Prudence and gay marriage

I am glad these people think this way. Homosexuals do not need "marriage", but simply assurances and writs regarding insurance, inheritance, etc.

The good that may come out of all this is for people that understand traditional heterosexual marriage to realize that this was brought on by them. And search for some ways for strengthening traditional marriage, Christian/Catholic marriage rather that just legal rangling over the issue of homosexual "marriage".

I found Glenn Greenwald's explanation of the decision on Salon.com to be the best. The court basically held that Marriage and Domestic Partnerships are legally a distinction without a difference, and so they can't be separated. I personally found the distinction a decent compromise, but the court's decision does make sense. The voters of California can still decide the issue, including whether or not to keep these judges (if I'm not mistaken). It's certainly hard to read these decisions, but fair-minded people should at least give it a shot. Whether or not this decision helps or hurts Gay Marriage in the end is hard to say, and may well hinge on the level of argumentation each side musters going forward.

no name writes "Walk a mile in their shoes."

Homosexuals (that is the word in my lexicon) need tolerance from others and honesty from themselves.

It's as clear as the nose on any of our faces. Proponents of a ban on gay marriage seek to isolate marriage and save it only for opposite-sex partners. This withholding is, in fact, discriminatory. Never has there been identified a legitimate threat that might render any citizen's marriage less important or meaningful. But in the alternative, the institution of marriage would make a lot of things easier on the gay marriage partners and add strength to their relationships by way of the same cohesive qualities traditional marriages enjoy--recognition and support from family, financial and tax benefits and the return of their belief that the country they live in is fair and treats its citizens equally and doesn't interfere with personal and family decisions without a clear, definitive reason for doing so.

Richard,

The mind boggles that you think gays are only clamoring for marriage because straight people have made such a botch of it.

Does it really occur to no one that perhaps commitment, responsibility, fidelity, monogamy, etc., are things that some gay and lesbian people affirm?

Once one stops accepting the sin-disgusting-objectively-disordered mindset and sees it for the ignorance and misguidedness it is, you reach a point where you stop apologizing and explaining and just get on with the business of living and holding our states and country to the ideals that their constitutions express. Particularly the ones about justice for all.

You insist on seeing everything about this thru the lens of the disintegration of sexual morality and family disintegration. I see this thru the lens that more and more people are claiming their dignity and aspiring to live as full members of society. You want to cheapen these "I Dos" to no more than "I want sex that feels good". For shame; "I Do" means a whole lot more than that. I know you know that. Don't you think we do, too?

I think there is reason for hope for those of us who want to protect marriage and no I don't mean Senator Obama. Some time in recent history (you are welcome to fact check me), Gov. Swartzenegger of California vetoed a bill that would required that homosexuality be taught as normal in schools. You may not have heard about it because this does not fit the liberal media template. So ask yourself a question, will the loudest proponents of gay marriage be satisfied if it is legalized? The answer, in my view, is an emphatic NO. This about victim status couched in a discussion about rights. There will be no end and at some point the vast majority will figure this out and realize we've been had.

A quick anecdote to illustrate the point: I remember being at one of those quick lube places and the sales rep / tech pitching me on something that needed to be done and he had a justification. I took him very seriously and authorized the service. And then, well you know, he came back to the well again with some other service I really needed with some elaborate explanation and fear tactic. This time I laughed. I laughed right in front of him. I realized I'd been had the first time, and it wasn't going to happen again. Well, I think many of the activists' lives revolve around make themselves into victims. Some day it will dawn on the American people that we've been had, and then the tide will turn.

Randy--- "So what argument might you bring to illuminate this darkness? Help a brother out!'

Well, here is an attempted start. Not a direct match but related. Hope it helps:

http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1437

"Homosexuals do not need "marriage""

And somehow, heterosexuals do?

Richard Barrett,

"I don't know of a single gay person who is legally barred from marrying a consenting member of the opposite sex"

Yeah, gawd forbid people should actually be allowed to marry the person they love and want to marry, eh? Yeah, let's have more false marriages. That'll help. (Not.)

"If homosexuals want to argue that they should have the same right to that [the legal benefits that come with marriage] as anybody else -- frankly, they have us there."

I have always argued for nothing more, less or other than "the same right" as you have, Richard. Thanks for being gracious in your admitted defeat.

David Blankenhorn has written about this in a new book, The Future of Marriage. Even though he is a lifelong gay rights supporter and liberal Democrat, he is against gay marriage. Why? Because, he says, across history and many cultures, the fundamental reason for marriage has been family – the proposition that children need a mother and a father. The state has an interest in preserving marriage because of what it does for children, and, in turn, for society. When marriage ceases to be about CHILDREN and becomes about COUPLING, it is not good for children, not good for society, and is no longer in the state's best interest.

He uses the example of Scandanavia, where gay marriage has become normalized:

"We can see the connection between same-sex marriage and illegitimacy in Scandinavian countries. Norway, for example, has had de-facto same-sex marriage since the early nineties. In Nordland, the most liberal county of Norway, where they fly “gay” rainbow flags over their churches, out-of-wedlock births have soared—more than 80 percent of women giving birth for the first time, and nearly 70 percent of all children, are born out of wedlock! Across all of Norway, illegitimacy rose from 39 percent to 50 percent in the first decade of same-sex marriage.

Anthropologist Stanley Kurtz writes, “When we look at Nordland and Nord-Troendelag — the Vermont and Massachusetts of Norway — we are peering as far as we can into the future of marriage in a world where gay marriage is almost totally accepted. What we see is a place where marriage itself has almost totally disappeared.” He asserts that “Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.”

Back to Blankenhorn, who reports this same trend in other countries. International surveys show that same-sex marriage and the erosion of traditional marriage tend to go together. Traditional marriage is weakest and illegitimacy strongest wherever same-sex marriage is legal.

"You might say, “Correlation doesn’t always indicate causation!” Yes, but often it does. Is there any doubt that liberalizing marriage laws impacts society for the worse? You need look no further than the last 40 years of no-fault divorce laws in the United States (family disintegration destroys lives and now costs tax payers $112 billion per year!)."

So, those of you who enjoying mocking heterosexuals who "fear" gay marriage will destroy their own are missing the point. It's not about protecting MY marriage... it's about protecting the INSTITUTION of marriage by keeping its founding principle (family and children) front and center. Contrary to what homosexual activists assume, the state doesn’t endorse marriage because people have feelings for each other. The state endorses marriage primarily because of what marriage does for children and in turn society.

"I don't know of a single gay person who is legally barred from marrying a consenting member of the opposite sex"

Yeah, gawd forbid people should actually be allowed to marry the person they love and want to marry, eh? Yeah, let's have more false marriages. That'll help. (Not.)

You miss my point; my point was, no more and no less, that marriage as currently defined isn't denied to anybody. From my point of view, what is sought is not an extension of rights but a reformulation of what something intrinsically means. To put it another way, I would define marriage intrinsically as a 2-person heterosexual union, as opposed to defining marriage as a relationship upon which we just happen to have a heterosexual restriction with an arbitrary number for purposes of privilege. You may claim that's a distinction without a difference; I don't see it that way.

I think we can agree that an intrinsic characteristic of motherhood is being female, yes? As a man, I might be able to insist that my (as yet hypothetical) children call me "mother" (and they might even do so voluntarily with a two-syllable extension on the end in their teen years), but it would be a spurious appellation at best. I can be a father, I can be a parent, but I can't be a mother without a ground-up redefinition of what the word means.

Going along with that set of premises, I find that I increasingly buy the argument that the state, under the current set of cultural circumstances, has no particular dog in the fight of defining the word "marriage" one way or the other, and that everybody might be better off with the state getting out of the marriage business altogether. Words have meaning, but it's not up to the government to publish a dictionary.

"If homosexuals want to argue that they should have the same right to that [the legal benefits that come with marriage] as anybody else -- frankly, they have us there."

I have always argued for nothing more, less or other than "the same right" as you have, Richard. Thanks for being gracious in your admitted defeat.

Well, if you're going to use brackets, at least use them to actually convey the whole of what I said, not what you decided to cherry-pick. Therefore:

"If homosexuals want to argue that they should have the same right to that [institutionally-legitimized sex with legal benefits] as anybody else -- frankly, they have us there."

Jim:

You mischaracterize a good deal of what I said. Effectively, I was suggesting that certain amount of self-reflection on the part of heterosexuals (including myself) as to whether or not we're truly walking our own talk might not be a bad plan. If we're not, then perhaps we should focus on doing so ourselves first rather than joining our voices to an already too-shrill cacophony and pointing fingers at other people.

Richard