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I genuinely do appreciate your comments, but I have to ask you, as an historical aside: Why do you say that marriage belongs to the Church? The United States accommodates multiple belief systems (to varying degrees - that's another dicsussion), but from our history it is fair to characterize it as a Protestant nation. The Protestant Reformation put marriage in the hands of the state, according to the views of Martin Luther, and Protestant marriage in what is now the U.S. began as a civil institution, not a religious one. To take us back even further in terms of cultural origins, marriage was a secular/civil institution in ancient Greece and Rome as well. I'm not trying to be hostile, but I have often heard people talk about the religious nature of marriage in America and Western culture, and I just can't find the sources of this POV. I'd be open to informed instruction, though.
In another post you clarified my question to a fellow member - that my concern is this seasonal legalizing and de-legalizing. I guess I feel the same way about church and state in this matter. We should either commit to an idea or not, not pick and choose and shift with the wind. If one claims to want to preserve the institution of marriage as part of our cultural heritage, then marriage should actually be a civil institution, as it was in the Plymouth Colony. Again, I'm honestly not hostile to your opinion, which is based on your own accumulation of knowledge. Just arguing my own, based on mine.
Good evening,
Maybe you're right. I'll be honest and say that I did not do extensive research into past cultures' definitions and reasons for marriage. Honestly, I am neither for or against gay marriage, which is why I shared my own opinion of what I thought marriage historically was, based on life experience, instead of doing the research I usually partake in before posting to a thread. So I'll concede that you're probably correct in your historical account since I haven't bother to check it out thoroughly.
Academically speaking, I believe it is a state issue and states should decide if they want to have gay marriage or not. My reason for proposing government get out of the marriage business period, is to give a solution that gives everyone happy since they can be married within their own church or other institution that recognizes their type of marriage.
That back and forth legalize / de-legalize issue was raised in the OP, and is why I offered a compromise that may be acceptable for all. I personally would be fine with gay marriage being legal, or being banned. It doesn't affect my life so I would never fight for or against it.
Thanks for being kind in your post despite your disagreement my point of view within that post. I have a lot of respect for your approach!
Yes, but do you think a state should be able to change its mind when it changes its legislature? That seems like a HUGE gray area to me!
Not if the definition is part of the state Constitution. I really do believe this belongs at the state level and not the federal government. People can vote with their feet and move to those states that best suit them.
I see a problem with the state being out of it completely for only the reasons of the potential abuse of polygamy or child brides.
I will never understand why polygamy and/or marrying toaster ovens and goats always finds its way into a same-sex marriage debate. I'll grant you that one man/one woman is different from one man/one man or one woman/one woman, and I understand why people are uncomfortable with that for personal or religious reasons, but we're still talking about a union of two (and only two) consenting adults. Not that big of a leap. Not that long ago, to a lot of Americans - and to some still today - interracial marriage posed the same sort of threat, and those who were against it had a host of Biblical and legal justifications for their stance. But surely we can all see that polygamy is neither miscegeny nor same-sex marriage. Not even close. Polygamy would pose a much greater challenge to every institution in our society, secular or religious, and for obvious, practical reasons.
Given that California and New Hampshire can't even keep same-sex marriage legal, how can anyone argue that legalized polygamy is any kind of threat? To me, this slippery slope is more of a red herring.
Oh but I'm all for 'legalizing' polygamy. Or rather: for not making it illegal anymore. I.e. getting the state out of marriage.
What I meant is: why does every minority have to fight for its specific rights when these freedoms should not have even been restricted in the first place.
I couldn't resist a bolded, blue post, regardless of length.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pennsylvanian1
Apart from personal decisions to accept or reject the idea of same-sex marriages occurring in any state, there is also a very important aspect which is seldomly mentioned in arguments opposing this controversial issue, the issue of 'influence'.
[/color][/b]One does not have to do much research into the actions of gay activists before detecting a consistent pattern revealing an agenda reaching far beyond the quest for the achievement of being recognized as married couples.[/color][/b]
Actually, I’ve heard the “influence” argument posed quite frequently by guest commentators not only on Fox News but also on CNN and MSNBC, so I can assure you that your message is getting out there more than “seldomly.” Much less common is an argument against same-sex marriage that doesn’t allude to:
1. a vast and dark “gay agenda”
2. the fallacy that gays and lesbians are all pedophiles or even more prone to pedophilic behavior than heterosexuals
3. the tired canard that every dimension of gay people’s identities and/or aspirations revolves around the performance and promotion of sex.
I’d actually love to hear more of those arguments, because that would make for an honest, serious debate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pennsylvanian1
It is quite simple, from an objective standpoint, to envision a society with a strong tolerance base extending even into the religious sector. But, it is clear that the gay agenda involves an insatiable motivation to become influential in multiple aspects within society, which puts even the highest of tolerance levels to the test.
Rather than indulge your clever attempt to cast the Conservative/Christian community as the benevolent victim in this scenario, I’ll just stick with what we agree on – that gay and lesbian people are indeed quite determined to “become influential in multiple aspects within society” - just like their heterosexual counterparts in a nation where all men are supposedly created equal. Or I should say, “more openly influential,” because gay men and lesbians have been influencing and contributing to American life for hundreds of years in every role imaginable.
As for your example of U.S. Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, you really should update and fact-check your data. It has been long been proven that the teen you mentioned was 16 years old, the legal age of consent in Massachusetts, at the time of his conversation with Jennings in 1988, so Jennings had no obligation to inform anyone, and if you are an even mildly critical consumer of information, you'd have noticed the notion that Jennings “believed” the youth was 15 only surfaced in accounts with an unabashedly negative bias. Also worth noting is that Jennings has only personally written two books, one of which is an autobiography that is not nearly as exciting as you imagine, and the other of which is a guide for parents to help them understand their LGBT children. This hardly makes him “an author of more than a few books on homosexual education explicitly detailing the performance of homosexual acts,” and I would love for you point me toward a copy of the elusive “*****ing Elementary Education” book, which has never been assigned an ISBN and is nowhere to be found. Proper personal research makes for a much more credible argument.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pennsylvanian1
These are the policy changers. Those who become influential in setting the course of American culture from behind the scenes.
“These?” You only mentioned one guy, and didn’t have your facts straight. C’mon, seriously. How about a genuinely informed debate?
And finally, I can't help but address the infamous quote you trotted out and attributed to an article in the gay travel magazine The Guide. This quote was actually a comment made by one of the magazine’s editors, Ed Hougen, in an interview featured in a conservative Christian “watchdog” newsletter known as The Lambda Report that specifically seeks out people from the far radical fringes of the gay community – in this case a member of the very small and controversial group NAMBLA – to interview and hold up to its homophobic readership as examples of the average gay man or lesbian. So when you claim with great assurance that you understand The Guide as reflecting the “principles, the beliefs, and the views of a certain number of homosexuals, views which don't automatically change when individuals who share these beliefs enter positions within government, or other influential capacities within our society,” you are referring to the wrong publication (just for starters), implying that you take the first result returned by Google at face value.
As such, this is where I stopped reading your post – and I suspect I got further than most.
You had your rant, but you never answered my question. If you're so sure of your opinions, why not start there?
Last edited by sautille42; 01-15-2011 at 02:03 AM..
Reason: caught major editing issue/typo when I saw my post quoted by another member
I couldn't resist a bolded, blue post, regardless of length.
Actually, I’ve heard the “influence†argument posed quite frequently by guest commentators not only on Fox News but also on CNN and MSNBC, so I can assure you that your message is getting out there more than “seldomly.†Much less common is an argument against same-sex marriage that doesn’t allude to:
1. a vast and dark “gay agenda,†the fallacy that gays and lesbians are all pedophiles or even more prone to pedophilic behavior than heterosexuals
2. the tired canard that every dimension of gay people’s identities and/or aspirations revolves around the performance and promotion of sex.
I’d actually love to hear more of those arguments, because that would make for an honest, serious debate.
Rather than indulge your clever attempt to cast the Conservative/Christian community as the benevolent victim in this scenario, I’ll just stick with what we agree on – that gay and lesbian people are indeed quite determined to “become influential in multiple aspects within society†- just like their heterosexual counterparts in a nation where all men are supposedly created equal. Or I should say, “more openly influential,†because gay men and lesbians have been influencing and contributing to American life for hundreds of years in every role imaginable.
As for your example of U.S. Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, you really should update and fact-check your data. It has been long been proven that the teen you mentioned was 16 years old, the legal age of consent in Massachusetts, at the time of his conversation with Jennings in 1988, so Jennings had no obligation to inform anyone, and if you are an even mildly critical consumer of information, you'd have noticed the notion that Jennings “believed†the youth was 15 only surfaced in accounts with an unabashedly negative bias. Also worth noting is that Jennings has only personally written two books, one of which is an autobiography that is not nearly as exciting as you imagine, and the other of which is a guide for parents to help them understand their LGBT children. This hardly makes him “an author of more than a few books on homosexual education explicitly detailing the performance of homosexual acts,†and I would love for you point me toward a copy of the elusive “*****ing Elementary Education†book, which has never been assigned an ISBN and is nowhere to be found. Proper personal research makes for a much more credible argument.
“These?†You only mentioned one guy, and didn’t have your facts straight. C’mon, seriously. How about a genuinely informed debate?
And finally, I can't help but address the infamous quote you trotted out and attributed to an article in the gay travel magazine The Guide. This quote was actually a comment made by one of the magazine’s editors, Ed Hougen, in an interview featured in a conservative Christian “watchdog†newsletter known as The Lambda Report that specifically seeks out people from the far radical fringes of the gay community – in this case a member of the very small and controversial group NAMBLA – to interview and hold up to its homophobic readership as examples of the average gay man or lesbian. So when you claim with great assurance that you understand The Guide as reflecting the “principles, the beliefs, and the views of a certain number of homosexuals, views which don't automatically change when individuals who share these beliefs enter positions within government, or other influential capacities within our society,†you are referring to the wrong publication (just for starters), implying that you take the first result returned by Google at face value.
As such, this is where I stopped reading your post – and I suspect I got further than most.
You had your rant, but you never answered my question. If you're so sure of your opinions, why not start there?
good job. you are being very reasonable to what seems to me a very unreasonable person.
and i am SO GLAD that you pointed out that the Guide quote was NOT representative of the gay community as a whole.
and for mister blue bold, where the hell have you been? do you think that gay people have had no influence, whatsoever, on culture as a whole? that they are pushing for something that they have never had? wake up! they are here, they are q#@r, get used to it. there have been gay people since time immemorial. its only since the stonewall riots that they started waving placards around. as a life-long champion of gay rights with a gay sister, even we hate the flounciness of the Q. Nation folk, shoving it all in people's faces. no one is gonna change their minds about homos by going to a Gay Pride Parade. most gay people i know, while supportive of gay marriage, don't shove anything into anyone's faces and just want to be free to love who they want to love and marry who they want to marry. big deal. if you think that is a conspiracy then you really don't have a clue.
Freedom123, thanks for your post, and your kind regards. You’ll probably want to take it all back once you read my post to Pennsylvania1, but I think this an important issue in our country and I’m weary of people who love to share strong opinions that are poorly informed and/or clearly bigoted. It gets us nowhere.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freedom123
Academically speaking, I believe it is a state issue and states should decide if they want to have gay marriage or not. My reason for proposing government get out of the marriage business period, is to give a solution that gives everyone happy since they can be married within their own church or other institution that recognizes their type of marriage.
I get what you’re saying, and I liked that you offered a clear and thoughtful summary of your solution. I just question how we could ever pull it off, since so many things we don’t even think about are conferred by our government based on a person’s marital status. A common argument for same-sex marriage is based on a 2004 letter from the U.S. Government Accountability Office to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist affirming “a total of 1,138 federal statutory provisions classified to the United States Code in which marital status is a factor in determining or receiving benefits, rights, and privileges.” This figure doesn’t even begin to address statutory provisions on the state level. We’d have to pull an unfathomable number of threads to extricate marriage from our social fabric, to the point that our butts would be too bare for any paid solicitor to cover!
Sadly, it looks like there’s no way for all of us to ever be happy with any one solution. Like anything else that really matters, I suppose.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freedom123
I personally would be fine with gay marriage being legal, or being banned. It doesn't affect my life so I would never fight for or against it.
I get what you’re saying here, too. I felt the same way until I realized how many gay people I’ve actually known, and how many more I might know without knowing…if you know what I mean.
Because of those 1,138 provisions, and because the gay men and lesbians I know are good and caring people - no less human or American than I am - I feel like I have to support them to be true to my own values and ideals. I don’t have any kids, but I have little nieces and nephews whom I love very much and if any of them are gay or lesbian, I would want them to have the same rights I do. It makes me think about the six gay teens whose suicides made news last September and October. I think about what gay kids are exposed to in our increasingly ugly and irresponsible public discourse. We are telling them that their dreams, their love, and their individual lives aren’t worth as much as a heterosexual’s in this country that we teach them is so exceptional. I know this sounds dramatic, but all this really does affect my life, both directly and indirectly.
Since same-sex marriage has become an issue – like it or not – I don’t want to risk diminishing someone I care about and I don’t want laws that do give gays and lesbians the right to marry to be subject to change with little notice, or concern about the human consequences. I can respect thoughtful, informed views that differ from my own, but this is what I’ve decided for myself.
What I meant is: why does every minority have to fight for its specific rights when these freedoms should not have even been restricted in the first place.
I gotcha now. Sorry. And I agree, but I also sympathize with our Forefathers. They were the products of their own, flawed cultural heritage - and they were unable to predict the future.
I guess I'd like to think each of these successive battles and eventual victories is actually healthy for our society, and a sign of our increasing enlightenment (do I dare say "evolution"?). I'm just not sure if our instant-access, media-saturated culture is more of a help or a hindrance to the change process. I wonder what our Constitution would look like if it had been drafted today.
Not if the definition is part of the state Constitution.
That's my whole point. Though I support same-sex marriage, at times I respect states that ban it constitutionally more than those that permit it but don't protect it. Enshrining any definition of marriage in a state constitution makes it far less subject to a change of heart or fancy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lifelongMOgal
I really do believe this belongs at the state level and not the federal government. People can vote with their feet and move to those states that best suit them.
Though I personally think marriage is too fundamental to an individual's social identity to be recognized in one state but not another, I see why people disagree and I also see the value/necessity of at least starting out on a state-by-state basis.
But I can't buy into the "people can vote with their feet" argument. Not in this economy, with unemployment and expenses as high as they are. The gas for a mid-sized U-haul from New York to Florida can currently eat a month's worth of many Americans' pay. I live in South Carolina, a state with a political ideology that is light years from my own, but I moved here for a job that has since evaporated and I couldn't afford to leave right now if I wanted to (and I desperately do).
Quote:
Originally Posted by lifelongMOgal
I see a problem with the state being out of it completely for only the reasons of the potential abuse of polygamy or child brides.
Good point. And since free exercise of religion is the law of our land (at least on paper), we would technically have to allow for both if marriage was left completely to religious institutions!
Last edited by sautille42; 01-15-2011 at 03:07 AM..
good job. you are being very reasonable to what seems to me a very unreasonable person.
most gay people i know, while supportive of gay marriage, don't shove anything into anyone's faces and just want to be free to love who they want to love and marry who they want to marry. big deal. if you think that is a conspiracy then you really don't have a clue.
I wonder what our Constitution would look like if it had been drafted today.
Take a look at the EU "constitution" a.k.a. Treaty of Lisbon (all 277 pages of it) and the headache you will receive will be an indication of what it would look like.
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