I can't believe no one else has brought this up yet, so...

[ladysycamore]

Originally posted by Elspode
You want to hear what is truly funny about all this? Rush Limbaugh is on the radio right now talking about the war on "our traditional values" by the Liberals.

Who the fuck sold this idiot all the traditions? Who are all these other people who have different traditional values, then? Are they not Americans? Is it not *their* constitution as well?

The worst thing about this is that no one, fucking NO ONE, can come up with any demonstration of actual harm being caused by two people of the same sex being married.

It is prejudice and hate, pure and simple. There's nothing moral about any of it, because no one is trying to force anything on anyone else on the so-called 'Liberal' side of this issue. No one is trying to pass an amendment requiring other people to have gay sex or take a same-sex partner.

Gay marriage deprives no one of anything, except perhaps the Right's precious sense of being the only class of people who have anything to say about everything.

I believe that this issue has just cost GW the election.

Nail, hit, head.

But wait: it gets much worse:

Jerry Falwell Forms Anti-Gay Marriage Coalition

And this:

Homosexual Marriage Constitutional Amendment: U.S. Department of Faith Proposal to Amend United States Constitution to Conform to Biblical Principles Regarding Marriage

*shakes head*

[Happy Monkey]

That's whitehouse.org...

[richlevy]

I found this 2003 article on interracial marriages. I find the parallels between that and gay marriage very simlilar. I wonder what would have been the reaction in 1967 if the President of the United States had proposed a constitutional amendment banning interracial marriage?


Color-Blind Love

[ladysycamore]

Originally posted by richlevy
I found this 2003 article on interracial marriages. I find the parallels between that and gay marriage very simlilar. I wonder what would have been the reaction in 1967 if the President of the United States had proposed a constitutional amendment banning interracial marriage?


Color-Blind Love

Thanks for that link. Sheesh, I guess Syc and I would be spitouttaluck if interracial marriage were banned.

I personally don't see how allowing gays and lesbians to be married will be hurting anyone.

[godwulf]

This is my first visit to The Cellar, and I love it. I've only read this one thread, but it seems like a lot of people 'preaching to the choir', as they say - don't the (in this case) anti-gay marriage types ever check in here with their opinions, worthless and hackneyed though they might be?

I have difficulty believing that any person of even moderate intelligence and at least minimal education could possibly, honestly believe that recognition of same-sex marriages will somehow adversely affect their own marital relationship, or 'encourage' people to 'be gay.' The Religious Right are simply asserting what they believe to be their prerogative to control every aspect of 'their' society - putting their scent on everything, like a dog marking territory.

There is no rationally defensible reason that two law-abiding, unrelated adult citizens should not have access to the exact same legal status - marriage, in this case - regardless of their sex.

Aside from advancing and codifying a relatively obscure religious prohibition, in a realm - our government - into which religious doctrine and prejudice are, IN THEORY, not supposed to intrude, there is no logical reason to be against the State's recognition of gay marriage relationships.

Here are a couple of great quotes from 'Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America', by Michael Nava & Robert Dawidoff:

"America tells us that citizens of this country possess the inalienable right of freedom, and that government exists for no higher purpose than to protect the exercise of that freedom. America promises that the law shall be applied equally to all of us, regardless of our differences and especially if those differences incite prejudice in others. America tells us that the Constitution is a living thing, a framework that bends to accommodate and protect the freedom of every group of Americans that seek its protections, whether or not the founders could have envisioned their specific claim. America guarantees that we shall be free to worship God in the manner of our choosing, but that no other person's God will dictate how we are to live our own lives."

"It all comes down to this: Are people equal in this society by virtue of their citizenship, or not? If the answer is no, then we will be saying that equality does not exist in America anymore but has been replaced with tiers of citizenship, and that what tier you occupy depends on whether people like you or not. And if we accept this, then we will have repudiated the constitutional principles of liberty and equality upon which America was founded and which have been its historic challenge to the world."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...844439-5612816

America is a country of many traditions and national impulses; between many of them there exists a state of tension that sometimes breaks out into conflict or crisis. We're a people that extols the virtues of nonconformity, yet we're constantly trying to pressure our neighbors to be more like us in every conceivable way. We're justifiably proud of our Constitution, our court system, and the rule of law that they support, promote and defend - yet we balk and equivocate and rebel when these institutions, the envy of billions of people throughout the world, work as they should and protect the rights - to privacy, to equal treatment - of an entire class of Americans.

godwulf

[Kitsune]

America promises that the law shall be applied equally to all of us, regardless of our differences and especially if those differences incite prejudice in others.

I find it amusing that this is the promise of a country that has kept various classes and races of people in ordered social catagories for hundreds of years. Even now, I think the majority of the population is aware of some group of people they would like to restrict the freedoms of or remove rights from.

An Editorial Comment: "The moral decline of America started with one atheist, when the liberal judges, placed in power by the Democrats, allowed equal rights for that one person."

Yes, folks, rights in this country are granted to you, not given away freely just for being here.

Damn, I'm being a horrible pessimist today.

[godwulf]

Kitsune wrote:

>Yes, folks, rights in this country are granted to you, not given away freely just for being here.<

I think that situation exists only if we're lazy and selfish enough to permit it.

The massive Federal bureaucracy has a vested interest - to say the least - in fomenting divisiveness and hostility among Americans along lines of class, race, sexuality, gender, religion, and whatever other artificial qualifiers they can dream up.

It is to their benefit to lessen our empathy for other groups, and use the supposed danger posed by 'them' to enact laws that will eventually lessen or do away with the freedoms enjoyed by all.

To that end, they also foster the illusion that all rights spring not from our citizenship, but from the largesse of the government.

Do you know what first popped into my mind when I heard about the civil disobedience, re: gay marriages, happening in places like San Francisco, New York state, and Oregon? (No, it wasn't the urge to leave my wife of 14 years and go marry another guy.) It was the way the Soviet satellite countries like East Germany, Lithuania, Hungary, et al, simply began ignoring the directives of the Soviet government in 1989 and doing the right thing by the people.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by wolf
That's pretty much how they handle it already, isn't it?

HP could answer this for us.

[wolf]

This has been making the rounds on the right-wing humor lists.

********~********

A scene at City Hall in San Francisco )

"Next." Good morning. We want to apply for a marriage license."

"Names?"

"Tim and Jim Jones."

"Jones? Are you related? I see a resemblance."

"Yes, we're brothers."

"Brothers? You can't get married."

"Why not? Aren't you giving marriage licenses to same gender couples?"

"Yes, thousands. But we haven't had any siblings. That's incest!"

"Incest?" No, we are not gay."

"Not gay? Then why do you want to get married?"

"For the financial benefits, of course. And we do love each other. Besides, we don't have any other prospects."

"But we're issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples who've been denied equal protection under the law. If you are not gay, you can get married to a woman."

"Wait a minute. A gay man has the same right to marry a woman as I have. But just because I'm straight doesn't mean I want to marry a woman. I want to marry Jim."

"And I want to marry Tim, Are you going to discriminate against us just because we are not gay?"

"All right, all right. I'll give you your license. Next."

"Hi. We are here to get married."

"Names?"

"John Smith, Jane James, Robert Green, and June Johnson."

"Who wants to marry whom?"

"We all want to marry each other."

"But there are four of you!"

"That's right. You see, we're all bisexual. I love Jane and Robert, Jane loves me and June, June loves Robert and Jane, and Robert loves June and me. All of us getting married together is the only way that we can express our sexual preferences in a marital relationship."

"But we've only been granting licenses to gay and lesbian couples."

"So you're discriminating against bisexuals!"

"No, it's just that, well, the traditional idea of marriage is that it's just for couples."

"Since when are you standing on tradition?"

"Well, I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere."

"Who says? There's no logical reason to limit marriage to couples. The more the better. Besides, we demand our rights! The mayor says the constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. Give us a marriage license!"

"All right, all right. Next."

"Hello, I'd like a marriage license."

"In what names?"

"David Deets."

"And the other man?"

"That's all. I want to marry myself."

"Marry yourself? What do you mean?"

"Well, my psychiatrist says I have a dual personality, so I want to marry the two together. Maybe I can file a joint income-tax return."

"That does it! I quit!! You people are making a mockery of marriage!!"

[Happy Monkey]

At least it didn't try to bring in bestiality.

[wolf]

They must have forgotten to do so.

[Undertoad]

Marriage is a legal contract, i.e. an agreement between two legal parties.

Thus, just like every other legal contract: no children; no animals; no more or less than two people.

Please let the right-wing lists know this, as I am dead tired of hearing this straw man argument.

[godwulf]

Not to cause anyone to doubt which side I'm on here or anything, but...

The children and animals thing is just silly, true, and the familial relation (incest) prohibition, when it comes to marriage, is pretty well grounded in science at least as much as tradition, but when it comes to plural marriage, well...

The appeal to "what's gonna happen next?" or "next we'll have to..." that's being invoked by the right-wingnuts is, I think, more of a 'slippery slope' argument than a 'straw man', by the way.

I'm just not sure but that eventually, somewhere down the road, the state will HAVE to recognize plural marriage relationships...and, since you brought up legal contracts, they're not always just between two people, if you think about it.

Let me make it crystal clear that I'm NOT in any way suggesting that the current prohibitions against same-sex marriages should therefore be continued or even strengthened because letting same-sex couples obtain that status MIGHT hasten the day when plural marriages become legally inevitable. I'm not suggesting that the 'slippery slope' argument that "Next we'll have to permit three or four people the right to get married" is a valid argument against same-sex marriages - only that it might, in fact, happen that way.

Right now, in Arizona, we have one or two 'fundamentalist Mormon' communities that everybody here thinks of when the topic of plural marriage comes up, and to say that they give the plural marriage concept a black eye is a vast understatement. Thirteen-year-old girls being forced to become the fifth or eighth or twelfth wife of some fifthy-something guy who's also her uncle, amid a human cesspool of welfare fraud, inbreeding, and sexual and physical abuse as a way of life - that's what any mention of plural marriage is going to bring to most people's minds in this part of the country these days, and that's a shame.

I work in the child custody field, and I'm aware of how ill-prepared the court system currently is for any new twists or innovations - like plural marriages - but the day may come when the system is going to have to adapt and grow to meet the changing needs of society. Same-sex marriage is inevitable, despite the bigots, and it may well be the case that legal acceptance of plural marriages is, too.

[Happy Monkey]

Indeed. From what I can tell, the primary cause of moral revulsion to plural marriages is the traditional association with pedophilia, incest, and abuse. If those are removed, I can't manage to drum up any opposition.

[Undertoad]

They say it's a slippery slope, I say if it's not legally possible it's not a slope at all never mind slippery, and the point is that we're still arguing over things *other than* gay marriage... a straw man.