Another State Legalizes gay Marriage

[Askthepizzaguy]

Now, you're thinking.

Good response, Koga. Very on-point and decisive.

[Fragony]

Doesn't matter what it is, two reasons against gay marriage, enforcing it is a breach of the seperation of church and state that works both ways, and it is a small group they shouldn't claim what belongs to many, they can live the life they want without taking that.

[Koga No Goshi]

Doesn't matter what it is, two reasons against gay marriage, enforcing it is a breach of the seperation of church and state that works both ways, and it is a small group they shouldn't claim what belongs to many, they can live the life they want without taking that.

The first argument doesn't make sense and the second argument doesn't work in a secular democracy. Have an argument that applies to the U.S.?

[Fragony]

The first argument doesn't make sense and the second argument doesn't work in a secular democracy. Have an argument that applies to the U.S.?

Oh, ok, doesn't make sense. Church can't interfere in state business and visa versa that is how it should be, state can merely set up a civil contract the rest is outside their realm of influence. Well that is how it should be but it always wants more.

[Koga No Goshi]

Oh, ok, doesn't make sense. Church can't interfere in state business and visa versa that is how it should be, state can merely set up a civil contract the rest is outside their realm of influence. Well that is how it should be but it always wants more.

Well maybe you are not aware, but in the U.S., that social contract is called marriage. Yes, marriage is claimed as having religious overtures. But it is still a legal contract separate from any church or religion's jurisdiction, in the U.S. Marriage existing as any sort of exclusive right only for certain groups of the population is unconstitutional under our laws, regardless of whether or not religious people feel the word itself means that marriage contract under the government must only recognize man + woman.

Maybe I just misunderstood what you were saying, you make short vague comments so I can't be sure.

Regarding everyone "agreeing" to just revoke marriage and replace it with a generic civil contract or civil union legal status, that sounds good-- but it is not what is being proposed. And I suspect you'd find just as much stiff resistance, if not more, to removing it. The whole legal defense of keeping it and not extending it to gay couples is 'tradition' and 'sanctity of marriage' and 'traditional definition of marriage.' So it's hard to picture these same people suddenly agreeing to disband the legal entity of marriage altogether. What's being proposed over and over in the U.S., are state ballot measures and Federal amendments to the Constitution to ban gay marriage. The discussion should reflect that, because theoretical discussions of deconstructing marriage and replacing it with something else is not what is going on, or even being proposed, by lawmakers or interest groups.

So until the constitution at the state is amended, and the constitution at the federal level is also amended to define marriage, courts have no consitutional recourse but to declare any law denying human couples the ability to have a state sanctioned marriage as unconstitutional.

In not so many words that is precisely what I have been saying. It is off-base for people to argue that this is "activist judges" or "legislating from the bench." If a law comes up excluding equal rights for certain groups it is the duty, not the "partisan judgment call" of a judge to overturn it. As stated before, if you do not believe this to be the case, I would wonder what exactly people think the judiciary's role IS supposed to be. Unfortunately I think too many people have come to view it as "rendering popular opinion rulings on issues in a way I agree with", and anything else as "activist judging."

Now Gina is deceased. Sarah (my relative) cannot dispose of any of Gina's property, Gina's family blames Sarah for Gina's death and refuses to travel to Arizona to assist, and responds to phone calls and emails in vile, abusive, homophobic language, and Sarah cannot even get a copy of Gina's Death Certificate, because she is not the legal next-of-kin.

Thanks for sharing Kukri. This is not "in a vaccuum." This is not "maybe what-if's." This happens to people every single day. This is exactly the kind of scenario I mentioned more than once and it's not rare or some remote theoretical. It does happen to people, and it's a complete injustice. I don't see how anyone can support this nebulous legal status as a good thing.

gay activists that would not stop before even the church would be forced by law to marry gay couples on one side, some opponents of gay marriage who would see any form of legally condoning gay relationships as a step towards the destruction of soviety) or nothing are often the ones that are blocking a pragmatic approach.

I am sure you can find some tiny fringes who want to "force it into churches", just like you can find fringes who advocate mass deportation for gay people or preach that natural disasters are God's punishment of tolerating gays. However I think we are frankly giving the public in general too much credit assuming that taking these fringes realistically is the reason they are lukewarm-resistant to the idea of recognizing gay marriage. First off, many churches already will either formally, or on the side, conduct gay marriage ceremonies. It really comes down to the individual clergymen in question and their personal beliefs. And some churches openly accept gay couples. So the idea that gay couples will "have to" next try to force some kind of totally unconstitutional law to force churches to conduct their weddings is just a scare tactic. Nor do I know of any such proposal, aside from one person mentioning an activist group protesting a church. But on any large scale, I do not believe this is something anyone is serious about messing with, and nothing that would pass the legislatures OR the courts anyhow, and thus not something people should be making their decision about.

That is, incidentally, something I am extremely annoyed with the Knights of Columbus about at the moment. Here in California the radio, even PROGRESSIVE radio is FLOODED with support ads to overturn the gay marriage ruling, saying that it's going to "force" people who object on moral grounds to accept it including churches. And they throw in this odd statement, too.... "kids in public schools make a joke out of it, just like they did when gay marriage was legalized in Massachussetts." My eyes almost bulged out... HUH? We are supposed to vote on a state ballot based on not wanting kids in school to make fun of something? And it ends with "Paid for by the Knights of Columbus."

The level of fearful, uninformed kneejerk reactionism this ad was trying to play towards doesn't speak well about the "reasonableness" of the so called middle.

[Fragony]

Maybe I just misunderstood what you were saying, you make short vague comments so I can't be sure.

Nope, was just wrong, different situation then here I guess. My other point still stands though, that gays should want to be husband and husband out of respect for the feelings of others about the status of marriage. America being a religious country and the holy order of the bruised star being what it is they will probably demand a marriage with backing of the church, seen it before.

[Askthepizzaguy]

The United States is not a religious country, and it's not a secular country. It's both.

And even if it were the majority, the rights of minorities must be respected, and the state is officially secular.



Just to clarify my previous post; if it's not a big deal, then it shouldn't be illegal.

[Koga No Goshi]

Now, you're thinking.

Good response, Koga. Very on-point and decisive.

Pharaoh thanks you.

This is purely for my curiosity.... does anyone here have any gay friends or relatives they are on good terms with? I noticed a couple times in this discussion people said "wow, am I the only person against this?" or something similar. It left me wondering, wow... are there so few people who have gay friends or relatives?

I'm just curious.

Personally, of course I Knew a lot of gay people. I wasn't friends with the couple I (suspected) were gay in high school, but that was really just luck of the draw more than avoidance. The three or so that I heavily suspected were gay (or just by common knowledge were, even though they never said so out loud to me personally) in my class hung out with the popular girls and of course the popular girls looked at me like I was a deformed ladybug on their sandwich.

In college, I knew lots. I did Student-to-Student Peer Counseling (called SSPC on our campus) for two years and not only had a lot of training seminars which touched on sexuality and relationships, STD's and safe sex, but also of course talked to a lot of struggling students who came in during office hours to talk to someone. Though frequently I saw these people only once and we weren't friends or classmates, it was a big campus.

I had a lot of female friends who had had sexual encounters with other women, but of course, I think anyone who knows a good deal of women knows that sexuality is a harder to pin down thing for them in many cases. They are freer and more liberated about everything from hugs and kisses to flirting to sex when it comes to gender crossing than men are allowed to be in our society, without necessarily being gay. My sister's best friend for a couple years of college was a lesbian, and through her my sister (heterosexual) got really involved in the UC-Irvine gay clubs on campus. I didn't really know many of them firsthand other than meeting a couple when I was visiting my sister and hanging out in the campus coffeehouse where she worked and a lot of her friends would come in. Since most were female it got me over the stereotype that lesbians were bulldikes or all masculine and butchy. Many you would have no way of knowing were lesbians.

I had a friend, whom I did not know was gay right off the bat, live with me for about a year after a big fight where his family had cut him off over something unrelated to sexuality. (Fight over his paychecks, which they had cashed and spent and threw him out when he was pissed about it.) I found out he was gay later, but that didn't bother me-- he had a lot of issues though. I suppose the fact that we were very good friends for years and he didn't tell me till very late despite my ... what the forum would call... "Berkeley liberalism", is proof that he had a lot of hangups about it. He was very "straight"/closeted and had multiple girlfriends over the course of time I knew him.

I had a lot of college classmates who were gay, ranging from normal to rainbow hair. I had a couple of friends that hung out in my "circle" who were, and it was no big thing to anyone. I was surprised (pleasantly) that rather than the "omg... omg, DID YOU HEAR?" reaction that people in my high school had to the topic, people in college treated it like absolutely no big deal.

[PanzerJaeger]

This is purely for my curiosity.... does anyone here have any gay friends or relatives they are on good terms with? I noticed a couple times in this discussion people said "wow, am I the only person against this?" or something similar. It left me wondering, wow... are there so few people who have gay friends or relatives?

I'm just curious.

My best friend is, and I know a lot of gay people through him. Some of them I would call pretty good friends.

[Redleg]

Actually observations and comments about homosexual behavior are irrevelant to the topic. Since the topic is about the legalization of gay marriage.


The Federal government enacted legislation to provide equal rights to all regardless of age, race, religion, and sex. The Federal government has yet to enact a constitutional amendment that define's marriage as a union between man and woman only.

States also have enacted legislation to provide equal rights to all in line with the Federal Government.

If the state does not enact a constitutional amendment to define marriage they have opened the door for constitutional challenges of legislative law, given most states have defined marriage as a partnership between two people. Some states are indeed attempting or do have constitutional amendments in place.

So while people will argue about the slipperly slope theory, I just don't see it anylonger given the state has defined it as a partnership between two people both historically and in many cases in the law itself. I thought that arguement was valid at first, but when I look into the history of marriage, and the actual legislative law for the states I have lived in, I dont see the slipperly slope theory being valid where the state has defined marriage as a union between two people.

So until the constitution at the state is amended, and the constitution at the federal level is also amended to define marriage, courts have no consitutional recourse but to declare any law denying human couples the ability to have a state sanctioned marriage as unconstitutional.

So this is not the courts legislativing law from the bench, its a failure of the individual states to address the actual definition of marriage that the people wish for the state to have, and place it into their constitution.

[KukriKhan]

A very close family member living in Arizona is lesbian. Her partner of two years and she were in a car wreck in May, hit by a drunk driver. Both were examined and released from hospital. Two weeks later, her partner dropped dead one morning while sitting in their garden drinking coffee. No warning, just *plop*, face down, no breathing, no heartbeat, dead.

Gina (the dead partner) grew up in New Hampshire, but had been alienated from her family for over 30 years. A year ago, convinced that they loved each other and wanted to share life, the couple flew to NH to reconcile with family, and announce their intentions, giving each other "promise rings" in front of Gina's family, who seemed to take it all pretty well.

Now Gina is deceased. Sarah (my relative) cannot dispose of any of Gina's property, Gina's family blames Sarah for Gina's death and refuses to travel to Arizona to assist, and responds to phone calls and emails in vile, abusive, homophobic language, and Sarah cannot even get a copy of Gina's Death Certificate, because she is not the legal next-of-kin.

We hafta fix this. If Redleg and I decide to go into business together to sell widgets over the internet, and file the appropriate paperwork - even though we've never physically met, and he's in Kansas, me in California, if I drop dead tomorrow, HE has more rights to dispose of my assets that my Sarah does her Gina's. And that ain't right.

[Ser Clegane]

Thanks for sharing this, Kukri - I can only imagine how terrible it must be for your relative to face these bureaucratic barriers while trying to cope with these tragic personal loss.

My sincere sympathies go to her.

This shows that there are actually real people with tangible problems behind this discussion, not just some vile people with an agenda to corrup society and to pave the way for marriages between people and livestock/appliances.

The sad thing is that a civil union that covers the rights (or at least a good chunk of them) that married heterosexual couples have, seems to be something that would get the consent of a rather broad majority - and that it is the fringe groups on both sides wanting the full enchilada (i.e. gay activists that would not stop before even the church would be forced by law to marry gay couples on one side, some opponents of gay marriage who would see any form of legally condoning gay relationships as a step towards the destruction of soviety) or nothing are often the ones that are blocking a pragmatic approach.