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Marriage is defined by God. It's not up to states to redefine it.
A few blocks up the street from my house is a Jewish synagogue, Congregation Kol Tzedek on Baltimore Avenue. The Rabbi of that synagogue will marry two people of the same gender.
By not allowing two adult tax-paying US citizens the happiness of marrying the person they love in the house of worship of their choice - or no house of worship if they choose - to me showing contempt and disrespect for those citizens.
It's all about tolerance and respect.
That is the bottom line.
To my way of thinking, only people who are intolerant of the gay community, would demonstrate their disrespect my denying them the fundamental freedom to marry the person they love.
I am curious if those of you who support this ruling would also support the legalization of polygamous marriages. It seems to me you should, using the same reasoning as the Judge.
I don't have a problem with polygamous/polyamorous marriages.
I am curious if those of you who support this ruling would also support the legalization of polygamous marriages. It seems to me you should, using the same reasoning as the Judge.
Actually, I do. I think the laws passed against polygamy were essentially political attacks against the Church of Latter-Day Saints, and are therefore violating the freedom to exercise the religion of one's choice. That said, I also can see that since marriage is a legal contract merging the assets of two (or more) people, and that the interests of children are also protected by marriage laws, that the government does have an interest in regulating marriage. To that end, laws that require people prove their financial ability to marry multiple partners, be it men with multiple wives or women with multiple husbands, does not seem to be beyond the scope of the government. The potential burden on the government when a family has a dozen or more children makes it in the government's interest to address that aspect of marriage.
obviously, this is turning into a nation governed by the "elite", who decide what they want to do REGARDLESS of what the people actually choose.
shame on the court for not respecting the will of the people of that state.
Screw "the will of the people" when "the will of the people" is to discriminate and project their bigotry. The judiciary serves the Constitution, not "the people."
"The people" do NOT get to pass unconstitutional laws. Period. That's why we have a judiciary.
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Originally Posted by floridasandy
i bet we get plenty more decisions like that in the future.
I understand your position, and respect it. You have religious beliefs that exclude homosexuals from marriage as your religion defines marriage. You have stated that you don't want homosexuals denied any rights, you just don't support same-sex marriage.
I think that the posters that have argued with you are doing so because the position you've taken is essentially separate but equal. Homosexuals can't "marry", but they can enjoy the privileges of marriage as long as they call it a civil union and not a marriage. And that's essentially separate but equal.
And we know that separate but equal is impossible. When you make a distinction that a certain class of people cannot enjoy an institution, privilege, right, by virtue of a characteristic that has nothing to do with their qualifications to participate in that activity, you are discriminating against that class of people. And the separate but equal argument is just a rationalization to explain away that discrimination.
Since the civil rights movement had to work so hard to overcome the separate but equal argument, the appeal to parallels is not that black people or any other people automatically must support gay marriage, but that it is illogical to use the separate but equal argument against same sex marriage.
The separate but equal idea failed because things weren't equal. I think that's pretty obvious. Although I was not alive during the time of Jim Crow (thank God), I can imagine that the issue was not that things were separate, but instead that things weren't equal. The services that blacks had access to were substandard and damn near third-world in some instances.
I can't imagine an instance were this can be abused now as it pertains to marriage. In actuality, things would be much simpler if there were two distinctions:
civil unions- for all couples (straight or gay) forming a government-recognized union that affords all rights and privileges under today's "marriage"
marriage- a religious ceremony. Does not afford one rights, so you would have to have a civil union for those privileges.
Trying to get the US to change the boundaries of marriage (man/woman) when there is such a religious stronghold is going to be a very uphill battle. For the most part, the Civil Rights Movement was not about religion, but just plain and simple hatred.
I don't have a problem with polygamous/polyamorous marriages.
I don't either.
But, there are independent reasons to not recognize polygamous marriages that have nothing to do with morality.
It's all about practicality. The automatic rights and responsibilities, benefits and duties of marriage do not necessarily work well when spread beyond 1+1 person.
Marriage immunity and privilege in court? Splitting of benefits? Inheritance rights? Polygamous marriage imposes an extra (perhaps unworkable in many cases) burden on the government.
BUT, if in the future, polygamists find enough support and can craft arguments and solutions to overcome these obstacles, then more power to them. Polygamous marriage is, after all, perhaps the most traditional form of human marriage.
It is altogether proper and fitting for the Judicial branch of government to protect minorities from "the tyranny of the majority." That is why a court can invalidate legislation or popular referendum that hurts minority communities ... that is precisely the role of the higher courts.
I can't imagine an instance were this can be abused now as it pertains to marriage.
Actually, there is. Things like FMLA.
FMLA doesn't apply to legally married couples of the same gender as it does to legally married couples of opposite gender.
Even under the same name of marriage, homosexual couples still do not even get all of the protections granted to heterosexual couples. So putting them under a header of their own would just increase the rift.
Your entire post is about rights, when I've stated many times that I'm against the denial of rights for gays.
The you are for the right of every consenting adult to share the same rights as other consenting adults including gay and lesbians the right to marry whom they choose?
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And I find comparing the black struggle to the gay struggle to be extremely offensive. You are absolutely free to feel otherwise.
And again, I find your attitude to be extremely narrow minded and offensive.
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In threads that deal with gay marriage, it is inevitable that you will find posters who suggest that blacks "ought" to support gays because they too faced civil rights violations. It is this attitude of a perceived slight that I find off-putting. Blacks don't OWE gays their support.
African Americans "owe" our foreparents to stand full square on the side of any human being seeking the same rights that they fought so hard to earn. Which brings me to why I feel this attitude to be so offensive. Unlike other ethnic groups who after winning some level of acceptance in American society, African Americans MUST not stand upon the shoulders of the group one rung lower on the social ladder by engaging in infantile arguments "of who suffered the most."
Do we owe gays and lesbians our support, yes we do. It is our obligation? It is not only our obligation it is our birthright to stand with our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters just as so many of our Jewish, Italian, and Irish American brothers and sisters stood by us; having been drawn the Civil Rights movement who found their moral courage through the lenses of their own histories of racial and ethnic discrimination.
So I ask you, was Michael Schwerner offended when African Americans compared their struggle to that of the Jews? Was Anthony Liuzzo, whose wife was gunned down on a Alabama highway, offended by comparisons to the persecution of Italian Americans? How about the Irish American Berrigan Brothers, Philip in particular, who joined the Society of Saint Joseph, a Catholic religious body dedicated to achieving equal opportunity and basic human rights of African Americans in the South?
And last but not least, what do you say about the debt that African Americans owe to our own gay brothers and sisters in general and Baynard Rustin in particular, a gay black man who was the leading strategist of the movement itself?
Back when I was a christian, my answer would have been unequivocal, yes we owe gays and lesbians and a whole bunch of other folks our support for their efforts to win their most basic human rights. So, it is astounding that having shed by belief in a supernatural god that some folks who hide behind their so called Christian values as a reason to support the rights of others. But then again, maybe that is the reason why I no longer believe in Christianity.
The separate but equal idea failed because things weren't equal. I think that's pretty obvious. Although I was not alive during the time of Jim Crow (thank God), I can imagine that the issue was not that things were separate, but instead that things weren't equal. The services that blacks had access to were substandard and damn near third-world in some instances.
I can't imagine an instance were this can be abused now as it pertains to marriage. In actuality, things would be much simpler if there were two distinctions:
civil unions- for all couples (straight or gay) forming a government-recognized union that affords all rights and privileges under today's "marriage"
marriage- a religious ceremony. Does not afford one rights, so you would have to have a civil union for those privileges.
Trying to get the US to change the boundaries of marriage (man/woman) when there is such a religious stronghold is going to be a very uphill battle. For the most part, the Civil Rights Movement was not about religion, but just plain and simple hatred.
Separate but equal ALWAYS fails, because it is inherently discriminatory. The instant you deny someone a right you enjoy, for instance the right to marry the person of their choice, based on a characteristic that has nothing to do with that right, then you are discriminating.
While I respect the fact that you have religious convictions that you feel very strongly about, the fact is that you would probably be very troubled if your church refused to baptize someone because they had a cleft palate or because they had eyes of different colors. Those are characteristics that have nothing to do with whether that person could be a contributing member of a church. And if someone is a homosexual, it has nothing to do with whether that person would make a good husband or wife to another consenting adult. To prevent that person from freely marrying their loved one is simple discrimination.
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