10 States Pass Ban on Gay Marriage

*raises hand*

I'm against the governmental interference in religious matters.

To me, marriage and civil unions should be seperate affairs. Marriage should have no legal standing whatsoever within the law of the nation, and civil unions should have no relgious significance whatsoever. You can get one, you can get the other, you can get both or neither, but "marriage" should not be both religious and governmental.

No it isn't. There's been more than a few societies that used it as a means of showing or acquiring power, political means or even just a show of love. I'm sure I can hunt down something to show this if I need to.

Such as what? The only thing you get out of government-sponsored marriage is the inability to go your separate ways without lengthy and expensive legal battles. If you really want that, hire a lawyer to draw up a partnership contract before you decide to move in with someone.

Really, the only benefit that I ever saw from a marriage certificate was dependency status of one of the spouses for tax purposes. But that doesn't really offset the marriage tax in most cases, so what's the big deal?

Insurance and other benefits. Estate rights in the event of death, etc, etc.

How about the ability to sit beside your loved one during their last moments?

In intensive care only immediate family gets this privilege. A gay partner doesn't count and can be kept out.

Also, a gay partner listed in a will can be contested by the immediate family and disinherited, as can any children adopted by one partner and raised by both (as partners cannot adopt together).

Doesnt anyone find the whole concept of marriage a little silly?
I mean, why the heck does the government care who or what I love?
Isn't it a bit anachronistic? It's like I have to register my ownership of a new piece of property. I dont think we should legalize gay marriage, I think we should do away with the whole god damn concept of marriage and divorce.

*sigh*... ain't that the truth

- Ace

1. if 2 guys wanna get married, how does this hurt me? im not thinkin about marryin a guy, but im not thinkin about eating vegimite either. and anybody that wants vegimite can get it easily. the real issue should be to ban vegimite!

I've heard about vegimite *shudder*
I propose a constitutional amendment that bans the stuff.
I'll call it the Defence of Condiments Amemendment.

ps. While I'm on a roll, I want to ban all the foods I consider gross:
frozen fish sticks, mutton, lutefisk, clams, escargot, oysters, raw swiss cheese, blood sausage, turkey dogs, tofu dogs, that purple sausage with the tongue chunks, okra, turnips, beets, daikon radish, wasabi, horseraddish, carrot juice, and any veggie juice the same color as lawn clippings. America must be protected from these devient substances masquarading as food!

You should ban any food that claims to be "organic". What the hell does that mean anyway?

Isn't all food organic?

I know a lot of generally intelligent people that just ohhh and ahhh over a label that claims something is organic. I don't get and I'm not buying it.

Organic usually means that it isn't treated with genetic engineering or special hormones, and isn't sprayed with pesticides that are toxic

All of these are valid issues. However, I think they're better addressed by addressing the problem, not shoe-horning every "pairing" of people into the definition of a "marriage."

I think the bigger problem is that much of our society is still stuck in the 40's/50's and a lot of these things are family-centric.

I'm not saying I have answers in my pocket, but there have to be reasonable compromises that don't center around marriage and the family tree. Tieing all of these issues to marriage just makes them all hot-button issues that conservatives and liberals will always fight over. If you find a way to remove morality/religion/marriage from the problem, compromises will be much easier to find.

Using a paragraph from Grim's post above, I performed a little word-substitution to illustrate that for me, it's the same argument, just a new victim:


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I'm not saying I have answers in my pocket, but there have to be reasonable compromises that don't center around racial equality and segregation. Tieing all of these issues to racial equality just makes them all hot-button issues that blacks and whites will always fight over. If you find a way to remove racial equality/desegregation from the problem, compromises will be much easier to find.
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SEPARATE IS NEVER EQUAL.

Morality and Religious beliefs are the main reason people are opposed to gay marriage Grim.

There is no single valid reason I've heard over the last year to *not* allow same sex couples to marry. Not a single one, other than simple bigotry.

I won't comment on my thoughts about gay marriage, but I will say that if you ban gay marriage, it definitely is a human rights violation to also ban civil unions. What is scary is that some of these states went so far as to ban those, too.

What's more scary is newly elected senators like DeMint. DeMint has said on the record that not only should gays not have civil unions, but they should also not be allowed to teach in schools. On top of that he added that neither should unwed mothers. Hello? Can we say trampling over reproductive rights? What fucking bullshit. Congrats, Southern US, on electing this closet-cased bigot. I'm ashamed this guy shares my political party.

I think it's absolutely sad and laughable that right-wingers claim gay marriage is a threat to the sanctity of marriage, not things like alcoholism, spouse abuse, child abuse, infidelity, high divorce rates, teenage and unwanted pregnancy ... etc etc etc.