Amendment # 28 to ban Gay marriage!

I don't want to come off sounding like I'm jabbing at you so I'll clarify this as a genuine question from someone who knows nothing about the Gay lifestyle issues from the perspective of a Gay. I don't want to read any of the typical smart-assed bashing that I've come to observe on this forum from intollerant intellects who suppose they are more enlightened and therefore have the right to talk down to anyone not of their opinion.My honest question is, what is it about getting married or having a legal civil union recognized by the State, that the Gay community is finding it worth fighting for? From my perspective, the whole institution of marriage has evolved in the last 50 years in this country to where there are almost as many divorces as marriages. These statistics combined with the legal ties that go along with marriage have created a major headache in our society. I just don't understand why the Gay community would want to saddle themselves with the same burden instead of just co-habitating and being able to step back and laugh as the straight folk wind up back in court every time they change their formal partner.I can only think from an unfamiliar perspective that either the Gay marriages would be more stable and your divorce rates would be significantly lower than the straight community, along with tax benefits, but again, I'm not being facicious, just speculating. My other guess would be to achieve acceptance and parity with the straight community, but from the few people I know who are openly gay, they don't seem to be concerned about staight community opinion anymore. I am at a loss and welcome your own reason why the Gay community might want Gay marriage.

I thought possibly the same, but are there not legal remedies that can do virtually the same thing, especially rights to surviorship that the Gay community could take advantage of without dancing with the ugly side of marriage - the possibility of divorce? I have watched a horrendous number of my fellow combatants in my unit go through and going through divorces and it is not something that I would wish on anyone. I think the Gay community has plenty of other areas that they could focus their energy on verses self distructing from the inside like what straight community marriage seems to be doing, at least in the military it is.

I can see the point about tax benefits. I got hammered this year and I have a wife and 2 carbon units replicas and we still owed.

National health care is coming which should end all of that as Bush wants everyone to have access to good health care. It's going to be painfully expensive but I think our country is backed into a corner on this and socialized medicine is on the way. We have what's called "Open Season" in November of every year at which time we can choose our health care provider. If you take the time to actually read some of the stuff they print in these brochures, you will conclude as I that our health insurance program in this country is a train wreck.I don't think that by the time Gay marriage becomes national that it will be of any effect from health care availability.

Again, I'm not Gay so I never have experienced what you talk about as far as second class treatment. But I don't think Gay marriage is going to change society's mind about the Gay lifestyle. I think what is going to eventually allow Gays to achieve parity with the straight community is American society to continue on it's road of appathy. People in restuarants in Seattle don't get up and confront 2 men sitting close in a booth an holding hands because they accept the 2 men's behavior. They don't get up and confront them because they don't give a damn. I think that as America becomes more appathetic to everything around them, all of a sudden you will find that one day your Gay public behavior is transparent just as a mom pushing a stroller. Just look at what's on TV now verses 20 years ago.Things like pressing for Gay marriage just seem to cause people to tense up now and create more negative feelings towards the Gay community instead of the appathetic view that is evolving now. And again, as I see the gut wrentching hurt that so many in the military are going through from divorce, I'd not wish even the possibility of that on you. I don't think the Gay marriage will have anything on the straight's as far as success rates. Social pressures, financial pressures, job pressures and broken vows are human issues. You'll not escape them and unfortunatly some if not many of your Gay friends will suffer the same emotional devistation as the people in my unit who are straight and divorcing. It's a very rugged road. That's from a straight perspective and from someone who's never walked in your shoes though.

I don't know what your problem is with me but you are sure digging around dissecting what as I say as if you are trying to hold a trial here. If you're going to comment on how many times I said "lifestyle", then why don't you comment on how many times I said the word "the"?Where did I ever say that I have the opinion that the Gays are all cut from the fab 5? And don't tell me that it's not a lifestyle. The homosexual community uses the term themselves so if you want to correct someone, go explain it to them.The other thing you comment on is that I am supposedly saying that marriage is such a horrible thing. Again you betray yourself that you've got some personal vendetta against me. So what's your problem dude? I didn't ask whether anyone wanted to be treated less of a human being by the government. You are making a big stretch by inferring that by my asking why Gay's want legal marriage that I'm questioning their right as human beings to be treated with dignity.

It's good that you have the hard data on the divorce rates to refute my supposition. That is powerful information that the Gay community could use to validate Gay marriage since it's arrangement appears to be more stable and permantent than traditional or as you say "mixed sex" marriage.

According to berberry, the main thing the Gay community wants is to achieve parity in society. So marriage is a part of reaching parity and acceptance is also part of it. Sensitivity training towards Gays mentions acceptance so I believe they desire that in order to achieve real parity.I personally don't equate inter-racial marriage with the Gay marriage issue. I don't believe the skin tone tells anything about the make-up of a person. I place some concerns on people of different cultural backgrounds getting married because your cultural roots make up more of who a person is than the amount of melenin in your skin. So if you are going where I think you are - don't go there with me. I am not a racist and I don't have anything against people of different racial make-ups getting married.

Concerns about them getting married - yes. Absolutes concerning them not to marry because of cultural diversity - no. I think there's a popular sit com that addresses the issue from a humorous angle about a girl with hippie parents who marries a dude from the elite.As far as you being scared to death about winning someone else's approval to marry a girl, then you must have issues about yourself. I received the approval from my wife's family concerning dating her and then later on marrying her. If they had objected to either, she would have called it off with me. She wouldn't have liked it, but her character was developed by her parents to be both strong and independent while respecting the wisdom of them. Her parents are well respected by me and most definitly by her. Their ability to observe my character, mannerisms, guage my opinions and test my perspectives while remaining outside of the areana of love and not looking through rosy glasses gave her confidence that she had met a keeper and it gave me confidence that this family would be my allie and not my adversary in life.I have friends, close friends who did not win the approval of the girl's parents and it has put the wife in the middle of a family tug of war for the girl's loyalties.If you don't win the girl's parents approval doesn't mean it won't work but it does mean that while I start the race with 2 additional sets of tires that my pit crew can change when the car starts to get loose in the corners, you might have to run the whole race on the same set. If you've got a good set of tires, then you'll make it but if track conditions are harsher than expected, you'll want the option of a fresh set. Good inlaws can give you a fresh outlook when times get tough. I'm speaking allogorically concerning the race car example - in the spirit of the Daytona Week action, so be aware of that before someone starts putting my sentences in quotes and accusing me of thinking that women are worth no more than a fresh set of racing slicks.You might reconsider your position and say you hope you win the approval of your future wife's parents because it has value instead of being horrified of it, but it won't be the end of the world it you don't. Is it your disdain for parents and restrictions or do you have a history of not being accepted by the parents of the girls you date?

Oops!Sorry about that. I read right through what you were trying to say and after you pointed it out I can see you mean from an outside censorship. Yeah, that would really whip the llama's ass if you had to get the aproval of a town comisar to get married to a specific woman. I think we agree on what you originally posted.Thank God they don't have me in charge of pushing the Nuke buttons! It's a little hard to apolgise once they are launched.

Yeah, you are right about my own personal opinion about same sex marriages. I'll try to explain why I feel that skin tone has nothing to do with it but your gender does.I have a lot of friends who are men. I am a man. I have an inner circle of 8 men who are very good friends of mine and 3 who are close friends. I have women friends also but none are in my inner circle. The inner circle of friends that I have are very good and loyal brothers to me. I love these guys. I love being around them, spending time with them, watching and playing football, going camping and fixing cars with them. The 3 of them that I consider close friends know most everything there is to know about me. I can share most anything with them and I would give my life to protect any of them. I have a bond with the 8 and also with the many other men friends that I cherish and find healthy.Now with the women friends. Some are good friends of mine but I keep an invisible emotional distance from them. Why? Because they are women and I am oriented to be attracted to women. Evey woman who works in our squadron is subliminally evaluated by every man as to wheather or not you would sleep with her, and every woman can spend 3 minutes in a conversation with any man and know whether he would sleep with her. That's the dynamics of sex and being human. So I don't allow myself to have close friends who are women because of the obvious danger of being unfaithful to my wife. My wife started out as an aquaintaince, then a friend, then a good friend and then quickly the love of my life. There's only room for one and no competition is allowed in my life now that we are married.Now lets say that all of a sudden I decided that I wanted to sleep with a man and handle dude parts instead of wanting to be with a woman. It sounds graphic but that's what homosexuality is. Men who want to handle dude parts instead of women's parts, but the sex drive is still there.So now I have these 8 friends in my inner circle and 3 close friends and we are now all gay. I can no longer have the healthy man to man type relationship with them that I had before because now sex is involved. We're all still men so we have strong sex drives but now it's for each other. So when we all go out camping, we can't sit around the fire anymore and just shoot the bull because we're all in a situation similiar to if I was camping with 7 women. I'd be eyeing them up for more than just conversation, and now the relationships and competition becomes very complex. So much for a relaxing men's get-away camping trip.So what I see the gay's loose is that really cool man to man bonding and exchange it for a man to man sex/bonding with the sex always in the areana. So who then does the Gay man go to just bond with? Women? Again, even though they are attracted to other men, they are still different from women so whatever bonding occurs will not replace the man to man non-sexual bonding. And in the military, open Gay service will be a disaster because even though I will serve with them and do my job with them, there will be no male to male bonding because of the sex issue, similiar to how we as men are taught concerning how to respect the women servicemen differently. There are clear rules and it is suicide for a man to have a woman bring up sexual harrasment charges against him. Can you imagine the complex dynamics now if the sex thing is permeated within the male ranks with each other?So my confusion comes in when I wonder why any man would want to throw away the really valuable man to man friendships and bonding and exchange it for a sexual relationship with each other. I'm not knocking them although I don't know why a man would ever want to handle other mens dude parts. But I believe they give up way more then what they get back when they exchange the natural male to male bonds for the right to have sex with each other.

Well spoken about the marriage conditions.So if race is not an issue then gender should not be an issue.If gender is not an issue, then gender combinations is not an issue.If gender combinations is not an issue, then quantity is not an issue.If quantity is not an issue then age is not an issue.If age is not an issue then -------------I wonder at what point the whole concept of marriage becomes unrecoverably distorted to where the definition of a family is as nebulous as the definition of heaven. If the concept of a family unit becomes trashed by the time everyone is done redefining it to suit their own specific bend, I wonder if our social structure will handle it.What did you mean by saying "Being in support of same-sex marriage because it is what the constitution demands is not the same thing as being in support of it because it is the right thing to do"?Do you mean that anyone who does not believe in his heart that Gay marriage is just as right as straight marriage has the real troubles. If so, what would you do with those straight disidents and how far would you go to identify them?

Read my post you replied to again. I didn't say that I cannot have friends who are women. You are playing a stupid game of over simplifing what I say to try to paint me as an undisiplined freak.My post says that I choose to not have CLOSE personal female friends. Now you ask your wife if she has a problem with you having CLOSE personal female friends that you share most everything with and who know most everything about you and you go and hang out with without the company of your wife.If you come back and say that she is perfectly cool with you having as many close personal friendships with women as you wish because she see's no difference with you going fishing with Trisha for the weekend alone vs. going fishing with Travis alone for the weekend then you're that majical one couple who have achieved 110% total trust and hey- more power to you.

Again you are trying to paint me as someone I'm not. I did not say that I am for crashing into every bedroom of a house where 2 guys are living to see if they are just room mates sharing the cost, or if they are swinging from the ceiling with each other.I respect the rights of the individual and part of my job puts my ass on the line to insure that my and your individual rights remain, verses us being over run by another country. I doubt if that has clicked with you since you are bent on painting me a darker shade of ugly.If 2 guys want to have sex with each other - then so be it. If you want to consume mass quantities of alcohol and drink yourself to oblivion - then do it. But if you are commited to drinking yourself spunk drunk, then stay in your house. Don't go staggering down the streets and trying to interact with sober people and you damn well better not get behind the wheel of a car and drive. If you decide that alcohol isn't for you and you get on the wagon - BFD. I could care less as long as your actions when you are on the bottle are done in private. I don't want you telling me that alcoholism is some kind of disease and you need help from some government program to get yourself back together. Nor do I want you to tell me that that's just the way you are wired and the trip you get from alcohol is more intense than the trip I get, so you being the way you are, have a right to be drunk in public and I must accept it or I'm a drunkaphobic.Now if you determine that the alcohol is a problem in your life and it's bigger than you are and you seek formal private treatment to begin the road to reformation - then great for you. You've identified a harmful behavior and you've taken the first step to taking back control of yourself.In like manner if you want to as a man, fall in love with another man and have sex with him and hold him and go at it just like a straight man does with a woman that he loves and protects and cares for - then go for it. If you can honestly hold another man in your arms and look in his eyes and feel like all you want to do is provide for this man and protect him and hold him and whatever else one man wants to do with another man when they think they are in love, then have at it.But I'm calling bullshit. If you've got a speedbag swinging between your legs then you are a man and you have all of the traits and charateristics of a man - personality speaking. You are goal motivated, visually arroused, task oriented, masqulin, agressivly protective, driven, and domimate. So I can't see how any man would want another man to hold him in his arms and treat him like a weaker companion as he makes his sexual or lovingly moves on him. So I think it's all about the sex and they've stumbled into something very powerful that causes them to burn wildly for each other and they misinterpret being in heat for being in love, just as most straight couples do.They think they are in love until the road gets rough. And I believe the road will get just as rough for a couple of dissillusioned men who have become legally married and then the infactuation of spamming each other's hams wears off and the waves of life come smashing down. Problem is, I don't think they will find anything else in the suitcase of their relationship to help preserve it like what a straight couple finds when they hit the hard patches and realize they weren't in love but in lust but now they are married
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They can seek marriage conseling. The straight couples can and do fall actually in love from this but 2 guys falling in REAL love? I don't think they will find that they compliment each other, but being 2 men, the best they can do is reflect each other.So I equate their behavior as damageing and distructive both to themselves and to society. I don't care if they want to do it in their bedrooms and I'm not going to pitch a beef if they behave in public with the same restraint and dress that conservative couples should anymore than I care if a guy comes out of a bar lit up but his alcolol is under control. But I don't want them coming into the schools with their pro gay literature and feeding impressionable young minds anymore than I want Cammel Cigarettes passing out "Joe Cool" T-shirts to these same kids. I don't want to pay for some government program for them to force society to bow down and acknowledge that Gay is OK or loss my job or end up in court for a thought crime. And I damn well don't want to see them going after the institution of marriage bending it on a platform of destructive behavior but clothing it as a new normal faction of society.Now if these individuals realize that they've stumbled into a harmful but very powerful form of behavior and it's bigger then they are, and seek private formal help, then good for them. They've just made the first step to reclaiming control of their lives by correctly identifying homosexuality as harmful verses "equal but different" to heteralsexual behavior.But again, are you going to find me chomping at the bit to identify gay relationships and force them to admit "Be Straight - no Debate" or they'll loose their jobs and wind up in court or jail for a thought crime? Not hardly. I respect their individual rights and freedoms and I don't belive in legislating morality. I don't belive in beathalizer check points but I'm glad that there is a force of protection present when someone is behind the wheel and drunk to intercept them and stop their driving. I don't believe we have the right to tell someone they can't have sex as a man with another man, but I hope there is a protection force there to stop the behavior from infecting the rest of society by protecting marriage in this country for the next generations.

But I believe that if you do even have an extramarital affair with an anomyous stranger, then you have suffered a form of emotional estrangement with each other.I don't own my wife. She doesn't own me. She's not my personal property. But she is more precious to me than all of the personal property that I could ever amass. I have never been content with anything material but I am content with her as my partner. She feels likewise. The thought of ever outsourcing sexual gratification, no matter how carnal or raunchy is very painful. It's the only thing that we have that's just between us with no outside inclusion. It's a part of the glue that holds us together along with many other human dynamics.We're not still-together because of our exclusive sex relationship, but if the sex was outsourced then the the glue weakens to more of a Post-it-Note formula. It doesn't take much effort to remove a post it note and once you break the sexual vow, it doesn't take as much to break the rest of the vow.