when you start handing out civil rights, you have to hand them out fairly.Gay marriage might well lead to plural marriage. (I hope it does, actually.) But just because you don't like plural marriage is hardly a reason to deny gay people their rights.

My mistake.But isn't it true that all the societies Holmes was talking about are only polygamous in the sense that one man can have many wives?That hardly gives us a framework on which to base all plural marriages. I mean, if three men are married to five wives, who owns the wives? (Ownership of wife apparently being part of the basis for polygyny. )

Huh. Based on nothing but popular stereotypes about men, that's exactly the opposite of what I would expect.

That's something else I don't understand. I'm married, but the license isn't an enumeration of the rights and privledges of marriage. It just says we're married.So what "contract" are you referring to? I was following you when it seemed you were talking about an implicit contract, but now it appears that you're referring to an actual, printed contract that I've never seen.I mean, how can I inital changes to an implied contract? That may be, but I doubt that the law bothers to define "bride" and "groom" anywhere. Just like it doesn't bother to define "is."I could be wrong, but I guess you'd have to show me.This doesn't seem to be either here or there. I think the topic was the gay marriage amendment.

Like I said, I'm literally looking at mine right now and it lists my wife and I as "participants." There is no change that would need to be made to this document if both of us were the same sex.I don't remember the application well enough to be sure if it listed us as participants there, or if it did say bride and groom.I imagine the point in Minnesota marriage licenses is not to pave the way for an eventual adoption of gay marriage but rather to suggest equality between spouses - so that the groom doesn't always have top billing.So far I haven't actually seen any marriage laws that reference "bride" or "groom". What I see a lot of is the term "spouse", which is gender-neutral. So what exactly has to be changed? You keep saying we have to change these terms, that hetersexuality is "built in", but I haven't seen that anywhere in my state. I guess I'd like you to dig up at least one example of a law that says "bride and groom", or better yet, "man and woman", rather than "spouse".I thought this part of your site was interesting:

quote:

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In all states except Hawaii and Vermont, couples must be of the opposite sex to form a valid marriage.

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Now, nowhere on the application did we have to certify that we were heterosexual. I imagine that, had we both been men, they simply would have just refused to give us the license application, or refused to certify it. But the license itself doesn't check for gender.If it's just policy that prevents gay marriage, and not the actual letter of the marriage forms, it's going to be pretty easy to redact the laws, I think.Out of curiosity, what happens if I'm married to a woman and she gets a sex-reassignment? Or if she's diagnosed with XY syndrome? What happens to a legal marriage if the sex of one of the participants suddenly becomes less clear? Has this ever happened?

It'd be nice, yes. Of course this doesn't count laws that exist soley to counteract gay marriage (ala "defense of marriage acts.") It's got to be some fundamental right that isn't transferable between spouses because it's based on gender or genitalia.

What exactly does your wife (or you) have the problem with? Is it the close friendship, or the possibility of sex?My wife would prefer that I had anonymous extramarital sex rather than become better friends with another woman than I am with her. I rather feel the same way. Maybe that's because we see marriage as a personal, emotional commitment, not legalized sexual ownership. Which is not to say that either of us would be really happy about adultery. But we'd be a hell of a lot more sore about emotional estrangement.I guess we're weird like that.

Since it's obvious that you don't know human sexuality from a hole in the ground, let me ask you, in a similar tone to your post:When the hell did you decide that you were going to be straight?Not ever, right? You just are that way, right?It's literally insulting to me that you would rather cop an attitude than ponder, just for one minute, what it's like for a homosexual, and how it might be possible for a person with plumbing just like yours to be wired to want to use it another way. The biological basis of sexual preference is beyond dispute.I love how you're convinced you're possessed of a supernatural ability to read the minds of gay people you don't even know. A position contradicted by the fact that there's a significant statistical probability that your average male gay couple will be in a relationship that lasts longer than your marriage. Let me tell you what I think a harmful behavior is. I think it's a behavior that can't tell the difference between something they think is icky and something with actual harmful consequences.I realize that you're the line of defense against the foes of this country. And I'm glad you're there, trust me.What worries me is that after you're done defending our freedoms, we're going to have to defend freedom from people like you.

What offends me is that you have no idea what it means to be homosexual, yet you're comfortable supporting policy that has a very real and negative consequence on their lives. When we pass the point where we can demonstrate actual harm as a result of the freedom we're about to bestow. We're hardly at that point with gay marriage. Ludicruous! How could letting more people marry lead to the abolishment of marriage?If it's the defense of marriage that you're so concerned about, why not have a constitutional amendment banning divorce? Oh, sure. Just so long as you approve of who I love. I'll take my chances with a future where adults can marry who they please. Nobody's demonstrated how that's a bad thing - just given spooky, nebulous pronouncements about the slippery slope of too much freedom.