To Hell with "Gay Marriage"!

[manifold]

any two adults should be able to enter into a legal contract, regardless of sex.

they can

 

[The Rabbi]

Just so it stays on track with the real issue.

Why is it that gays are not allowed to have the same legal/financial benefits that are inherent in what the state calls marriage with out jumping through a bunch of hoops. There is a disconnect in here for a lot of people.

You've answered your own question. The state calls it marriage. The state defines what that is. The state has an interest in doing so because certain unions tend to produce better citizens than other unions. And we don't live in a vacuum here but have a legacy of historical record from the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition, which defines marriage as one man, one woman.
And for those saying the state has no business defining marriage, does the state have business assigning inheritance? Does it have business assigning child custody? Does it have business administering bankruptcy? Does it have business defining and enforcing property rights? Because all of those are tied up in marriage in one way or another.

In one breath you say no one is stopping them from marrying and in the next breath you say this??? You're all over the road.

OK, so to you marriage depends on a piece of paper from the state. If the state doesn't bless a marriage, then it doesn't exist.
Fortunately not everyone thinks like you.

 

[Skull Pilot]

You've answered your own question. The state calls it marriage. The state defines what that is. The state has an interest in doing so because certain unions tend to produce better citizens than other unions. And we don't live in a vacuum here but have a legacy of historical record from the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition, which defines marriage as one man, one woman.
And for those saying the state has no business defining marriage, does the state have business assigning inheritance? Does it have business assigning child custody? Does it have business administering bankruptcy? Does it have business defining and enforcing property rights? Because all of those are tied up in marriage in one way or another.

In one breath you say no one is stopping them from marrying and in the next breath you say this??? You're all over the road.

OK, so to you marriage depends on a piece of paper from the state. If the state doesn't bless a marriage, then it doesn't exist.
Fortunately not everyone thinks like you.

The state doesn't bless marriages, all the state does is confirm and record the legal status of the marriage contract.

And yes marriage does depend on a piece of paper from the state. Without said piece of paper, there is no legally recognized marriage contract.

 

[The Rabbi]

In one breath you say no one is stopping them from marrying and in the next breath you say this??? You're all over the road.

OK, so to you marriage depends on a piece of paper from the state. If the state doesn't bless a marriage, then it doesn't exist.
Fortunately not everyone thinks like you.

The state doesn't bless marriages, all the state does is confirm and record the legal status of the marriage contract.

And yes marriage does depend on a piece of paper from the state. Without said piece of paper, there is no legally recognized marriage contract.

The key phrase is "legally recognized." People can be married all they want. Want gays want is legal recognition and more the benefits that recognition entails. Why should they have it? They already have all the legal rights everyone else does.

 

[ihopehefails]

I'm down with gay marriage as long as I can say gay marriage is wrong, not rent, sell, associate with, or be forced to condone in any way. They say their rights are being violated but my right of association and speech are endangered by the PC police in this country. You are free to call me a bigot but my religious beliefs tell me that is wrong and that is decided by God and not by the Obama/state PC relilgion that seeks to impose its utopia on me.

 

[Skull Pilot]

OK, so to you marriage depends on a piece of paper from the state. If the state doesn't bless a marriage, then it doesn't exist.
Fortunately not everyone thinks like you.

The state doesn't bless marriages, all the state does is confirm and record the legal status of the marriage contract.

And yes marriage does depend on a piece of paper from the state. Without said piece of paper, there is no legally recognized marriage contract.

The key phrase is "legally recognized." People can be married all they want. Want gays want is legal recognition and more the benefits that recognition entails. Why should they have it? They already have all the legal rights everyone else does.

Then your marriage should not be recognized by the state. because then you would have one more legally recognized right than someone else.

 

[Skull Pilot]

I'm down with gay marriage as long as I can say gay marriage is wrong, not rent, sell, associate with, or be forced to condone in any way. They say their rights are being violated but my right of association and speech are endangered by the PC police in this country. You are free to call me a bigot but my religious beliefs tell me that is wrong and that is decided by God and not by the Obama/state PC relilgion that seeks to impose its utopia on me.

So you would rent to a single gay guy with a roommate just not two gay guys with a piece of paper that says they are married?

 

[The Rabbi]

The state doesn't bless marriages, all the state does is confirm and record the legal status of the marriage contract.

And yes marriage does depend on a piece of paper from the state. Without said piece of paper, there is no legally recognized marriage contract.

The key phrase is "legally recognized." People can be married all they want. Want gays want is legal recognition and more the benefits that recognition entails. Why should they have it? They already have all the legal rights everyone else does.

Then your marriage should not be recognized by the state. because then you would have one more legally recognized right than someone else.

Only because I am a formerly single man married to a woman. Anybody else can do the same thing and have the same benefit.

 

[Skull Pilot]

The key phrase is "legally recognized." People can be married all they want. Want gays want is legal recognition and more the benefits that recognition entails. Why should they have it? They already have all the legal rights everyone else does.

Then your marriage should not be recognized by the state. because then you would have one more legally recognized right than someone else.

Only because I am a formerly single man married to a woman. Anybody else can do the same thing and have the same benefit.

except gay people

 

[Vanquish]

This issue will bend the right way (in favor of homosexuals) in time as our nation grows younger and more liberal. It's a shame we can't legalize it country-wide now...

Here's my own wall of text for those interested: Short history of homo law


Bowers v. Hardwick
June 30, 1986

Facts
Michael Hardwick was observed by a Georgia police officer while engaging in the act of consensual homosexual sodomy with another adult in the bedroom of his home. After being charged with violating a Georgia statute that criminalized sodomy, Hardwick challenged the statute's constitutionality in Federal District Court. [procedural crap omitted]

Question
Does the Constitution confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in consensual sodomy, thereby invalidating the laws of many states which make such conduct illegal?

Holding
No. The divided Court found that there was no constitutional protection for acts of sodomy, and that states could outlaw those practices. Justice Byron White argued that the Court has acted to protect rights not easily identifiable in the Constitution only when those rights are "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" (Palko v. Connecticut, 1937) or when they are "deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition" (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965). The Court held that the right to commit sodomy did not meet either of these standards. White feared that guaranteeing a right to sodomy would be the product of "judge-made constitutional law" and send the Court down the road of illegitimacy.

Romer v. Evans
May 20, 1996

Facts
Colorado voters adopted Amendment 2 to their State Constitution banning laws which protected gays from discrimination based on their gayness.
[procedural crap omitted]

Question
Does the Colorado Amendment, forbidding the extension of official protections to people suffering discrimination due to their sexual orientation, violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause?

Holding
Yes. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court held that Amendment 2 of the Colorado State Constitution violated the equal protection clause. Amendment 2 singled out homosexual and bisexual persons, imposing on them a broad disability by denying them the right to seek and receive specific legal protection from discrimination. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that oftentimes a law will be sustained under the equal protection clause, even if it seems to disadvantage a specific group, so long as it can be shown to "advance a legitimate government interest." Amendment 2, by depriving persons of equal protection under the law due to their sexual orientation failed to advance such a legitimate interest. Justice Kennedy concluded: "If the constitutional conception of 'equal protection of the laws' means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest."


Lawrence and Garner v. Texas
June 26, 2003

Facts
Responding to a completely bogus and trumped-up weapons charge in a private residence, Houston police entered John Lawrence's apartment and saw him and another adult man fucking each other. Lawrence and Garner were arrested and convicted of deviate sexual intercourse in violation of a Texas statute forbidding two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. In affirming, the State Court of Appeals held that the statute was not unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, with Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), controlling.

Question
Do the criminal convictions of Lawrence and his lover under the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law, which criminalizes sexual intimacy by same-sex couples, but not identical behavior by different-sex couples, violate the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of laws? Do their criminal convictions for adult consensual sexual intimacy in the home violate their vital interests in liberty and privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? Should Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), be overruled?

Holding
No, yes, and yes. In a 6-3 opinion delivered by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Court held that the Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct violates the Due Process Clause. After obliterating Bowers's idiotic premises, the Court reasoned that the case turned on whether gays were free as adults to engage in the private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause. "Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government," wrote Justice Kennedy. "The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual," continued Justice Kennedy. Accordingly, the Court overruled Bowers. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, with whom Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Thomas joined, filed dissents.


Compare with:

Loving v. Virginia
June 12, 1967

Facts
In 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The Lovings returned to Virginia shortly thereafter. The couple was then charged with violating the state's antimiscegenation statute, which banned inter-racial marriages. The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail (the trial judge agreed to suspend the sentence if the Lovings would leave Virginia and not return for 25 years).

Question
Did Virginia's antimiscegenation law violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Holding
Yes. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that distinctions drawn according to race were generally "odious to a free people" and were subject to "the most rigid scrutiny" under the Equal Protection Clause. The Virginia law, the Court found, had no legitimate purpose "independent of invidious racial discrimination." The Court rejected the state's argument that the statute was legitimate because it applied equally to both blacks and whites and found that racial classifications were not subject to a "rational purpose" test under the Fourteenth Amendment.

**************

So are bans on same-sex marriages distinguishable from the ban on interracial marriages struck down in Loving? Before Loving was decided, most Americans were opposed to interracial marriages, and anti-miscegenation laws still existed in 16 states.

If the courts decide that same sex marriage bans violate either state or the federal constitutions, may state legislatures create "civil unions" for same-sex couples while reserving "marriage" for opposite sex couples? Vermont, as a result of state constitutional litigation on equal protection grounds, already has such a law in place, and New Jersey, Connecticut and other states have followed suit.

See it becomes an issue of scrutiny - strict, rational basis, intermediate.... Segregating same-sex unions from opposite unions cannot possibly be held rationally (that's the level of scrutiny we're talking about here) to advance or "preserve" what was stated in the Goodridge case were the Commonwealth's legitimate interests in procreation, child rearing, and the conservation of resources.

There's two ways to go about trying to advocate gay marriage: Due Process or Equal Protection. Is sexual orientation predictive of conduct that should be protected from invasion under the Due Process Clause, or a status that should be protected against discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause?

The Bowers case above said there was no substantive due process violation, but the subsequent Lawrence case overruled it. That is to say, if the same case came today or if Bowers had never happened, it might go entirely the other way. Crazy ain't it?

Gay Marriage is an Equal Protection issue, I say.

 

[dilloduck]

This doesn't have anything to do with homosexuality---it has to do with the defintion of marriage.

 

[ihopehefails]

I'm down with gay marriage as long as I can say gay marriage is wrong, not rent, sell, associate with, or be forced to condone in any way. They say their rights are being violated but my right of association and speech are endangered by the PC police in this country. You are free to call me a bigot but my religious beliefs tell me that is wrong and that is decided by God and not by the Obama/state PC relilgion that seeks to impose its utopia on me.

So you would rent to a single gay guy with a roommate just not two gay guys with a piece of paper that says they are married?

I probably would in either case but I was arguing that anyone else shouldn't be forced to be a part of something that they find deeply immoral for whatever reason. You can go and be what you want but you can't force everyone else to accept that if they don't agree with it..

It use to be that hotel owners wouldn't rent rooms to ummarried couples. It sucked for them but the owner had a right not to participate in something he/she found immoral. Another hotel owner could if he did not object to it. Its a choice that someone has over how they want to interact with others in society.

 

[xotoxi]

I'm down with gay marriage as long as I can say gay marriage is wrong, not rent, sell, associate with, or be forced to condone in any way. They say their rights are being violated but my right of association and speech are endangered by the PC police in this country. You are free to call me a bigot but my religious beliefs tell me that is wrong and that is decided by God and not by the Obama/state PC relilgion that seeks to impose its utopia on me.

So you would rent to a single gay guy with a roommate just not two gay guys with a piece of paper that says they are married?

I probably would in either case but I was arguing that anyone else shouldn't be forced to be a part of something that they find deeply immoral for whatever reason. You can go and be what you want but you can't force everyone else to accept that if they don't agree with it..

It use to be that hotel owners wouldn't rent rooms to ummarried couples. It sucked for them but the owner had a right not to participate in something he/she found immoral. Another hotel owner could if he did not object to it. Its a choice that someone has over how they want to interact with others in society.

No one is forcing you to offer your room for rent. If you don't want a gay or a black or a muslim living in your house, don't rent the room.

 

[xotoxi]

You are free to call me a bigot...

You are a bigot.

 

[Valerie]

any two adults should be able to enter into a legal contract, regardless of sex.

"Marriage" is also a statutory status.

DEFINITIONS

It is important to note at the outset the distinction in the types of marriages that exist in the United States and throughout the world, namely civil marriage and religious marriage. In addition, there are significant legal distinctions among civil marriage, civil union, and domestic partnership, although these terms are often incorrectly used interchangeably.

Civil Marriage and Religious Marriage

Civil marriage is a legal status established through a license issued by a state government. Such status grants legal rights to, and imposes legal obligations on, the 2 married partners.

Depending on the faith, religious marriage is considered to be a liturgical rite, a sacrament, or a solemnization of the uniting of 2 persons and is recognized by the hierarchy and adherents of that religious group. The hierarchy, clergy, and in some cases members of religious organizations, establish their own criteria and rules for who may marry within their assemblies. They are not bound by statutory definitions of marriage. Civil government entities in the United States have no authority over a religious organization's autonomy.

In the United States, couples may choose to marry in a civil ceremony, a religious ceremony, or both. In the United States, state governments grant priests, rabbis, clerics, ministers, and other clergy presiding over a religious marriage the authority of the state to endorse the marriage license and establish a civil marriage. Certain public officials in the United States, such as judges, justices of the peace, and others, also have the authority to establish civil marriage.

By contrast, in many European countries and elsewhere in the world, religious officials have no authority to establish civil marriages. If couples in these countries wish to participate in the marriage ceremony of a faith tradition, religious ceremonies are often held once a civil ceremony has taken place. However, a marriage is considered legal only by means of issuance and endorsement of a marriage license by civil authorities.

Because clergy in the United States are vested with the authority of the government for purposes of civil marriage, many people are not aware of the distinction between civil and religious marriage and assume that the 2 are inextricably linked. However, the following analysis presumes this distinction. It addresses issues related to civil marriage, leaving issues of religious marriage to religious organizations and individuals.

Civil Union

A civil union is a legal mechanism, sanctioned by civil authority, intended to grant same-gender couples legal status somewhat similar to civil marriage. In the United States, civil unions have been established only in Vermont and Connecticut. In these states, same-gender couples are granted the same state-level rights, benefits, and protections as those granted to heterosexual married couples. No other states recognize civil unions. As such, same-gender couples considered to be legally united in either of those states are treated as single individuals when they cross into other states.

Unlike the national governments of some foreign countries, the US federal government does not recognize civil unions. As a result, >1000 federal rights, benefits, and protections are not made available to same-gender couples joined by civil union in the United States.

Domestic Partnership

A domestic partnership is a relationship between 2 individuals, often but not necessarily of the same gender, who live together and mutually support one another as spouses but who are not legally joined in a civil marriage or a civil union. Some same-gender couples enter into domestic partnership agreements to create legally enforceable contracts involving property, finances, inheritance, and/or health care. Domestic partnerships do not reach the same legal threshold as civil unions or civil marriages and, accordingly, do not afford couples the rights, benefits, and protections of civil marriage.

The Effects of Marriage, Civil Union, and Domestic Partnership Laws on the Health and Well-being of Children -- Pawelski et al. 118 (1): 349 -- Pediatrics

 

[The Rabbi]

Then your marriage should not be recognized by the state. because then you would have one more legally recognized right than someone else.

Only because I am a formerly single man married to a woman. Anybody else can do the same thing and have the same benefit.

except gay people

Wrong. Gay people can marry anyone of the opposite sex they want, just like I could. There is no test for heterosexuality to issue a marriage license.

 

[Valerie]

There is no test for heterosexuality to issue a marriage license.

That's right!

In the United States, couples may choose to marry in a civil ceremony, a religious ceremony, or both. In the United States, state governments grant priests, rabbis, clerics, ministers, and other clergy presiding over a religious marriage the authority of the state to endorse the marriage license and establish a civil marriage. Certain public officials in the United States, such as judges, justices of the peace, and others, also have the authority to establish civil marriage.

 

[Liberty]

Marriage is and forever should be a religious institution, numbnuts of usmessageboard.com

It is a shame no one realizes this.

 

[Valerie]

Marriage is and forever should be a religious institution, numbnuts of usmessageboard.com

It is a shame no one realizes this.

You are at LIBERTY to read the above differences in Marriage law.

It's a shame some don't realize Marriage is FREE to remain a religious institution forever and ever Amen.

 

[Samson]

Why shouldn't same-sex straight "couples", no mater their sexual proclivities, who love one another, be allowed to marry?

Carry on........

Are you proposing?