Another State Legalizes gay Marriage

[Askthepizzaguy]

same-sex marriage, different-religion marriage, different race marriage.

At one time, they were all illegal.

Now, two out of three are legal almost everywhere. The third is legal in 3 states.

Your argument, Rhyfelwyr, doesn't hold water, because you're basically arguing "something was illegal for a long time, therefore it should be."

[Rhyfelwyr]

same-sex marriage, different-religion marriage, different race marriage.

At one time, they were all illegal.

Now, two out of three are legal almost everywhere. The third is legal in 3 states.

Your argument, Rhyfelwyr, doesn't hold water, because you're basically arguing "something was illegal for a long time, therefore it should be."

And just because some things were legalised doesn't mean everything should be.

Marriage, as an institution, is based on the fact that there is one man and one woman involved. If they are of different religions, then it is up to them to judge at their discretion if marrying is compatible with their beliefs. As for race, I don't believe such a thing exists in any noteworthy form, so despite shameful attitudes in the past its a non-issue in this thread. So long as it is one man and one woman, it is marriage.

Any other combination does not = marriage.

If you make instutitions to allow for same-sex partnerships, then it is something totally seperate from the traditional idea of marrige.

If you change the definition of something, well then that doesn't mean that whatever you allow to happen through the changes are really legitimate in the original form of whatever you redefined.

Its like saying we should abandon the idea of heterosexuality because it discriminates against homosexuals. You can ban these two catagories and say only sexuality exists, but in the end you can't make homosexuals heterosexual in the traditional meaning of the word.

[Koga No Goshi]

And just because some things were legalised doesn't mean everything should be.

Marriage, as an institution, is based on the fact that there is one man and one woman involved. If they are of different religions, then it is up to them to judge at their discretion if marrying is compatible with their beliefs. As for race, I don't believe such a thing exists in any noteworthy form, so despite shameful attitudes in the past its a non-issue in this thread. So long as it is one man and one woman, it is marriage.

Any other combination does not = marriage.

If you make instutitions to allow for same-sex partnerships, then it is something totally seperate from the traditional idea of marrige.

If you change the definition of something, well then that doesn't mean that whatever you allow to happen through the changes are really legitimate in the original form of whatever you redefined.

Its like saying we should abandon the idea of heterosexuality because it discriminates against homosexuals. You can ban these two catagories and say only sexuality exists, but in the end you can't make homosexuals heterosexual in the traditional meaning of the word.

This whole quote is a perfect exemplar of what I meant when I made the post a page back about how our government messed up because it did not foresee how the word marriage would wind up being such an obsessive sticking point for so many people. They should have just called it domestic contracts or somesuch, with what happens in a church still being called a wedding or marriage, and we wouldn't be at this impasse. But we are.

Thank you for the history of the Euro/Judeo-Christian history of the concept of marriage, Rhyfe. In your own way you are not incorrect. However this argument fails, over and over and over, to address the question of legal rights within the framework of the United States. So it is entirely irrelevant to the question or rather topic posed in the original topic. I have no problem with anyone having their own opinion, be it man + toasters or "marriage is Christian" or whatever their personal beliefs may happen to be. But those all need to be checked at the door in a legal question of equal rights, and trying to posit them over and over again as arguments against a legal recognition of relationship rights to gay people is dragging the argument off topic. It is, as I have said, as legally relevant as "I don't think so and so should have that right just because I don't like them." And indeed that is pretty much what the opposition comes down to when it's all boiled down. A lot of the state ballots on recognizing gay rights winds up being pitched as little more than an up or down referendum on "do you like/mind gay people?"

Since this is going in circles, but many of you clearly feel passionate about it... could I offer a friendly suggestion to start a new thread on Homosexuality: Right or Wrong or something more suited to opinion arguments than a discussion of U.S. state laws recognizing gay relationships? It might be closed rather rapidly if things spiralled out of control, but it is honestly off topic in this discussion.

In order to make a real case against extending equal relationship rights to gay people, you are pretty much in the position of having to prove that doing so somehow harms other people or infringes upon their rights. Remembering of course that simply annoying people is not necessarily infringing their rights. ;)

I have said that in Connecticut there was no discrimination because they allow civil unions and marriage is essentially an extra symbolic recognition for male/female relationships because they are special.

Does the civil union statute extend ALL of the same rights, verbatim? If it does not then it is a "separate but "equal" law" which legal precedent has maintained does not work, and is rarely equal in practice. This would include things people don't normally consider, like the ability to cover each other under insurance policies, pensions, etc.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Does the civil union statute extend ALL of the same rights, verbatim? If it does not then it is a "separate but "equal" law" which legal precedent has maintained does not work, and is rarely equal in practice. This would include things people don't normally consider, like the ability to cover each other under insurance policies, pensions, etc.

But is there one man who can marry another man or one woman who can marry another woman? No. There is no legal discrimination or wording towards it unless you maintain that marriage is for the protection of all sexual relationships. I can't marry a man and neither can a homosexual man marry a man. If love isn't in the law books and homosexuality hasn't been proven to be something other than a choice, then it isn't discrimination.

Off topic:
Women are entitled to maternity leave and the choice of whether or not they have a baby and are responsible for it for it financially for the rest of their lives. Men don't have that choice, is that a separation of rights that is unconstitutional?

[Koga No Goshi]

But is there one man who can marry another man or one woman who can marry another woman? No. There is no legal discrimination or wording towards it unless you maintain that marriage is for the protection of all sexual relationships. I can't marry a man and neither can a homosexual man marry a man. If love isn't in the law books and homosexuality hasn't been proven to be something other than a choice, then it isn't discrimination.

Off topic:
Women are entitled to maternity leave and the choice of whether or not they have a baby and are responsible for it for it financially for the rest of their lives. Men don't have that choice, is that a separation of rights that is unconstitutional?

A man will never carry a baby in his womb. A gay man will have his partner dying in a hospital at some point or another, if they're together long enough. A gay couple will own property together. So the comparison of those rights based on maternity leave is specious. If, at some future point, sex change operations advance to the point where former men can fully carry babies to term, they should qualify for maternity leave, even if some throwbacks argue "but he's really still a man, he was born one, we've always defined someone's gender by the one they're born with."

And regarding the first paragraph, absolutely it is discriminatory. Different groups of people may tend towards different choices or lifestyles or experiences based on culture or identity. So saying that a gay man not being able to marry his partner is undiscriminatory because you, as a straight man, also cannot marry a man, is like saying a law banning Synagogue is not discriminatory. The Jews are not allowed to go to Synagogue, but neither are the Christians. So where's the discrimination? Fair for everyone.

We have a history of those kinds of "not discriminatory" laws, Tuff. Look at San Francisco during the post-gold rush era, where laws prohibited more than x people living in a house together or placed a special fee on businesses using a horse for delivery---- knowing, in advance, that those laws would hit the Chinese, and hardly anyone else.

That logic isn't really turning the tide here, sadly.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Well if the concern is over practical factors such as medical rights and tax cuts, then why would a secular state have to mutate the traditional concept of marriage and base civil partnerships on any kind of sexual relationship?

Why not say, OK, everyone can select one person to share certain privileges with. This will mean they can choose who has say over what happens to them if they're lying unconscious in a hospital bed. And perhaps some tax arragement.

That way, you are not basing secular politics on a corruption of a Judeo-Christian ideal, and it will be more encompassing than sexual-preference based civil partnerships, as it will mean even those not looking for a sexual relationship for whatever reason can have the practical benefits of civil partnerships.

[woad&fangs]

Well if the concern is over practical factors such as medical rights and tax cuts, then why would a secular state have to mutate the traditional concept of marriage and base civil partnerships on any kind of sexual relationship?

Why not say, OK, everyone can select one person to share certain privileges with. This will mean they can choose who has say over what happens to them if they're lying unconscious in a hospital bed. And perhaps some tax arragement.

That way, you are not basing secular politics on a corruption of a Judeo-Christian ideal, and it will be more encompassing than sexual-preference based civil partnerships, as it will mean even those not looking for a sexual relationship for whatever reason can have the practical benefits of civil partnerships.

[Koga No Goshi]

Well if the concern is over practical factors such as medical rights and tax cuts, then why would a secular state have to mutate the traditional concept of marriage and base civil partnerships on any kind of sexual relationship?

Why not say, OK, everyone can select one person to share certain privileges with. This will mean they can choose who has say over what happens to them if they're lying unconscious in a hospital bed. And perhaps some tax arragement.

That way, you are not basing secular politics on a corruption of a Judeo-Christian ideal, and it will be more encompassing than sexual-preference based civil partnerships, as it will mean even those not looking for a sexual relationship for whatever reason can have the practical benefits of civil partnerships.

I believe this is acceptable to everyone, as long as it is fully equal for everyone. I think the people you'd have a hard time selling this on would be the people who've resisted any change to the marriage legal institution. I can already hear the radio ads saying that this is an attempt to totally nullify and destroy your marriage, with little old people believing it.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I believe this is acceptable to everyone, as long as it is fully equal for everyone.

I think that most people would sign off on this eventually.

The problem with bringing up "dying in a hospital bed" is that rights regarding visitation is not what you are pushing for. You are pushing for the title. How do I know that? Because courts overturned the laws of CT after they gave same-sex couples the option of visitation rights - because they were not given the title.

[PBI]

So everyone should have the right to a civil union with all the same rights as a marriage, but only those who get a religious marriage should be able to actually use the word "marriage"?

Since it is the religious groups insisting that it is their type of marriage that is "special" and different from the commonly understood sense of the word, surely they should be the ones who have to invent a special new euphemism for something which is in all essential aspects identical to a marriage but specifically happens in a church? Meanwhile everyone else can just use the word "marriage" for their sordid lust-fuelled state of living in sin since it has long since ceased to be the case that people require a marriage to have happened in a church in order to recognize it as legitimate.

You don't think it should be called a marriage, just call it something else when you have to talk about it. The English language does not and never has had government-set rules on how it can and can not be used, you have no sound basis whatsoever to try to prescribe what word other people should be allowed to use to describe their relationship.

[Koga No Goshi]

I think that most people would sign off on this eventually.

The problem with bringing up "dying in a hospital bed" is that rights regarding visitation is not what you are pushing for. You are pushing for the title. How do I know that? Because courts overturned the laws of CT after they gave same-sex couples the option of visitation rights - because they were not given the title.

I am not pushing for a title, it's just that every single proposal of civil unions I have seen in some way fall deficient of the rights bestowed by marriage, and I support completely the refusal to accept a 2nd class citizen pawn off of the rights bestowed by marriage in the eyes of the law.

So everyone should have the right to a civil union with all the same rights as a marriage, but only those who get a religious marriage should be able to actually use the word "marriage"?

Since it is the religious groups insisting that it is their type of marriage that is "special" and different from the commonly understood sense of the word, surely they should be the ones who have to invent a special new euphemism for something which is in all essential aspects identical to a marriage but specifically happens in a church? Meanwhile everyone else can just use the word "marriage" for their sordid lust-fuelled state of living in sin since it has long since ceased to be the case that people require a marriage to have happened in a church in order to recognize it as legitimate.

You don't think it should be called a marriage, just call it something else when you have to talk about it. The English language does not and never has had government-set rules on how it can and can not be used, you have no sound basis whatsoever to try to prescribe what word other people should be allowed to use to describe their relationship.

The problem with insisting that the term marriage must remain associated only with the Judeo-Christian tradition of man-woman marriage, or the "sacrament" of marriage if you are Catholic, etc. etc. etc., is that atheist or Muslim or Wiccan heterosexuals marry and divorce every single day. I do not consider the hubbub over the word and its imagined necessary ties to religious and moral traditions of just 1 religion/culture to be legitimate, least of all in a secular democracy. But would be willing to compromise (personally) on something like changing the word to civil contract or civil union, as long as EVERYONE then uses that legal status and it confers the same rights on everyone who uses it, without regard to gender.