20 States ban gay marriages

Yawn... in this world, the more you want something the less likely it is for the people that have it to give it to you.

I don't need a marriage license, and I have been with my partner for 7 plus years. If and when we choose to our own separate ways we can at least do it in dignity without involving 2 attorneys and at least 1 judge to muddle through the details of our lives to figure out which one of us gets which house....

Marriage is an industry. There's nothing sacred left in the concept of it... that is if there ever was anything sacred about it in the first place. After all wasn't it a way for families to exchange assets? And don't give me Adam and Eve, look what happened when they hooked up... please. The funny thing is Marriage creates markets on the way in and on the way OUT. Wedding industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and so is the divorce court. And don't forget all the goodies and crap we have to buy kids as they grow up -- most of which ends up getting destroyed and replaced multiple times.

If we are in the business of protecting marriage, straight people are the ones that should be banned from marrying. Why do I say that? Two words: Mrs. Federline.

Troy

Don't you mean Mr. Spears? *bats eyelashes*

Oh honey, don't even get me started on that one.

He is my posterchild for sterilization:

FEDERLINE: Cause sometimes the best thing to do with them is to time them up.

The simple solution here is to strip marriage and/or civil unions of any and all legal status. Get the government completely out of the marriage business-no tax breaks, nothing. Then give everyone the same rights as far as inheritence, medical benefits, etc. Problem solved.

-Kiamat Dusk

This I agree with, and have been saying for a while. If people aren't willing to allow all couples to the rights of marriage, then no couple should have them.

All this fuss and bother over what's in the pants of a person's chosen partner/companion/spouse/person-with-power-of-attorney.

Humans are animals, and far too obsesssed with what gets stuck where.

You can couch this in religion or tradition or politics all you want but it comes down to power:

Some people need a common right and wrong to be defined for them.
Other people need to be the ones that do that defining.
Those 'other people' expect to be obeyed and
They will use their 'sheep' to help "convince" any resistance.
With peer pressure, law or violence... whatever they can get away with.

Politics is a power struggle between shepards.

This issue is just a pawn to galvanize the sheep.

If you're a historian by profession then why do you want to do someone elses job? The meaning of a word is not defined by historians, it's defined by linguists. The leading dictionary for my native language defines the equivalent of marriage as a bond between 2 persons. It doesn't mention them being opposite sex. Off course this is a consequence of the fact that over here we're a bit ahead when it comes to equal rights.

Note that the word marriage had no meaning at all 2000 years ago, it did not exist. Talking about "translations" sounds a bit funny. You talk as if English is the origin of all languages. Marriage comes from French and further along the lines it comes from the Latin maritare: union under the auspices of the Goddess Aphrodite-Mari. Christians weren't really out to have their bonds linked to that back then. That happened only after it had lost its original meaning. So in essence today we should be ready to take another step. Drop the current meaning and catch up with reality.

Crap. I agree with you! Curse you, Kiamat!

(I said Want to protect marriage? Make divorce a felony.


Well, yes, it is a bit extreme, but it would do more for protecting marriage than denying marriage to same gender couples. Arizona is also doing something with covenant marriages... but honestly... they're only slightly harder to escape than normal marriages.

It's not that marriages should be hard or impossible to wriggle out of... they should be harder to wriggle INTO in the first place, for everyone.

I also think marriage should be a contract for a fixed period of time, not for life. I hate this whole "until death do we part" oath in front of God, Govt, Friends and Family... and then a few years later "oops, nevermind." Folks should be more honest up front and renew their vows as they go. They might work at maintaining the relationship more if they know that their partner can just opt out at the next renewal date.

Maybe a $10k bond at the time of marriage that is forfeit if the two get divorced... pay it back with interest if the couple is still together 25 years later, or earlier if one or the other passes away.

I'm not married, doubtfully ever will be... but living in a country that's obsessed with forbidding same sex marriage while ignoring a 50% marriage failure rate is just embarassing.

And activist judges or not... I do NOT like people trying to undermine the authority of our judicial system. When minorities are treated unfairly, popularity driven politicians can't be counted on to do the right thing. It is the justices of our nation that need to determine the fairness of laws in practice. REAL 'Freedom' in America depends on it.

Its all the church.... They have to much political standing in the United States and quite frankly influence governmental decisions as far as gay marriage, abortion etc. None of which are really morally subject as being wrong in context of people in general. Its religiously wrong thats about it. Seperation of Church and state? I think Not. You realize that the U.K legalized gay marriage? Politically I'd say they are advanced beyond us.

Also i do feel its a ploy by the government to distract people from the real problems going on. So i wanna marry someone of the same Sex big freaking deal. If two people love one another then there really isnt a problem that i see. Lets face it the church isnt exactly morally right alot of the time. In fact throughout history they were quite corrupt. Secret societies abound to help fight the uprising of other religious groups and promote them.

Simple Example of this would be The Order Of The Dragon. This was an order which the father of the man known as Vlad Dracula was a member. Or back when Lutherinism was formed they basically sold "tickets" to get into heaven (not sure of the proper term but...). Well showing this kinda proves one should not always trust movements made by the church.

Well, you hunt Ducks and geese at ranges greatre than 100 feet unless you are lucky, and really you don't hunt ducks and geese (or any birds) with bullets. You use shot. A bird would be damned difficult to hit with a rifle, which fires bullets, but a shotgun has a decent chance. Thus the animal might be plummeting with shot in its heart (and several other places too, in all likelihood) but not with a bullet.

I am intrigued about how many insecure hunters you have observed, and I wonder how exactly you went about surveying their penis size? Did you do this in the woods, while you were being exposed to the variety of sounds of animals? Are you attracted to men with a bully complex? If not then why have you spent so much time observing thier penises?

In fact hunting is sometimes required for food, as I very much enjoy the taste of pheasant, and the only way to get this bird is to hunt it. Yet we all eat what we kill, or give it to somone who does, hunting is not a wasteful acitivity, just a lethal one.

For my own part I hunt (less now since I have time) because it puts me in my place in the food chain. I am a carnivore, and things must die so that I may live. It is hypocritical of me to ask other people to kill on my behalf when I am not willing to do the same thing, so I hunt. I kill. I feel power. I feel guilt. As the man said..killing is a cathartic release...its the dying part that hurts.

I think generalizations are dangerous things.

All that being said, the term marriage implies a religious and spiritual bond. The term civil union implies equal protection under law. I think the goverment should sponsor only civil unions which are available to everyone. If you want to do it in a church and call it marriage, fine, but that should have no legal effect. But denying equal protection of the law based on sexual preference is wrong.

Is it any wonder government in America is so broken, when the people in this thread are responsible for electing our politicians?


The only reasonable compromise is to legally sanction all civil unions, giving straight and gay couples all the same rights and responsibilities. Replacing the words marriage, husband, wife, etc. in every legal document with a gender neutral equivalent.


Now, would any reasonable person like to argue against that? Or would you rather criticize my spelling, attack my credentials, or give me lessons on the anatomy of water fowl?

I don't get it.

We are stuck in an endless quagmire of a war with no end in sight. Its costing us billions a month.

A band of would-be jihadists gets busted in Canada for plotting to blow up Parliament and other targets in Canada.

Hurricane Season is here, and repairs on New Orleans' levee system are far from complete.

We still x-ray a fraction of containers entering our ports.

A gallon of gas costs a bit more than twice what it cost 6 years ago.

I could go on and on with this list, but I'll cut to the chase. With all the things our "lawmakers" could be dealing with today, they decide that America's #1 priority is throwing a cold bucket of water on a bunch of "sinning homos". I just don't get it...

I'm annoyed every time the 50% statistic comes up. It is incorrect. http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/d/divorce.htm

In short, yes, dividing the divorce count by the marriage count brings up about .5, but that does not take into account the millions of pre-existing marriages. The people getting divorced are most likley not the same people that got married that year. The article cites "54 million marriages." So, the divorce rate is fueled by these 54 million couples, and having it lower than the marriage rate, even in the slightest, is damn good. I've heard a 2% statistic instead of 50%.

My point was there were references to same-sex marriage in history.

I do agree completely with your last paragraph. Unfortunately, we will never all just get along nor will we agree with what other people do in the privacy of their own homes or hearts. I can only hope that someday soon people will understand that what Fred and George down the street do has no bearing on anyone else's lives but their own (and their extended family... but that doesn't really count, either, does it?).

You're butchering the statistics and misreading the article, IMO. The article says there was a huge backlog for easy divorces back around 1980 (the "fuel" for the high divorce rate), but presumably that backlog has been mostly cleared 25 years later, so current data would be much more accurate.

Plus, you make the implicit assumption that "failure" means "divorced" and that therefore that all marriages that end in death could be considered a success. Both are untrue by any reasonable definition of those terms.

So unless you have other references, I'll keep saying that over 1/2 of all marriages are doomed to failure.

From the page you quoted:

"It predicted that one-third of new marriages among younger people will end in divorce within 10 years and 43 percent within 15 years. "

Okay... so for that demographic the number is 43% fail within 15 years. That's something to be proud of?

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm
reports for 2004 (slightly paraphrased):
2,279,000 marriages.
0.78% of the counted population got married.
0.37% of the counted population got divorced.

Very nearly half as many divorces for that year recorded as there were marriages. No, of course they're not the SAME marriages... but they are marriages. Why should 'when' make any difference? A failed marriage is a failed marriage... after 6 months or 16 years.

How about we think of it this way:

If folks can so easily ignore the "SPOKEN OUTLOUD" tradition of "Until Death do we part"...

Then perhaps it's time to ignore the previously unspoken "1 man and 1 woman" tradition as well.

Using tradition as a defence is rank hypocrisy unless the person also endorses abolishing divorce as well.

it was just campaign rhetoric. gay marriage is not under any threat.

who could argue? You make a great point.

Government should have domain only for Civil Unions --if places of worship wish to confer a "marriage" they can do so --but it shouldn't have anything to do with the State.

There are churches and temples that will even now perform same-sex marriages, but the tax breaks, et al should be the domain of civil unions (by definition)

The only statisic I provided was the one I heard. That in no way means I believed it, nor mean I pulled it from that article. There's no butchering of statistics on my part, the only butchering is the constant use of the 50% figure without taking into consideration its context (or lack thereof). Saying half marriages end in divorce is a gross oversimplification of the issue. Divorce rates vary by age, education, social climate, time, the total number of marriages currently, and other influences. Theres also lack of specific information regarding the statistics; like the duration of the marriage, and the total cumulative number of divorces(to counter the total cumulative number of marriages). There simply are too many ways of measuring, and too little statistics.

I need prove nothing except reason to doubt the statistic being professed right now. The divorce count is carrying 100 years of marriage on its back. The marriage count has no such extra baggage. With the current method being used to support that 'half' figure, it would be possible for the statistic to skyrocket to absurd irrational figures due to its failure to take background figures into account. If something were to happen which caused the marriage rate to drop below that of divorce, we'd be pulling a statistic over 100%. All marriages end in divoce, right? Wrong.

Of course failure means divorce. Throwing abstract and subjective concepts of failure into the mix just makes the issue cloudy, giving yourself plenty of wiggle room with extra unimportant "what if"s to pad whatever notion you wish to support.

http://www.divorcereform.org/nyt05.html
http://www.pobronson.com/factbook/pages/335.html

Which is not what I said. I was vague. Let me be more specific:

In any given year, the number of marriages compared to the number of divorces in the US is roughly 2 to 1. Happy now? Does that statistic warm your heart? It seems dismal to me honestly.


My POINT which you're ignored for your pet peeve rant was simply this:

Ignoring a staggering number of divorces... and yet fixating on the evils of same gender marriage is just absurd.

Massachusetts, which I'm sure someone has pointed out, if I haven't missed it already... which allows same gender marriage, also has one of the nations LOWEST divorce rates.

Go figure.

No,

I counted the number of states where the possiability of a constitutional amendment passing was over 70% and I come up with 25

They need 38 states to pass a constitutional amendment and they need 2/3rds of the votes of the state.