This should make any decent person mad as hell

[Bbucko]

Or better yet, if the govt took its nose out of the marriage issue all together.

I was raised to understand that marriage is a religious institution, not a governmental one. I still can't figure out what in the hell government has to do with marriage...

This is where the LGBT activists (yes, in a kind way) are getting it wrong.... It seems to be the word "marriage". It's freaking people out (mostly the religious right). The LGBT community is hell-bent on using the word "Marriage".

Until we agree to call it "Civil Partnership", "Life Partnership", or what ever term other than marriage, we will not see our partnerships recognized at the Federal level in the states.

I am an American, living in the UK. We have Civil Partnership here, and no one from the heterosexual communities give a toss; what they DO object to is the use of a word with religious connotations. Fine, let them have it.

We could care less what you call it..... we just want the same legal rights as "straight" partnerships/marriages.

This article made me so angry, I had to read it in two sittings....


Cheers!

You know, these two posts really remind me how different my upbringing was from so many others. Neither of my grandparents were married in a church; both had civil ceremonies. And although they were two very different couples, probably the one thing they had in common was that they raised their families with a non-denominational/Unitarian type of religious appreciation (albeit very Protestant).

None of my uncles, aunts or cousins ever have had anything but a condescending distrust for charismatic Christianity or any other type of fervent piety. My parents church-shopped and settled on very-low-church Episcopalian more out of a sense of parental duty than any actual religiosity, and everyone in my nuclear family breathed a sigh of relief when, in my early teens, we all just stopped attending.

Marriage was seen as a vital and necessary step in the maturation process: a "settling down". It conferred an adult status suggesting that one could begin his/her life of establishing a home and beginning a family. Among my female cousins, it was also a path to emancipation: they all married young (between 19 and 21) and made wrong choices. Not a single one of their marriages endured past the five-year mark, and despite their all having been married in churches, at no time were there any religious ramifications or consequences in those divorces.

As I came out while still in High School (as did my sister shortly after me), my relationships were never given the same weight of significance nor support. It's not that my parents objected to my being gay (they were both very accepting of me, though much less so of my sister), but the implication of maturity and "settling down" was just never considered appropriate. Deeply into my 20s, my parents' attitude toward my relationships was always of the condescending sort reserved for high-school crushes. When my lover passed of AIDS in 1992, neither could be made to understand why I chose to devote his last days exclusively to his care: they both thought that I'd have been better off abandoning him to his fate alone.

Again: religion paid no part in their inability to comprehend my relationships or equate them with the troubled pairings of my cousins, most of whom are by now on their third or fourth tries. And for all their "coolness" about having a gay son, they are still unable to conceive of my (or my sister's) relationship as being of the same importance as their own (which ended in 1975) or the subsequent marriages (one of which ended in divorce as well).

We have an existing institution that already confers all the necessary gravitas to relationships (including immigration rights): it's called marriage.

And although I'm currently an infrequent poster here, I'm on record as being personally ambivalent on the subject of same-sex marriage: I find the idea that we, as leaders of the avant-garde in society, are clamoring for enfranchisement into the world's most bourgeois institution vaguely appalling. But until we achieve full civil equality in the eye of the law (fuck the opinions of the bible-thumpers), our places as second-class citizens will endure. And as I continue to age, I'm finding that harder and harder to tolerate.

 

[HazelGod]

I find the idea that we, as leaders of the avant-garde in society, are clamoring for enfranchisement into the world's most bourgeois institution vaguely appalling. But until we achieve full civil equality in the eye of the law (fuck the opinions of the bible-thumpers), our places as second-class citizens will endure. And as I continue to age, I'm finding that harder and harder to tolerate.

As I get older, I become more convinced that not only does Kuhn have it right, but his theory applies just as well to all collective human social developments. Understanding of social and cultural norms is generational, largely because so few human beings are either willing or capable of following paradigm shifts when they occur. We literally have to wait until the previous generation dies out and takes their now-archaic notions of normalcy with them.

PS: Good to see you back in black, Uncle Bb.

 

[Bbucko]

As I get older, I become more convinced that not only does Kuhn have it right, but his theory applies just as well to all collective human social developments. Understanding of social and cultural norms is generational, largely because so few human beings are either willing or capable of following paradigm shifts when they occur. We literally have to wait until the previous generation dies out and takes their now-archaic notions of normalcy with them.

PS: Good to see you back in black, Uncle Bb.

I've always been fascinated with the popular concept of "closing down",like those women who haven't changed their hairstyle in 20 or 30 years: how can they not realize how absurd they appear?

I call myself a social anarchist precisely because I've never allowed societal "norms" to interfere with my personal pursuit of happiness, but it's sure not a life I'd wish on anyone else.

PS: Thanks, babe: much like those old beer ads, some days are better than others

 

[b.c.]

Or better yet, if the govt took its nose out of the marriage issue all together.

I was raised to understand that marriage is a religious institution, not a governmental one. I still can't figure out what in the hell government has to do with marriage...

IMO, what "government has to do" with it is enact legislation that, like any other CIVIL RIGHTS issue, would seek to protect people from this kind of discrimination.

 

[B_talltpaguy]

^That's my point though, if the government gets out of the business of picking winners and losers in the first place, then there are no rights to abridge. The government's role is to be an impartial referee, not to impose moral values on individuals.

You should understand, I fully favor any committed couple of any orientation to have the same rights to the same economic benefits. Or conversely, nobody should get any special benefits, and we should just lower the tax rate on everyone slightly to account for the difference.

Either way, I agree that what goes on now is BS. Know what I mean?

 

[bigbull29]

That's why I quit going to church after having gone to 4 local churches, and they all were full of fascist bigots. After a while, I just couldn't put up with it anymore. I don't need to go to church to know that I'm living an ethical life. If God is everything we're told he is, then he knows I did the right thing. And if not, then there's no need to waste my time anyways.

Most Christians have made a mockery out of religion: they corrupted the holy teachings for their benefit as well as justification to be mean and hateful. And this is not unique to Christianity, either. All religions are guilty of this.

What you do sexually with a consensual adult is no one's business - NOBODY'S. Nor does anyone need to justify it to the world. That's sick and twisted.

That it wasn't "Adam and Steve, but Adam and Eve" is such an over-simplified argument used over and over again (Islam says that, too). It denies the complexities and individualities of the human person as if we're all just continued replicas of "Adam" and "Eve" over time.

 

[b.c.]

...

 

[b.c.]

^That's my point though, if the government gets out of the business of picking winners and losers in the first place, then there are no rights to abridge. The government's role is to be an impartial referee, not to impose moral values on individuals.

You should understand, I fully favor any committed couple of any orientation to have the same rights to the same economic benefits. Or conversely, nobody should get any special benefits, and we should just lower the tax rate on everyone slightly to account for the difference.

Either way, I agree that what goes on now is BS. Know what I mean?

In a more perfect world that might be possible: possible for government to stay out of overseeing fair wage and employment practices, protecting the environment against dangerous industry and business practices, protecting minorities and women against discrimination, protecting the consumer against unfair practices by banks and corporations, protecting drivers and consumers against shoddy and/or dangerous products, ensuring that most at least have a shot of getting some kind of relief when needed from unemployment, in health care, in financial assistance...

In a perfect world, we wouldn't need the government for squat.

 

[B_talltpaguy]

^Not sure what any of that has to do with the current topic, which has no relevancy that I know of to the things you just mentioned.

Exactly what do married people need 'protecting' from?

 

[b.c.]

^Not sure what any of that has to do with the current topic, which has no relevancy that I know of to the things you just mentioned.

Exactly what do married people need 'protecting' from?

I didn't say. I said government is needed to protect the rights of its citizens.

However, the author of the article (cited in the o.p.) seemed to argue the case for unions legally defined as marriage (and for laws guaranteeing equal protections for same sex marriages). I don't want to get into a debate as to whether this is necessarily so, or should be.

There are various definitions for "unions" in (so-called) heterosexual society ("civil union", for example). IMO, it should be plain and simple: Whatever rights and responsibilities that applies to heterosexual unions (civil unions, marriage, or otherwise) should also apply to same-sex unions.

 

[B_talltpaguy]

I didn't say. I said government is needed to protect the rights of its citizens.
[/COLOR]

There's your problem... Marriage isn't a right. It's a contract regulated by law.

 

[b.c.]

There's your problem... Marriage isn't a right. It's a contract regulated by law.

ok... so??

Are not laws intended to regulate AND protect?

 

[Bbucko]

There's your problem... Marriage isn't a right. It's a contract regulated by law.

The Supreme Court disagrees with you:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.