House defeats gay marriage ban amendment

jonb

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My own opinion? Marriage is worth defending, from all these crazy heterosexuals. I mean, Utah laws wrt polygamy and incest are rarely enforced, but yet the Mormons are some of the big ones bitching about gay marriages. Now let's check the anti-gay marriage lobby's grade card:

Psychology - F (for fraudulent Freudian foolishness)
Anthropology - F (marriage is the core of civilization, but it serves an economic function)

Yahoo

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The House followed the Senate in decisively rejecting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, ending for this year debate on what has become the dominant issue for the Republican Party's conservative base.

The 227-186 vote in the House Thursday was well short of the two-thirds majority needed to advance a constitutional amendment, but fulfilled a promise by backers to get lawmakers on the record on the highly sensitive issue in the run-up to Election Day.

"This is only the beginning, I'm telling you," said Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, stressing that the issue was too important to abandon.

"Marriage is the basic unit of society, the very DNA of civilization, and if that civilization is to endure, marriage must be protected," he said.

Democratic opponents said the motives for holding the vote were tinged more with election-year politics than protecting the nation from gay marriages.

"The purpose in bringing this amendment to the floor today, just four weeks before the election, is to create the fodder for a demagogic political ad that appeals to voters' worst fears and prejudices," said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House's second-ranked Democrat.

The measure drew the support of 191 Republicans and 36 Democrats. Voting against it were 158 Democrats, 27 Republicans and one independent.

The Constitution has been amended only 27 times, including the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights, in its history. Amendments must win two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate and be ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures. The Senate rejected the gay marriage amendment in July.

The House in recent days has also taken up legislation dealing with gun rights and the phrase "under God" in the pledge, two other issues of importance to social conservatives.

On Wednesday the chamber voted 250-171 to overturn a 28-year municipal ban on handgun ownership in the District of Columbia. Last week it voted to protect the "under God" phrase from federal court challenges. Both bills are unlikely to be considered in the Senate before this session of Congress concludes.

President Bush has urged Congress to take up the gay marriage amendment. Recent surveys in battleground states in the presidential race indicate roughly one-quarter of Bush's supporters say moral or family values are uppermost in their minds.

The gay marriage amendment said marriage in the United States "shall consist only of a man and a woman." It also would have required that neither the U.S. Constitution nor any state constitution "shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman."

DeLay said the need for congressional action was "forced upon us by activist judges trying to legislate from the bench." He noted that under 1996 legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton, marriage is defined as between a man of a woman.

"Traditional marriage is worth preserving, because the nuclear family is far and away the best environment in which to raise children," said Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo. "Every child deserves both a father and a mother," said Musgrave, whose persistent advocacy for the measure has gained her national notice unusual for a first-term lawmaker.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said it has long been the tradition that states, not the federal government, regulate marriage and other family law issues. States are already addressing same-sex marriage issues by numerous referendums and legislative action, he said.

Voters in 11 states will decide the fate of proposed amendments to their state constitutions this fall, and opponents of bans on gay marriage concede they will be difficult to stop.

McGovern noted that in his own state, where the state supreme court decided in favor of same-sex marriage last year, a process was now under way to give the people of the state a chance to change the state constitution to ban gay marriages.

"We feel love and we feel it in a way different than you," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is openly gay. "We feel it with someone of the same sex, male or female, and we look at your institution of marriage and we see the joy it brings. How do we hurt you when we share it?"

Public polls show strong opposition to gay marriage, but opinion is about evenly divided regarding a federal constitutional amendment to ban it.

___

The bill is H.J. Res. 106.
 

BobLeeSwagger

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I propose that all governments ban marriage for everyone. Not in the sense that couples can't enter into partnerships with each other and designate on another as beneficiaries, etc.

I mean that government should bestow no special benefits or disadvantages on anyone based on marital status. And governments wouldn't have the power to approve or disapprove of what someone wants to call "marriage."

Like this:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2085127/
 

jonb

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Fairly nihilistic. Hey, a lot of Indians I know aren't legally married.

One of the big heterosexual marriage hypocrisies I was thinking of, though, was mail-order brides. Horrible idea of the romantic view of marriage right-wingers present, but it fits perfectly into alliance theory.

Jon (Damn, it really is the world's oldest profession.)
 

madame_zora

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It would be a moot point if it were in fact over. Since there will always be right-wing maniacal idiots in the world, it will be recirculated whenever they need to rally their kind. I wish they'd read the REST of the Bible- the stuff about loving your neighbor, etc.
 

jonb

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Well, most of that stuff any rational person would do anyway. The prohibition on homosexuality is around the same importance as the prohibition on shrimp. There might be some kinship issues, but what about polygamy? Bride wealth? Lineage endogamy? Cross-generational marriages? All were standard Jewish practices. How about we just strike out all of English's classificatory kin terms as well? (There are important differences in Judaism between one's father's brother and one's mother's brother, for example.)

When they mentioned the nuclear family as the optimum, I could only think of Freud's primal family, recapitulated by boys who have recently discovered their genitals in the form of the Oedipal/Electra. Of course, the whole Oedipal/Electra is bullshit, but then again, these neuroses can only be present in the nuclear family.
 

madame_zora

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I'm in for banning marriage- with the divorce rate well over 50% by anyone's standards, it seems like a waste of effort to try to protect it from anything other that itself.
 

jonb

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Well, marriage itself isn't so bad, but the problem is all the misogyny associated with Western marriage. Maybe it just shouldn't be a legal matter, IMO.
 

madame_zora

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Take it from me, Kinkguy, being a serial marrier is highly overrated. I love the idea of marriage NOT being a legal matter, then we could all be raped equally by our government. Dammit, this administration is making me hate almost everything.
 

jonb

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That's Bush for you. Actually, many societies have more than one form of marriage, so "civil unions" make perfect sense in that respect.

My favorite was Bush telling gay Republicans to support his abolishing the inheritance tax because it discriminates against unmarried couples. Yeah, unmarried millionaires. Or . . . And if people followed that logic under Brown, we wouldn't have schools today.
 
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YoungNHung19: Madame Zora, bash Bush if you want, but Kerry was also for not allowing gays to get married, and as a Senator he helped to get that decision switched in his state (Massachusetts) where it was briefly happening!
 

LuckyLuke

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Originally posted by YoungNHung19@Oct 12 2004, 08:32 AM
Madame Zora, bash Bush if you want, but Kerry was also for not allowing gays to get married, and as a Senator he helped to get that decision switched in his state (Massachusetts) where it was briefly happening!
[post=259068]Quoted post[/post]​

As pointed out in another thread where you made the identical nonsensical post... maybe you ought to tear yourself away from Kerry-bashing" long enough to review the US Constitution?

Now I'm not American, but at least I know enough of the US Constitution to know that a United States Senator has no formal power or authority in the legislative business of an individual State.

By your reasoning, Bush is responsible for every idiot decision made by the local dog-catcher in No-wheres-ville, Montana.
 

madame_zora

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Thanx, Luckyluke. The problem with most of us Americans (myself included) is that we don't know as much about our government as we should. Too fat, too lazy. The one thing I appreciate about bush is that he has encouraged more people (like myself) to get off our asses and learn about how things work. He is a bright shining example to me of how I definitely don't want my government to be run. I am not naive enough to believe that Kerry, or any other politician (or any other human being for that matter) is without flaw. I wouldn't even WANT someone without flaw to be the president. I'm just of the opinion that he would care more and do more for the majority of Americans- the middle class- than this current administration, of whom I am realistically afraid. I see my civil rights diminshing right before my very eyes on things about which I did not get a vote. If anyone out there doesn't find that disturbing, something is terribly wrong.
 

jonb

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Originally posted by YoungNHung19@Oct 12 2004, 12:32 AM
Madame Zora, bash Bush if you want, but Kerry was also for not allowing gays to get married, and as a Senator he helped to get that decision switched in his state (Massachusetts) where it was briefly happening!
[post=259068]Quoted post[/post]​
As a SENATOR? I didn't know Congress could amend state constitutions.
 
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YoungNHung19: As for JonB, it is called political influence, maybe you have heard of it. And to LuckyLuke, glad you aren't in America, keep it that way...and thanks for letting us know, so we know you can't vote and therefore your opinions are for all practical purposes, irrelevant! HAHA
 

madame_zora

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Youngnhung19, I appreciate your passion, but your opinions would mean more if they were better researched. You may find it funny to be dismissive to Luckyluke, but the fact remains that he obviously knows more about how our government runs- even as a foriegner- than you do.

These discussions are starting to remind me if a certain female member we used to have named T----- with the whole "My mind is already made up, don't confuse me with the facts" attitude.
 
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YoungNHung19: Considering you are a self-admitted egomaniac and one of your best qualities, according to your own profile is ridiculous, and based on your latest posts where you are unaware of the facts (see post on Dolfer report..AKA: oil for food scandal, remember that thing you didn't know what I was talking about and asked for proof)
I would say I cannot take you seriously whatsoever, and it seems to me YOUR mind is made up.
 

jonb

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Originally posted by KinkGuy@Oct 14 2004, 08:27 AM
Any time the republicans are in trouble, they drag out the three "G's"...God, Gays and Guns.
[post=259504]Quoted post[/post]​
Funny when 64% of gun owners are in favor of the assault weapon ban.