Honey and Sweetheart

Personally, I plan on divorcing my wife and then blaming it on teh gays.

“I really wanted to stay married, your honor, but the gays destroyed my marriage.”

I don’t think this is quite the point of those who insist this kind of thing will destroy the institution of marriage. They oppose broadening the definition until it seems to have no real meaning at all. (And it’s not just gays and lesbians who would like to change things. Others would like concepts like open marriage, polygamy, etc. to be socially and legally acceptable.) They fear that by so expanding the concept fewer people will bother with it and that arrangements heretofore considered morally debased will become palatable and even mainstream.

I demand apologies for using such terms as “honey” and “sweetheart” .
You think you’re better than Obama? ( “sweetie” )

=P

Yeah, I just informed Mr. Writerdd that we will have to get divorced now.

Haven’t you infidels heard?! Gay marriage killed the dinosaurs! Repent before it’s too late!

/sarcasm

Is that a straw man I smell burning?

I don’t think this is quite the point of those who insist this kind of thing will destroy the institution of marriage.

Based on the discussions I’ve had with such people, they don’t have a point, nor are they trying very hard to find one. It’s a just a convenient way of dressing up their anti-homosexual bigotry to make it socially acceptable (in certain quarters).

I can barely contain my happiness and excitement!

/serious

Nice blog you’ve got here. Please check out my site, GodRiddance:
http://www.godriddance.com

-Ryan

I’m always struck by the “Gay marriage will destroy/diminish straight marriage” arguments.

Seems to me the institution is diminished by not extending it to people who should have it.

Richard & Stephen:

Now, I’m not trying to argue their case for them. I’m just suggesting that we address their actual concerns. It is not among their concerns that existing heterosexual marriages will somehow fall apart if gay marriage is allowed.

Karen,

Heterosexual marriage lives on (despite Richard’s wife’s worries)

What makes you assume that I am Honey and my wife is Sweetheart? 🙂

This is their strongest, most rational, most logically compelling argument against permitting those who want to marry to marry.

Aww, that’s really sweet.

Brian E said,

But what is the pressing need for gay/lesbian couples to have state-recognized marriages? Is it simply for tax/benefit purposes?

It’s about all the other legal stuff when something bad happens. Imagine being in a car wreck with your not-legally-married partner who is badly injured. Next thing you know, his family (for the sake of convenience I will say ‘his’ instead of ‘his or her’) is making all the medical decisions, you can’t even see him because it’s ‘family only’, then he dies and suddenly you’re homeless because the house was in his name and your kid is taken away because it was your partner’s DNA that the kid has and not yours.

That is a worst case scenario but it illustrates why it’s important. When crap happens, the unmarried have no rights.

What makes you assume that I am Honey and my wife is Sweetheart? 🙂

Well, isn’t it obvious?! You are a honey of a guy! 😉

Richard Wade is my hero:

Richard Wade said,

May 15, 2008 at 4:09 pm

This is their strongest, most rational, most logically compelling argument against permitting those who want to marry to marry.

Mass hysteria! You’ve used Ghostbusters before, I think, and it was music to my ears then as well.

And hooray for the Supreme Court of California (well, 4 of them at least)! I’ve already placed it on my list of Why I Love to Live in California.

Here is my answer to Brian E’s question.

In 2004, Greta and I were among the 4,000 couples who got married at SF City Hall. As it happens, my mother is also gay, and she and her partner had also made an appointment to get married at City Hall, and I was planning to attend. Then the courts stepped in and halted the weddings, so my mother’s was cancelled. Then the courts stepped in again and annulled all the marriages that had already taken place.

I’ll just repeat that: the government cancelled my mother’s wedding. Then the government annulled my marriage.

I live in the Bay Area, and I don’t have to deal with much anti-gay discrimination in my daily life. But that experience hit me hard and made me realize: we really are second class citizens.

That is why atheists should care about this issue. Because the government has no business interfering in our families in that way. And calling it “civil unions” or “domestic partnership” doesn’t work, because those terms are not recognized in all jurisdictions of the nation and the world the way that “marriage” is.

I appreciate your question, Brian, and no offense taken. But I would respectfully suggest that “privilege” is something that people only notice when they don’t have it.

A definition is an attempt at precision. It’s so the other guy can have a fair idea what you’re talking about (”meaning”) when you use the word. Using “rabbits” for “horses” simply muddies the waters such that no one is really sure whether you mean what we now call a “rabbit” or what we now call a “horse.”

I’d argue that this isn’t very broadening at all, any more than when we “expanded” the term marriage to include two people who were of different races.

“Expanding” the term marriage in that case didn’t muddy anything… It clarified.

Ditto here.

mikespeir,

Not to be too snarky, but the “explanation” you have provided sounds like post-hoc rationalization of deliberate, gross, bigotry to me.

I’ve followed this issue for only 30 years or so and not once, in all that time, have I ever heard a single anti-marriage-for-teh-gays spokesperson make such an argument. Not ministers, not priests, not Bishops, not state assembly members, not petition proponents, not anyone. They just say, Teh gay marriage is disgusting, or God don’t like it so neither do I.

So if this “rationale” is widespread among such folk, they seem to be keeping it to themselves as a cult secret or something. Or, perhaps, they are protecting their pre-existing religious position by latching onto a rationalization similar to the Discovery Institute’s assertion that ID has nothing to do with belief in a (Christian) god.

And I hate to break it to you, but inclusive definitions are not less “precise”, as you have asserted, they are simply less “narrow.” A hammer is a hammer, whether a ball-peen hammer, a claw hammer, or a sledge hammer. Is that really so hard to understand? Or must the name be changed for hammers that have plastic instead of wooden handles?

If arguments are based on mistaken fears about grammar or English usage, they are simply bogus and do nothing to counter arguments based on equal justice, human rights, or basic fairness.

As for fun talk about rabbits, horses, and other creatures, I suggest that you pick up a book on cladistics or just check out Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin.

MTran, I haven’t even tried to argue for or against the propriety of gay marriage here.

And precision is by definition narrow.

Your point about the hammers is well taken, though. I’ll have to think about how that applies.

lol, I love it

mikespeir,

I don’t know what political positions you may or may not support, but it was your *comment* to which I was responding. I don’t think I accused you of taking a position regarding gay marriage, I did, however, take issue with the explanation *you* provided.

As for “precision” meaning “narrow,” that is a quality (though not a synonym) of the term, especially when it is used for scientific or mathematical purposes. However, you were using it as a concept that places a constricting qualifier upon *definitions* of words. I’m not convinced that it works that way when applied to language.

In the context of defining terms, “precision” of meaning does *not* preclude broad categories or indistinct boundaries. Some categories of things or actions are rather loose or fluid by nature and their definitions reflect that.

A *word* can be used precisely or imprecisely, correctly or incorrectly, but a broad *definition* is not necessarily less precise than a narrow one. As far as I can tell, they are just different definitions. And you’ve doubtless seen how “terms of art” take everyday words and imbue them with very “precise” meanings that have nothing to do with common usage.

Steven Pinker has discussed problems that native English speakers have created for themselves when they attempt to apply the rules of math to language. Perhaps we have just stumbled upon another such instance.

Or maybe you just have thought about it longer and have a better angle on it than I do!

Siamang:
I understand this is personal for you, and I assure you I mean no personal offense. I think it’s pretty clear, too, that nothing I say will convince you, as you said that you’ll take any “attack on [your family’s] rights” as an “attack on your family.” I’m not sure what that means, except that you feel passionately about this issue, which is fine.

I’m not attacking anyone. I just don’t believe that a right for two men or two women to marry exists. I happen to believe that same-sex intercourse is wrong, and I’m probably the only one to comment on this thread who believes that, and I’m ok with that. I don’t necessarily think homosexual behavior should be outlawed, but I also don’t think there’s any reason why states should be required to change the way marriage has always been understood.

I made the straw man comment because the original post assumed that the right-wing Christians, or whoever, think that homosexual marriage will ruin heterosexual marriages. That’s not what anybody I’ve ever heard means when they say that homosexual marriage is a threat to marriage. They mean that it’s a threat to the institution of marriage, which is already pretty much a laughingstock in this country (and yes, I know the stats aren’t any better for evangelicals on this). The line of thinking is that the marriage of a man and a woman is the basic building block of the family, which is the basic building block of society. To pretend that that bond can be made between anything other than a man and a woman leads to a messed-up view of what marriage is. That’s the logic– I haven’t thought through whether I agree with it, but no Christian thinks their marriage is going down the tubes just because gay people can get married too.

I’m just saying there’s plenty to disagree on without setting up straw men to beat up. It’s just as easy for a bunch of atheists to laugh at the stupid, backward, ignorant Christians they’re imagining as it is for Christians to assume that all atheists are moral reprobates who eat children.

Jake sez:

but I also don’t think there’s any reason why states should be required to change the way marriage has always been understood.

Ignoring that marriage has not “always” been understood in any manner, since it’s a (relatively recent) human invention…

…and ignoring that mutually-monogamous, one-male one-female relationship has not “always” been the way that marriage has been understood…

Marriage is defined by government; democratic government is based on the will of the people; if the people’s will changes, then government should change to go along with it. …right?

I made the straw man comment because the original post…

…the original post which was > 90% humor? Yes, we all get it, you didn’t get the joke. Well done.

In the original post, there was a mention that people who are threatened by homosexual marriage are suffering from “weak marriages, weak minds or small hearts.” From your comments, particularly that section about

I don’t necessarily think homosexual behavior should be outlawed

I’m guessing its a mix of the last two conditions.

I’m not old enough to have seen Loving v. Virginia and so I am positively thrilled that in my lifetime, we might (maybe) be able to extend civil rights further in our country. The annoying thing is that some people have to be brought, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. And why? Oh, right, because of attitudes like:

I happen to believe that same-sex intercourse is wrong

What a weird coincidence, I happen to believe that Republican-Republican intercourse is wrong. But I’d be sick to my stomach if they weren’t allowed to marry the people they choose to love.

I happen to believe that same-sex intercourse is wrong

Your reasons are imaginary. I happen to believe making up imaginary reasons based on imaginary deities talking to you through fictional holy texts to oppress a biological determined human trait to be highly immoral.

why states should be required to change the way marriage has always been understood.

Let’s say marriage has been around for 15,000 years. It was polygamy or women trade for most of this time in most cultures. And this assessment ignores our 200,000 year history. Nope, Jake, you don’t get to claim “always been understood”. Your reasons are, once again, imaginary and in your head.

The line of thinking is that the marriage of a man and a woman is the basic building block of the family, which is the basic building block of society. To pretend that that bond can be made between anything other than a man and a woman leads to a messed-up view of what marriage is.

Once again, a bunch of imaginary reasons based on no decent evidence. You are just typing for the sake of typing. Just because you can imagine a somewhat rational argument, doesn’t mean your imagination equals reality. Please stop using your imagination so much, Jake.

I’m just saying there’s plenty to disagree on without setting up straw men to beat up.

Not really. There is nothing to disagree with. Gays are a biologically determined, sexually antagonistically selected, sexual orientation of the homo sapiens species. Oppressing them for any reason is immoral, just as it is to oppress black skin or red hair. The ONLY reason to disagree with anything here is to use your imagination to whimsically design play-logic arguments that fit your imaginary deity’s anthropomorphized bigotry.

This entire conversation reminds me of the sorts of arguments that were posed in many (if not most) state legislatures in the 1800s when there was a movement to outlaw “marriages by contract.”

The argument then was, if people get married through the use of a written contract, that reduces marriage from a Christian-God-Blessed union into a form of prostitution that degrades the institution of marriage itself and the partners to such marriages.

The *real* purpose of the laws, however, was to stop the influence of the Christian denomination that had the marriage contract, without the need for church ritual or officiation, as part of its essential traditions. That Christian denomination was the apparently “vile” Quaker sect, a denomination that was utterly opposed to violence and slavery — at a time when slavery was common and a violent “honor” culture permeated much of the American south.

Of course, the fact that the Quaker tradition treated both spouses with respect and provided women with a means to avoid marriages to violent, domineering, gigolos made it all the more apparent to “right thinking Christians” in other sects that such a horrible practice had to be stopped before it spread further.

Jake said:

I’m not attacking anyone. I just don’t believe that a right for two men or two women to marry exists.

As of today, it does in California. Whether you believe it or not, it is reality. You may not agree with it, and you may think that the right should in fact not exist.

But as of right now, it does exist. Let us take that as a starting point, then. Given that the right now exists for members of my family to be legally married, let us hear why you think they should be stripped of their right.

I think it make the discussion much clearer when viewed from this perspective.

I happen to believe that same-sex intercourse is wrong,

Aha, so you’re the sex police now? Can I get a clearance on french kissing within straight marriage… okay or not okay? I mean, while we’re passing judgement on folks, I just want to be clear… is french kissing taliban approved?

See, you started your sentence with “I happen to believe that”. I don’t know if you noticed, but you didn’t give any REASON for your opinion. The words “I happen to believe that…” sound like a reason, but if you look closely, they really aren’t a reason. You’re just saying “I don’t like it because I don’t like it.” I have noticed that religious people often use phrases like that to sound like they’re giving a reason, or providing support for a view when they aren’t or can’t.

I don’t necessarily think homosexual behavior should be outlawed,

Good then. Can we set the sex thing aside, since we aren’t talking about outlawing private, adult consensual sex? The sex is a distraction from the real topic then, is it not?

but I also don’t think there’s any reason why states should be required to change the way marriage has always been understood.

So you’re one of those “man was made for marriage, marriage wasn’t made for men” kinds of people. It’s an institution, first and foremost…. who cares about the people who have to make a life for themselves… who live and love and work and care for each other, make families, make homes, die and bury and grieve each other… screw people… it’s INSTITUTIONS that count!

I made the straw man comment because the original post assumed that the right-wing Christians, or whoever, think that homosexual marriage will ruin heterosexual marriages.

I think it makes a different point, humorously. The point it makes is: If it doesn’t mess with your personal marriage… then YOU shouldn’t mess with other people’s marriage.

They mean that it’s a threat to the institution of marriage, which is already pretty much a laughingstock in this country

You know who’s not laughing? My family. We’re crying.

I’ll quote what I wrote back then, just after witnessing hundreds upon hundreds of people getting married, in violation of all that is wrong and unjust with the former marriage ban.

If you weren’t there, and I’m assuming you weren’t,… you cannot know the pure, pure emotion. And you cannot know the resolve of these people to have what heterosexuals take for granted, flaunt, throw away, and toy with. You didn’t see the tears of joy on thousands of faces this weekend, when the door of equality was opened for just an inch before it will be shut again for a time.

You wouldn’t think marriage was such a pathetic joke if you wanted to marry your fiancee, and the stupid government wouldn’t let you.

The line of thinking is that the marriage of a man and a woman is the basic building block of the family, which is the basic building block of society.

Please explain for me what does and does not constitute a “building block”. Does a single mother (like mine was) constitute a building block? What about a mother and a grandmother raising a child of a soldier killed in Iraq? Are they a building block, or not?

I mean, if “building block” or not is the measure by which we choose who gets to be a legal family in the eyes of government… then there should be some kind of back up reasoning as to what constitutes this building block. What about two senior citizens with no children… are they a building block? Do they get to get married? What about two gay women with a child… do they get to raise their child as a family, or are they “single mother and financially supported friend”?

What I’m saying is, if you’re going to bring out the “building block” trope, you better back it up. Why is my mother in law, her wife and their child not a building block?

Please define precisely what makes a “building block.” And try not to define it tautalogically: straight couple = building block. Building block= straight couple.

I encountered someone arguing the “building block” idea on a different thread during the great gay wedding march in San Francisco. I wrote this challenge:

Please show evidence that society is made up of “building blocks”. I don’t know where that analogy comes from, so I’m not sure what sociological validity that analogy holds.

Surely family is important. But I do not see the “building block” analogy. Do you think that society is a structure, as in a building, and that a weak family, somewhere in the structure, will allow all of society to topple? That’s not supported in sociological studies, as far as I know. We have good families and bad families in society. We have loving, comitted parents, and we have drug abusing, wife-beating families. Yet society doesn’t topple as long as we continue to try and maximize the good, and minimize (through law enforcement and education and health care and charity) the latter.

I don’t accept your reasoning, therefore, and I think you’ve done some arm-waiving as far as what “building block” means.

My question to you is:

How do you define “building block”, and if that “building block” “affects society as a whole” and “must be above privacy issues”, by what measure do we as a society determine WHICH families are fit to be “building blocks” and which ones will be so unfit as to be a danger to society?

Or do you think that only gay families pose that danger?

Should a government body start marching around and divorcing –say abusive couples–because their marriage is a danger to society as a whole?

Jake wrote:

To pretend that that bond can be made between anything other than a man and a woman leads to a messed-up view of what marriage is. That’s the logic– I haven’t thought through whether I agree with it,

Yeah, why think about reasoning behind your views?… Just start your sentences with ” I happen to believe that…”

but no Christian thinks their marriage is going down the tubes just because gay people can get married too.

They’re too busy worrying about what other people might be doing in the privacy of their bedroom.

I’m just saying there’s plenty to disagree on without setting up straw men to beat up. It’s just as easy for a bunch of atheists to laugh at the stupid, backward, ignorant Christians they’re imagining as it is for Christians to assume that all atheists are moral reprobates who eat children.

I think the post was a joke that made the point ‘if it doesn’t mess with your marriage, don’t mess with other people’s marriage.’

But getting back to the charge of a straw man argument. After you called “straw,” I responded by saying:

If so, do you care to plead the argument you think is strongest? Tell me right now why you think my mother-in-law shouldn’t be allowed to be married to the mother of her child. It better be a very, very good reason.

But you didn’t give any reason. All you gave is “I happen to believe that…” Well, that and the building block thing.

My opinion on the whole thing is that approaching it from the whole “marriage” angle is wrong. There should be some general relationship responsibility/dependence framework. Some would be automatic such as children or co-residents, etc. and some would be specifically applied for as some kind of pooling of resources. The idea is to examine all the benefits of marriage and just extract the legal implications of them and apply them fairly to all people.

What about asexual people? Shouldn’t they be entitled to some of the same legal benefits (perhaps not all, but this is where specific issues have to be examined and addressed). For example, two brother who live together on a farm are not “married” in any traditional sense of the word but they have a financial and social responsibility to each other (i.e. if one dies the other would require support, etc.). What about two complete non-related men in a similar non-sexual but permanent relationship. Does them having sex or not change their obligations to each other? What if it was a man and a woman living together in a non-sexual relationship?

The point is that government has no right or obligation to have anything to do with sexual relationships in these general scenarios and so whether someone is male/female has no legal bearing at all.

And of course the child/animal thing is a complete red herring because these are differentiated by mental capacity and so are treated differently (more of ward/guardian responsibility model). And prohibitions on incest, etc. would also still be in effect because of the negative impact on offspring (and what about incestuous relationships with infertile partners–on what grounds do we have to ban those?)

Anyway, my point is that government is sticking its nose too far into certain things and we should just push it back a little bit. Generalize the rules to be fair for everyone, abstract the specifics of traditional marriage out of the equation, and get rid of considerations that the government rightfully has no need of. But I don’t have the time, knowledge, or inclination to hash out the details and this really isn’t my area, but that is just my opinion at a fairly theoretical level.

I agree, Shane.

I wish the government got out of the marriage business altogether and anyone determine their head of household, shared financial partner and next of kin to their content, legally and easily with some simple notarized forms.

My model family is a woman and her mother raising the orphan child of her sister who died a soldier in iraq. Let’s make THAT family work as a two-parent household. There are non-traditional families… time to stop ignoring them or pretending they don’t exist. Time to treat them AS families.

MTran

Or maybe you just have thought about it longer and have a better angle on it than I do!

I wouldn’t count on that. I have done some thinking about you hammers, though, and I can see it both ways.

Actually, “hammer” has a pretty precise definition, something like “a tool used for pounding.” If we were to add to that “or a tool used for driving screws or a tool used for turning bolts,” then it would lose meaning (or, maybe, I should say meaningfulness) as it acquired definitions.

Likewise with the rabbits and horses. If I were to tell you, “I just saw a mammal running across the meadow,” I suspect your immediate response would be, “What kind of mammal?” It’s not that “mammal” doesn’t have a fairly precise definition (“an animal with certain distinguishing characteristics”); it’s that it’s defined as a broader category.

Is “marriage” defined that broadly? I think a lot of people would say it never has been. They could insist it has never been “any relationship (especially sexual) between human beings.” On the other hand, as I wrote to Siamang, there’s another way of looking at it. Aren’t we really knocking out qualifiers? Would it not be simpler to say that marriage is the legal union of two people, without a qualification for “gender”?

Of course, working from definitions can get a little silly quickly–except in that they reflect concepts. It’s the concepts here that are at issue. They’re glimpses of our take on reality. The Fundamentalist Christian, for example, has, as we all know, a very different view of reality than most of us here. He believes marriage was defined by God and we don’t have any right to tinker with it. Simply removing belief in God inevitably knocks the legs out from under most, if not all, arguments against gay marriage.

I’ve got an idea, dissolve the legal sanction of “marriage” altogether. Since the word is damn precious to people.

Lets go with a legal union system for all people regardless of sex, gender or any other criteria. Let the ‘marriage’ crowd had their weddings in their churches to their heart’s content but don;t extend any legal recognition to it. No preacher should have any legal power vested in him/her anyway.

It seems to me that the state recognizing a religious ceremony as being legally binding is the same as the state accepting ‘god’s way’. It could be construed as a violation of the separation of church and state. I’ve wondered for a long time why preachers are allowed to perform a legal joining.

Richard- I applaud you. Fantastic.

Anyone who thinks marriage is between a man, a woman, his gun, and their government- please read Anatomy of Love, which focuses on who we sleep with and how we define the relationship. Not all marriage, such as it is, is defined or experienced the same way that it is in America today. As an extra benefit, the book doesn’t really talk about the gays, which will be a huge relief for you.

Brian E-

But what is the pressing need for gay/lesbian couples to have state-recognized marriages?

I don’t know. Why are you married, if it isn’t important? Go get a divorce right now. Oh, wait, is there a reason you wouldn’t, even if it is simply taxes? Well, there is your reason.

I don’t necessarily think homosexual behavior should be outlawed

Bully for you. Why should we go back to the not-so-distant past? Oscar Wilde went to jail for gay sex. Now, won’t someone please think of the children? You want them to live with their sinful, unmarried parents? Better to legitimize the relationship- for the children, of course.

Personally, I don’t really think I will ever get married- I just don’t believe n the institution- but I would love for it to be an option for any and all of my of-age consenting adult friends- up to and including open relationships, multiple marriages, and whatever other relationships people want to have.

If I might bring another issue up: Mr. James Dobson said yesterday’s Cali ruling was an outrage and that it was judicial tyranny at its worst (parphrased, but closely).

I can never buy this judicial activism argument. Do state Supreme Courts not have the right to rule on the constitutionality of laws passed by their legislatures? How is this “legislating from the bench”? Conservatives had no problem allowing the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the 2000 Presidential election, nor calling for it’s involvement in the Terri Schiavo case. It’s completely and utterly subjective. I can’t prove it, but I’d be willing to bet quite a bit of money that if Vermont’s state Supreme Court struck down the Civil Union law as unconstitutional that Dobson and Co. would be hailing the decision as glorious. My god, who today (besides neo-Nazis) would say that Brown v. Board was judicial activism? Please.

I want to salute Richard, Siamang, and everyone else on this post who is exposing this topic for what it really should be: a non issue. Gay couples have just as much right to marry and raise children as the millions of heterosexuals who fuck it up all the time, but still have the right. Had it not been on the Ohio ballot in 2004, John Kerry might be President and I encourage all Californians to resist it being (or vote against it) when if a ban is on the November ballot.

Go Spurs!

Siamang:

Anyway… yes I’m an asshole in this thread.

Not so. You’re making an excellent argument in a civil, logical manner. I have witnessed some Siamangling ™ over the years, but I haven’t seen you coming across nastily or impolitely in this thread at all.

Linda:

The reason I sound unsure is because it may just spark more anger on both sides of the argument. I don’t know if there are any simple solutions when it comes to changing the mindset of the majority.

Someone on NPR made an excellent point this morning: There’s never a “good” time or a “better” time to protect civil rights. They must simply be protected, period.

The majority that is in power (conservative religious people, for the most part in this case) will never give up its stranglehold over that power voluntarily. All or at least most of the civil rights advances in this country have come about by war, protests, lawsuits and decrees designed to protect minority groups. If we were to wait until nobody was angry or fearful of black people getting equal rights, they would never have gotten equal rights. Same is true for women, interracial couples as it is for homosexuals.

Stephen:

Do they actually have any idea what their concerns are? In most cases I think it is, as I said, just bigotry dressed up.

That’s exactly what it is. Nothing more complicated or nuanced than that.

Siamang, it’s called “Freedom kissing” now. Those damn French…

Thread over, I guess.

I was really hoping for an answer from him.

I shall keep an eye out for it on his own blog. It is clear to me that I am seeing only one side of this. The side that says that granting equality to a group that has been denied it is a good thing. As hard as I try to see a negative effect of this all I come up with is that some people may be forced to review their ideas and that may make them uncomfortable for a while. Well, we could all do with that a bit more often.

Jake has started a series of posts explaining why he disagrees with same sex marriage over here.

My wife and I have been married for 29 years. Getting married was easy, but staying married was not. Though we did and do love each other, we married impetuously and foolishly and the differences between us were and are substantive.

But it is above all else a partnership. We have held hands while she gave birth to our three children. We have together endured unemployment, sickness, and the deaths one year apart of each of our fathers. We have attended graduations together, helped our kids with their homework until they advanced to the point where we could only offer moral support. She has been hospitalized once and I have many times and we have been there for each other, watching out for each other’s interests.

Our. Marriage. Matters.

But what if we had been of two different races and had the misfortune to live in our parents’ generation in certain states? Or what if, when our partnership was formed, we had been of the same gender and the law simply refused to recognize our right to form that partnership as we navigate through life, and denied us the thousand-or-so legal ties and benefits that fit comfortably within the word “marriage”?

The bible has about the same number of verses pertaining to eating shellfish as it does against homosexuality. And approximately twenty-two times that many verses enjoining Christians to have mercy on the poor. Why aren’t more Christians clamoring for social justice, for national support of good schools in poor neighborhoods, for equal health care for all? The bible contains verses that establish second-class citizenship for people whose testicles have been crushed. The Apostle Paul, who never met Jesus (who never once mentioned homosexuality) except in a hallucination, wrote the strongest words in the book against homosexuality.

In a secular society (please note the number of times ‘god’ is mentioned in our constitution) the tenets of any religion cannot be considered as the basis of any law.

And the “definition of marriage”?

This should be obvious, it shouldn’t take a minute to figure out. It’s partnership in life. It’s mutual protection, love, and care. It isn’t genitalia.

It’s simple humanity and decency toward people who are a little different. It isn’t just which kinds of genitalia people have – some people have ambiguous genitalia, should they be forbidden to marry? Many married couples never have sex anymore; should they forced to split up? Why is this so hard to figure out?

Bill, I’ll post this here and at your blog, but the short answer is that partnership has many societal benefits besides children, and that even infertile couples are “allowed” to marry. (can you imagine how well a childbearing requirement would go over?) It is also true that gay people have children, and also adopt children, and those children deserve the protection that a partnership affords them.

I appreciate a couple of you popping over to give your thoughts. I feel like I’ve opened a can of worms on my blog that I wasn’t quite prepared for. It’s obvious this guy has thought about this issue a lot more than I have, which is unfortunate because while I disagree with him, I’m having trouble making a rational argument against him.

Thanks a lot for the link to that article! That’s really what I’ve been looking for; some guidance as to just why the government is involved in marriage in the first place. Without some background knowledge in that area it’s difficult to converse with someone who argues his point from that arena.