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“The Supreme Court’s Challenge: Restore Marriage Decisions to Citizens”

Heritage’s The Foundry:

The Supreme Court announced today that it will hear cases dealing with the definition of marriage during its current term.

The Court will consider challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress and signed by President Clinton, and Proposition 8, California’s constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

After lower courts ruled against these marriage laws, the Supreme Court now has the opportunity to return authority to citizens in answering questions about marriage policy.

Every marriage policy draws lines, leaving out some types of relationships. But equality forbids arbitrary line-drawing. Determining which lines are arbitrary requires us to answer two questions:

  1. What is marriage?
  2. Why does it matter for policy?

There are many good reasons why citizens in 41 states have said over and over that marriage is between a man and a woman. Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces. And as ample social science has shown, children tend to do best when reared by their mother and father.

Government recognizes marriage because it is an institution that benefits the public good.

Marriage is society’s least restrictive means to ensure the well-being of future citizens. State recognition of marriage protects children by incentivizing adults to commit permanently and exclusively to each other and their children.

While respecting everyone’s liberty, government rightly recognizes, protects, and promotes marriage as the ideal institution for procreative love, childbearing, and childrearing.

In recent decades, marriage has been weakened by a revisionist view that sees marriage as primarily about emotional bonds or legal privileges. In other words, it is more about adults’ desires than children’s needs. Same-sex marriage is the culmination of this revisionism: Emotional intensity would be the only thing left to set marriage apart from other bonds.

Government should not obscure the truth about marriage by accepting that revisionist view. In redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships, government would weaken marital norms, which would further delink childbearing from marriage and hurt spouses and children—especially the most vulnerable. It would deny a mother or father to a child as a matter of policy.

The harms resulting from redefining marriage would force the state to intervene more often in family life and force the state’s welfare to grow even more. Citizens would lose more of their freedom of religion and conscience.

Today’s decision from the Supreme Court comes a week after the district court of Nevada upheld that state’s marriage amendment that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

This is, to put it mildly, an important litmus test:  will 9 philosopher kings be swayed by emotional arguments about some inherent right to “marry” someone of the same sex (rather than form some other form of legal partnership which has the same practical effects, but yet keeps the distinction alive between marriage as recognized and promoted by the state for a civil good); or will they be swayed by the argument that the people in each state should to decide for themselves what comes to count as marriage — and who has the right to define the term?

If the court goes with the former argument, it will have decreed that it — and not the people — has the right to define marriage for everyone else, and this will not only serve as an assault on federalism, but an assault on religious liberty, forcing people to accept as legitimate relationships that will essentially deconstruct the historical, current, prevalent (and, in most states, desired) institution of marriage, turning it into something it has never been.

As I’ve said here a million times, there is nothing “homophobic” about taking the position that same-sex unions — being a different thing than marriage as historically defined (and popularly held) — establish a different name for that union.

It being a different thing and all, and so deserving of its own name.

I’ve also said that if a state wishes to vote for same-sex “marriages,” they can certainly do so — but they cannot force other states whose citizens hold an opposite view of what counts as “marriage” to recognize those unions as marriages.

Each time I bring this issue up, I hear the chirping of certain commentators and the sneering from certain trolls — and yet these people never answer the simple question that I’m now going to pose:  why is it necessary to call a same-sex union that enjoys many of the same legal protections as a traditional marriage (if not all; these are questions for the states and their citizens) “marriage”?

That is, what is it that those who support same-sex marriage hope to see happen as a result of this redefinition that couldn’t happen should we simply recognize same-sex unions as the new, different things that they are?

And finally, do you find it implausible that by expanding the definition of marriage, additional legal challenges to purely “love” -based relationships will most certainly arise — that if the sexes of the marital participants are decided upon by the Courst as arbitrary, and therefore unconstitutional, surely the number, it can be argued (and currently is being argued), is arbitrary as well?

Having seen the courts at work, I’m very reluctant to give them any linguistic space into which they can force a wedge.  That doesn’t mark me as a homophobe. It suggests I’m prudent.  You know, conservative.

(h/t serr8d)

810 Replies to ““The Supreme Court’s Challenge: Restore Marriage Decisions to Citizens””

  1. It’s always been about being able to walk in and piss on somebody else’s altar while sneering back at them. The compromise for civil unions has been out there forever, but they won’t take it.

  2. leigh says:

    What Charles said.

  3. JD says:

    Hohophobes

  4. LBascom says:

    Santa don’t scare me.

  5. RI Red says:

    Hey, Slip-Slop! “Garriage” and “Gayraige ™” are still available. What say?

  6. cranky-d says:

    I would be quite surprised if they did anything other than assert their “authority” to say marriage can be between any two people, no matter their sex. The philosopher kings know better than we.

  7. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Why stop at two though? What’s so special about monogamy?

  8. Dale Price says:

    Why stop at two though? What’s so special about monogamy?

    Nothing. Nothing at all. Baby steps, though, to utopia:

    http://www.beyondmarriage.org/

  9. Squid says:

    The important thing is what it does to happy’s viscera when he thinks about it. And hey — setting policy by reading entrails is the postmodern way to go, right?

    In unrelated news: the lovely bride and I are heading to the sunny Bahamas for a while. Try not to miss me too much. And if you could shovel my sidewalk while I’m away, that’d be just peachy!

  10. LBascom says:

    How about:

    Any agreement to “get it on” shall be considered a “marriage”, for the duration of the agreement, oral or otherwise.

    Leaves off all the labels, and cuts to the heart of the movement!

  11. Mike LaRoche says:

    Any agreement to “get it on” shall be considered a “marriage”, for the duration of the agreement, oral or otherwise.

    The Shi’ite Muslims already have those: mu’tah marriages.

  12. leigh says:

    Have a good time, Squid.

  13. Jeff G. says:

    Have a great vacation, Squid!

  14. happyfeet says:

    DOMA should goma that’s terrible how the federal government raped those nice lesbians you can’t tell me the federal government had any right to that money it just makes my heart hurt for the one that isn’t the dead one

  15. Ernst Schreiber says:

    What are the rights of the unborn child after the female party to the agreement gets knocked up?

  16. LBascom says:

    What are the rights of the unborn child after the female party to the agreement gets knocked up?

    See: Roe vs. Wade

  17. happyfeet says:

    the weather outside is frightful here in unpronounceable ny town Mr squid

    Is called “oneonta”… It’s actually kinda fun here they have a vibrant downtown and it’s cold and rainy and there’s christmas lights in the puddles

  18. Mike LaRoche says:

    See: Roe vs. Wade…

    Which enshrined abortion as the holiest sacrament of progressivism.

  19. happyfeet says:

    I got mad i was looking for a howdy hi present for my aunt n uncle for when I see them and this douchebags “business professor” had a meltdown about fracking and then the local art coop employees joined in so I decided I couldn’t shop there cause of they made me sick to where I wanted to throw up on their stupid local artists things

  20. beemoe says:

    It is amazing how people who have no idea how oil drilling works know so much about fracking.

  21. Ouroboros says:

    Study: Children of lesbians may do better than their peers.

    http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1994480,00.html

    Just saying is all..

  22. newrouter says:

    It is amazing how people who have no idea how oil drilling works know so much about fracking.

    in ny it is about the gas fracking the proggtards are about

  23. Jeff G. says:

    Study: Children of lesbians may do better than their peers.

    At what?

    And is the study an outlier? Politically motivated? Tied in some way to climate change? Really a tax?

  24. newrouter says:

    “Study: Children of lesbians may do better than their peers.”

    ANOTHER study came out this week indicating that children raised by homosexuals fare worse than children in other households. The study, which is actually a re-evaluation of an earlier study that was more positive, appeared in the journal Demography. Here is a recap at the Heritage Foundation.

    Truthfully, I am not very interested in this study or in the other studies on the issue, regardless of their conclusions. Although it is perhaps necessary that such studies be done, I do not consider them useful. Focusing on studies is a major distraction and a losing battle. We do not need studies to know that same-sex households are harmful to children.

    Here are the reasons why I recommend you also ignore these studies:

    link

  25. LBascom says:

    Children of lesbians may do better than their peers.

    Well, I guess it follows Dad is a hindrance, after splashing the jiz that is.

    Probably explains the patriarchy lying about children living with mom and dad having the advantage.

    Bastards.

  26. Jeff G. says:

    Just sayin’.

  27. LBascom says:

    Well, I guess it follows Dad is a hindrance, after splashing the jiz that is.

    I’m no song writer, but that right there sounds like it could be rap lyrics.

  28. JHoward says:

    Well, I guess it follows Dad is a hindrance, after splashing the jiz that is.

    Probably explains the patriarchy lying about children living with mom and dad having the advantage.

    Probably explains the matriarchy lying about children living with mom after dad having the advantage.

  29. JHoward says:

    ANOTHER study came out this week indicating that children raised by homosexuals fare worse than children in other households. The study, which is actually a re-evaluation of an earlier study that was more positive, appeared in the journal Demography. Here is a recap at the Heritage Foundation.

    Right. Positive.

    I move we rebut it on its own grounds.

  30. Correlation is not causation. Somehow, I’ll bet open lesbian couples with children are in a much higher, dare I say it, tax bracket than the general public.

  31. LBascom says:

    Probably explains the matriarchy lying about children living with mom after dad having the advantage.

    That’s how it sounds when you remove the tongue from your cheek…

  32. happyfeet says:

    Mom are you a lesbian?

    Um… ask your mother.

  33. JHoward says:

    That’s how it sounds when you remove the tongue from your cheek…

    Heh.

  34. LBascom says:

    One things for sure, all those outdated ideas about marriage and children gotta go.

    ‘Cuz of the bigotry of nature.

  35. cranky-d says:

    FauxNewz is talking about the fiscal cliff again.

    Yawn.

  36. I think I’m going to start calling it the Fiscal Cliff Claven.

  37. Jeff G. says:

    Plus they have China babies what are really good at math so no fairsies.

  38. happyfeet says:

    Romney was in a hurry to get to disneyland

  39. newrouter says:

    he had fun on the rolley coaster

  40. LBascom says:

    The only lesbien couple with baby I can think of is Brad and Angelina, but I think they got theirs from Africa.

  41. Ernst Schreiber says:

    What are the rights of the unborn child after the female party to the agreement gets knocked up?

    See: Roe vs. Wade

    Her choice entitles her to half-plus of your income for twenty-six years.

    Talk about anchor babies.

  42. LBascom says:

    By the way, did they ever get married?

  43. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Any agreement to “get it on” shall be considered a “marriage”, for the duration of the agreement, oral or otherwise.

  44. LBascom says:

    Her choice entitles her to half-plus of your income for twenty-six years.

    Just try and make less than her.

    The answer though, is the unborn child, according to the highest court, has no rights apart from the mother.

  45. LBascom says:

    Ernst, you got spit all over my words! ;-)

    I guess instead of an “open marriage”, we’ll have to call it an “evolving marriage”.

  46. Ernst Schreiber says:

    It does rather go to the point of why two guys shacking up is just two guys shacking up, regardless of how they try to dress it, though, does it not?

  47. newrouter says:

    sodomiage?

  48. happyfeet says:

    when you think about how few gay people there are then think how few of them find someone they want to marry it’s like statistically so improbable that one can only conclude that it’s God’s Plan that they get married mr ernst

    these few these lucky few

    his ways they are mysterious, no?

    yes they are indeed

  49. newrouter says:

    when you think about how few gay people there are

    darwin tries to explain this

  50. President Threeputt says:

    *putt*

    *putt*

  51. Blake says:

    Churches can marry whomever they want.

    States have the right to define what is “marriage.”

    The Federal government does not have standing to intrude in a State matter. Unfortunately, a federal judge thought otherwise with regards to Prop 8. Of course, the Prop 8 lawyers were not astute enough to challenge whether or not the federal court even had jurisdiction.

    Finally, I’m completely against the Federal Government getting involved in marriage.

    That said, homosexual marriage advocates will invoke “equal protection” because they will want to get married in a State that allows homosexual marriage and then return to the State in which they reside. Of course, federal courts could bow out and say they have no jurisdiction. Unfortunately, there is no way a federal judge will show judicial restraint and give up that power.

  52. Blake says:

    Squid, enjoy the vacation.

  53. Blake says:

    Happy, do you believe in God or Evolution? Both? Neither?

  54. LBascom says:

    it’s like statistically so improbable that one can only conclude that it’s God’s Plan that they get married

    I’m pretty sure my God’s plan was designed to put tab A into slot B to support part C*.

    *Warning: other arrangements will be unstable and will fail to provide the necessary support for part C.

  55. happyfeet says:

    i believe in both plus also i believe when people love each other it makes god’s day plus also i believe gay marriage is inevitable and poor team r needs to learn to pick their battles also i believe pancakes are loaded with carbs

  56. Blake says:

    How does homosexual marriage promote the survival of the species, happy? If you believe in evolution and survival of the fittest, seems to me there’s a problem with homosexuality.

  57. newrouter says:

    ” i believe sodomiage gay marriage is inevitable”

    that’s the term now. the perverts own it

  58. leigh says:

    ” i believe gay marriage is inevitable”

    Why? Most of the straight people I know are married and divorced. Maybe remarried. Maybe just living together.

    Most arguments about gay’marriage’ boil down to getting sweet sweet benefits which are available at many large companies who employ gays and insure their partners, but not for straights who are shacking.

    That’s not fair. Gays want more than their fair share and they shouldn’t be able to have it. I say they are making pigs of themselves and no one likes that.

  59. happyfeet says:

    nope homosexuality is like the appendix it doesn’t have any bearing on species survival but in america it recurs every generation all the same

  60. newrouter says:

    same with the “lgbt communists” they are now referred to the “freaks of nature” community

  61. leigh says:

    Vestigal organs serve no purpose and often become a source of infection that can kill.

    Good analogy.

  62. happyfeet says:

    what’s the difference between a freak of nature and an elected republican president again lol

  63. newrouter says:

    but in america it recurs every generation all the same

    before the communists came out in the ’60’s the freaks of nature community were kept in their place.

  64. happyfeet says:

    having an inbred royal soldierwhore jam your pussy full of his tardseed can make you sick to where you have to go to the hospital leigh

    what’s your point

  65. newrouter says:

    what’s the difference between a freak of nature and an elected republican president again lol

    not much if you throw in the freak of nature baracky

  66. happyfeet says:

    plus they say you’re better off keeping your appendix for vague immunological reasons or whatever

    it’s a best practices thing

  67. Blake says:

    “Baseball Anouncer”

    “Leigh steps up to the plate, eyes the pitcher. Happy winds up, and throws a hanging breaking ball down the heart of the plate…Leigh swings, you can hear the crack of that one all the way to the cheap seats….going going going..gone..Leigh smacked that one all the way out of the park!!”

    “Touch ’em all, Leigh!!”

  68. Blake says:

    *Announcer

  69. happyfeet says:

    baracky campaigned on gay marriage and won mr. newrouter

    mitt romney campaigned on Sacred Definition and lost

  70. leigh says:

    You’re thinking of your tonsils, not your appendix, happy.

    I asked you a question upthread.

  71. leigh says:

    Heh, Blake.

  72. happyfeet says:

    oh you may be right… appendices are mysteriouser but still you don’t get rid of them willy nilly

  73. happyfeet says:

    gay marriage is inevitable cause there’s not a compelling reason to disallow it that american kids can process

  74. newrouter says:

    the proggtards use the freaks of nature to beat upon america like the proggtards use the darkies. problem is i don’t give 2 feces about those folks no mo’

  75. steph says:

    “when you think about how few gay people there are then think how few of them find someone they want to marry it’s like statistically so improbable that one can only conclude that it’s God’s Plan that they get married mr ernst”

    methinks Christ isn’t the prince of this world, so my thought is that gay marriage isn’t His plan at all.

  76. LBascom says:

    i believe gay marriage is inevitable and poor team r needs to learn to pick their battles

    Team R didn’t pick the battle, it was/is executed against them. You are calling for surrender, though I doubt you understand the significance of what you are surrendering.

    As for being inevitable, new laws may be, the public accepting it not so much.

    Of course in a culture that can get away with preforming secret abortions on school-girls, I’d say it’s likely.

    And it won’t have nothing to do with Gods plan.

  77. happyfeet says:

    we are all brothers and sisters in christ mr. newrouter

    there’s a world outside your window and it’s a world of dread and fear you know and if the gay marriagings help mitigate that for our friends what choose that then merry christmas i day

  78. happyfeet says:

    i *say* i mean

  79. newrouter says:

    to support the freaks of nature you are saying you reject science namely biology and darwin’s theory.

  80. newrouter says:

    we are all brothers and sisters in christ mr. newrouter

    not to this christer some of them folks are consigned to hell or proggtard heaven imho

  81. happyfeet says:

    jesus christ is all about celebrating committed loving relationships mr. steph it’s in the bible

  82. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The Federal government does not have standing to intrude in a State matter. Unfortunately, a federal judge thought otherwise with regards to Prop 8. Of course, the Prop 8 lawyers were not astute enough to challenge whether or not the federal court even had jurisdiction.
    [….]
    [H]omosexual marriage advocates will invoke “equal protection” because they will want to get married in a State that allows homosexual marriage and then return to the State in which they reside. Of course, federal courts could bow out and say they have no jurisdiction. Unfortunately, there is no way a federal judge will show judicial restraint and give up that power.

    I belived the Full Faith and Credit and Privileges and Immunities clauses of Art. IV (Secs. 1 & 2) apply, as does the Supremacy Clause of Art. VI.

  83. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I believe.

    Can’t spell to save my life today.

  84. leigh says:

    I want to know why straight couples can’t jump on each others bbenefits packages that the others employer offers like gays can.

    Gays can’t have it both ways. Throw those sweet sweet bennies on the table first and then we’ll talk about a clear and necessary step to civil partnership that would restore them, while make each other liable for the others debts, inheritences and all the rest—-just like married folks get when they think they are ‘in love’ and get married.

    It’s difficult to get divorced. May they have all the trials of that, like the rest of us get when we split up: Alimony, child support, loss of real property, etal.

  85. newrouter says:

    jesus christ is all about celebrating committed loving relationships mr.

    tell that to the money changers at the temple

  86. happyfeet says:

    the california case is stupid that’s where gay marriage is the mostest inevitable on the whole planet

    the DOMA case is more important cause that has to do with limiting federal authority to where the federal government can’t be so grabby grabby with people’s money that they have no right to take

  87. LBascom says:

    This is a facet of happyfeet I haven’t seen before.

    It’s kinda creeping me out…

  88. newrouter says:

    Throw those sweet sweet bennies on the table first

    that’s the whole health care scam. the fed gov’t uses private co. to “provide” health care. health care should be more like auto care or vet care. the bennies is what the freaks of nature want along seiu and other commies

  89. JHoward says:

    I think where things went a little off thread-wise was here:

    i believe when people love each other it makes god’s day plus also i believe gay marriage is inevitable and poor team r needs to learn to pick their battles also i believe pancakes are loaded with carbs

    …which can’t be disagreed with, actually, especially Team R more wisely picking their battles, there being 10x more of them being of way more importance than going all federal against gay marriage. From there if your State wants to prohibit gay marriage (or pancakes) that’s on them, them being either a lot of yous or just your one.

  90. steph says:

    Chapter and Verse Mr Happy, Chapter and Verse if you will. I await Christ’s APPROVAL of homosexual love.

  91. newrouter says:

    the DOMA case is more important cause that has to do with limiting federal authority

    you proggtards pick strange areas to limit the fed gov’t

  92. JHoward says:

    you proggtards pick strange areas to limit the fed gov’t

    As do the Republicans.

  93. leigh says:

    Winner, winner, nr.

    So, there is no compelling reason for the Fed to get involved in marriage, gay or otherwise.

    I recall the good old days when a person’s sex life was nobody elses damned business. It should stay that way.

  94. JHoward says:

    I await Christ’s APPROVAL of homosexual love.

    I await his disrespect of Jewish law and tradition.

  95. JHoward says:

    Exactly, leigh.

  96. Ernst Schreiber says:

    i believe gay marriage is inevitable and poor team r needs to learn to pick their battles

    You know why the hill the GOP is going to die on is this fiscal cliff nonsense?

    Because fucking idiots like you have been telling them they need to learn to pick their battles, that issue X isn’t the hill to die on.

    Well, now there aren’t anymore hills. A fucking cliff perched over an abyssal sea is all that’s left.

  97. leigh says:

    Thanks, JHo.

  98. JHoward says:

    You know why the hill the GOP is going to die on is this fiscal cliff nonsense?

    Because fucking idiots like you have been telling them they need to learn to pick their battles, that issue X isn’t the hill to die on.

    As for pragmatism, I’m thinking telling them to invoke Christ and the goodness of gay hatred probably isn’t that hill either.

  99. Ernst Schreiber says:

    baracky campaigned on gay marriage and won mr. newrouter
    mitt romney campaigned on Sacred Definition and lost

    He did, huh? Happened so fast I missed it. Maybe he should have campaigned on it more than once, so people would have noticed.

  100. happyfeet says:

    i think mr. howard has it right

    mr. steph if jesus were bugged by it i’m sure he would have mentioned something he was a very chatty guy

    it kinda got him in trouble there towards the end

  101. Pablo says:

    Study: Children of lesbians may do better than their peers.

    http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1994480,00.html

    Just saying is all..

    Of course! Just ask a lesbian:

    In the early 1970s, when being homosexual could get a person arrested, condemned as a “sinner” or diagnosed as mentally ill, gutsy Stanford University undergraduate Nanette Gartrell came out as a lesbian, and then some: She started conducting research to counter pervasive beliefs that gay and lesbians were deviant* and even downright dangerous.

    That’s how research is done, bitches! OTOH…

    *Most scientists know what the word deviant means.

  102. Darleen says:

    grieferfeets is all ghey all the time without ever making the distinction between private relationships and an public, contractual institution.

    Maybe it is unfair that a gay couple cannot be married, but there is a lot of unfairness in the micro that is entirely fair for the macro

    Is the man-woman definition of marriage fair to gays who wish to marry? No, it isn’t. And those of us opposed to same-sex marriage need to be honest about this, to confront the human price paid by some people through no fault of their own and figure out ways to offer gay couples basic rights associated with marriage.

    But whether a policy is fair to every individual can never be the only question society asks in establishing social policy. Eyesight standards for pilots are unfair to some terrifically capable individuals. Orchestra standards are unfair to many talented musicians. A mandatory retirement age is unfair to many people. Wherever there are standards, there will be unfairness to individuals.

    So, the question is whether redefining in the most radical way ever conceived — indeed completely changing its intended meaning — is good for society.

    It isn’t.

    The major reason is this: Gender increasingly no longer matters. There is a fierce battle taking place to render meaningless the man-woman distinction, the most important distinction regarding human beings’ personal identity. Nothing would accomplish this as much as same-sex marriage.

    The whole premise of same-sex marriage is that gender is insignificant: It doesn’t matter whether you marry a man or a woman. Love, not gender, matters.

  103. Pablo says:

    i believe gay marriage is inevitable and poor team r needs to learn to pick their battles

    41 states say otherwise.

  104. LBascom says:

    which can’t be disagreed with, actually, especially Team R more wisely picking their battles, there being 10x more of them being of way more importance than going all federal against this one.

    In remembrance of Pearl Harbor, think of it like this; we were attacked by Japan, but we declared war on Japan, Italy, and Germany. It was a package deal. An axis of evil, if I may…

  105. happyfeet says:

    i’d rather have a lesbian mom than a food stamp mom i think

    if i got to pick

  106. Ernst Schreiber says:

    the california case is stupid that’s where gay marriage is the mostest inevitable on the whole planet

    Despite the Citizens of California electing to amend their Constitution to limit the definition of marriage to one man and one woman?

    Now your making less sense than slipperyslope.

  107. LBascom says:

    I’m thinking telling them to invoke Christ and the goodness of gay hatred probably isn’t that hill either.

    Gay hatred? OK, now you’re creeping me out.

  108. JHoward says:

    Can’t really buy that, LBascom. Gay marriage, in order to not be a practical federal problem must not be a collective moral issue. Itself.

    Therefore, in the spirit, tenor, tone, and letter of classical liberalism, demote the fucking thing down the list about a hundred slots and, in the actual words of the Christ, suffer those mighty injustices by turning the other cheek. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

    With that dispensed with all the other statist, costly, ruinous, parasitic, and industrial strength federal overreach evaporates.

  109. cranky-d says:

    I care what the Supreme Court does, because if they decide to impose gay marriage on the nation, like they imposed abortion “rights” on the nation, the issue will never be settled. If Roe v Wade had been decided for Wade, abortion would long since have ceased to be a major issue, as the states were mostly moving towards enacting their own abortion laws, as it should be. The same must be true for gay marriage. If states want it, and either the people or their representatives (and not the courts) vote for it, then that is fine. If it’s imposed from the SC, watch out for the flames.

    I hope the SC finds a way to argue it as a State’s rights issue, make that stick, and then leave it alone. They really shouldn’t have taken it up in the first place, but that’s in the past.

    As far as what the GOP does, I could not care less. The majority have been statists for a very long time, and are part of the problem, not the solution. They play games with some of our pet issues to tweak us, but what they care about is power, and only that.

  110. LBascom says:

    Despite the Citizens of California electing to amend their Constitution to limit the definition of marriage to one man and one woman?

    Twice.

  111. happyfeet says:

    darleen i came down solidly and unequivocally on the side of the salvation army in the recent kerfuffle i will have you know

    go check i can wait

  112. leigh says:

    Obviously the citizens of California aren’t allowed to have opinions that differ from the trendy issues, Ernst.

  113. Darleen says:

    leigh

    I agree that the gov should stay out of [consenting adult] sex lives.

    However, adjudication of property divisions, inheritance, support, etc, is going to end up in a court room, regardless.

    Cuz it’s either having courts to mediate, or use of force by individuals involved.

    So having a bare-bones set of default statutes based on societal interests needs to exist.

  114. happyfeet says:

    amending the california constitution is just a 50% plus 1 thing mr. ernst

    ain’t no thang

  115. Darleen says:

    i’d rather have a lesbian mom than a food stamp mom i think

    If the former is single, she’s just as likely to be a food stamp mom.

    sheesh

  116. JHoward says:

    Gay hatred? OK, now you’re creeping me out.

    Fair enough; I’ll ratchet that back, at least with respect to you. If the nation opposes gay marriage for purely economic reasons, likewise for it too.

    But if it did, wouldn’t it have reformed the travesty of rights that is family law first?

  117. JHoward says:

    having a bare-bones set of default statutes based on societal interests needs to exist.

    What, contract law is obsolete?

  118. steph says:

    So Chapter and Verse is a No?
    Cause’a him bring so chatty and whatnot. Up there on the cross, you couldn’t shut up the son of a bitch up… opps, didnty mean to go there.
    Let’s check Paul, shall we?

  119. LBascom says:

    in the actual words of the Christ, suffer those mighty injustices by turning the other cheek.

    I can’t take the creepiness anymore.

    What you guy’s are doing to the teachings of Christ…on Protein Wisdom no less.

    I gotta go.

  120. leigh says:

    “What, contract law is obsolete?”

    I was just going to say this.

  121. Darleen says:

    JHoward

    So what are you going to do with people who don’t make an individual contract?

  122. JHoward says:

    Correct away, LBascom.

  123. Pablo says:

    Gay hatred? OK, now you’re creeping me out.

    Some of them are awfully angry.

  124. leigh says:

    Lee, obviously those perverting the words of Christ aren’t familiar with the gospels and the actual teachings of Christ.

  125. Darleen says:

    The law already provides for inheritance if someone dies without a will.

    Why shouldn’t the law also provide for other relationship issues if people don’t get an individual contract?

  126. Pablo says:

    What, contract law is obsolete?

    As marriage goes, it seems to be. Fucking Reagan.

  127. leigh says:

    “So what are you going to do with people who don’t make an individual contract?”

    Their failure to plan ahead isn’t our problem, Darleen.

  128. Pablo says:

    Lee, obviously those perverting the words of Christ aren’t familiar with the gospels and the actual teachings of Christ.

    Remember when Jesus said that paying taxes is awesome? They do.

  129. happyfeet says:

    have u read what the doma case involves darleen?

  130. JHoward says:

    So what are you going to do with people who don’t make an individual contract?

    Your optimistic kindness is touching, Darleen. But to answer the question as it was literally worded, I’d have them seek a jury trial in an extant system designed for just such an emergency.

    Which, one might add, is a far sight better then our quaint little inverse convention, which is to gut one or the other parties like a fish simply because of their junk and because of their junk and some nonsense about the offspring’s best interest. Without a jury.

  131. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I await Christ’s APPROVAL of homosexual love.

    I await his disrespect of Jewish law and tradition.

    You’re going to have a long wait then, because his disrespect was directed towards the keepers of Jewish law and tradition, not the law itself. I distinctly remember something about the Son of Man coming to fulfill the law.

    if jesus were bugged by it i’m sure he would have mentioned something he was a very chatty guy

    The part you’re looking for is when he tells the adulterous woman to go and sin no more. People tend to forget that part because not casting stones is much more congenial.

  132. Pablo says:

    But if it did, wouldn’t it have reformed the travesty of rights that is family law first?

    That is what it is for economic reasons. Progressive economic reasons. And also because the state likes having your wife.

  133. Pablo says:

    …and kids.

  134. leigh says:

    Sure, Pablo. Jesus was down with the immenent domain a la Kelo, too.

    It’s right there is the chapter where he married the gay guys at the wedding in Sumaria.

    Or something.

  135. Darleen says:

    Their failure to plan ahead isn’t our problem, Darleen.

    That’s a non-answer, leigh. Deal with reality. People die without wills. Each state has a default manner of divving up the property.

    People get into relationships that acquire property, make babies, etc. People will then split out of the relationship.

    Do they get to go to court to settle it (and by what standard) or is the individual with the bigger mob get to seize everything — including kids — while the law shrugs its shoulders and says “tough nuggies”?

  136. JHoward says:

    I await his disrespect of Jewish law and tradition.

    You’re going to have a long wait then, because his disrespect was directed towards the keepers of Jewish law and tradition, not the law itself. I distinctly remember something about the Son of Man coming to fulfill the law.

    Yes, what I said.

  137. happyfeet says:

    happy committed marriages are a key part of the anti-adultery toolkit mr. ernst

    that and internet porn

  138. Darleen says:

    JHoward

    Which, one might add, is a far sight better then our quaint little inverse convention, which is to gut one or the other parties like a fish simply because of their junk and because of their junk and some nonsense about the offspring’s best interest. Without a jury.

    Men, to a greater or lesser, degree have been screwed by contemporary family court.

    Sort of the reverse that used to happen. Cosmic justice or black comedy? YMMV.

    But what standards are the juries to use, dear? Since “marriage” cannot be used since the state is verbotten to recognize it. Or must recognize all manner of it from same-sex to polygamy.

  139. JHoward says:

    Their failure to plan ahead isn’t our problem, Darleen.

    That’s a non-answer, leigh.

    Not remotely. We already have a court system. What you’re proposing is a special one, (which as Pablo notes, have been tried and found wanting in this very area.)

    But back to your point, why must the law discriminate?

  140. leigh says:

    It isn’t a non-answer Darleen. If someone dies intestate, that is the problem of the heirs, if there are any.

    None of the obligations you mentioned, especially acquiring property and having children is going to leave a paper trail so thick you’ll need ski poles to get through it.

    A lot of people don’t buy insurance and don’t write wills, either. It’s not my problem. It is their problem for being an unorganized idiot with property, pets and children, and possibly a partner who depends on them and not getting anything on paper.

    Please don’t tell me to ‘deal with reality’.

  141. Darleen says:

    btw JHoward

    Your wanting jury trials is naively touching. With the gutting of CA courts, civil trials — say in Los Angeles county — will take 5 years to see the inside of a courtroom.

    I’m in the midst of squeezing in attorneys & clerks since one of the offices I supervise is closing 12/31 and it’s cases coming to my other office.

    How many criminal cases have been input into our county system so far this year? Oh, we passed 60,000 last week.

    But hey, jury trials for everyone!

  142. Darleen says:

    and DO NOT get me started on the farce of CA’s “prison realignment” aka AB109.

    FUCK Gov Moonbeam!

  143. newrouter says:

    I’m thinking telling them to invoke Christ and the goodness of gay hatred probably isn’t that hill either.

    “gay hatred” is an oxymoron ?

  144. JHoward says:

    But what standards are the juries to use, dear? Since “marriage” cannot be used since the state is verbotten to recognize it. Or must recognize all manner of it from same-sex to polygamy.

    For crying out loud, they’ll survive as will the parties, Darleen! One of the indicators of classical liberalism is self-sufficient, independent responsibility. And the other happens to be liberalism.

    Look, it you expect to be free then you must grant everyone around you that same duty and capacity. You must be fearless about that and you must exude that expectation from every pore and every policy you’re involved in. We know certain of your fellows will foul up but we also know that number is built 90% of what government already fucked up beyond recognition.

    Get government out of family law and watch the family improve by that same ratio in one generation.

  145. leigh says:

    Why would an intestate citizen’s case need to be heard by a jury?

    We’re not talking about Aaron Spelling or some other mega-rich person. Just your average Joe.

  146. newrouter says:

    Oh, we passed 60,000 last week.

    merry cloward piven to you!

  147. Darleen says:

    leigh

    it IS your problem when it ends up in court with no standards by which one can make a decision.

    You pay for the courts. You want to pay more?

    Someone dies without a will, the state already has a default way to divide the estate.

    Why should it be any different for the end of a married relationship?

  148. JHoward says:

    Your wanting jury trials is naively touching. With the gutting of CA courts, civil trials — say in Los Angeles county — will take 5 years to see the inside of a courtroom.

    Darleen if I have one criticism of your stance it is that you have a hard time separating the problems of dealing with a ruined system with what constitutes the functioning of a wholesome system. Every time you bandaid the former you delay the latter.

  149. Darleen says:

    We’re not talking about Aaron Spelling or some other mega-rich person. Just your average Joe.

    Excuse me? Do you have any idea how vicious the average Joe & Jane will get over the custody of the family dog??

  150. newrouter says:

    “freaks of nature hatred” would work

  151. Darleen says:

    JHoward

    Then clarify for me. Do you want every person whose relationship ends to have a jury sort out the details or not? And by what standard is the jury allowed to use in coming to their decision?

  152. happyfeet says:

    ** clip and save **

    1. “marriage” is between one man and one woman

    2. “gay marriage” is between either:

    a.) one man and one man

    b.) one woman and one woman

  153. leigh says:

    Do you not work in an attorney’s office, at a law firm Darleen?

    What does I-N-T-E-S-T-A-T-E mean? I’ll help: the person DIED without a will.

    They’re DEAD, okay? Why would they need a jury trial and not a simple decision by a judge?

    It should take an afternoon, tops.

  154. JHoward says:

    Do you want every person whose relationship ends to have a jury sort out the details or not?

    Of course not. I just want a Constitutionally structural backstop with the basic rights fully intact. Were a simplified system the norm, and were it backstopped by a Solomon’s Baby court of law then 99% of this crap would settle elsewhere.

    Now kindly answer me about the trajectory of family court, that being as often a juryless, rules-bound, third world crapshoot of bigotry, sexism, special interest, cronyism, and corruption.

    And by what standard is the jury allowed to use in coming to their decision?

    You may not like this part but juries aren’t supposed to be omniscient. They’re supposed to be peers, peers being the best we got. Peers with the right of everything up to nullification, which is such a variable that most everybody would avoid a trial by their peers if given the chance. Presto: responsibility.

  155. beemoe says:

    Today, the numbers are more striking: 23.8 percent of men, and 19 percent of women, between the ages of 35 and 44 have never been married. Tick back a cohort to the people between 20 and 34?—?the prime-childbearing years?—?and the numbers are even more startling: 67 percent of men and 57 percent of women in that group have never been married. When you total it all up, over half of the voting-age population in America?—?and 40 percent of the people who actually showed up to vote this time around?—?are single.

    What does this group look like? Geographically, they tend to live in cities. As urban density increases, marriage rates (and childbearing rates) fall in nearly a straight line. Carville and Greenberg put together a Venn diagram which is highly instructive. Of the 111 million single eligible voters, 53 million are women and 58 million are men. Only 5.7 million of these women are Hispanic and 9.7 million are African American. Nearly three-quarters of all single women are white. In other words, the cohort looks a lot like the Julia character the Obama campaign rolled out to show how the president’s policies care for that plucky gal from the moment she enrolls in Head Start right through her retirement. You may recall that because of President Obama, Julia goes to college, gets free birth control, has a baby anyway, sends her lone kid to public school, and then?—?at age 42?—?starts her own business (as a web designer!). What she does not do is get married.

    How did we get to an America where half of the adult population isn’t married and somewhere between 10 percent and 15 percent of the population don’t get married for the first time until they’re approaching retirement? It’s a complicated story involving, among other factors, the rise of almost-universal higher education, the delay of marriage, urbanization, the invention of no-fault divorce, the legitimization of cohabitation, the increasing cost of raising children, and the creation of a government entitlement system to do for the elderly childless what grown children did for their parents through the millennia.

    But all of these causes are particular. Looming beneath them are two deep shifts. The first is the waning of religion in American life. As Joel Kotkin notes in a recent report titled “The Rise of Post-Familialism,” one of the commonalities between all of the major world religions is that they elevate family and kinship to a central place in human existence. Secularism tends toward agnosticism about the family. This distinction has real-world consequences. Take any cohort of Americans?—?by race, income, education?—?and then sort them by religious belief. The more devout they are, the higher their rates of marriage and the more children they have.

    The second shift is the dismantling of the iron triangle of sex, marriage, and childbearing. Beginning in roughly 1970, the mastery of contraception decoupled sex from babymaking. And with that link broken, the connections between sex and marriage?—?and finally between marriage and childrearing?—?were severed, too.

    The issue is much larger than gay marriage, and continuing to focus on it outside a comprehensive discussion is setting yourself up to fail.

    Not that it matters, its all closing the barn door way to fucking late.

  156. Ernst Schreiber says:

    You’re going to have a long wait then, because his disrespect was directed towards the keepers of Jewish law and tradition, not the law itself. I distinctly remember something about the Son of Man coming to fulfill the law.

    Yes, what I said.

    I guess I’m denser than usual then because I’m not following you.

    I can’t even pretend a stayed the night at Holiday Inn level of expertise in levitical or deuterocanonical law, but I’m cautiously certain they’re not down with homosexual activity, which pretty much definitionally rules out gay marriage.

  157. leigh says:

    Lotsa luck, JHo.

  158. newrouter says:

    that be fun to go on mslsd and call the “queers” freaks of nature. exploding proggtard heads. just say darwin.

  159. Darleen says:

    I’m chief clerk at a District Attorney’s office, leigh.

    The state currently has a default standard for I-N-T-E-S-T-A-T-E. I’m using that as an analogy to have a similar default standard for the dissolution of marriage.

    But if “marriage” is no longer to be recognized by the state, how then to adjudicate the dissolution of private relationships that have no signed contract?

    Why is having a default standard for a dead person ok but not ok for a dead relationship?

  160. steph says:

    So Christ, while hanging on the cross and uttering that they know not what they do, being the chatty Cathy that he was, gave his approval of homosexual love, internet porn, and the gold standard.
    Wowsa.
    I gotta get me a more modern translation of the KJV, ’cause the one I have is obviouslt shit.

  161. leigh says:

    Why is having a default standard for a dead person ok but not ok for a dead relationship?

    You tell me. I was talking about dead people.

  162. newrouter says:

    2. “gay marriage” is between either:

    the word maybe queeriage

  163. newrouter says:

    the freaks of nature want to rule the failshit amerikkka

  164. steph says:

    obviouslt=obviously, obviously.

  165. JHoward says:

    I’m cautiously certain they’re not down with homosexual activity, which pretty much definitionally rules out gay marriage.

    The ancient Jewish statists, so to put it, could be vehemently opposed to homosexuality. Jesus respected the tradition of Jewish law and said so (much as he delivered the render to Caesar line, there being zero evidence that Jesus was a Roman statist or commending of its effects on pretty much every Christian virtue in that State.)

    Naturally he also recognized the nature of adultery — an issue utterly untouched by our national politics and for obvious reasons — and a host of other sins. He was profoundly moral, which goes without saying.

    I just suggest that whoever invoked Jesus to support anti-gay whatever came a little to close to a Godwin’s Law of sorts and went right on over the line with respect to what issues the national Republicans should touch with a ten foot pole.

  166. Blake says:

    Ernst, yes, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, however, where the Constitution is silent, State law is supposed to be supreme.

    I don’t know about Article IV applying to marriage. My first thought is that marriage is very much a contract and the interpretation and enforcement of a contract varies from State to State.

    I admit, I could very well be wrong and my antipathy toward the Feds getting involved in homosexual marriage may have more to do with my being suspicious of anything the Feds get involved in. Too much power has accrued to a centralized Federal government, something the Founders tried very hard to limit.

  167. Darleen says:

    beemoe

    same sex marriage is along that trajectory – it’s part and parcel of the “if it feels good, do it” sentiments of the 60’s — that includes gender/sex blurring, hedonism, libertinism and nihilism.

    Having and raising kids is fulfilling, but it isn’t always fun.

    So while parents are working a few overtime shifts to pay for their kids soccer camp, their childless friends are doing another 3 week vacation in Italy.

    At one time, single men over a certain age were not looked upon as fully adult and capable of advancement in businesses because of their shirking of what was considered the behavior of men who embraced adult behavior.

    But hey, it’s now #Julia! Where BigGov is to be God/Parent/Spouse! Why have family when you’ll just get a portion of your [sucker] neighbor’s earnings so you can play x-box until you’re 90!

  168. Darleen says:

    leigh

    please clarify, then, why you think the gov should have no involvement in marriage?

    how can they AVOID having involvement in marriage?

  169. leigh says:

    Jesus gives us instruction that is easy to remember and refer to in the Sermon on the Mount.

    Regular rules to live by.

  170. Blake says:

    Darleen, why do you hate 35 year old adolescents?

  171. Pablo says:

    But if “marriage” is no longer to be recognized by the state, how then to adjudicate the dissolution of private relationships that have no signed contract?

    Marriage used to be a contract. Now it’s a potential assignment of power of attorney to the state for your children and assets, what with the contract being voided before it’s even entered into. Fucking Reagan.

  172. Pablo says:

    please clarify, then, why you think the gov should have no involvement in marriage?

    They should record it, recognize it and leave it at that.

  173. JHoward says:

    Darleen, does government rightly involve itself in if and how you buy a car? Groceries? Babysitter service?

    How you agree to any relationship with services rendered?

    I added the rightly partly because you live in California…and partly because right there, at that one word, we’re all confronted with just how much statism we’re willing to chew and swallow.

    Me, none.

  174. leigh says:

    I said the federal government should have no involvement in marriage. Marriage is a civil matter that should be adjudicated, if need be, by the state in which one lives.

  175. Pablo says:

    But hey, it’s now #Julia! Where BigGov is to be God/Parent/Spouse! Why have family when you’ll just get a portion of your [sucker] neighbor’s earnings so you can play x-box until you’re 90!

    That’s because both government and progressive culture have made marriage a sucker’s bet for men. See my 7:49.

  176. JHoward says:

    Pablo has it. (And as I recall, by not inconsiderable experience.)

  177. Pablo says:

    You recall correctly, JHo.

  178. newrouter says:

    Republicans should touch with a ten foot pole.

    yes let’s not take a stand against the proggtards. cave you hillbilly peeps.

  179. beemoe says:

    Some of you folks need to go read Leviticus.

    Seriously. Homosexuality isn’t the only abomination in there, you all probably commit multiple abominations daily.

  180. leigh says:

    I’ve read the Old Testament. It’s teachings are superceded by the New Testament.

  181. steph says:

    Blake,
    I can’t offer reasons why Darleen hates 35 year-old adolescents (tongue in cheek or no), but I an offer my own: because they are the pool I have to hire from.

  182. Pablo says:

    The Leviticus referenced has exactly nothing to do with what marraige is. This isn’t a sodomy question.

  183. newrouter says:

    Some of you folks need to go read Leviticus.

    Seriously. Homosexuality isn’t the only abomination in there

    i read darwin and biology – freaks of nature.com/lavender

  184. JHoward says:

    No, let’s take plenty of constitutional, structurally sound stands against the proggtards, newrouter. Preventing the courts recognizing gay marriage is indeed one of them — for the same reason government has no business in marriage at all and the law does only as a contract arbiter — but as a moral cause against your “freaks” gay marriage is absolutely not one of them.

    And yes, given the wholesale inability of the American Press to see that distinction it only adds to the national Republican’s problems. So zombie GOP should choose another hill to die on again.

  185. LBascom says:

    Seriously. Homosexuality isn’t the only abomination in there, you all probably commit multiple abominations daily.

    Hourly. Don’t try and pass’em off as God’s plan though.

  186. Pablo says:

    …which leads me to the fact that this is simply the next step in the long game of undermining marriage and family to the service of The State.

  187. Blake says:

    steph, I feel for you.

  188. newrouter says:

    all this freaks of nature stuff is hollyweird deconstructing your country. me don’t ax gov’t if you can stick your thing here. like you now freedom. because if you need gov’t approval you want gov’t enforcement.

  189. Pablo says:

    Beck had Penn Jillette on for the hour last night and SSM was one of the topics. Those of you who have access to the whole thing should access it. Those of you who don’t should watch this clip.

  190. steph says:

    I’ve read the OT.
    And the NT.
    And read about grace.
    Doesn’t mean Leviticus or any old things being passed away are sent to the garbage can.
    What, the ten commandments are in the griswold shitter?

  191. steph says:

    Thank you Blake!

  192. newrouter says:

    but as a moral cause against your “freaks” gay marriage is absolutely not one of them.

    us christers joined by true darwinists supported by the biological sciences would say you are wrong. you can’t make babies with y-y or x-x pairings. are you a denier?

  193. Blake says:

    steph, I deal with them every day. Uggh.

  194. Pablo says:

    What, the ten commandments are in the griswold shitter?

    Biblical Vacation?

  195. JHoward says:

    the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, however, where the Constitution is silent, State law is supposed to be supreme.

    Blake let me add that in the present system, as Pablo can attest, your standing, original, unalienable rights to a presumption of innocence, equality, liberty and property, due process, not being subject to either an imperial court or debtor’s prison, and a jury trial come first.

    In other words, before the State holds any sway at all it must first reconcile itself to the American Constitution.

    Which it, by its actions in each and all of those areas, it greatly prefers to crap all over the notion of. I know because over a sandwich a FC judge once looked at me in disdain and invoked her unilateral “right” to rule however she damn well saw fit because all she had to do was think about the child’s best interest clause.

    To which the two State Assemblypersons in attendance offered not a syllable of protest.

    So you’re absolutely right. The challenge is in holding on to those rights.

  196. JHoward says:

    us christers joined by true darwinists supported by the biological sciences would say you are wrong. you can’t make babies with y-y or x-x pairings. are you a denier?

    This Christian knows that adulterers don’t make good families but you didn’t see me on the phone to Romney about it.

  197. Darleen says:

    Pablo

    Do you remember WHY Reagan passed no-fault divorce?

    Because the cronyism, nudge nudge wink wink, gotta lie even if both want it to just end, was so rampant at the time of FAULT divorce.

    And at the beginning, no fault absolutely fucked over women and kids.

  198. newrouter says:

    see i want fight these “freaks of nature” because they live in a make believe world of: media, hollyweird, sports et al. you are not going to get me on the lbgt bullsh&t band wagon nor the global warming stuff nor any of the other idiot things being that are being promoted by the proggtards. effin’ mock them and their stupidities.

  199. steph says:

    Blake – and the worst part of my working life, after hiring them, is writing their annual review that a a HR weighs in on and must correct/approve. WTF?
    It’s why I drink.
    Heavily.
    This isn’t the world I was taught to exemplify myseph in, is it?

  200. Darleen says:

    does government rightly involve itself in if and how you buy a car? Groceries? Babysitter service?

    The gov is involved when I buy a car, because I sign a contract that has to conform to my state’s rules on contracts.

    Purchase of goods & services (groceries, babysitters), if something is criminally or can fall under torts, the gov has a standard by which I can settle a dispute via the courts.

    If my grocery short changes me, I cannot pull out a gun and shoot him.

    But hey, if the court is unavailable to me because it refuses to recognize the relationship between me and my grocer, nor have any standard by which I can petition the court for relief, then my shooting is ok, right?

    Any particular law can be an ass because legislators are too often asses themselves.

    But we can deal with each other voluntarily and take our disputes to court, or we can deal with each other via violence.

  201. newrouter says:

    This Christian knows that adulterers don’t make good families but you didn’t see me on the phone to Romney about it.

    no but i want to take the freak of nature coupling to the enemy using darwin and biology to find the proggtards anti science. let the chrismathews copulate dat

  202. Pablo says:

    Do you remember WHY Reagan passed no-fault divorce?

    Yeah. Jane Wyman hurt him. And I’m slightly consoled by the fact that he lived to regret signing it.

  203. Darleen says:

    and the worst part of my working life, after hiring them, is writing their annual review that a a HR weighs in on and must correct/approve.

    You work for the government, right?

    (I pull my hair out over work-performance-evaluations all the time)

  204. Blake says:

    Steph, I’m surprised you’re even coherent at this time. Nothing like having Komrade look over your shoulder and nod his political approval.

    JHoward, yeah, there is no presumption of innocence any more. I am not at liberty to go into a lot of detail, suffice to say I know all to well of which you speak. These days, you have to prove your innocence rather than the State prove your guilt.

    I went down the children and court road myself. She initially wound up with the kids, but I took them away from her. I knew it would happen, I was patient and won, in the end. When I did not have custody of my kids, the courts made damn sure I paid child support. Was the converse true? Hah!!

  205. steph says:

    seph = self.
    I can’t see or spell for shit while I’m freezing my ass off outside, cause I’m sitting outside in 30 degrees or below weather trying to keep up with the comments cause my cigar stinks up the 1200 square foot mansion we have because we’re 250K billionaires and I’m wondering why we don’t have a heated porch, is why.

  206. newrouter says:

    the courts made damn sure I paid child support.

    that only applies to whites

  207. Pablo says:

    Purchase of goods & services (groceries, babysitters), if something is criminally or can fall under torts, the gov has a standard by which I can settle a dispute via the courts.

    That doesn’t put the State into the transaction. That is recourse when the transaction is conducted outside of the intent of the transactors. The potential of dispute resolution via the courts doesn’t affect the transaction until the dispute occurs.

  208. Darleen says:

    Pablo

    Yep, he regretted no-fault like he regretted his abortion decision.

    What seems like a great idea at the time may have unforeseen consequences.

    Now, let’s say we scrap family court/family law tomorrow. Burn it down, salt the earth.

    People are still going to get into relationships that are dysfunctional and doomed.

    Should there be a default standard (akin to inheritance) of dissolution in cases no individual contract has been signed/recorded?

    And what should that standard look like?

    See, I have fully supported civil unions/domestic partnerships as a way for same-sex couples to have a default standard of expectations regarding their relationship and protection in case of dissolution.

    It is just NOT marriage. So when people throw up their hands and say “get Gov out of the marriage business” I say “and replace it with WHAT?”

  209. Darleen says:

    That is recourse when the transaction is conducted outside of the intent of the transactors.

    So when spouse A goes against the intent of the relationship with spouse B, should/should not spouse B avail themselves of the court to dissolve the relationship?

  210. leigh says:

    I was under the impression that civil unions were legal in California, so that’s that.

    Oklahoma is a common-law state if you live together for a number of years and divison of property, child support, etal is treated as it is in divorce.

  211. newrouter says:

    It is just NOT marriage. So when people throw up their hands and say “get Gov out of the marriage business” I say “and replace it with WHAT?”

    civil unions

  212. Pablo says:

    Now, let’s say we scrap family court/family law tomorrow. Burn it down, salt the earth.

    No, that’s not what I’m suggesting. Scrap no fault and restore the integrity of the marriage contract. Divorces would plummet.

  213. Darleen says:

    I was under the impression that civil unions were legal in California, so that’s that.

    They are. But for the gaymafia, it isn’t good enough.

    How dare anyone think that mothers & fathers have something unique to pass on to their kids.

    (remember, in CA now grade school textbooks MUST cover the unique historical contributions of LGBT people!)

  214. Pablo says:

    Have you noticed that lots of people don’t even bother getting married anymore? You know why? Because it really doesn’t matter anymore.

  215. Darleen says:

    Scrap no fault and restore the integrity of the marriage contract.

    Actually, I agree with you. JHoward & leigh? What say you?

  216. leigh says:

    Works for me.

  217. cranky-d says:

    The Old Testament is a covenant with G-d that is based on believing in the Savior that is to come. The New Testament puts forth a new covenant with G-d, acknowledging Jesus Christ as the Savior promised in the Old Testament.

    However, I am not sure how much a believer that Jesus Christ is the promised Savior is supposed to take from the Old Testament.

    My take on the matter is, I am not in any position to judge anyone. I certainly don’t have any say on who will be saved. I don’t know if I will be saved. I hope so. I don’t know what G-d will do, and neither does anyone else.

    Freedom of association allows those who associate to create whatever rules they like to be a member of that association. In the case of gay marriage, this means that no church should be forced to perform them. That is one fear of opponents of gay marriage, and it is not a trivial one.

    Also, you cannot do just one thing. If you decide that gay marriage is okey-dokey, you create secondary consequences as a result. Those consequences may not even be apparent until it’s too late. That is one reason why conservatives tend to be against gay marriage. It is why I am against calling it marriage. I also see it as inevitable in some form.

  218. Darleen says:

    Because it really doesn’t matter anymore

    Because we treat unmarried people with the same standards as married.

    Because we FEEL really bad when there’s a sobsister story about some longtime gal-pal who gets tossed out of the house after boyfriend dies and the family that never like her swoops in.

    There Outta Be A Law (TM)

  219. Darleen says:

    Works for me.

    You realize that marriage contract is defined by the state, just like a car contract or landlord/tenant?

    So there is going to be State involvement at dissolution, right?

  220. cranky-d says:

    I also agree that divorce needs to be more difficult. People should understand that they are entering into a contract that is serious, and that it is not about love but about making a life together and raising children.

  221. leigh says:

    That is the fault of the stupid boyfriend for not securing his woman’s future.

    If they don’t marry, and many people simply don’t wish to, she could still inherit.

  222. newrouter says:

    I also see it as inevitable in some form.

    the freaks of nature have rights to sign contracts. they want gov’t endorsement of their perversion.

  223. leigh says:

    An auto loan is a chattel mortgage. I’d like to think my marriage is a tad more special.

  224. Pablo says:

    So there is going to be State involvement at dissolution, right?

    Unless there’s a dispute, that involvement should be limited to recognizing and recording the dissolution.

  225. Darleen says:

    leigh

    or it is the fault of the stupid girlfriend for not insisting they get married or she would leave.

  226. happyfeet says:

    team r is obsessed with gay marriage far out of proportion to its impact on real people

    it makes them look loony

  227. happyfeet says:

    hah this town where i am is where pee wee herman grew up

  228. leigh says:

    Either or, Darleen. She could marry him or take him to her attorney and draw a will.

    She’s screwed either way if there’s nothing in writing and he has kids from another relationship.

  229. Pablo says:

    People should understand that they are entering into a contract that is serious, and that it is not about love but about making a life together and raising children.

    Thing is, it’s already a throwaway, at will sort of thing. So why not make it a whimsical, everybody in the pool thing?

    I think I’ll marry my dog.*

    *I’m gonna need to get a dog.

  230. Pablo says:

    Maybe I’ll marry my brother. Because tax breaks and love!

  231. Darleen says:

    actually cranky, getting married should be more difficult

    and we should stop treating unmarrieds AS married.

    This may sound harsh, but women who have children out of wedlock should get no child support and the father’s get no rights to the kids.

    Might make a few people think twice.

  232. leigh says:

    I have three brothers. Think of the tax breaks there, yo!

  233. cranky-d says:

    What made marriage a throwaway, at will sort of thing? Maybe that’s what we should address.

  234. Pablo says:

    team r is obsessed with gay marriage far out of proportion to its impact on real people

    Wait, weren’t you just saying that Team D campaigned on it ?

  235. Darleen says:

    hf

    conservative opposition to SSM has never been about impact on individuals.

    but hey, keep blathering the Left’s meme on this

  236. Pablo says:

    What made marriage a throwaway, at will sort of thing? Maybe that’s what we should address.

    Yes. No fault. Fucking Reagan.

  237. Darleen says:

    What made marriage a throwaway

    1960’s

  238. cranky-d says:

    Women who have children out of wedlock have the state to provide for them. They need not think twice if they’re fine with that.

  239. Pablo says:

    actually cranky, getting married should be more difficult

    It is, when churches do it.

  240. leigh says:

    The church is tough, what with the pre canna counseling and all.

    Annulments are time-consuming and expensive.

  241. Darleen says:

    Pablo

    IMHO if the adults of 1969 had the same moral foundation and view of marriage as people of Reagan’s generation, “no-fault” wouldn’t have been that big a deal.

  242. Darleen says:

    Women who have children out of wedlock have the state to provide for them.

    Thankfully, welfare reform cut a lot of that out. No “baby raises” and can only be on TANF for 3 years. Period.

  243. newrouter says:

    it makes them look loony

    nah letting the freaks of nature hold sway over the civil society is da looney tunes. go read darwin and biology you ignorant pickachu

  244. Pablo says:

    IMHO if the adults of 1969 had the same moral foundation and view of marriage as people of Reagan’s generation, “no-fault” wouldn’t have been that big a deal.

    Unfortunately, it was California, circa 1969.

  245. Darleen says:

    Unfortunately, it was California, circa 1969.

    :::sigh::: I was there.

  246. newrouter says:

    “Unfortunately, it was California, circa 1969.”

    Often when watching American films from the 1940s or ’50s, rather than the story line I focus on what was things that were not consciously intended to be part of the film. Hitchcock movies are especially good for this. So are the Bogart movies. Try Dark Passage (1947) with Bogart and Bacall, about an escaped convict who befriends a woman who agrees to help him find who really killed his wife. If you can do it without crying, watch the background scenery of San Francisco in mid 20th century. Notice how magnificent the city seems, how clean, how broad and sunlit the horizon. This is film noir but even the induced murk fails to cut off the sense of unbounded promise that exists just beyond the camera’s focus. Watch the pace of the city that appears in the background, the people walking down the street, the way they interact, the way they dress. Look at how an unspoken code of manners is guiding every person in the background. See how the man in the suit opens the door for the lady in the dress. Notice the assured masculinity of the men, the charming femininity of the women as they get off the train. That’s not intended to be in the film. They didn’t have any opinions about all this in 1947; it just was. Look at the man casually talking to his friend on a street corner, there is an ease and congeniality that is terrifying to watch. Or the couple sharing a cup of coffee in a café, they have all the time in the world.

    link

  247. happyfeet says:

    i’m just trying to help

  248. newrouter says:

    another thing: the proggtards decry the homogeneity of amerikkka what with mcdonalds but they don’t care about federalism. explain?

  249. newrouter says:

    i’m just trying to help

    we need tacos now

  250. dicentra says:

    Freedom of association allows those who associate to create whatever rules they like to be a member of that association. In the case of gay marriage, this means that no church should be forced to perform them. That is one fear of opponents of gay marriage, and it is not a trivial one.

    Being forced to perform same-sex marriages?

    Heaven forfend! They’d never do that.

    Instead, they’ll just make sure that any church that doesn’t sanction SSM (and all the people who belong to them) are made absolutely miserable through lawsuits, bullying, denial of employment, boycotts, and general expulsion from polite company. Or even impolite company.

    Just as happened with Catholic Charities, churches who refuse to give up their beliefs in favor of political correctness will be forced to shut down their adoption, counseling, and other charitable services. Hey, maybe they’ll drive the Salvation Army off college campuses for not being ghey enough!

    This is no different from the mandate that evabody pay for insurance policies that cover contraception and abortifacients: maybe the proggs can’t legally dissolve churches, maybe they can’t revoke the first amendment, but by god they’ll do their damndest to strip churches of every last scrap of moral authority and credibility.

    SSM is the perfect issue: either churches (and their members) bend to the will of the State regarding a fundamental sacrament or they are isolated and marginalized.

    Win-win, amiright?

    Someone should ask ‘feets if he’ll stand up for us “homophobes” when the persecution by the State and the Culture begins to get as ugly as it did for the Jews in Germany. It would be interesting to know if he’s willing to sew a yellow star to his coat as a show of solidarity or if he’s willing to partition off a back room for us to hide in, putting his very life at risk.

    Of if he’ll just shrug and figure we should have listened to him back in 2012.

  251. slipperyslope says:

    why is it necessary to call a same-sex union that enjoys many of the same legal protections as a traditional marriage (if not all; these are questions for the states and their citizens) “marriage”?

    Because that’s the same as “separate but equal”.

    It’s also odd too think that, for example, one man wants to marry another man, and they find a judge or pastor that’s happy to perform this marriage, and Jeff gets to decide what it’s called – specifically that it not be called marriage. Why would Jeff get to do this?

    If the supreme court strikes down DOMA, then won’t it simply be decided state by state? And what’s wrong with that?

  252. dicentra says:

    or if he’s willing to partition off a back room for us to hide in, putting his very life at risk.

    Because if they start hauling away the gays in cattle cars, Ima hide them in my house or at least raise a big stink about it.

    On account of it’s wrong to do that to anyone.

  253. dicentra says:

    Because that’s the same as “separate but equal”.

    Only if gender/sex is irrelevant to marriage.

    It hasn’t been throughout the history of human society. Why all of the sudden do we—paragons of marital virtue that we are—get to declare otherwise?

    First law of remodeling: Don’t remove a wall until you know why it’s there. I’ve yet to hear a compelling case for gender/sex being irrelevant to marriage.

  254. dicentra says:

    And what’s wrong with that?

    Don’t be coy. A same-sex couple is married in one state and not in another?

    Yeah, that’ll stand.

  255. dicentra says:

    and Jeff gets to decide what it’s called – specifically that it not be called marriage. Why would Jeff get to do this?

    Jeff doesn’t get to do this: the language, culture, and custom have done so millennia before Jeff was even born.

    In the culture wars, the conservatives are the ones chained to the redwoods and the left holds the chainsaws, but rhetorically you guys act like it’s the other way around.

    Not fooled, sorry.

  256. Pablo says:

    If the supreme court strikes down DOMA, then won’t it simply be decided state by state? And what’s wrong with that?

    No, DOMA ensures that it’s decided state by state. What’s wrong with that?

  257. Ernst Schreiber says:

    What made marriage a throwaway, at will sort of thing? Maybe that’s what we should address.

    Paul Rahe tried earlier this week. It was politely, if coolly, recieved.

    (Thanks, for clarifying your point earlier, JHoward.)

  258. slipperyslope says:

    So it comes down to many of you do not want marriage to be allowed between same sex couples. Many other people do want it to be allowed. So, I guess the majority will decide.

  259. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The church is tough, what with the pre canna counseling and all.

    No it wasn’t.

  260. Darleen says:

    Because that’s the same as “separate but equal”.

    So men & women are fungible?

  261. Darleen says:

    I guess the majority will decide

    A majority of people wanted to keep slavery … didn’t make it right.

  262. Darleen says:

    do not want marriage to be allowed between same sex couples

    has nothing to do with “allowed.” Same-sex couples can have loving, committed and fulfilling relationships.

    Doesn’t fit the definition of marriage.

  263. dicentra says:

    So, I guess the majority will decide.

    Ultimately, yes it will, but what will happen to the minority? Did you not read what I wrote at 9:21? It will be used as a legal and social cudgel to destroy churches and religion in general, so that the State may supplant them as the Sole Moral Authority in society and the Sole Determiner Of Values.

    You down with that?

  264. Darleen says:

    State may supplant them as the Sole Moral Authority in society and the Sole Determiner Of Values.

    Left’s version of Sharia

    explains a lot

  265. slipperyslope says:

    Ultimately, yes it will, but what will happen to the minority? Did you not read what I wrote at 9:21? It will be used as a legal and social cudgel to destroy churches and religion in general, so that the State may supplant them as the Sole Moral Authority in society and the Sole Determiner Of Values.

    What’s your objection outside of “slippery slope”?

    Doesn’t fit the definition of marriage.

    Your definition of marriage is frozen at 1950, and you call that year “always”.

  266. McGehee says:

    You down with that?

    You may not have intended that as a rhetorical question…

  267. LBascom says:

    I’ve yet to hear a compelling case for gender/sex being irrelevant to marriage.

    Well missy, I guess you just don’t consider the delicious feeling of love ( not mention that terse feeling in your pants) to be compelling. *sniff*

  268. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Because that [i.e. calling a gay “marriage” a civil union insted of marriage] [i]s the same as “separate but equal”.

    That’s your burden to prove.

    It’s also odd too think that, for example, one man wants to marry another man, and they find a judge or pastor that’s happy to perform this marriage, and Jeff gets to decide what it’s called – specifically that it not be called marriage. Why would Jeff get to do this?

    Because in Western culture for the last two or three thousand years, “marriage” describes something else, to whit, the union of a man and a woman. The term is already taken. It’s not Jeff who’s decided, it’s custom and tradition. Why would you get to redefine marriage as the union of one man with another? What makes you special?

  269. Pablo says:

    Your definition of marriage is frozen at 1950, and you call that year “always”.

    1950? Lay off the crack, kid. The definition is stuck at always.

  270. slipperyslope says:

    Raise your hand if you really want a traditional marriage.

  271. LBascom says:

    So it comes down to many of you do not want marriage to be allowed between same sex couples. Many other people do want it to be allowed. So, I guess the majority will decide.

    California decided. Twice.

  272. Pablo says:

    When does your definition of mendacious asshole emanate from?

  273. Ernst Schreiber says:

    So it comes down to many of you do not want marriage to be allowed between same sex couples. Many other people do want it to be allowed. So, I guess the majority will decide.

    In California, Vaughn R. Walker was a majority of one.

  274. LBascom says:

    California decided. Twice.

    Sometimes no means no. It’s like California is getting gay raped.

  275. slipperyslope says:

    You guys should really research traditional marriage before you advocate for it. I’m guessing none of you would want a traditional marriage.

  276. Darleen says:

    slipsnot

    Please link to any historical civilization where marriage was granted to single-sex people (couples or groups).

    Even the practice of polygamy is defined by sexual relationship between opposite sexes in the group.

  277. Darleen says:

    slipsnot

    again, are the sexes fungible?

  278. slipperyslope says:

    Did you marry someone you loved?
    Did you choose your spouse, or was your marriage arranged?
    Are you expected to take your brother’s widow into your house as a wife?
    Were you betrothed to a wealthy land owner as his 2nd or 3rd or 4th wife?
    Should women be executed for adultery?
    Is it somewhat expected that if the husband is successful he’ll have mistresses?

    Choosing your spouse and marrying for love are very progressive ideas.

  279. slipperyslope says:

    Darleen, why is it so important to you to decide if what two guys have or two women have is marriage?

  280. slipperyslope says:

    Were you disowned for marrying outside of your faith?
    Were you disowned for marrying a foreigner or someone of another race?

  281. slipperyslope says:

    If you are a woman, were you married off as a teen ager?

  282. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Your definition of marriage is frozen at 1950

    I’m surprised you object! In 1950, the blue model was king. But then guys like you with their feet firmly planted in the air asking “why not?” started systematically undermining the cultural foundations that made the blue work, didn’t you?

  283. slipperyslope says:

    If you haven’t given birth to sons are you ashamed and know that your husband and family is disappointed?

  284. Darleen says:

    why is it so important to you to decide if what two guys have or two women have is marriage?

    Dear, *I*m not deciding anything.

    I’m still waiting for you to produce any evidence that any historical culture ever allowed same-sex marriage.

  285. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Darleen, why is it so important to you to decide if what two guys have or two women have is marriage?

    Turn that around for sec. Why is it so important to you that Darleen’s definition (which I’ve already explained isn’t Darleen’s) be preempted for one you prefer?

  286. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Wow. Look at all that straw.

  287. Darleen says:

    all your interesting details aside, slipsnot, every marriage you’ve detailed is between opposite sexes.

    THAT is the salient factor.

  288. slipperyslope says:

    Dear, *I*m not deciding anything.
    I’m still waiting for you to produce any evidence that any historical culture ever allowed same-sex marriage.

    Would it change your mind if I did?

    Turn that around for sec. Why is it so important to you that Darleen’s definition (which I’ve already explained isn’t Darleen’s) be preempted for one you prefer?

    I’m advocating freedom and self-determination. You’re advocating either “I know best” or “the government knows best”, a position that should seem odd to you.

  289. slipperyslope says:

    THAT is the salient factor.

    Really? I think arranged marriages is the salient factor.

  290. Darleen says:

    Would it change your mind if I did?

    Why are you channeling a 7th grader who knows he can’t answer the question?

    Oh … right …

  291. slipperyslope says:

    Why are you asking me to go dig something up just so you can say, “I don’t care. It’s still wrong.”

  292. LBascom says:

    I’m advocating freedom and self-determination

    You can put on a pink dress, whirl around in a circle, and call yourself cotton candy for all I care, just don’t try and compel everyone else to lick you off a stick.

  293. Ernst Schreiber says:

    If you want to be free to determine your self, find an island or a mountaintop of your own.

    I believe I’ve mentioned that before.

  294. Darleen says:

    slipsnot

    many of the details around marriage have changed ….

    and arranged marriages existed at the same time as self-choosing, specifically because arranged marriages had either to do with politics or property.

    The vast hordes of the lower classes married by choice …

    So “arranged” or married off or age of marriage or even number of wives is not the universal, fundamental, defining aspect of marriage.

    The joining of opposite sexes is.

  295. Darleen says:

    Why are you asking me to go dig something up

    You can try, but it isn’t there. You know it, but you can’t admit it.

  296. LBascom says:

    Slipshod, California voted twice to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Why do you feel the need to force your morality on everyone else?

  297. slipperyslope says:

    If you want to be free to determine your self, find an island or a mountaintop of your own.
    I believe I’ve mentioned that before.

    Darleen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions

    Now that I’ve provided it, I eagerly await your completely predictable explanation of why that doesn’t count or change anything. I suggest that some other people chime in to mock the source, and mock the places where it’s occurred.

    and arranged marriages existed at the same time as self-choosing, specifically because arranged marriages had either to do with politics or property.
    The vast hordes of the lower classes married by choice …

    Source?

  298. slipperyslope says:

    Darleen, how do you think same sex marriages will be any different than heterosexual marriages? What’s the danger?

  299. slipperyslope says:

    Slipshod, California voted twice to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Why do you feel the need to force your morality on everyone else?

    Good for California. Then it shouldn’t be legal there. Did I say otherwise?

  300. slipperyslope says:

    If you want to be free to determine your self, find an island or a mountaintop of your own.
    I believe I’ve mentioned that before.

    Tyrant

  301. Darleen says:

    wikipedia? Really?

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

    I used actually deadtree libraries with , you know, scholarly books.

  302. slipperyslope says:

    That made me smile.

  303. cranky-d says:

    Go kick in $20 to Jeff for the month, slipshod. You’ll feel better.

    I mean, you have the money, right? You said so.

  304. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Now that I’ve provided [evidence for same-sex unions], I eagerly await your completely predictable explanation of why that doesn’t count or change anything. I suggest that some other people chime in to mock the source, and mock the places where it’s occurred.

    After you poisoned the well like that?

  305. Darleen says:

    and I should note that the wiki article links to other wiki articles

    it also declares that ssm happened, then weasels around saying that ss couples were noted in literature but the word “marriage” wasn’t attached

    and the ONLY other example is Emperor Nero whose “marriage” to a male slave who he had castrated … whether the fact was true or not, Nero’s same-sex marriage was depicted at the time as a depravity of a madman.

  306. slipperyslope says:

    Again, D, what’s the danger?

  307. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I’m a tyrant for letting you go and discover yourself in a place of perfect freedom for you to do whatever, whenever, free of all outside considerations or constraints?

    100% corrrect. But not for any reason you’d recognize.

  308. Darleen says:

    how do you think same sex marriages will be any different than heterosexual marriages?

    They are fundamentally different.

    Cats and tables both have 4 legs. But that doesn’t make them the same.

    You have no objection with France (and now Washington) removing the hateful, discriminatory terms “mother” “father” “bride” “groom” from government documents?

  309. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The danger is in furthering the notion that men and women are fungible.

  310. slipperyslope says:

    D, answer the question. What’s the danger?

  311. Darleen says:

    slipsnot

    the sexes are not fungible. Mothers and fathers matter.

    and as di has cited above, it really isn’t about “marriage” since civil unions & domestic partnerships exist. It’s about the Left’s version of Sharia where no religion will be allowed to dissent from Gov.

  312. Darleen says:

    slipsnot

    You see no danger in the banning of “mother” and “father”?

  313. slipperyslope says:

    You have no objection with France (and now Washington) removing the hateful, discriminatory terms “mother” “father” “bride” “groom” from government documents?

    Hmm. No. Can’t see how that really matters. Heterosexuals can still marry, right? Still have kids? Doesn’t change any legal responsibilities or definitions of kinship? So this leaves me with a “so what” kinda feeling.

  314. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Nero’s chief crime in that little tidbit wasn’t that he got gay married. It’s that he was the bride in that particular ceremony.

    In case anyone’s interested.

  315. slipperyslope says:

    You see no danger in the banning of “mother” and “father”?

    Mother and Father haven’t been banned. Children are not expected to call Mom “Parent 1” and Dad “Parent 2”.

    It’s about the Left’s version of Sharia where no religion will be allowed to dissent from Gov.

    Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that that’s not true, and no church will ever be required to marry same sex couples. Then what’s your objection?

  316. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Can’t see how that really matters. Heterosexuals can still marry, right? Still have kids? Doesn’t change any legal responsibilities or definitions of kinship? So this leaves me with a “so what” kinda feeling.

    That’s because you’re a muddle headed pseudo-quasi-intellectual fuzzy feeler.

  317. Darleen says:

    Mother and Father haven’t been banned.

    Guess you missed what’s happened in RI.

  318. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Except that it is likely to be true, and we know that to be true from previous church-state conflicts –not all of which were limited to churches as churches.

    So let’s not.

  319. slipperyslope says:

    Except that it is likely to be true, and we know that to be true from previous church-state conflicts –not all of which were limited to churches as churches.

    One can construct a slippery slope argument for anything. It’s the favored tool of the weak mind. Which is why I’m asking what horribly things happen *now* if gay marriage (and only gay marriage) is allowed today.

  320. Ernst Schreiber says:

    You’re the one advocating for fundamental change, the argument is yours to make.

  321. Ernst Schreiber says:

    After all, you guys are big fans of the so-called precautionary principle when it comes to the physical environment. Why not when it comes to the sociocultural environment?

  322. slipperyslope says:

    Oh, ’cause you have Uganda passing Kill the Gays laws, and kids who have gay parents, and guys who get dragged to death behind a pickup truck for being gay, so it’s not like there’s no harm in the status-quo.

    And there is just no danger apparent in gay marriage. So it gets my vote.

    You should look forward to arguing with your kids on this issue. Maybe they’ll say, “We’re not going to bring the grandkids around if you say that homophobic shit.” I’m not going to have to deal with that.

  323. slipperyslope says:

    Oh, I forgot, being afraid of gay marriage without being able to cite any actual serious problems isn’t homophobic.

  324. happyfeet says:

    the precautionary principle here involves the question of whether the supremes will intervene to save team R from themselves

    i doubt they’ll go that far

    team R will still be beating this drum as hillary takes the white house in 2016 i bet

    team boehnerfag likes to fuck america over on some goddamn silly altars

  325. slipperyslope says:

    My guess is the supremes will toss DOMA. I have trouble seeing how they couldn’t. The Lib Supremes will toss it because they like Teh Gehys, and the Con Supremes will toss it ’cause of states rights.

  326. Darleen says:

    being afraid of gay marriage

    Whose afraid, dear? A little projection along with your obtuseness?

  327. Darleen says:

    and slipsnot

    “gay marriage” is again playing with the language. Since, right now, marriage law treats all men equally, and never asks for sexual orientation when handing out marriage license.

    A gay man has as much right to marry as a straight man. As long as the partner is a woman. And only one. And an adult who consents and is outside a certain degree of consanguinity.

    What was that about about how marriage is a “right” based on who you “love”?

    There seems to be an awful lot of restrictions on this “love” business.

    Slipsnot, aren’t you offended you cannot marry your sibling?

  328. slipperyslope says:

    Well, you think it’s dangerous for unspecified (and maybe unspecifiable) reasons. That’s, like, you know, fear.

  329. slipperyslope says:

    A gay man has as much right to marry as a straight man. As long as the partner is a woman.

    Except in Washington and a few other places. There, a man can marry a man, and a woman can marry a woman.

    Slipsnot, aren’t you offended you cannot marry your sibling?

    This just illustrates how weak your argument is. You constantly advocate against gay marriage by throwing up something completely different. Can you stay on topic?

  330. […] — that if the sexes of the marital participants are … … Read the original here: “The Supreme Court's Challenge: Restore Marriage Decisions to … ← What to Do When Holiday Gift-Giving Fills You With […]

  331. JHoward says:

    The arrogant little ball of mucus shows up three hundred remarks late, preens itself in the Internet’s windows, and proceeds to demand answers to Life’s Persistent Questions as it uniquely sees them.

  332. JHoward says:

    Darleen, to answer your question awhile back, I agree with each of Pablo’s points subsequent to it. I can’t add much. There are solutions to the problem, all of which tighten personal responsibility and reduce or eliminate State control where it should have none whatsoever outside of providing a just and reliable registry and court.

  333. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Oh, ’cause you have Uganda passing Kill the Gays laws, and kids who have gay parents, and guys who get dragged to death behind a pickup truck for being gay, so it’s not like there’s no harm in the status-quo.

    So now you’ve moved to hyperbole? You care more, so that makes your opinion more valid than mine, is that it?

    And there is just no danger apparent in gay marriage. So it gets my vote.

    And finally, we get to the nub of why you’re trying to shift the burden of proof onto defenders of the status quo. We both know that you’re asking that a negative be proven.

    Nobody knows what danger gay marriage does or does not present, yet you demand that Darleen or myself convince your ignorance and obtain your permission to maintain the status quo. You’re the one proposing an almost impossible to undue change to society and culture, you’re the one who wants it done on your timetable, which is now, if not sooner, so you’re the one who needs to the do the heavy lifting of making the persuasive argument, not us.

    And you can’t do it, because you can’t (or won’t) define your terms: marriage is civil union is sexual union between infinitately malleable persons.

    But I’m the weak minded one.

    My guess is the supremes will toss DOMA. I have trouble seeing how they couldn’t. The Lib Supremes will toss it because they like Teh Gehys, and the Con Supremes will toss it ’cause of states rights.

    Yes. the Conservative wing will tell states that they don’t have the right to recognize as marriage the union of one man and one woman and only the union of one man and one woman, and thus the right to not recognize as a “marriage” the union of two men or two women, or a man a woman and a goat contracted in another state that permits such unions. Because States Rights.

    Not that your necessarily wrong. Kennedy and Roberts are almost as fuzzy in their categories as you.

  334. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Which is why I’m asking what horribly things happen *now* if gay marriage (and only gay marriage)

    [no fault divorce]
    [unrestricted access to abortion]
    [sexual revolution]
    [ban on ddt]

    is allowed today.

    Those are just off the top of my head, based on stuff discussed on this blog this week. Some of it in this very thread!

    It’s not the forseeable, short-term consequences, it’s the unforseen mid to long-range consequences; it’s assuming that we always know better than our ancestors did because we know more than they did, not remembering what’s been forgotten as new knowledge crowds out the old.

    But hey, judge you by your good intentions rather than your suboptimal outcomes, right?

  335. Ernst Schreiber says:

    This just illustrates how weak your argument is. You constantly advocate against gay marriage by throwing up something completely different

    Because incestuous unions, polygamous unions, bestial unions, incestuous, bestial polygamous unions are completely different things from gay unions and straight unions (which are the same thing, only different) in your mind.* And if you’re okay with something, then everybody should be; and anybody who isn’t, is just being irrational.

    *for now

  336. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The Lib Supremes will toss it because they like Teh Gehys

    I’ll leave that hanging curve ball for somebody else.

  337. dicentra says:

    And there is just no danger apparent in gay marriage. So it gets my vote.

    If there were any danger, how would you know? Leftists and intellectuals specialize in making dangerous things seem harmless and harmless things seem dangerous, because that sets them apart from the hoi polloi, whose ideas are rooted in nothing but bigotry.

    INSTANT VIRTUE! WE’RE NOT THEM!

    I do know that societies and subcultures have experimented with SSM in the past, and yet none of them continued it. Don’t you think we should know why before charging “ahead” ourselves?

    It wasn’t so long ago that the sophisticates among us said that “we don’t need a piece of paper to prove our love,” and now suddenly marriage is the BE-ALL and END-ALL. The sophisticates pushed the sexual revolution—expressly—as a means to tear apart bourgeoise values and institutions such as marriage, the nuclear family, monogamy, heterosexuality, and fidelity. Homosexuality was touted as a direct challenge to the traditional “1950s” view of marriage and family. Shacking up was likewise pushed to undermine marriage and family.

    And now these same people are genuinely concerned with making their formerly deliciously transgressive mascots into WHITE-picket-fence families?

    Right. These people are totally trustworthy when it comes to reshaping society. They have nothing but our best interests at heart.

    BTW, it’s not just Western civ that values marriage: the aborigines in the remotest jungles do, the Chinese, the Indians, the Mayans—all societies practice heterosexual marriage, and NOT just for reproduction. They are tuned into the ancient wisdom that marriage is the mystical, spiritual union of the two cosmic complementarities—male and female. The fact that our spoiled rotten society has decided to erase masculinity and femininity from our conceptual models (BECAUSE OF THE SOPHISTICATION AND TOLERANCE!) is not at all persuasive.

    We’re currently in the process of decline, not progress. We can’t even manage the basic math of a federal budget. We divorce nastily and often. We can’t identify and neutralize narcissists and sociopaths beause we’re so easily dazzled by their superficial charm. We don’t even reproduce anymore because we care more about US and NOW than the future.

    So even if I didn’t have my own convictions about the subject, I would still oppose it on the ground that I know who’s pushing it and I know that they don’t have society’s best interests at heart. They want us to stop depending on each other and depend on the State.

    No sale. Absolutely not.

    Oh, I forgot, being afraid of gay marriage without being able to cite any actual serious problems isn’t homophobic.

    Problems that haven’t arisen yet, right? Wait right here: I’ll get my TARDIS.

    brb

  338. happyfeet says:

    We should give resources to the smug morally constipated marcorubio so he can just hammer the shit out of the gay marriage issue between now and 2016.

    There is a great hunger in America for moral guidance from the Republican party.

  339. Pablo says:

    The arrogant little ball of mucus shows up three hundred remarks late, preens itself in the Internet’s windows, and proceeds to demand answers to Life’s Persistent Questions as it uniquely sees them.

    Most of which are already on display.

  340. Pablo says:

    There is a great hunger in America for moral guidance from the Republican party.

    It’s even greater than the hunger for your advice.

  341. happyfeet says:

    Team R sees you when you’re sleeping Team R knows when you’re awake

  342. beemoe says:

    Wow. Look at all that straw.

    Can’t see it for all the dead horses.

  343. happyfeet says:

    people all over the world … join hands!

    start a procreative love train… oh yeah

    feel it feel it

    it’s such a good vibration cmon cmon

  344. Slartibartfast says:

    Leviticus is for Levites.

    Discuss.

  345. Pablo says:

    Oh, so you actually read it? Bigot.

  346. serr8d says:

    What made marriage a throwaway, at will sort of thing? Maybe that’s what we should address.

    Contracts and other legal obligations, and the removal of traditional values.

    Marriage as-is is a sham, because government got involved. From the original link and above…

    There are many good reasons why citizens in 41 states have said over and over that marriage is between a man and a woman. Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces. And as ample social science has shown, children tend to do best when reared by their mother and father.

    Government recognizes marriage because it is an institution that benefits the public good.

    Marriage is society’s least restrictive means to ensure the well-being of future citizens. State recognition of marriage protects children by incentivizing adults to commit permanently and exclusively to each other and their children.

    While respecting everyone’s liberty, government rightly recognizes, protects, and promotes marriage as the ideal institution for procreative love, childbearing, and childrearing.

    In recent decades, marriage has been weakened by a revisionist view that sees marriage as primarily about emotional bonds or legal privileges. In other words, it is more about adults’ desires than children’s needs. Same-sex marriage is the culmination of this revisionism: Emotional intensity would be the only thing left to set marriage apart from other bonds.

    Emotional bonds are not quantifiable. What two men or two women have are ONLY emotional bonds; there can never be a biological combination of their genetic material to make a child. They might nurture an adopted child, but they can do that outside ‘marriage’. Pity that child.

    Gays want to hook up for legal privileges? Civil unions. Contracts. Government. That’s all they need for legal privileges and ’emotional bonds’.

    What this is is a fight to preserve what’s left of our Constitution, shredded as it’s been by years of revisionist attacks. This attack, just another revisionist attacks have the object to further shred the founder’s intent. So, we fight this fight, ‘feets, whether or not we all agree on what is “GOP” or “Conservative” or “Classical Liberal”.

    Emotional bonds and contracts between non-child-bearing ‘couples’ can be handled by civil unions. Marriage is for opposite-sex couples who have the intent of, for the most part, creating and raising children.

  347. Danger says:

    “in the actual words of the Christ, suffer those mighty injustices by turning the other cheek.”

    A slap on the cheek (or better described as an insult) was the purpose of the turning JHo. Jesus didn’t speek of Homosexuality because:
    1. it wasn’t common and he likely didn’t encounter it.
    2. it was already covered in previous guidance.
    and
    3. his time was limited to a three year ministry.

    What he did say though, is that he did not come to replace the law, but that the law would be fullfilled.

  348. Danger says:

    Man Ernst beat me too it about 150 comments ago. I’m gonna have to up my game:)

  349. Darleen says:

    JH

    outside of providing a just and reliable registry and court.

    Excuse me, maybe we are talking at cross purposes, but I thought you were arguing that marriage NOT be recognized by the State and the court NOT be available to people who couple without personally signed contracts.

  350. Darleen says:

    oh, griefer now is mad at Marco Rubio because he’s Catholic.

    I’m so surprised.

  351. Danger says:

    leigh says December 7, 2012 at 7:14 pm
    Sure, Pablo. Jesus was down with the immenent domain a la Kelo, too.

    Leigh,

    I’m quite certain that Pablo was actually being sarcastic. The left likes to think that the verse “give to Caeser what is Caeser” but they forget a couple of things:
    1. WE are the “Caeser” and we agreed to be governed under principles outlined in the Constitution.
    and
    2. The other half of the verse.

  352. Danger says:

    On second thought, it occured to me that Leigh might have been dealing in the sarcasm craft as well. You guys should come up with a signal or something when you do that;)

  353. Pablo says:

    Another thing is that Jesus was politely telling his interlocutors to piss off.

  354. Danger says:

    “Not that it matters, its all closing the barn door way to fucking late.”

    Sadly, you make a good point beemoe.

  355. Danger says:

    “The ancient Jewish statists, so to put it, could be vehemently opposed to homosexuality.”

    JHo,
    That trivializes the issue a bit, unless you think Sodom and Gomorrah were struck by an Israeli nuclear attack.

  356. Danger says:

    “Homosexuality isn’t the only abomination in there”

    Another point to beemoe!,
    (hey, I’m callin em as I see em;)

  357. SGTTed says:

    I have a cousin who has been in a partnership thats lasted longer than a lot of straight marriages. Is his love second rate? Is his union to be like an old south “slave marriage”, only good enough until some other person or group of people decide it’s null and void?

    I don’t find the cultural arguments compelling. I find the liberty arguments more compelling.

    I am not quite clear on how forbidding two same sex adults in love from marrying in a church that agrees to peform the ceremony voluntarily provides extra protection for straight marriage. If the gays are living in a non-promiscuous loving relationship that is mutually supportive of them and their family, should they choose to have one, why shouldn’t it be recognized? Or rather, how does the State make the claim that such is inherently more damaging than straight marriage, given the problems going on with those in straight marriages and family law? What is the functional, legal difference between marriage and union that separates gay couples from straight ones?

    If the same legal protections for children and property are in place for gay unions as well as straight marriage, then whats the problem, again?

  358. Danger says:

    cranky-d says December 7, 2012 at 8:42 pm
    The Old Testament is a covenant with G-d that is based on believing in the Savior that is to come. The New Testament puts forth a new covenant with G-d, acknowledging Jesus Christ as the Savior promised in the Old Testament.

    However, I am not sure how much a believer that Jesus Christ is the promised Savior is supposed to take from the Old Testament”…

    100 internet points to the Crankster!

  359. Danger says:

    SSgt Ted,

    That’s a tough one and I see slippery slope is ahead of you in line so I gotta head back upstream.

  360. Danger says:

    “I think I’ll marry my dog.*”

    Pablo,
    A lifetime commitment might not be quite as fulfilling.
    We just found out our 8 yr old Westie has lymphoba :( but even in the best circumstances man’s best friend only lasts a couple of decades.

  361. Darleen says:

    SSgt Ted

    Your cousin is not second class. Neither will be mine if he finds a loving ss partner and commits to him publicly.

    And I’ve always supported Civil unions/domestic partnerships.

    Just don’t call it “marriage” in the law because it is not.

    http://www.dennisprager.com/columns.aspx?g=4bd9a8e1-d2e3-4e27-8ff9-13225099eea5&url=why_a_good_person_can_vote_against_samesex_marriage

    SS couples are fundamentally different than OS couples. If you insist they are fungible, “marriage” loses its definition and, since it is to be a “right” based on “who you love” then what cogent argument can you muster against polygamy? Or close degree of consanguinity?

  362. Darleen says:

    And churches are indeed free to perform any commitment ceremony they wish right now.

    If SSM is a “right”, how do you protect via 1st Amendment churches who don’t want to marry SS couples?

    See, right now we have religious organizations that have to fight NOT to be forced to pay for abortifacients because “contraception is a right”.

    And we know what Catholic Charities has gone through because they believe that mothers & fathers matter when it comes to raising kids.

    What may not seem fair in the micro is entirely fair in the macro.

  363. Danger says:

    slipperyslope says December 7, 2012 at 9:23 pm
    why is it necessary to call a same-sex union that enjoys many of the same legal protections as a traditional marriage (if not all; these are questions for the states and their citizens) “marriage”?

    Because that’s the same as “separate but equal”.

    So letting Rosa Parks sit in the front of the bus wasn’t really equality. We actually needed to refer to her as a white woman?

  364. Pablo says:

    People are equal. Relationships are not.

  365. Danger says:

    dicentra says December 7, 2012 at 9:27 pm
    And what’s wrong with that?

    Don’t be coy.

    Dicentra,
    Now you’re just being cruel! We all know that’s the only thing the sllippery one lives for.

  366. Danger says:

    “Did you marry someone you loved?…”

    I see he brought the whole sss (slipperyslopestraw) army with him.

  367. Danger says:

    Ernst Schreiber says December 7, 2012 at 10:20 pm
    Wow. Look at all that straw.

    ERNST AGAIN!

    But I am drinking milk and one of these days I’ll catch up;)

  368. Danger says:

    SSgt Ted,

    (finally caught up),

    Darleen has addressed your question but so has Jeff (and others) in the past. One of the reasons is the way it (gay marriage) is being prescribed (by judicial dictate vice the will of the people). If an idea is a good/beneficial one then it will eventually be supported and won’t have to be forced on others.

    The other reason is language clarity or as the late great Ric Locke once said (paraprhased): Just because someone decides (and we all acquiesce) to call a hamburger a carrot it doesn’t make anyone a vegetarian if they routinely pig out on Big Macs. (I hope I didn’t butcher that too bad)

  369. JHoward says:

    A slap on the cheek (or better described as an insult) was the purpose of the turning JHo.

    Can you clarify that?

    Jesus didn’t speek of Homosexuality because:
    1. it wasn’t common and he likely didn’t encounter it.
    2. it was already covered in previous guidance.
    and
    3. his time was limited to a three year ministry.

    1. It was no less common then than it is now. Consider the Greeks. Consider debauched Roman morality.

    2. Yes it was.

    3. Then it had little importance, tending to support my point that there is no evidence either of high importance or of a profundity moral ill that would allow anyone today to point to Jesus as a bastion of anti-gay sentiment or instruction

    What he did say though, is that he did not come to replace the law, but that the law would be fullfilled.

    Yes he did.

  370. […] My Wife (Or Three)… Please! Posted on December 8, 2012 10:30 am by Bill Quick “The Supreme Court’s Challenge: Restore Marriage Decisions to Citizens” | protein … While respecting everyone’s liberty, government rightly recognizes, protects, and promotes […]

  371. Darleen says:

    It was no less common then than it is now. Consider the Greeks. Consider debauched Roman morality.

    Jesus was first & primarily a Jewish man preaching to fellow Jews, whose own laws & traditions specifically separated them from the Romans. So, indeed, homosexual behavior would have been both rare & forbidden.

    And where something is considered “ok” you get more of it. Homosexual behavior for Romans and Greeks had little to do with orientation and more to do with social behavior reinforcing the superiority of the citizen male. Indeed, Jewish law which was to channel male sexuality towards exclusivity with a chosen female actually elevated the status of the female.

  372. JHoward says:

    outside of providing a just and reliable registry and court.

    Excuse me, maybe we are talking at cross purposes, but I thought you were arguing that marriage NOT be recognized by the State and the court NOT be available to people who couple without personally signed contracts.

    I argue that marriage not involve the State and that that State return to being faithful to the Constitution. The State must not be co-involved with the married contemporaneously. The State, as a constitutionally sound agent of self-governance, must only provide the option of a legal platform to unwind or settle relationships and contracts — if no private contract exists, then the only remaining fallback will be trial court.

    I say this because there is no other civilized, legal option to people getting themselves into bad situations and not because I’m selecting from a list of attractive government solutions for personal irresponsibility. I’m not. There are none. There should be no such list of fabulous options because that would be progressivism and that would terminate in disaster.

  373. JHoward says:

    The ancient Jewish statists, so to put it, could be vehemently opposed to homosexuality.

    That trivializes the issue a bit, unless you think Sodom and Gomorrah were struck by an Israeli nuclear attack.

    Please expand on that.

  374. Darleen says:

    if no private contract exists, then the only remaining fallback will be trial court.

    Then you agree that when a person dies without a will, the state should have no standard by which the estate is divided? Just let it be fought out in court?

    And by what standard should a jury be instructed to use with all these relationship dissolutions they are presented with? Since the State is not to recognize “marriage”?

    What criminal trials should be shuttled aside for “marriage” trials?

  375. Darleen says:

    JH

    what other contracts should the state refuse to set standards for? Car purchases? Landlord/tenent? Should the state allow people to contract for indentured service and let trial courts adjudicate breach of those contracts?

    Should the state have no minimal standards at all with regards to personal relationships?

  376. JHoward says:

    Jesus was first & primarily a Jewish man preaching to fellow Jews, whose own laws & traditions specifically separated them from the Romans. So, indeed, homosexual behavior would have been both rare & forbidden.

    Homosexuality is nonexistent and at least tacitly forbidden in my family and it is probably quite rare while being entirely forbidden in some of the churches I’ve been exposed to. Neither local condition obviously has any bearing whatsoever on society in general the fact that locally it may be forbidden speaks directly to the awareness that there is a perceived external need to do so.

    In other words that it exists.

    But these are perceived moral concerns.

    And where something is considered “ok” you get more of it. Homosexual behavior for Romans and Greeks had little to do with orientation and more to do with social behavior reinforcing the superiority of the citizen male. Indeed, Jewish law which was to channel male sexuality towards exclusivity with a chosen female actually elevated the status of the female.

    I can accept that but I’d challenge you to thoroughly demonstrate it as a fundamental of some major difference between then and now. It was not different then and now in any way — and this has been my sole point throughout — that would defend dragging Jesus in as a position spokesman.

    This is a political issue in a constitutional republic that may not concern itself with the perception of the relative moralities involved.

  377. JHoward says:

    what other contracts should the state refuse to set standards for?

    Standards? Are not contracts themselves suitable, they being between consenting adults not involved in crmiminal activity?

    Rather, what contracts should the state set standards for?

    Should the state allow people to contract for indentured service and let trial courts adjudicate breach of those contracts?

    Wouldn’t that be criminal, Darleen? Come on…

    Should the state have no minimal standards at all with regards to personal relationships?

    Such as?

  378. happyfeet says:

    the marcorubio is constipated with righteousness and his time nears

    did you hear me unbelievers?

    make ready the way

  379. Darleen says:

    This is a political issue in a constitutional republic that may not concern itself with the perception of the relative moralities involved.

    All law is based on morals — it is the minimal floor by which one isn’t allowed to sink under without criminal sanctions.

    Murder is a moral issue, theft is a moral issue – prior to them being covered by Law.

    Adultery is a moral issue, but as a society we’ve decided it doesn’t fall within criminal purview because of its nature as involving adult sexual behavior. Though, it can be an issue in tort (alienation of affections, etc)

    Whether Jesus directly commented on homosexual behavior or not isn’t an issue. As an observant Jew, he wouldn’t be officiating any SSM, period.

  380. JHoward says:

    Then you agree that when a person dies without a will, the state should have no standard by which the estate is divided? Just let it be fought out in court?

    Of course.

    And by what standard should a jury be instructed to use with all these relationship dissolutions they are presented with? Since the State is not to recognize “marriage”?

    Did I say the State must not recognize a marriage contract, Darleen? Or do you insist the State must reference its own previous body of authority and cause the Parties to be, in effect, its marital subservients?

    And is a jury instructed in such matters, Darleen? Then by what standard?

    See, you turn this around, expecting a comfortable but subjective set of settlement rules. No. The moment you accept that that premise induces acceptable solutions is the moment you head down that progressive slippery slope, which is exactly where we find ourselves today.

    What criminal trials should be shuttled aside for “marriage” trials?

  381. Darleen says:

    Are not contracts themselves suitable, they being between consenting adults not involved in crmiminal activity?

    Then a polygamy contract is ok? A landlord/tenent one where sex is traded in lieu of rent? How about a car contract where late fees are spelled out as the purchaser comes over and cleans the home of the dealership owner?

  382. JHoward says:

    Murder is a moral issue, theft is a moral issue – prior to them being covered by Law.

    Adultery is a moral issue, but as a society we’ve decided it doesn’t fall within criminal purview because of its nature as involving adult sexual behavior.

    You’ve just defined your minimal standard. I agree.

    Whether Jesus directly commented on homosexual behavior or not isn’t an issue.

    It was upthread.

  383. Darleen says:

    Did I say the State must not recognize a marriage contract, Darleen?

    What is that marriage contract, JH? Two people? Four? Siblings?

    what STANDARD contract is to be used by the state when adjudicating relationship dissolutions and what STANDARDS are to by used by a jury when no formal signed contract is available but property/kids still need to be dealt with?

  384. happyfeet says:

    Jesus was down with the struggle, him and santa and mlk and lady gaga and Dale Evans

  385. Darleen says:

    You’ve just defined your minimal standard. I agree.

    Yep, and my minimal standard for marriage is one man/one woman, consenting adults beyond consanguinity of the 2nd or 3rd degree.

  386. JHoward says:

    Then a polygamy contract is ok? A landlord/tenent one where sex is traded in lieu of rent? How about a car contract where late fees are spelled out as the purchaser comes over and cleans the home of the dealership owner?

    Unconventional marriage between consenting adults? Prostitution barter? Simple barter?

    Darleen, you are free to spell out any degree of moral management via law you wish. I just want you to hold each and every instance up, as many of us have specifically with family law and probably all of us have with progressive law in general, to constitutional inspection.

    When I find half a dozen of my prior rights ruined by contemporary law — with the resulting damages being literally property and life-threatening to this day — then I have my answer for just about everything from the murder/theft/fraud level and up.

    Legalize it.

    Yes prostitution should be legal. Yes dope should be legal. Yes damn near everything without a clear, immediate, and severe negative consequence to others should be legal and for the rest healthy tort serves just fine. In fact healthy tort is a superb indicator, naturally, of healthy morality.

    Remember when I said that one must presume one’s fellows to be just as free and just as responsible as oneself? Excess law ruins that absolutely. We’re living it.

    Republican morality as a precursor to lawmaking is just as terminal to this constitutional republic as progressive morality is.

  387. JHoward says:

    my minimal standard for marriage is one man/one woman, consenting adults beyond consanguinity of the 2nd or 3rd degree.

    So no race restrictions then. And this must be uniform throughout the land or, you know, it’s going to fail. Probably no age limits. Religious taboos are right out.

    Like I say, compose a nice big book of law and have some Republican get it written into a bill. And in five minutes we’ll have 2012.

  388. JHoward says:

    What is that marriage contract, JH? Two people? Four? Siblings?

    Again: I’d prefer you get it written up, introduced, and passed. You and your peers. Me, I can’t possibly find it in myself to engineer society like that. I find social engineering a dismal guarantee of a dismal end.

    what STANDARD contract is to be used by the state when adjudicating relationship dissolutions and what STANDARDS are to by used by a jury when no formal signed contract is available but property/kids still need to be dealt with?

    I heard you the first time. If you expect a standard contract then you’re not interested much in merely adjudicating contracts period.

  389. Darleen says:

    If you expect a standard contract then you’re not interested much in merely adjudicating contracts period.

    Really? So every contract is legally enforceable regardless of what is in it? How does one adjudicate if there are no standards beyond what is written in the contract?

    Cool, so indentured servitude is back in style!

    JH, when did you move from libertarian to anarchist?

  390. Darleen says:

    I’d prefer you get it written up, introduced, and passed.

    It already has passed, JH. And in CA it was passed to make it an amendment to our state constitution

    but the faux “marriage equality” advocates will have none of it.

  391. Darleen says:

    Contract: An agreement creating obligations enforceable by law. The basic elements of a contract are mutual assent, consideration, capacity, and legality.

    How does that “legality” get there? When laws (standards) are passed governing said contracts.

  392. JHoward says:

    JH, when did you move from libertarian to anarchist?

    I’ll bite and my answer is pending your getting a truly sound definition of two things. The first is anarcho-capitalism and the other is anarchy.

  393. JHoward says:

    in CA it was passed to make it an amendment to our state constitution

    I wish you all the best with your California-style social engineering, Darleen. You did.

  394. JHoward says:

    legality

    Predicated on?

  395. JHoward says:

    More goodness by law.

  396. cranky-d says:

    Not all laws are based on morality. Most of them aren’t, but then again, most laws are not laws we actually encounter on a day to day basis. The laws where I infringe upon your right to exist are likely on sound ground, but otherwise we get into questionable areas.

    For instance, I don’t see speeding as immoral, and yet I can get fined for it.

  397. LBascom says:

    A slap on the cheek (or better described as an insult) was the purpose of the turning JHo.

    Can you clarify that?

    I’ll try. Jesus was talking about a personal insult in particular, you changed it to “great injustice” Christians are to turn the other cheek to. It’s a smarmy tactic used by unbelievers thinking they are clever.

    Turning the other cheek…

    Mat 26:50-51 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.

    And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out [his] hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his ear.

    Christians walking around with swords? How unchristian, say those who are not Christian…

  398. cranky-d says:

    I should have said, any law against my infringing on your right to life, liberty, and property is likely on solid ground. Once you leave that zone, you start getting into gray areas.

    There used to be a law against driving a red car on Lake St. in Minneapolis. There are many more laws just like that still on the books.

  399. leigh says:

    Lee, didja ever notice that those who aren’t Christians are the first to point out all kinds of obscure scripture and demand to know why we are such hypocrites about our faith?

    It’s almost like they have an agenda or something.

  400. JHoward says:

    Mat 26:50-51 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.

    And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out [his] hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote off his ear.

    The next two verses are not unimportant to the point I think you were making, Lee.

  401. JHoward says:

    Lee, didja ever notice that those who aren’t Christians are the first to point out all kinds of obscure scripture and demand to know why we are such hypocrites about our faith?

    It’s almost like they have an agenda or something.

    That’s not uncommon, Leigh, but then neither is failing to determine what Jesus was actually all about. I like to start that unresolvable discussion with the simple request to define God, and from that, the Son of God. No one’s answered it yet.

  402. leigh says:

    I say that those who think they have a definative answer to your questions should be looked at with suspicion, JHo.

    ‘Now we see through the glass darkly’ and all that.

  403. Darleen says:

    California-style social engineering

    what-the-fuck, really JH, how is recognizing the reality of what marriage IS “social engineering?”

  404. Darleen says:

    cranky-d

    certainly contract law is predicated on a moral foundation. It assumes that one engages “voluntarily with another in good faith”.

  405. Darleen says:

    Judeo-Christian God: ethical monotheism, where we as individuals have free will, but God wants us to be good.

    He gives us direction, but leaves the details and the behavior to follow/not follow up to us.

  406. leigh says:

    Darleen, respectfully, you work for lawyers. You are not a lawyer.

    All of us here are certainly old enough to have dealt with the law in a number of different circumstances and have had different experiences and therefore different opinions of the law and how it is adjudicated.

    Frankly, making life easier for the courts isn’t a goal of mine and I’m finding your attitude to be a bit grating.

    We’re all (mostly) friends here. Please ease up on the scolding.

  407. Darleen says:

    leigh

    Excuse me for wanting some actual details of how this utopia of settling disputes around children and property is supposed to happen sans legal standards.

    JH is unable or unwilling to do more than pontificate.

    I, more than most, understand that there are/can be too many laws covering too many things. That doesn’t de-legitimatize ALL law or even a basic, agreed upon standard by which disputes can be settled within a court of law.

    When you can’t settle stuff to your satisfaction on your own, you can use the courts or you can resort to violence (or have violence used upon you). That is the bargain we made when we stopped being tribal.

  408. Patrick Chester says:

    dicentra wrote:

    So even if I didn’t have my own convictions about the subject, I would still oppose it on the ground that I know who’s pushing it and I know that they don’t have society’s best interests at heart. They want us to stop depending on each other and depend on the State.

    No sale. Absolutely not.

    That was my impression as well after about 2004 or so. Similar reaction.

  409. Darleen says:

    and, I am not scolding. I’m frustrated that some people cannot or will not make the case for their position .. only engage in the “well if you can’t understand what I’m trying to say, you lack my sophistication and proves what a low-life you are” passive-aggressive style of argumentation.

    I get that enough from Leftists.

  410. happyfeet says:

    as an attorney I’ve never seen any problems with gay marriagings in fact I’ve always been struck by how sensible they are, speaking as a legal professional only

  411. leigh says:

    I understand your frustration, Darleen. Sometimes threads get heated and there are many commentators who are commenting on different (sometimes fictional, I’m looking at you slippery) aspects of a subject or on things that are tangential to the subject at hand.

    You and I got cross-wired over wills versus divorce last night. I was talking about one thing and you another. It happens and is one of the drawbacks of chatrooms.

    Just try not to take it personally is all I can suggest. (Being passive-aggressive is a fallback position for a lot of the punks I deal with in RL. You just carry on by ignoring it.)

  412. leigh says:

    You’re in the Catskills, right happy? It’s really gay-friendly there.

    You should head down to the bar and meet a nice fellow.

  413. happyfeet says:

    No I am outside erie a little ways…

    The catskills are super gay though google maryann’s coconut cream pie

    How fun is that?

  414. happyfeet says:

    I have to be in Chicago for a couple meetings next week so I had to turn around in Roxbury there when I encountered treacherous snow flurries

    that’s pretty much the only motel in that one town what sucks is there’s nowhere to eat during treacherous snow flurries but you can get pizza and such delivered

  415. LBascom says:

    I like to start that unresolvable discussion with the simple request to define God, and from that, the Son of God. No one’s answered it yet.

    God is spirit, and can only be discerned spiritually. Jesus is the spirit of God made flesh and blood.

    God is Love, Jesus is communication from God.

    As for holy matrimony

  416. leigh says:

    Erie is super gay, as well. A lot of the gay guys I knew in Pittsburgh used to go there.

    The whole town is full of alcoholics.

  417. sdferr says:

    I’ve always preferred Dewey Evans over that other Evans, despite that he played for the RedSox mostly.

    Montesquieu writes very beautifully about the spirit of law. He just asks the thing of us: “I beg one favour of my readers, which I fear will not be granted me; this is, that they will not judge by a few hours’ reading of the labour of twenty years; that they will approve or condemn the book entire, and not a few particular phrases. If they would search into the design of the author, they can do it in no other way so completely as by searching into the design of the work.” After awhile it’s not hard to see why the founders loved him so.

  418. happyfeet says:

    I’m a just visit a little I never been to erie my whole life I hope I see a big boat and I want to find a tractor supply store

  419. Danger says:

    JHo,
    Been out powerwashing the driveway (wee! – not) and I have a Christmas party to attend so I’ll try to respond/expand later.

  420. JHoward says:

    I say that those who think they have a definative answer to your questions should be looked at with suspicion, JHo.

    ‘Now we see through the glass darkly’ and all that.

    Immense thanks for reconfirming my hope, leigh, that not all Christians are cock-sure of what they can’t actually define except by standing up rote language time after time. It leaves the rest of us asking why God would be so, well, dim.

    Given Its wall to wall competition down here that kinda takes all the joy out of boundless dimension in all directions.

  421. JHoward says:

    what-the-fuck, really JH, how is recognizing the reality of what marriage IS “social engineering?”

    That’s circular, sadly. Have the confidence to step outside that construct, Darleen. It’ll be fine on its own. That’s its point. Trust me.

    Also, I didn’t refer to marriage as social engineering. I referred to social engineering as social engineering. You’ve been not hearing me much this thread. If you want my view on marriage it’s this, at least in the part sometimes I think I can glimpse, the rest of it as naturally infinite and eternal as anything humanity can construct: In the western tradition marriage is a component of Agape; a spoke in a wheel of spokes of love from God to man and back again, a wheel of many, the many being our gift and our challenge and our eternal promise, one we shall ever fall short of.

    And the only response to which is our acceptance of grace.

    So how then shall we live, endless grace being our harshest penalty. Marriage will be fine on its own. That’s its point. If it is not then it was not marriage.

  422. Jeff G. says:

    Okay. Let’s see if I can refocus this by bringing us back to the post proper. These are the questions I raised:

    why is it necessary to call a same-sex union that enjoys many of the same legal protections as a traditional marriage (if not all; these are questions for the states and their citizens) “marriage”?

    That is, what is it that those who support same-sex marriage hope to see happen as a result of this redefinition that couldn’t happen should we simply recognize same-sex unions as the new, different things that they are?

    And finally, do you find it implausible that by expanding the definition of marriage, additional legal challenges to purely “love” -based relationships will most certainly arise — that if the sexes of the marital participants are decided upon by the Courst as arbitrary, and therefore unconstitutional, surely the number, it can be argued (and currently is being argued), is arbitrary as well?

    Ready? GO!

  423. JHoward says:

    certainly contract law is predicated on a moral foundation. It assumes that one engages “voluntarily with another in good faith”.

    A component of which is having the good faith to understand that they shall be granted the same liberty as you expect they shed on you. A necessary component of which, since I seem to have to repeat myself a lot.

    Judeo-Christian God: ethical monotheism, where we as individuals have free will, but God wants us to be good.

    He gives us direction, but leaves the details and the behavior to follow/not follow up to us.

    Says you but fine; go with that anyway. Yet that God — being the One True God in your same construct — wants us to be an us whose task is to discover. Discovery tends to purify. Purity escapes a soul until it stops rejecting that experience because of selfishness and the pain of loss of ego.

    Jesus Christ did not reject that experience. Then Jesus Christ commended us to be like him. Whether Jesus was God or not is utterly absurd in its irrelevance, and indeed to conflate the Unknowable Infinite with even Its own prophet is blasphemy, should blasphemy still live in the vernacular of fully realized spirituality.

    Excuse me for wanting some actual details of how this utopia of settling disputes around children and property is supposed to happen sans legal standards.

    “Legal standards” yet again? You’re making demands that as are as illogical as they are irrelevant. They are no more yours to demand than others are obliged to pay them fealty. This is because yours are arbitrary. You have not yourself defined them except as legislative attempts or items of transient law. Okay, then they are just that, ergo not derived from God per se but at their functional best, as obvious evidences of experience, experience that confirms what they are and via that confirmation and only that confirmation, recommits the parties to what a marriage really is.

    Successful marriage is therefore no less an act of faith than faith itself is. You do it and then you discover what it is. Or not. Again, back to God’s apparent charge (if that’s even the word) and Christ’s relaying of that blinding evidence. It shall be fine, with or without you and I can assure you, only without the State. In spite of the State, actually.

  424. newrouter says:

    i like to mock these fools. out “same sex marriage” in “zombie marriage” or sodomiage. the “freaks of nature” should be named what they are by darwinian standards. throw the “science” card at them.

  425. Jeff G. says:

    Guess not. So I’ll have a Pop-Tart instead.

  426. happyfeet says:

    it’s hardly ever called “marriage” it’s called “gay marriage” or sometimes “same sex marriage” and for the most part people reach for the marriage phrasing reflexively and organically

    it’s like how googling came to mean searching for stuff online

  427. JHoward says:

    why is it necessary to call a same-sex union that enjoys many of the same legal protections as a traditional marriage (if not all; these are questions for the states and their citizens) “marriage”?

    It isn’t necessary but the State has already had its nose under the marriage tent. Marriage is, perhaps ironically, now a purely personal thing with peripherals subject to varying jurisdictions, whether legal or religious. Both the State and Church have failed marriage. Extending the scope of either doesn’t change the cancer.

    That is, what is it that those who support same-sex marriage hope to see happen as a result of this redefinition that couldn’t happen should we simply recognize same-sex unions as the new, different things that they are?

    Forced “equality”, a kind of open social revenge of the progressive rights class as it redefines things, its strategic habit or driving everything back into grime and mire.

    And finally, do you find it implausible that by expanding the definition of marriage, additional legal challenges to purely “love” -based relationships will most certainly arise — that if the sexes of the marital participants are decided upon by the Courst as arbitrary, and therefore unconstitutional, surely the number, it can be argued (and currently is being argued), is arbitrary as well?

    I know I don’t find anything implausible regarding marriage, the State, and grotesque plasticity of form and substance in this American age.

    But, as hard as it genuinely is to have to ask this, given that State and given contemporary marriage and given the Nihilistic rush to relative truth, did we really place any residual stock in traditional marriage anymore anyway?

  428. newrouter says:

    people reach for the marriage phrasing reflexively and organically

    or strategically if they use language as a weapon

  429. newrouter says:

    it is like the psa i hear during the marklevin show. you can only use the word gay one way these days . gay can mean homo but not stupid

  430. happyfeet says:

    Team R’s strategy seems mostly to involve trying and failing to come up with a phrase that means “gay marriage” without using the words gay or marriage

    it’s like that taboo game

  431. newrouter says:

    come up with a phrase that means “gay marriage”

    describes it perfectly: that’s so gay

  432. newrouter says:

    come up with a phrase that means “gay marriage”

    see the language can mean sumthing different from what the sodomites want it to mean

  433. happyfeet says:

    you can’t say sodomites it’s on the card

  434. Jeff G. says:

    it’s hardly ever called “marriage” it’s called “gay marriage” or sometimes “same sex marriage” and for the most part people reach for the marriage phrasing reflexively and organically

    Perhaps that’s done to suggest that the thing itself is different. One of these things is not like the other.

  435. Pablo says:

    So the ghey people don’t say “We’re married.” but rather “We’re gay married.” But only after they ask “Will you gay marry me?”

    Bullshit.

  436. Jeff G. says:

    or strategically if they use language as a weapon

    Precisely.

    happy — stop the baby talk for a second and answer the question: what is the justification, in your opinion, for calling the arrangement marriage vs. civil unions? Why do you find that legally innocuous or socially compelling, such that the entire country by way of judicial fiat is forced to accept something most still don’t wish to accept?

    I’ve always explained my reasoning. I’d like you to explain yours.

  437. happyfeet says:

    so what though… bing and google are different but people still google bing… they like how it does videos

  438. happyfeet says:

    it’s not like anyone’s confuzzled to where they’re like are you ladies married or gay married

    they know right off the bat they’re dealing wih a gay marriage situation, using contextual clues

  439. LBascom says:

    But, as hard as it genuinely is to have to ask this, given that State and given contemporary marriage and given the Nihilistic rush to relative truth, did we really place any residual stock in traditional marriage anymore anyway?

    You don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water.

    Also, don’t forget, western civilizations concept of marriage (as defined in the DOMA)predated and enveloped our founding as a constitutional republic. The whole idea of property rights is built on the foundation of multi-generational family identity.

    But don’t worry. the State will assimilate the concept of family along with marriage, and God, and we will live in Utopia forever, amen.

  440. Jeff G. says:

    It isn’t necessary but the State has already had its nose under the marriage tent. Marriage is, perhaps ironically, now a purely personal thing with peripherals subject to varying jurisdictions, whether legal or religious. Both the State and Church have failed marriage. Extending the scope of either doesn’t change the cancer.

    How do you know this? It’s an assertion and perhaps a dangerous one. It may very well change the cancer, turning it more aggressive and allowing for its more rapid spread.

    I know I don’t find anything implausible regarding marriage, the State, and grotesque plasticity of form and substance in this American age.

    But, as hard as it genuinely is to have to ask this, given that State and given contemporary marriage and given the Nihilistic rush to relative truth, did we really place any residual stock in traditional marriage anymore anyway?

    Evidently many of us do. Or we wouldn’t be having the debate.

    Despair is not an argument. And while I often share yours, I don’t think the answer is to let it all burn simply out of spite.

  441. newrouter says:

    gay marriage situation, using contextual clues

    funny how “gay” was magically affixed to marriage. i’m sure the google could give a time line of that combination.

  442. happyfeet says:

    “civil union” is inelegant and nobody knows what the verb form is plus if you ask any normal person to define a civil union between gay people they’re gonna say it’s like marriage for gay people

  443. Pablo says:

    How could anyone ever confuse the one with the other?

    Everybody knows who Spouse A is.

  444. newrouter says:

    Precisely.

    had a good teacher methinks

  445. Pablo says:

    it’s not like anyone’s confuzzled to where they’re like are you ladies married or gay married

    Indeed. I’m all “Oh, you think you’re married? How cute.”

  446. happyfeet says:

    spouse a is ellen spouse b is portia

    spouse a is doogie spouse b is the other guy

    spouse a is the bartender guy spouse b is anderson cooper

    Not difficult.

  447. newrouter says:

    a civil union between gay people they’re gonna say it’s like marriage for gay people

    why would not normal people have the same union as the freaks of nature crowd vis a vis the state?

  448. Pablo says:

    The whole idea of property rights is built on the foundation of multi-generational family identity.

    Well, that’s gotta go.

  449. Pablo says:

    Not difficult.

    Right. Like when kids play house, you can figure out who’s who.

  450. newrouter says:

    i don’t want the proggtards to steal a fundamental concept such as marriage. i’d rather move that back to the religious community. sure rev. wright can do a marriage. at least it outside of the state.

  451. happyfeet says:

    the whole point is all of this is evolving quite apart from team r’s impotent screechings

    gay marriage is a real and legal thing in a huge and growing swath of america

    it’s not a hypothetical

  452. newrouter says:

    Not difficult.

    go build your own private idaho tower of babel

  453. Pablo says:

    Oh yeah. Rev. Hatey knew how to deal with this.

  454. newrouter says:

    gay marriage is a real and legal thing in a huge and growing swath of america

    i think my “freaks of nature” campaign will work over time. ax darwin.

  455. newrouter says:

    rev hatey is jim jones in black face

  456. JHoward says:

    It isn’t necessary but the State has already had its nose under the marriage tent. Marriage is, perhaps ironically, now a purely personal thing with peripherals subject to varying jurisdictions, whether legal or religious. Both the State and Church have failed marriage. Extending the scope of either doesn’t change the cancer.

    How do you know this? It’s an assertion and perhaps a dangerous one. It may very well change the cancer, turning it more aggressive and allowing for its more rapid spread.

    Agreed. By change I meant some degree of remedy or restoration.

  457. happyfeet says:

    maybe if you get the marcorubio on board mr. newrouter

    the people listen to him about social issues

  458. Pablo says:

    gay marriage is a real and legal thing in a huge and growing swath of america

    Just like fail! This is not coincidental.

  459. happyfeet says:

    the raison d’etre of Team R should be defending the sacred definition of marriage Mr. Pablo

    especially since they’re hellbent on alienating the fiscal cons

  460. Pablo says:

    Who, other than your inane ass, is talking about political parties here? Jeff has some pertinent questions you might want to tackle.

  461. newrouter says:

    maybe if you get the marcorubio on board mr. newrouter

    we don’t need no socons. we got darwin and science too. darwin denier.

  462. happyfeet says:

    the erf has shifted under our feet mr. pablo

    Team R in particular needs to come to grips with that

    and quickly

  463. newrouter says:

    the raison d’etre of Team R should be defending the sacred definition of marriage

    the freaks of nature attack a judeo/christian concept. me team r can suck it i’ll defend it using darwin and science you darwin denier.

  464. JHoward says:

    given that State and given contemporary marriage and given the Nihilistic rush to relative truth, did we really place any residual stock in traditional marriage anymore anyway?

    Despair is not an argument. And while I often share yours, I don’t think the answer is to let it all burn simply out of spite.

    Despair is not an argument but defeat precedes another strategy and in our time marriage has already been defeated, evidently defeated by it’s fast becoming a travesty after having already become a political tool and industry. The libertarian in me says just let it rush into legal and political oblivion so as to return marriage to the person and his and her faith. I’ve said this. My spiritual side agrees.

    That said, before we’d protect traditional marriage from the State and that State’s growing overlap of the apathetic and the hostile — or by some means actually resurrect the sound majority support essential to protecting it — we need to re-enshrine it in a constitutional, structural envelope that travels well and presents rationally. We tend to fail to do that.

    In this thread I’ve seen too much relativism and unique spirituality somehow in support of traditional legal marriage and too little hard-hitting common sense as to how to reconfirm what it is about the true spiritual institution of marriage what would return to legal marriage necessary protections.

    Our problem is that that focus and definition are lacking. Why is this? I think it’s the same problem all losses to things like post modernism and progressivism involve, which is that it’s just too much work to sort it all out and then get a majority to first grasp and then support whatever sound reform it is that succeeds.

    I suppose that’s a lot of words to say it is indeed a desperate time and cause.

  465. happyfeet says:

    it was on the cable news the other day that more white catholics are now in favor of the gay marriage than are against it by the way

    it’s a for reals paradigm shift

  466. newrouter says:

    team r is a orange led loser. i’ll stick to darwin and science in confronting the freaks of nature in co opting the american language you pikachu wanker

  467. newrouter says:

    it’s a for reals paradigm shift

    wait til “freaks of nature” gets going. the gay peeps are going to start to seem gay

  468. happyfeet says:

    good luck with that

  469. Pablo says:

    I say again: Who, other than your inane ass, is talking about political parties here?

  470. bh says:

    I often speak of Burkean conservatism here and I do so because — as Ernst often hints at — the status quo doesn’t need to stand before the bar of reason.* It stands as is. It’s the change that hasn’t stood any real world test.

    This is the basic idea behind conservatism.** And it makes not a whit of difference if you have religious/visceral objections against gay sex or familial love for gay relatives/friends.

    *I believe that’s a Sowell quote or more likely a paraphrase.

    ** Conservatism in its most basic and useful sense.

  471. bh says:

    *** When I don’t abuse parentheses, I move to asterisks. No mark is safe.

  472. happyfeet says:

    mr. pablo this post was prompted cause of the supreme court is gonna examine the constitutionality of doma

    only one party rah rahs for doma anymore…the other one is busy electing presidents

  473. leigh says:

    I abuse parentses and commas. Anyone who needs extra, just help yourself.

  474. leigh says:

    gay marriage is a real and legal thing in a huge and growing swath of america

    Swath? 2% of the population is hardly a swath.

    Gays used to have Commitment Ceremonies back in the day. What was wrong with that?

  475. newrouter says:

    the supreme court is gonna examine the constitutionality of doma

    no i’m not letting proggtard dullards telling what “law” is. you’ll find me in the back over planting my wheat.

  476. happyfeet says:

    gay marriage is legal in like a dozen states in which a huge number of people live

  477. Pablo says:

    only one party rah rahs for doma anymore…the other one is busy electing presidents

    And voting for societal collapse. You might as well make like Charlie Crist and declare your new team.

  478. happyfeet says:

    im not a lifeydoodle and im not a socialist

    there’s no party for such an exotic species of american

  479. newrouter says:

    gay marriage is legal in like a dozen states

    name them

  480. happyfeet says:

    washington maine ny nh iowa md and like some more

  481. Pablo says:

    gay marriage is legal in like a dozen states in which a huge number of people live

    9, actually. French kissing your children is legal too. But 39 states have decided that marriage is what it has always been.

  482. newrouter says:

    6 doesn’t = 12 how many “judicial” like Massachusetts? those don’t count. lawyer clowns make shit up

  483. happyfeet says:

    if you project out based on the rate at which zero became nine you’ll see what we call a *trend*

  484. newrouter says:

    if you project out based on the rate at which zero became nine you’ll see what we call a *trend*

    nah it just shows how much proggtard propaganda is being excreted

  485. newrouter says:

    if you project out based on the rate at which zero became nine

    9, 12, 57 we the freaks of nature will defeat you

  486. Pablo says:

    What if you project out the rate where zero becomes thirty-nine?

  487. newrouter says:

    to have 15 media outlets saying the freaks of nature are gay. with darwin cartoons of why condoms are and birth control are needed! for the fetus baby!

  488. cranky-d says:

    Thread gone wild!

  489. dicentra says:

    Is his love second rate?

    This may come as a surprise, but marriage isn’t about love. It’s not about society recognizing that love. It’s about the union of the sexes as a foundation for a new household. Love in marriage is a wonderful thing, but there’s no “love test” (or sexual-orientation test) to determine whether a particular union is a marriage or a potential marriage.

    The unfairness in this situation is not that the Big Godbothering Meanies won’t give gays what they want, it’s about Mother Nature (or whatever the agent) failing to properly install the opposite-sex-attraction module.

    An airplane with both wings on the same side won’t fly, no matter how well-built. You have to have each wing opposite the other: a right wing and a left wing, and you can’t replace a right wing with a left wing.

    Our society’s undertanding of marriage and sexuality and masculinity and femininity is so degrated that we can’t tell that same-sex marriage is an absurdity. Extending the definition of marriage has a dilution effect, just as the practise of shacking up has made marriage less desirable and less common. In those societies where all sexual behavior is considered legitimate, families fail to be formed and children are not raised to honor the Enlightenment values (or any values) that form the necessary foundations of the civil society.

    What is the functional, legal difference between marriage and union that separates gay couples from straight ones?

    Any children raised in a gay union are by definition deprived of one parent, either a mother or a father. No matter how butch the lesbian, she will not be seen by a child as a father; no matter how fem the man, he will not function as a mother in a child’s psychology.

    If gay couples will agree to not raise kids, then I’ll gladly santion their unions. But you know as well as I that such an arrangement will never happen.

    Don’t let your affection and sympathy for two perfectly decent human beings undermine your logic centers. The welfare state—and the ill effects it has spawned, from wasted human capital to unsurmountable debt—was supported by sympathy for the unfortunate, especially young women who were pregnant and whose baby-daddies split or were not suitable for marriage. There was PLENTY of warning from Moynihan and others that we’d be sowing the east wind and reaping the whirlwind, but sympathy and the desire to be nice to nice people won the day.

    Now look at us.

    If same-sex marriage were the functional equivalent of OS marriage, Jesus would have instituted it. God would have instituted it with Moses. It would exist elsewhere, in other societies, on a regular basis.

    It doesn’t. We should not rush in where our ancestors feared to tread.

  490. newrouter says:

    Jesus would have instituted it.

    don’t use religion. use science and darwin on the freaks of nature. make ’em look silly or gay.

  491. newrouter says:

    go alinsky on the freaks of nature

  492. newrouter says:

    there’s no “gay” gene. there’s a population looking to change the normal and scientific. just say no effin’ way to the sissies.

  493. dicentra says:

    the erf has shifted under our feet mr. pablo

    Team R in particular needs to come to grips with that

    COMPLY! COMPLY, DAMMIT, OR YOU’LL BE PERSECUTED LIKE THE JEWS IN HITLER’S GERMANY!

    I for one welcome our new intolerant overlords who will go to the ends of the earth to make sure that I don’t make the fatal mistake of being tacky or backward or un-hip.

    The culture that sees no problem with the sluttification of children and that only discusses human sexuality the same way you’d hear in a high-school boys’ locker room and that denies the humanity of its own offspring all the better to vacuum it from the safety of the womb can DEFINITELY be trusted to know what’s good and harmful in terms of sex and marriage.

    Yup. We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. World can’t wait. Everything in the State, nothing outside it.

  494. newrouter says:

    it is funny the “gay” thing is popular with the afghani taliban types just saying

  495. dicentra says:

    it was on the cable news the other day that more white catholics are now in favor of the gay marriage than are against it by the way

    it’s a for reals paradigm shift

    Or they’re weary of being called H8rs and homophobes and evil and bad and bigoted. People DO “change” their minds to avoid social ostracism. It’s what the left counts on, and whaddaya know, it works.

  496. geoffb says:

    “Spouse A” is …..
    “Spouse B” is …..

    Once this becomes the normal form, adding “Spouse C, D, E, F, ad infinitum is just a “copy&paste” away.

  497. bh says:

    We should not rush in where our ancestors feared to tread.

    You sound like a conservative.

  498. bh says:

    I mean, heaven forbid that what might take a couple hundred years isn’t compressed into Obama’s presidency.

    The history has already been set. We’re disappointing it. It might be ashamed of us. It might not visit us in the nursing home.

    [Insert a single Native American tear, like if someone was just littering.]

  499. dicentra says:

    there’s no “gay” gene

    The lack of an identifiable strand of DNA doesn’t rule out an organic cause. None of us decided to be attracted to the opposite sex: it was hard-wired into our brains. It is entirely plausible that in some cases, the module that correctly identifies the “oppositeness” of the opposite sex is not correctly calibrated, so people are turned on by the “exoticness” and “otherness” of their own sex.

    Those gays I know were never eager to be gay, nor did they find it preferable to being hetero. They did their dead-level best to be straight, but to no avail.

    There is also the effect of child sexual abuse, which turns girls OFF to men and turns boys ON to them.

    Who knows what else might cause people to be attracted to their own sex instead of the opposite?

    Calling them “freaks of nature” is accurate only insofar as the deaf, blind, crippled, and lactose-intolerant are freaks, too. The trouble is, we are similar to some in the deaf community, who insist that they’re nothing wrong with them and who get all bothered by cochlear implants and other treatments that “switch” people from deaf to hearing.

    No doubt much of their zeal is powered by the painful social isolation that comes with not being able to participate in oral speech. They tired of being thought freaks and decided to deny that there was something “wrong” with them.

    Even so, I won’t be hiring a deaf man to tune my piano, be an air-traffic controller, or answer the phones.

    We’re all freaks in our way: might as well embrace that fact and move on instead of pretending that it’s all the same when it clearly is not.

  500. newrouter says:

    Calling them “freaks of nature” is accurate only insofar as the deaf, blind, crippled, and lactose-intolerant are freaks, too

    no the ” deaf, blind, crippled, and lactose-intolerant”
    do it with the opposite sex. per darwin gays + lgbt are truely freaks of nature. sexual reproduction is basic ax a tadpole?

  501. bh says:

    Dude, you’re just saying darwin and freaks of nature over and over again.

    That’s hf’s level of argument.

  502. newrouter says:

    We’re all freaks in our way

    no we are individuals in our own way. freaks of nature don’t reproduce. ax darwin and “the science”.

  503. newrouter says:

    Dude, you’re just saying darwin and freaks of nature over and over again.

    do sodomites procreate? do licking lesbians make babies? is darwin wrong? is animal physiology gay?
    pondering.

  504. bh says:

    Once you’ve pondered, you’re repeating. After you repeat a few dozen times it’s just annoying, man.

    I’m sure we all fail in this way. I’ve just sworn off saying “cheers” for a solid year. Noticed it had become some sort of weird tic. So I decided to stop.

    Chee–

  505. newrouter says:

    Dude, you’re just saying darwin and freaks of nature over and over again.

    same weapon: use language to defeat them. sodomites are biologically freaks of nature. ax darwin.

  506. newrouter says:

    Once you’ve pondered, you’re repeating.

    ax hf about “repeating ‘gay marriage'”. msm does it all the time. who put the gay in “gay marriage” and when?

    1995, 2000, 2005, 2012?

  507. bh says:

    Everyone knows why hf constantly repeats his terms like an infomercial or inverts “social engineering”, nr.

    It’s not a goal to aspire towards. It’s sorta the opposite.

  508. newrouter says:

    RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

  509. newrouter says:

    darwin biology

    RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.

  510. newrouter says:

    RULE 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

    freaks of nature on msnbc

  511. newrouter says:

    send pat robertson to argue darwin on msnbc. what fun!

  512. bh says:

    There’s something of a problem though when I just want to talk with my peers about the issues of the day and a significant percentage of the commenters are playing a game of repetition or I’m-a-genius-and-you’re-stupid.

    It really makes a mess of the place. I’d prefer we didn’t fuck up Jeff’s place.

  513. newrouter says:

    It’s not a goal to aspire towards. It’s sorta the opposite.

    no mr. bh you must constantly repeat your message. they are freaks of nature. the bible is a ” be aware guide” the sodomites want a tower of babel.

  514. newrouter says:

    the commenters are playing a game of repetition

    yes please do see nprabccbsnbctimenewsweekwashpostnyt et al. this venue has a “small” audience. that crowd up there plays that game 24/7/365. that is the enemy. and “they” came up with the “gay marriage” bs donchaknow

  515. leigh says:

    It really makes a mess of the place. I’d prefer we didn’t fuck up Jeff’s place.

    Agreed, bh.

  516. bh says:

    Not so sure, nr.

    I’m entirely sympathetic to the basic conservative message of “don’t think you’re so smart that you can just start changing fundamental things starting today”. I’m not at all sympathetic to the message that gay people are freaks of nature or terrible, terrible Sodomites that are all queer and shit.

    If you want to craft an Alinskyite message you should start by avoiding the ones that irritate your allies.

  517. newrouter says:

    indeed mr bh i would like to go back into the lexis nexis data base and find out WHEN “gay marriage” showed up and WHO did it. and where did this person originate from. just a little cynical of the info peeps. almost like want to try to SELL you sumthing?

  518. newrouter says:

    I’m not at all sympathetic to the message that gay people are freaks of nature or terrible, terrible Sodomites that are all queer and shit.

    mr. bh by darwinian/biological definition queers, gays, lgbt: are freaks of nature. reproduction doesn’t happen with them by science.

  519. newrouter says:

    “almost like (they)want to try to SELL you sumthing?

  520. bh says:

    See? That I might very well get a kick out of nr. Who knows what you might turn up that might be good for a laugh. I imagine all kinds of silly nonsense was printed before gay marriage became the great white whale of our times.

  521. tracycoyle says:

    Why is it necessary to call a same-sex union that enjoys many of the same legal protections as a traditional marriage (if not all; these are questions for the states and their citizens) “marriage”?

    Same sex unions, those legalized in a few states, do not have the same legal protections as marriage in our laws. The argument put forth by those that supported DOMA was that without it states that did not support same sex marriage would have to abide by the sanction of other states. It is that argument, that same sex unions are not afforded the same protections, that drives a desire to use specific legal recognition of marriage to same sex couples that has a long and well documented history.

    Many of the same arguments might have to be re-fought in courts to establish exactly what rights, privileges and responsibilities are conferred with a ‘same sex union’ designation when they have already been established by the courts with regard to the term, marriage. Given the differences in how same sex unions may be implemented throughout the country, variations will cause significant disputes and arguments as to what rights or responsibilities are applicable. Agreements on child custody that have been established between the states rely on certain aspects of marital and divorce law that would have to be, at the minimum, rewritten to account for as many as 50 different implementations of same sex unions. The use of ‘marriage’ to a same sex union would clearly define the rights, obligations and responsibilities as already written into law.

    Further, ‘traditional’ marriage did not have some legal protections that have changed the meaning of marriage from what was once considered fundamental, among those was the right of a husband to the affections of his wife such that she could not withhold them from his insistence. That means that a husband could not be charged with the rape of his wife when in fact that is what he did. Further, because many institutions did not recognize a wife as a co-partner in a relationship, a man that was employed was the only one that appeared on deeds and other forms of ownership of property, a situation that made divorce not only devastating to the wife, but financially crippling to her. Although common property states are few, aspects of property ownership are established when a couple marries that would not be ‘normalized’ by a same sex union unless specifically done so by legislation again creating the probability of 50 different implementations. We have a UCC to formalize the attributes of contracts and how they are handled in jurisdictions different from the point of origin. DOMA specifically prevents a similar attempt, it enshrines the ability of states to treat all ‘marriage contracts’ differently.

    That is, what is it that those who support same-sex marriage hope to see happen as a result of this redefinition that couldn’t happen should we simply recognize same-sex unions as the new, different things that they are?

    Right now the State of Wisconsin can fine and imprison someone for stating that their civil union is the same as marriage. The State further enjoins the State Legislature from creating any legal approval for civil unions with the same or nearly the same rights and privileges as marriage. There is no set of documents that can be prepared between a same sex couple that affords them the same rights, privileges and responsibilities afforded marriage. Many states will not allow ‘third party’ adoptions. When one partner of a same sex couple adopts, the states will not allow the other partner to also adopt. When Wisconsin attempted to formalize it’s process of allowing third party adoptions, the legislature, relying on it’s anti-civil union statute, ended the informal process and formalized its prohibition. No documents formed and agreed to by the couple can be presented in a court if the original adopting parent refuses.

    Even when and where civil unions obtain many or even most of the same rights and privileges of married couples in ONE state, those do not transfer to any other state. Even in states where civil unions exist, there is question whether those civil unions created in other states can be recognized as the civil unions are often created for the residents of their states and only their states.

    Finally, for the Federal government to establish a ‘marriage’ or ‘civil union’ statute that would be applicable to all the states flies in the face of our federalism. The idea that the federal government can impose the characteristics of legal contracts between individuals is beyond the scope and authority of the Federal Government. (Note, the UCC is implemented individually in each state).

    And finally, do you find it implausible that by expanding the definition of marriage, additional legal challenges to purely “love” -based relationships will most certainly arise — that if the sexes of the marital participants are decided upon as arbitrary, and therefore unconstitutional, surely the number, it can be argued, is arbitrary as well?

    Marriage is first a joining of a couple, SECOND, it is a recognition by friends, family, community and state of that joining. The implication made by the final sentence suggests that polygamy is the ‘slope’ such same sex marriage advocates will throw us down. Personally I don’t have an issue with polygamy any more than I have a problem with parents teaching their children creationism. I COULD make the argument that a ‘marriage contract’ establishes the rights, responsibilities and privileges of TWO people that becomes a matter of legislation to try and address how three or more would share them – ie, the same problem of creating civil unions now. So, arguments to support civil unions actually supports similar arguments in support of polygamy more than they support an anti-same sex use of marriage.

    Let me address one thing often brought up in this debates but not here:

    Procreation is a CONSEQUENCE of some relationships. There does not have to be ‘marriage’ for it to occur, nor does a ‘marriage’ require procreation to validate it. Arguments that allowing same sex marriage will destroy marriage seem counter-intuitive to ME. People that WANT marriage, that seek to affirm the institution of marriage are more likely to support marriage than destroy it. We can point to the last 50 years of the decline of marriage not to same sex advocates but to heterosexuals that do damage the institution. I am not sure how many heterosexuals will get divorced to marry a same sex partner, or how many heterosexuals will avoid marriage because same sex couples can get married, but I bet the number will be significantly less than the statistically small number of likely same sex marriages that do occur.

    Marriage to me has always been about the love, trust, respect, caring for, the making two one. Definitions of marriage seem to be much more than ‘a man and a woman’.

    Some people are afraid that changing the meaning of a word destroys the word, in this case, using marriage for same sex couples destroys the meaning of marriage – as traditionally understood to be between a man and woman. Maybe that fear is well founded….and maybe if an institution needs the force of government to maintain it in the face of societies effort to change it, the institution has lost its position as a fundamental pillar of society – maybe we should encourage everyone to support an institution we believe to be a fundamental part of society rather than deny it to some we feel don’t deserve it….

  522. newrouter says:

    I imagine all kinds of silly nonsense was printed before gay marriage became the great white whale of our times.

    mr bh i think pw is a “language” site. my musing about when “gay marriage” made the lexis/nexis is apt. i see how the propaganda pipe is laid. the “tower of babel” crew are wanting in their mission

  523. bh says:

    The disappointing thing for me is that ‘feets poisoned-well lexicon of “gay hatred” and “social engineering” is gaining ground.

    Here at pw. It’s a sad thing.

  524. newrouter says:

    feets poisoned-well lexicon of “gay hatred”

    oh hatred and marriage are “gay” now. thanks for hijacking dat. the freaks of californication – go away.
    effin soviet clowns

  525. newrouter says:

    hey freaks of nature- that’s so gay!!11!!

  526. newrouter says:

    Blech.

    yes because 106 trillion dollars is so gay. laugh the decline a way. do it!

  527. bh says:

    I should comment less.

  528. newrouter says:

    I should comment less.

    there’s 106 trillion wise

  529. Pablo says:

    So nr is into the Drano again? Lovely.

  530. serr8d says:

    Erm…tracycole…

    Marriage is first a joining of a couple

    ..and a couple has been defined, for untold centuries, as a MAN and a WOMAN. A ‘coupling’ of men or a ‘couple’ of women does not a marriage make; nor does changing the laws in a few states make such couplings acceptable to those who hold fast to the original meaning of marriage. The original intent of ‘marriage’ is ‘to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces’. Two same-sex ‘couplings’ cannot take their genetic material and make ‘their’ child (sperm donations from a third party, or a ‘paid womb’ implanted agriculture-style by a dropper don’t count, because, third party). They are forever-by-biological-rule childless ‘couples’. They can adopt, but that, I believe, should also be proscribed; two same-sex individuals do not present a decent role model for a normal heterosexual child.

    You can revise words and make contracts all you like, but the bottom line is a biological certainty: homosexuals are dead-enders. Their genes cannot naturally reproduce, and that’s the reason they can’t, ever, get traditionally married.

  531. Jeff G. says:

    civil union” is inelegant and nobody knows what the verb form is plus if you ask any normal person to define a civil union between gay people they’re gonna say it’s like marriage for gay people

    — only different, because it’s not marriage.

    Keep going, you’re almost there!

  532. dicentra says:

    Marriage is first a joining of a couple,

    FIRST the joining of a man and a woman. Historically, no other types of pairings have been so sanctioned. WHY? Don’t cite the Bible, because non-biblical societies don’t do SSM either. It’s not all about reproduction, either, because societies don’t object to old folks getting hitched.

    The implication made by the final sentence suggests that polygamy is the ‘slope’ such same sex marriage advocates will throw us down. Personally I don’t have an issue

    Unfortunately, boasting about “not having an issue” with something has become a way for people to differentiate themselves from those squares with the hang-ups. It’s to show how tolerant you are, how unencumbered you are by old superstitions, how unjudgmental and caring and sophisticated and evolved you are.

    It doesn’t matter whether YOU have an issue with something; what matters is the CONSEQUENCE of something being embraced by a society.

    BTW, polygamy is very definitely coming next, if the apostate Mormons and the Muslims have anything to say about it. The papers have already been filed in court, right here in Salt Lake City. You think insurance companies and other “bennie” disburers are going to be cool with paying for seven wives and a couple-dozen kids?

    Procreation is a CONSEQUENCE of some relationships.

    Procreation is a consequence of one fertile woman and one fertile man copulating. Marriage is designed to make sure that the children they create are legally and socially connected to their parents. That is the primary purpose of marriage: to formalize a family structure, for the benefit of the kids. NOT for the benefit of the adults.

    There is also the secondary purpose, which is that a man and a woman each represent the two cosmic complementarities. One representative from each sex combines to form one complete person. SSM by definition excludes one of the sexes.

    Arguments that allowing same sex marriage will destroy marriage seem counter-intuitive to ME. People that WANT marriage, that seek to affirm the institution of marriage are more likely to support marriage than destroy it.

    You’re assuming that there aren’t plenty of anti-family, left-wing statists who are eager to use SSM to destroy OSM from the inside. I’ll refer you to my 8:28 for the rest of it.

    We can point to the last 50 years of the decline of marriage not to same sex advocates but to heterosexuals that do damage the institution.

    It’s called “piling on.” The entire society has become degraded in its understanding of human intimacy, sexuality, reproduction, marriage, and family. This has been by design. The less people are bound together in healthy family relationships, the more the state can step in and take over. There is a ton of literature on this: not by conservatives but by the leftists who are doing it.

    SSM is just one more stage, one more effort to erase boundaries, one more step toward no standards at all with regard to our understanding of human sexuality. The advances toward that end have not had happy results: why should we continue along that path?

    We’re playing with fire when we mess with society’s foundations. I’m not giving matches to the arsonists, thanks. Or if you want another metaphor, maybe the gangsters wielded the knives that cut our skin, but what done us in was the opportunistic bacteria that got in through the cuts.

    I am not sure how many heterosexuals will get divorced to marry a same sex partner, or how many heterosexuals will avoid marriage because same sex couples can get

    I’ve never heard anyone object to SSM by saying that currently married couples are going to divorce to marry someone of the same sex or that people will get grossed out by SS couples and not marry, so you can stow that straw man for now.

    Changing the COMPOSITION (not just definition) of marriage changes the whole culture, changes what we think marriage is, changes what we think sexuality is, and changes things that neither you nor I can foresee.

    Further, ‘traditional’ marriage did not have some legal protections that have changed the meaning of marriage from what was once considered fundamental, among those was the right of a husband to the affections of his wife such that she could not withhold them from his insistence.

    I don’t think you’ll find the term “traditional” in my arguments. I insist that marriage IS the union of man and woman. Traditionality is irrelevant. I refer only to the longstandingness of including at least one of each sex, despite the fact that homosexuals have existed as long as society has, and that people HAVE experimented with SSM, only to discontinue it.

    So you can stow that straw man away with the others you brought along.

    Marriage to me has always been about the love, trust, respect, caring for, the making two one. Definitions of marriage seem to be much more than ‘a man and a woman’

    To you? I really don’t care about your subjective opinion regarding marriage. Nor about mine, for that matter. The meaning and function of marriage is far deeper, far more spiritual, far more primordial, and far more impactful than anything our society is capable of recognizing at this point.

    I have no reason to believe that our society is qualified to modify marriage in a positive way. I defy you to prove otherwise.

    rather than deny it to some we feel don’t deserve it….

    It has nothing to do with deserve, not withstanding newrouter’s freak talk. It has to do with QUALIFY FOR. Blind people “deserve” to have everything that the sighted have, but we habitually deny them driver and pilot licenses. It’s not motivated by prejudice but by recognizing that limitations are real and that we can’t wish them away.

  533. tracycoyle says:

    No, I don’t have a problem with polygamy because I think people have the right to make their own choices about the relationships they want to be part of without other people getting to interfere in that choice.

    “The original intent of ‘marriage’ is ‘to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces’. ”

    That in fact MIGHT have been the original intent, except of course men and women were forming bonds long before ‘marriage’ was ever thought of. Or it might have been a way to establish ownership over a woman that had consequences for those that trespassed on that claim.

    And while you ‘don’t care about my subjective opinion regarding marriage’, your care about how I might or might not conform to your ideals of what it should be is as subjective an opinion as any other. Nothing changes for YOU if I choose to be with a same sex partner except your comfort level with my choices – and that comfort level is of no concern to me, nor should my choice be any concern of yours. If you feel that marriage is important, more spiritual, more soupy, then please, get married, encourage your children to get married and scorn all those that render marriage the hapless institution it has become, not at my hands but at the hands of the heterosexuals over the last two generations.

    Our society will change, nothing can stop it – certainly not a government demand that it not do so. I understand the desire to establish a benchmark and enforce it against all the barbarians at the gate, the PRINCIPLE that what was in the past has proven itself and therefore change can not be allowed for the frivolous and immoral, but yet change will happen and if marriage is such a fragile institution that it’s defense must be at all costs, then by all means, wage it.

    If same sex marriage fails, then let it fail. It will never be more than an oddity, an occasional edsel remarkable for it’s short burst on the scene and then disappearance. Or not.

    No one, not a single person that opposes same sex marriage on religious, moral or eschatological grounds will change their minds because I think individuals have the freedom to chose their own partners. I understand some don’t think I have the right to choose my partner, though I am unsure what then it is…a privilege? An entitlement? Granted by society through it’s militant/judicial arm – the government?
    Given some of the outcomes by the SCOTUS, relying on their judgment certainly is suspect, but they seemed to think marriage was a right…

    I understand that emotionally and philosophically my pursuit of happiness must be limited to what is historically sound and morally pleasing to others. Obviously, it is self evident.

    I am sure the Left wants whatever opportunity it can find to destroy…everything and if gays are available on Tuesdays and Wednesday and occasional Sunday mornings for society destroying duty the Left will happily avail itself of the opportunity. Nothing better than principle to be used against principle to eliminate principle as a stick to fend the Left off.

    “I’ve never heard anyone object to SSM by saying that currently married couples are going to divorce to marry someone of the same sex or that people will get grossed out by SS couples and not marry, so you can stow that straw man for now.”

    I’m sorry, see I get confused by how gays getting married then destroys marriage. If same sex marriage doesn’t stop heterosexuals from getting married, and it doesn’t destroy existing marriages, I’m not sure how letting same sex marriage happen destroys marriage. If 99% of all the marriages will be opposite sex marriages and they will still continue to happen, it seems that the problem is…..the 1% will ruin it for everyone else? The institution will fail and society will collapse?

    My liberty, my pursuit of happiness will bring down the very foundation of society if allowed to be freely exercised in a way that has absolutely no impact on anyone else’s choice. EXCEPT to allow me my happiness, my choice is dangerous because it sends the wrong message to impressionable people devoid of any other examples. My freedom is too dangerous to be allowed. My happiness is the substance of our demise.

  534. cranky-d says:

    You can choose whatever partner you want, and set up whatever relationship you want with however many people you want. No one here will stop you. No one here cares, really.

    It cannot ever be marriage, though, unless it’s one man and one woman.

    Why do you need something called marriage when it isn’t one? What purpose does that serve except to force others to recognize something that doesn’t exist under that definition? To me, all it means is another way to destroy what is in favor of something else, with no care given to any consequences.

    The only reason I can see is to have others validate your life choices. Why would you need that? Why would you need our approval? I certainly don’t need yours for any choices I make.

  535. Pablo says:

    My liberty, my pursuit of happiness will bring down the very foundation of society if allowed to be freely exercised in a way that has absolutely no impact on anyone else’s choice.

    Your liberty does not require that others regard your relationships in your preferred manner, nopr does it require that you be allowed to redefine words or societal institutions until they’re so you like them. Liberty is the maximum absence of coercion, not the ability to coerce.

  536. happyfeet says:

    Oregon is probably next that’s where that hotel is – the one they used for the outside shots of the one in The Shining it’s sort of a ski lodge though so it’s probably tricky to go there when it’s snowy and empty to where you would find long empty hallways and such

  537. Pablo says:

    And while you ‘don’t care about my subjective opinion regarding marriage’, your care about how I might or might not conform to your ideals of what it should be is as subjective an opinion as any other.

    Nonsense. You’re looking to change the status quo. My “opinion” is the long and universally recognized definition of the institution. Yours is that the whole of history had it wrong and needs to be corrected. The burden is yours to convince of a need for redefinition. I need only acknowledge what already is.

  538. happyfeet says:

    next for the marriagings I mean I’m not gonna really go on this trip i did a couple days in portland in September already right before I left

    basically gay marriage is one of those things where if it would be rude not to get a gift it’s pretty much the same as marriage from a practical perspective

  539. SDN says:

    The problem, tracey, is that “society” isn’t making that effort. Less than 2% of society (because there are gays who oppose SSM) has allied with a political party that relies on destroying any institution it comes across.

  540. SDN says:

    It assumes that one engages “voluntarily with another in good faith”.

    Which is at the root of my contention that we cannot form or keep a society based on that premise with Leftists in it. That leads me to the inescapable conclusion that a second Revolution followed by a second “expulsion of the Tories” is necessary.

    I have a structure with a terminal termite infestation. I don’t want to burn it all down out of spite; I want to burn it all down because it gets rid of the termites far faster and more surely than replacing boards ahead of the gnawing jaws will.

  541. happyfeet says:

    how gay people getting married has any affect on taylor swift finding love and settling down with a nice guy who thinks she hung the moon is a mystery to me but on a wednesday in a cafe you might could explain again how that works

  542. happyfeet says:

    man her wedding is gonna be almost as big a deal as when princess hipbones got hitched

  543. JD says:

    Right now the State of Wisconsin can fine and imprison someone for stating that their civil union is the same as marriage.

    bh – the new drive-by thespian claimed the above. I suspect it is qn outright fabrication. What say you?

  544. JD says:

    Finally, for the Federal government to establish a ‘marriage’ or ‘civil union’ statute that would be applicable to all the states flies in the face of our federalism. The idea that the federal government can impose the characteristics of legal contracts between individuals is beyond the scope and authority of the Federal Government. (Note, the UCC is implemented individually in each state)

    Yet you call for exactly that which you claim the Federal government does not have the power to do. Convenient, that.

  545. JD says:

    Marriage to me has always been about the love, trust, respect, caring for, the making two one. Definitions of marriage seem to be much more than ‘a man and a woman’.

    Your feelings are more important than silly things like the history of mankind, or definitions. Icky.

    I just read the rest of your passive-aggressive nonsense. Verbose drive-by’s claiming a self-proclaimed faux moral high ground are tiresome. Good on you for admitting you want to destroy the idea of traditional marriage as a pillar of society.

    Straw people and caricatures. Tiresome

  546. Pablo says:

    Good on you for admitting you want to destroy the idea of traditional marriage as a pillar of society.

    For happiness!

  547. leigh says:

    Someone needs to take the blue pencil to these dead of night posters.

    STET

  548. leigh says:

    happy, I’ve known Taylor since she was in preschool. She’s an immature git with marginal talent and wealthy parents. Take notice that she has been dating teenagers for the past year when she herself will be 23 tomorrow.

    Something wrong here, to quote Dr. Henry Lee.

  549. happyfeet says:

    she creeps me out and she’s less country than marie osmond even

    but she’ll do just about anything for money

  550. Darleen says:

    That in fact MIGHT have been the original intent, except of course men and women were forming bonds long before ‘marriage’ was ever thought of.

    I always love these assertions of history unaccompanied by any link to evidence.

  551. Darleen says:

    The entire society has become degraded in its understanding of human intimacy, sexuality, reproduction, marriage, and family. This has been by design. The less people are bound together in healthy family relationships, the more the state can step in and take over. There is a ton of literature on this: not by conservatives but by the leftists who are doing it.

    SSM is just one more stage, one more effort to erase boundaries, one more step toward no standards at all with regard to our understanding of human sexuality.

    . Brava, di! Brava!

  552. Blake says:

    Tracy knows he cannot find sanction for his idea of marriage with a church, so, he’s hitched his star to having government sanctify his idea of marriage.

    Except that, oops, there are secular reasons as to why marriage should not be redefined.

  553. Blake says:

    Btw, hat tip to Dicentra, Pablo, Ernst, SDN and Cranky. I learned a lot from what ya’ll had to say.

  554. leigh says:

    she’s less country than marie osmond even

    Dude, she was born in Reading, PA. And didn’t move to Nashville until she was eleven. Her entire Wiki page is chock-a-block with lies, too.

  555. Darleen says:

    I’m sorry, see I get confused by how gays getting married then destroys marriage.

    Are you really confused, or just an bad faith way to avoid confronting what di has said?

    When you radically change the definition of something, you may call it “marriage” but it has ceased to exist as marriage.

    And if you truly believe it just affects the 1% of the population, then you are woefully ignorant of current government policies that are already enforcing a “genderless” Brave New World: e.g. France banning the words “mother” and “father” from all government documents, Washington State banning “bride” “groom” from all marriage documents.

    Not to mention that public school textbooks will follow (and have already moved toward) in that grade school kids starting to study the subject of culture will not read the words “mother/father” or “marriage” or “weddings” or have a family defined as “mom, dad, kids”. Pictures in said books will have any “traditional” family in the minority, if at all.

    It’s the Life of #Julia that will be the norm … where government is a person’s God/Parent/Spouse will be implicitly and explicitly taught.

  556. Jeff G. says:

    Finally, for the Federal government to establish a ‘marriage’ or ‘civil union’ statute that would be applicable to all the states flies in the face of our federalism. The idea that the federal government can impose the characteristics of legal contracts between individuals is beyond the scope and authority of the Federal Government.

    Which is why I said if individual states wish to vote it in, that’s fine. But other states need not be forced to recognize it, unless those states agree to.

    Some states have different ages for marriage eligibility. And now, some states have different definitions for what comes to count as marriage. That’s fine. So long as the state the voted for it is the state responsible for it — not the others, who may have voted differently. There is a degree of reciprocality between states on certain laws, but that’s agreed upon by the states.

    As others have said, it doesn’t matter to very many of us here who is sleeping with whom; nor are we averse to their desire to sanction the union in a way that provides them with certain benefits that come with monogamy and commitment. What we object to is trying to force on us a definition of these relationships as marriages when they are not marriages, because marriages have nearly always included one man and one woman by definition and composition. Other arrangements have been tried historically — including SSM (which has turned out to be a disaster in Europe) and polygamy (also problematic in a society that relies on private property rights) — and largely abandoned. Unless you want to hold up Muslim polygamist culture as some kind of enlightened outpost for freedom.

    As Pablo notes, we don’t have a competing “opinion” about what marriage is. We have history and the status quo on our side, and as conservatives / classical liberals we recognize the need to proceed with extreme caution before upsetting one of the foundational arrangements of a civil society. Particularly when there doesn’t seem to be any reason to do it other than to force others to sanctify a certain arrangement or preference as being the same as some other, even when the two differ in composition, and so definition.

    It’s easy to push platitudes and go down the leftist road of emotional appeals about loving monogamous same sex couples feeling like second class citizens. But that’s silly. By not calling their unions marriage they aren’t being treated as second class citizens. They are being treated as people who have their own form of union that denotes a commitment to a single partner.

    Tell me, are we treating homosexuals as second hand citizens by noting that they are homosexuals? And if so, we’re here and we’re queer seems to be less about pride than about self-loathing and victim hood.

  557. happyfeet says:

    I don’t for the life of me understand why he didn’t like it when she wore high heels

    she’s like a weirdo loser magnet

  558. happyfeet says:

    maybe he was super short

    in which case she really should’ve been a little more sensitive

  559. happyfeet says:

    the history you think you have on your side includes the history of a little country what is pretty big on treating people equally

    I think the elderly lesbian the federal government stole all that money from was not treated equally to how the federal government would have treated my mom in that same situation after dad died

  560. LBascom says:

    You may think you’re advocating for the old lesbian to not have her money stole, but if you get what you are advocating for, it will end up with mom getting her money stole when dad dies along with the old lesbian. Marriage will become meaningless, not “fair”.

    JHoward will applaud, gays will rejoice, children will be fatherless. UTOPIA!

  561. happyfeet says:

    I don’t see how that necessarily is the case Mr. Lee I think the federal government should practice the same restraint about mugging old ladies when they’re married lesbians as when they’re married non-lesbians.

  562. bh says:

    Right now the State of Wisconsin can fine and imprison someone for stating that their civil union is the same as marriage.
    bh – the new drive-by thespian claimed the above. I suspect it is qn outright fabrication. What say you?

    I’m guessing it’s even legal to state that fishermen from Mars want to steal our earthworms.

    Maybe if you stated you were married on your tax forms when you weren’t then it might be tax fraud but that’s about the only thing I could imagine on this front, JD.

  563. LBascom says:

    They already do. It’s not governments fault the old lesbian wasn’t married, and chose cohabitation with another woman instead of getting married.

  564. happyfeet says:

    no the lesbians were married they got married in canada

    perhaps near a great lake

  565. LBascom says:

    Maybe we should redefine Canadian to mean American, and we wouldn’t have this problem. In fact, let’s just call everybody American, and it would solve the inequality born by illegal aliens! Brilliant!

  566. LBascom says:

    So if Mohammad and his twenty wives come to America from Saudi Arabia, we recognize his polygamy as legitimate? How about Ali from Uganda and his 9 year old bride? Good to go?

  567. Darleen says:

    griefer

    what about two unmarried sisters who live together their whole lives? Or two brothers? Or the son who stays home to take care of his elderly mom for 20 years? Or …?

    I can think of all manner of relationships that are not marriage between committed people based on love that will get no survivor benefits from SugarDaddy government.

    What makes lesbians more special than these others?

  568. happyfeet says:

    sisters can’t get married cause it would gross everybody out

    winter is stupid the wind off lake erie is inhospitable… I’m a drive out the peninsula anyway

  569. happyfeet says:

    im pretty sure if taylor swift got married in canada it would be a big fucking deal and nobody would question it

    man I bet she could ebay the dress for like a thousand dollars afterwards

    and that’s not including the shoes

  570. Darleen says:

    sisters can’t get married

    sure they can … as long as they each pick a man, just like lesbians can

  571. cranky-d says:

    My mom passed away in 1991. My sister lives with my father. She takes care of him, takes him to the doctor, cooks dinner, buys all the food, etc, since he has macular degeneration and cannot see well enough to drive or even read, though he can get around pretty well anyway.

    She is also somewhat dependent on his retirement income since she does not make very much as a substitute teacher. When he passes she is going to be in trouble, even though she will be able to live in the house as long as she wants to (and can afford to).

    So, perhaps they should be married, so she could enjoy his benefits when he passes. This is almost exactly the situation that argues FOR survivors to get benefits. Explain to me why this would be wrong, boosters of SSM for benefit’s sake.

    Let’s say it was me instead who was living with him and taking care of him (which would be the case if something happens to my sister). Should he and I then get married so I could get his retirement? If he married a woman my age, that would be the case I think.

  572. cranky-d says:

    The thing is, once you start redefining something, you introduce a cascade effect, and it makes it much easier to keep redefining until the entity you have been redefining no longer exists. The redefinition would not stop at the SSM marker.

  573. happyfeet says:

    I do not understand the preoccupation with incest here

  574. LBascom says:

    I do not understand the preoccupation with incest here

    It’s called willful ignorance. One of the strongest barriers known to man.

  575. leigh says:

    Aaaaand, here we are again.

    This isn’t about love and equality and all that happy crap. It’s about money.

  576. LBascom says:

    I’m warming up to my idea to modify “American”, or more precisely, “citizen”, in order to make it more inclusive. I mean, it ain’t right the government discriminates against those that, through no fault of their own, are not born here.

    We need to allow all with a foot on US soil to claim they are “citizens”, and these kinds of troubles would end overnight, and everyone could enjoy equality.

    “In the last few decades [Obama explained ], the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year,” Obama said. “Now, this kind of inequality — a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression — hurts us all.

    But do higher taxes on the rich reduce income inequality? Not according to a quick comparison of state inequality data and their corresponding tax codes.” […]

    That’s right: The three states with the highest income inequality also all share a border with Mexico. But what about New York? Or Georgia? Or Illinois (which is the sixth-most-unequal state)? They are all hundreds of miles away from Mexico.

    Well, it turns out that all of those states have huge illegal immigrant populations too. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, every one of the top five unequal states also is among the top 10 states with high illegal immigrant populations.

  577. cranky-d says:

    I do not understand

    Yeah, we know.

  578. cranky-d says:

    I effed that up.

  579. leigh says:

    That’s probably a good thing, Dave, since you were talking about incest and all.

  580. cranky-d says:

    Marriage != sex.

  581. tracycoyle says:

    to JD:
    Marriage. Section 13. [As created Nov. 2006] Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state. [2003 J.R. 29, 2005 J.R. 30, vote Nov. 2006]

    Wisconsin Statutes: 765.30 Penalties. (1) The following may be fined not more
    than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than 9 months or both:
    (a) Penalty for marriage outside the state to circumvent the laws. Any person residing and intending to continue to reside in this state who goes outside the state and there contracts a marriage prohibited or declared void under the laws of this state.

    Cranky: It cannot ever be marriage, though, unless it’s one man and one woman.

    That is your opinion, I disagree.

    Blake: I’m a she, and agnostic, I don’t need or desire a church to sanctify anything. My partner and I live in Wisconsin for 12 years, our friends, neighbors, community, schools, hospitals, businesses (and my partner’s church) recognized us a a couple – only the State did not. I never had any legal connection to our daughter until my partner died and I became her legal guardian because Wisconsin would not recognize any legal relationship.

    “That in fact MIGHT have been the original intent, except of course men and women were forming bonds long before ‘marriage’ was ever thought of.”
    Darleen: I always love these assertions of history unaccompanied by any link to evidence.

    Sorry that we don’t have much history in the form of records for the vast period before records were kept – but if you think ‘marriage’, the term and definition existed prior to either written records or even general language skills, ok.

    Pablo, the status quo is changing. There is a chance to support, encourage and reaffirm the nature of marriage by people that want to BE married, or tear it apart by trying to keep the ‘status quo’.

    I am not a leftist. I believe the individual is sovereign and that government, necessary evil that it is, is needed to maintain human society. By definition I am a classical liberal. My rights are inherent and do not include ‘rights’ to make others do anything for me, such as provide food, housing or health care, there are no rights to a job or an education.

    Jeff, By not calling their unions marriage they aren’t being treated as second class citizens.

    They are being treated as a different class. If you want to argue, and I think that you and Darleen have both done so, that civil unions should have the same rights, EXACTLY the same rights, you’d get no argument from me. But like the Leftists that have no desire to actually recognize gay rights EXCEPT as a means to destroy, there are those on the Right that have no desire to sanction a gay relationship at any level. The numbers of those on the Right are very small – I believe – and I also believe the vast majority on the Right don’t fundamentally care about gays and their relationships and are willing, even actively, to welcome gays into normal every day life – because their sexual preference is immaterial.

    Sorry that bad people use good things in bad ways. It doesn’t mean we should get rid of the good things. We oppose gun bans promoted by the Left because guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Gay marriage, which generally, maybe even overwhelmingly, is about the meaning and spirit of ‘marriage’.

    Jeff and Darleen, I enjoy this site, I agree more often than not with your takes on subjects, I’m a supporter and will continue to be so. We disagree on this subject (and maybe one or two others) but I believe in a commitment to individual liberty with the only limitation that it not interfere in the liberty of others.

    Jeff, I agree that words have meaning and that those meanings take forms. Change the meaning and you change the form. In general, I’d prefer to acknowledge that change IS going to occur and to be part of the process in managing it than to refuse to accept the change and let it be torn and pulled apart.

    See ya in the next thread…

  582. LBascom says:

    I effed that up.

    I thought it was excellent. Put emphasis on “we”…

  583. Darleen says:

    tracy

    Do you support criminal prosecution of a photographer who declines to take on as a client a same sex couple wanting their “wedding” photographed?

    Last I’ve seen no “Righty” is looking to jail/fine gays for living together … not true of SSM advocates.

    A same-sex relationship IS a “different class” because it excludes the opposite sex.

    You cannot hold that ss relationships are fungible with os relationships unless you think the sexes are fungible.

  584. cranky-d says:

    I once had a guy tell me that if you made an engine run on diesel fuel, that made it a diesel. He said this in ignorance of the fact that a diesel engine works a bit differently from other internal combustion engines.

    He also told me that his opinion was different from mine, and that his opinion of what a diesel engine is was all that mattered. He was wrong.

  585. LBascom says:

    Tracy, that was a thoughtful and dignified comment, thanks. Respectfully:

    They are being treated as a different class

    Is because they are a different class. The class that can’t produce children. It may be unfair, but then nature can be a bitch.

  586. cranky-d says:

    Remember, everyone, that when arguing with a progressive, you are arguing with someone who does not make decisions the same way we do.

    That is why we rarely find common ground. There are things we think are important that they do not.

  587. leigh says:

    Is because they are a different class.

    Beat me to it Lee.

  588. LBascom says:

    Yeah, well, Darleen smoked us both.

  589. leigh says:

    That’s what I get for taking a time-out to wrap gifts.

  590. leigh says:

    That’s a good site, cranky. Thanks.

  591. LBascom says:

    Happyfeet is always on about how team R needs to quit talking about social issues, but here is why they can’t.

    What Bruce Thornton writes about the Obama presidency is true of the neo-Marxist welfare state wherever it exists: the expansion of intrusive government power “in order to achieve dubious utopian notions like ‘income equality,’ ‘social justice,’ and ‘redistribution.’” As New York mayor Michael Bloomberg opined, “choice, gay rights, the environment are the real issues, more important than economics
    [emphasis mine]

    Here is why they shouldn’t

    The namby-pamby state has followed the recommendations of George Brock Chisholm, first director general of the World Health Organization, who, in a speech for the Conference on Education at Asilomar, California (September 11, 1954) advocating world government, advised: “it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family tradition, national patriotism, and religious dogmas.”

    The result should be evident to anyone with a modicum of intellectual clarity. We have embraced the spirit of self-contempt cloaked in the ideology of self-esteem. Scoured of intellectual virility and epistemologically neutered, we have become scions of a failed culture and, simultaneously, proud citizens of the namby-pamby state, celebrating the attributes that rob us equally of integrity and vigor. We have lost our sense of responsibility and self-respect, indeed, we have lost our very sense of individuality. As Victor Davis Hanson observes, we are now regarded as members of one or another tribe of the (presumably) dispossessed or deprived, a vision that “ignores all human individuality” while affirming a species of moral delinquency, limitless prerogative, and collective averaging-out.

  592. Darleen says:

    thanks for that link, cranky! I remember hearing about that study, and it kind of ties in with the article I posted about from The Telegraph about how “fairness” (aka equality of outcome) is destroying the West.

    Bug or feature up for debate.

  593. Blake says:

    Tracy, I apologize for getting the gender wrong.

    I second LBascom in regards to the thoughtful and dignified comment.

  594. tracycoyle says:

    Darleen, I am not going to defend the Left – they are not defending individual liberty they are attempting to destroy it using ‘rights’ as a bludgeon.

    As to the NM/photographer issue. I think when we as a society decided that the freedom to associate was no longer a right when someone opened a business that we abdicated a position in support of freedom of association. Arguing now that a business should be able to decide whom they will serve or not is 45 years too late – or if the argument was made then, it lost.

    When you give government the responsibility to teach the young, you lose the ability to decide what the young are taught. When you give government the responsibility to enforce associations on business, you lose the ability to decide which associations are enforced.

    I think a business should be able to refuse their service to ANYONE, for WHATEVER reason they choose. And a business can suffer the consequences of refusing to serve women, gays, blacks, Jews, Muslims or whatever they choose to refuse to serve.

    As to: You cannot hold that ss relationships are fungible with os relationships unless you think the sexes are fungible.

    In the forthcoming book I say:
    Socialism doesn’t work; it can’t work, because it demands humans’ act in ways that are not human nature. Individuals can go against human nature – we can choose to not procreate, we can choose to be vegetarians. But societies can’t. They are a function of human nature. Hobbes and Locke both noted that ‘humans are always at war’ with themselves and others. It is ‘the natural state of man’. One suggested we needed to give into that and impose civilization, the other suggested we harness and channel those desires. Socialism is the response of the first, capitalism of the second.

    I have a principle, I will not compromise on it. Attempts to make me compromise may succeed but only at the cost of tyranny against me. That is the path the Left has chosen – to apply it’s “moral principle of social justice” upon everyone. Imposing a moral principle on others will eventually fail which is why the Left will eventually fail.

    Male and female are different. Period. The idea that they are not is just delusion. That said, INDIVIDUALS can and do come up to and often cross that line that separates the sexes. They tend to be anomalies, several standard deviations from the norm, but they exist. Society should not adapt to make them ‘the norm’ but it should be flexible enough not to attempt to destroy them or marginalize them.

  595. newrouter says:

    First, the way that opponents’ arguments are heard are heavily influenced by the way that they are framed by the offence-takers, as is the impact that such words will have. As I will proceed to argue, communities of offence prime their members to take opposition personally, and to perceive strong disapproval of their actions or disagreement with their beliefs on the part of opponents as a personal attack. The very terminology of ‘hate speech’ will function as a self-authenticating designation in this regard. When all opposition to same sex marriage, for instance, has been labelled as ‘homophobic’, any debate is entirely loaded from the beginning, and it will be merely presumed rather than demonstrated that such opposition springs from an irrational systemic animosity towards homosexuals. Once this has been accepted anyone voicing such opinions will be perceived as being complicit in and expressing this systemic hatred, which merely reinforces persons’ sense of being victims of hatred, and opponents as being perpetrators of it. Likewise, the alienation and polarization that supposedly results from such speech is generally merely reinforced by the community that claims to deplore it.

    link

  596. LBascom says:

    I think a business should be able to refuse their service to ANYONE, for WHATEVER reason they choose. And a business can suffer the consequences of refusing to serve women, gays, blacks, Jews, Muslims or whatever they choose to refuse to serve.

    I don’t agree with this. Not in an absolute sense anyway. If Starbucks announces they will no longer serve a particular ethnic group, then they can’t open a store expecting to receive public services(water, sewage, garbage, sidewalks, street lighting, fire dept., etc.) paid for in part by that particular ethnic group.

    Also, in your refusing to serve list, some of those things weren’t like the the others. Rock Hudson coulda slipped one past the no gay guy’s business, but Sammy Davis sneaking past the no black guy’s? Not so much.

    He probably coulda messed with a no Jews business though.

  597. newrouter says:

    then they can’t open a store expecting to receive public services(water, sewage, garbage, sidewalks, street lighting, fire dept., etc.)

    starbucks doesn’t pay taxes?

  598. happyfeet says:

    Not in the UK apparently

  599. slipperyslope says:

    It’s not the next step that’s interesting, it’s the one after that. SoCons think that they have a chance to put up the wall and stop gay marriage in its tracks. But they don’t. We’ve passed the tipping point and more and more states are going to fall. The feds will recognize same sex marriages at some point.

    But it’s what comes after that that will be very interesting. Here’s how it’s going to play out.

    The losers (like the rabble here on PW) will be bad losers. You will have the photographer who refuses to provide services to a same sex wedding, the cake decorator who will refuse to put Adam & Steve on the cake, etc. And because of this intransigence, because of this insistence on the right to discriminate, the legislation will come down. The lawsuits will go up. The children and grandchildren will find you to be an embarrassment.

    It’s a wash, rinse, repeat of every other civil rights issue in the US.

  600. Darleen says:

    I think when we as a society decided that the freedom to associate was no longer a right when someone opened a business that we abdicated a position in support of freedom of association.

    So a person who creates art for a living is forbidden to turn down creating works that goes against their conscience …

    very cool … so I can force a black photographer to photograph a white supremacist wedding. Or a black author to write a laudatory biography of Jefferson Davis.

    Or force Catholic hospitals to provide abortions …

    Guess the Constitution is as dead as the real definition of marriage.

  601. happyfeet says:

    wtf is a white supremacist wedding?

  602. happyfeet says:

    and why would they want a black photographer exactly

  603. slipperyslope says:

    … because a white supremacist would obviously want to hire a black photographer to get the best pictures of their once in a lifetime occasion…

    Do you have any other unicorn examples?

  604. Darleen says:

    why would they want a black photographer exactly

    For the same reason a lesbian couple would want a Christian one when hundreds of others are available.

  605. Darleen says:

    and for the same reason the gaymafia sued eHarmony when samesex dating services are readily available.

  606. Darleen says:

    now, tell me again how churches will not be forced to perform samesex marriages or else?

  607. slipperyslope says:

    For the same reason a lesbian couple would want a Christian one when hundreds of others are available.

    They don’t. What happens is they go online and look for a good photographer in their area, look through portfolios, get references word of mouth, and call someone up. They start talking about the date, the location, etc, and when the woman mentions that she’s and sally can’t wait, the photographer says, “Whoa! I hate to break your heart, butch, but I don’t shoot fag weddings.”

    Which is a little different than doing a google search for “Conservative Christian Wedding Photographer” and calling them.

    now, tell me again how churches will not be forced to perform samesex marriages or else?

    Because churches, the KKK, the boy scouts, etc, are exempt non-profits. They’re exempt *because they’re in the business of discrimination* and are protected by the 1st amendment. Have you looked up why the boy scouts are able to keep out gay scout leaders?

  608. happyfeet says:

    I’m more concerned about these churches what are forced to do these white supremacist weddings

    it’s not right

  609. Darleen says:

    slipshit, obviously you don’t know the New Mexico case.

    Nice to know you’d allow a black photographer to be fined and threatened with loss of business license for refusing a Nazi gig.

  610. beemoe says:

    600+ comments repeating the same totally inconsequential shit.

    You people have all lost your fucking minds. On both sides.

  611. slipperyslope says:

    And unicorn weddings. How dare they? Happens all the time. tsk, tsk

  612. cranky-d says:

    Slipshod is honest at least since he admits he’s a fascist and that he’s okay with it.

    That’s something. Not very much, but something.

  613. cranky-d says:

    No one is forcing you to read any of this, are they, beemoe?

    Perhaps we don’t see it as inconsequential, even if you do. Did that thought ever pass through your mind?

  614. LBascom says:

    Here’s how it’s going to play out.

    I see things just continuing on the coarse (pun intended) we are on. The continuing elevation of the profane, the denial of economic realities, and the unconcern for our posterity. Oh, and yes, the legislation will come down. Lots and lots of legislation.

  615. happyfeet says:

    This is not a good issue for team R is all I know

    They still can’t even bring themselves to endorse civil unions, poor dears

  616. LBascom says:

    There is no good issue for team R these days. Your issue makes you a greedy cooperate 1%’er that wants the poor to starve and the air dirty. Probably racist too.

    At least no one can call you a lifeydoodle homophobe though, so ya got that going for you.

  617. happyfeet says:

    yeah team R is really in a pickle

  618. happyfeet says:

    they’ve made terrible leadership choices

  619. leigh says:

    BMoe has a bee in his bonnet whenever we talk about faith.

    Or so I have noticed.

  620. beemoe says:

    Got no problem with faith, leigh. Just don’t confuse it with reason, and don’t tell me your social policy is influenced by Leviticus.

    The main problem I have with this thread is it just shows how totally fucked our priorities are.

  621. serr8d says:

    beemoe, this ‘priority’ was dropped in our laps by a vocal subset of the far-Left, who sued existing laws for ‘redress’. Or whatever they want to wear in their little sham ‘weddings’.

  622. serr8d says:

    And ‘faith’ is what brung this Republic here together; the lack of faith – virtue is bringing her down. You’ll believe it when you see it, I suppose.

  623. happyfeet says:

    they’re much more flexible about jacking up taxes on people than they are about letting gay people get married

    which is kinda weird for a party that pretends to honor individual liberty

  624. serr8d says:

    I’m saying just bring back the Democrat tax rates, for all. Let the Clinton-era taxes be restored. These far-Left bastards don’t deserve George Bush’s tax rates any more. None of ’em.

  625. happyfeet says:

    if every last Gay got married over night how would Team R even know and even if they did find out wouldn’t they just get on with their day pretty much as planned

    or would it be like September 11 or like when Heath Ledger died

  626. LBascom says:

    I didn’t leave team R, team R left me.

  627. beemoe says:

    What is bringing this republic down is the welfare state, which is a product of who isn’t marrying, not who is.

    A post on that might get six responses.

  628. serr8d says:

    For so few, ‘feets, they sure are mouthy. But that’s how the far-Left works: agitate a bunch of kooks then use ’em as a weapon against our society. I think Alinsky wrote a book on it.

  629. leigh says:

    Just don’t confuse it with reason, and don’t tell me your social policy is influenced by Leviticus.

    No problem there. Faith is not reasonable and Leviticus was written for Levites.

    It’s not ‘my’ social policy by a long shot.

  630. LBascom says:

    if every last Gay got married over night how would Team R even know and even if they did find out wouldn’t they just get on with their day pretty much as planned

    The grins of a million lawyers would tip them off.

  631. leigh says:

    The hell? Happy is using caps for gay now?

  632. LBascom says:

    Happyfeet capitalizes pretty much at random these days.

  633. tracycoyle says:

    Darleen: So a person who creates art for a living is forbidden to turn down creating works that goes against their conscience …very cool … so I can force a black photographer to photograph a white supremacist wedding. Or a black author to write a laudatory biography of Jefferson Davis. Or force Catholic hospitals to provide abortions

    The photographer is not creating art for a living, she is offering a service to the public. It is her talent that she markets. And, as a result of the desire to impose a moral precept that regardless of the right of free association we would MAKE people associate with others they, for whatever reason, disliked, if they made themselves a business for hire to the general public. NOW we find that offensive? And of course when Whites hated blacks and found them offensive, we ignored them and said their offended sensibilities was an affront to our morally superior sensibilities. And when now on the receiving end of a similar argument, people are offended.

    I have made this argument before, on this site: if you desire to use a religious based argument (and I am NOT saying Jeff or Darleen are – but others do) to support creating laws, then when the religion changes in a community new laws base on THEIR religion will make clear the loss of liberty.

    The freedom to choose your customers was taken away from businesses for moral reasons – those reasons don’t stop because you stop liking the results.

    Darleen: Or a black author to write a laudatory biography of Jefferson Davis.

    If an author offered his services to write biographies, then he is in the same position.

    As for the hospital, that too was a choice that has been made that the consequences have led to places they did not want to go – I’d rather have that discussion in a different thread.

    Choices have consequences and when morality is introduced into law, it almost always ends badly. And I will note that ‘social justice’ is a moral precept the Left wants government to enforce that will end just as badly….

  634. leigh says:

    tracycoyle says December 9, 2012 at 6:03 pm

    Very good, Tracy. A few quibbles, but I’ll save it for a different time.

  635. Darleen says:

    The photographer is not creating art for a living, she is offering a service to the public.

    If an author offered his services to write biographies, then he is in the same position.

    Photography, like writing is a form of speech. You cannot compel speech

    This case is largely controlled by a United States Supreme Court precedent that the court of appeals never mentioned: Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705 (1977). Wooley, the New Hampshire license plate case that we discuss in detail below, makes clear that speech compulsions are generally as unconstitutional as speech restrictions. Wooley’s logic applies to photographs and other displays, and not just verbal expression. And that logic applies also to compulsions to create photographs and other works (including when the creation is done for money), not just to compulsions to display such works. Much of the reasoning used by the court of appeals is directly contrary to the reasoning of Wooley.

    Indeed, the court of appeals’ reasoning would produce startling results. Consider, for instance, a freelance writer who writes press releases for various groups, including religious groups, but refuses to write a press release for a religious organization or event with which he disagrees. Under the court of appeals’ theory, such a refusal would violate the law, being a form of discrimination based on religion, much as Elaine Huguenin’s refusal to photograph an event with which she disagreed was treated as a violation of the law. Yet a writer must have the First Amendment right to choose which speech he creates, notwithstanding any state law to the contrary. And the same principle, as we argue below, applies to photographers as well.

    Yet while Wooley provides important constitutional protection, it also offers an important limiting principle to that protection: Though photographers, writers, singers, actors, painters, and others who create First Amendment-protected speech must have the right to decide which commissions to take and which to reject, this right does not apply to others who do not engage in First Amendment-protected speech. This Court can rule in favor of Elane Photography on First Amendment freedom of expression grounds, and such a ruling would not block the enforcement of antidiscrimination law when it comes to discriminatory denials of service by caterers, hotels that rent out space for weddings, limousine service operators, and the like.

  636. LBascom says:

    Choices have consequences and when morality is introduced into law, it almost always ends badly.

    Like when this new gay morality is getting the introduction?

  637. Darleen says:

    BTW

    Without “religion” laws involving things like murder and theft have no foundation to stand upon.

  638. Darleen says:

    additionally, a lot of people make their living as speakers. Does the group approaching the speaker get to dictate the manner of speech? Or does the speaker get to turn down such a request?

  639. Pablo says:

    if every last Gay got married over night how would Team R even know

    Because they’d start insisting that they be considered just like really married people in every way, shape and form. Duh.

  640. leigh says:

    Apparently they do, Darleen. It’s one of the reasons FIRE was created.

  641. Darleen says:

    leigh

    I’m gobsmacked by the idea that somehow when money is involved, First Amendment rights go right out the window.

    Despite contrary examples, going into business for oneself does NOT mean one is a prostitute.

  642. serr8d says:

    Hmmph. One good thing that happened for me, as a direct result of this ‘gay marriage’ (a special privilege, not a civil right! forbidden by Jews, Christians and Islamacists alike!) forever war has been my discovery of, and downright love for Chik-fil-A (a private business that absorbed all the hatey-hate-hate the far-Left could throw, from the low-lifes gutter snipes of the streets to the Mayors and other elected ninnys of many of America’s largest shitty cities). Thanks! for that!

  643. Pablo says:

    The photographer is not creating art for a living, she is offering a service to the public.

    No, a pro is creating art. A hack is just taking pictures, but a pro is creating images, not just working the shutter.

  644. Darleen says:

    Leigh

    Thank God for FIRE (and others like Alliance Defending Freedom)

  645. Darleen says:

    Pablo

    If working a camera shutter was all that was needed, then people wouldn’t be looking for professional photographers … Uncle Bob with his smartphone would suffice.

  646. newrouter says:

    No, a pro is creating art. A hack is just taking pictures, but a pro is creating images, not just working the shutter.

    in a chemical based media i agree. in an electronic one even fools will get good shots.

  647. leigh says:

    That’s right, serr8d. I had forgotten your happy epiphany with the Chik-fil-A franchise. I wish they had one here.

  648. happyfeet says:

    some of y’all are just not receptive to the idea of gay marriage at all not even a little

  649. leigh says:

    Not really, nr. You have to know how to frame a shot, know your angles and shutter speeds and where the light is on your subject. Photographing humans is actually not easy or we’d all take our own portraits.

    A lucky snapshot doesn’t a portfolio or a studio make.

  650. JHoward says:

    Marriage will become meaningless, not “fair”.

    JHoward will applaud

    I will applaud that progressivism has ruined yet another institution, one of such importance and high spiritual trajectory that I said as much in this thread.

    I see.

    You haven’t just lost whatever argument you thought you were making, Lee. And you haven’t just lost my respect.

  651. newrouter says:

    A lucky snapshot doesn’t a portfolio or a studio make.

    the “pros” are taking multiple pictures too. back in the chemical era you are correct that angle shutter speed, et al are factors. you only had so many shots. digital media levels the playing field alot. see nyt

  652. leigh says:

    Civil Unions and Commitment Ceremonies are good enough.

    The gays have too many privledges that aren’t available to straight people and now they want to horn in on marriage, too. I’m tired of the press treated gays like some sort of hothouse plants; delicate flowers like the rarest of orchids to be babied along.

  653. Darleen says:

    You have to know how to frame a shot, know your angles and shutter speeds and where the light is on your subject.

    You have to know all that plus have the instinct of getting yourself in the right place at the right time

    and take a few hundred good photos for a couple of dozen awesome ones (and have the ability to pick those out, too)

  654. Pablo says:

    in a chemical based media i agree. in an electronic one even fools will get good shots.

    We’re talking wedding photogs. The good ones do a lot of staging, framing, etc… It’s not just about recording the ceremonies. It’s about creating memories that are better than what actually happened.

  655. JHoward says:

    the State of Wisconsin can fine and imprison someone for stating that their civil union is the same as marriage.

    Defending marriage — no matter that “marriage” tends to be defined for crap — shouldn’t include such unconstitutional provisions at the local level any more than there should be federal acts “defending” it, again typically based on bad definitions and unconstitutionality.

    Why isn’t it obvious what kind of State it becomes when everything you think, say, and do becomes subject to the prior art of federal law, regardless of your sense of how right or wrong those thoughts, statements, or acts may be.

    Maybe if I didn’t despise marriage like I apparently do I’d understand why we need law to grant and then protect wholesomeness.

  656. leigh says:

    and take a few hundred good photos for a couple of dozen awesome ones (and have the ability to pick those out, too)

    Got that right. Professional photographers are underrated since everyone, even Aunt Elsie, got a D-SLR and thinks they are automatically Ansel Adams.

  657. newrouter says:

    some of y’all are just not receptive to the idea of gay marriage at all not even a little

    no it is about proggtards using language to destroy western civ. that whole ” hey hey ho ho western civ has got to go” mind set. gay peeps are manufactured minorities. darwin tells me. he had pictures too.

  658. JHoward says:

    I do not understand the preoccupation with incest here

    Me neither, feets, but I’m sure that with enough federal wholesomeness we’ll stamp it entirely out in our lifetimes, starting with embargoing horny false prophets and their teenaged harems.

  659. newrouter says:

    It’s about creating memories that are better than what actually happened.

    are these grappled over in divorce proceedings?

  660. newrouter says:

    why are is the fed gov’t involved?

  661. Jeff G. says:

    I love it when JHo and the staunch one get together for a common goal.

    Here: let’s rewrite the Constitution thus: “Congress shall make no laws. But you aren’t allowed to kill or steal or rape or any of that sort of shit. The rest is all up to you. Because frankly, we as a government of the people representing the consent of the governed don’t have any stake in the people represented, and as far as consent goes, well, draw up a fucking contract and leave me alone.”

  662. Pablo says:

    You have to know all that plus have the instinct of getting yourself in the right place at the right time

    Right. They also create a lot of right times and places. I was a DJ for hire for years and worked a ton of weddings. The photogs do lots of coordinating to make sure they get the shots they want as they want them.

  663. happyfeet says:

    I just can go days and days without any incest thoughts usually

  664. JHoward says:

    If Starbucks announces they will no longer serve a particular ethnic group, then they can’t open a store expecting to receive public services(water, sewage, garbage, sidewalks, street lighting, fire dept., etc.) paid for in part by that particular ethnic group.

    Given that that’s practically impossible and I’m sure will also be seen as morally repugnant, how does this get implemented?

    Even if it can in some official form, we’re saying social justice derives from law?

    Okay, in this democracy, and with federal law tending to dominate, how do we establish that litany of wholesome things we are to live by that DC is to institute and enforce? Presumably God not being our standard any more, I mean.

  665. Jeff G. says:

    I think it quite appropriate to simply change however many years of the status quo definition for marriage to avoid looking like we’re trying to legislate “wholesomeness.” I mean, how “Leave it to Beaver” is that, amiright?

    I sneer at such things. Because I’m into liberty, like, big time. Now: ACCEPT WHAT I TELL YOU MARRIAGE WILL BE, REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU SAY WITH YOUR VOTES, HOMOPHOBIC ASSHOLES!”

  666. Pablo says:

    are these grappled over in divorce proceedings?

    EVERYTHING is grappled over in divorce proceedings, often at far more expense that the item being grappled over.

  667. newrouter says:

    Professional photographers are underrated since everyone

    you can learn how to do this on the internet for free. your digital camera shows the results right away. i used to develop my own film and print the results. freaking half the battle has been fought these days.

  668. happyfeet says:

    Erie btw is dazzlingly American and just a beautiful and nice place… will have to get back when I have more time

  669. JHoward says:

    Then responsible protections are just not your thing, feets.

    How are you about pretrial legal standards?

  670. tracycoyle says:

    Darleen: interesting that you linked to The Volokh. I read the post when it was put up (yep, been a long time reader of theirs as my business is working with attorneys in the federal courts) and one of the things that I saw (to our detriment and benefit) was judges that find a word or phrase in thousands of pages to turn their decision upon. It is one of the reasons why Clinton’s ‘it depends on what the definition of is, is’ gets no laughter from judges and attorneys, only agreement. I am not an attorney and certainly not of the caliber of Eugene Volokh, but I noted this in his brief:

    “And this full protection also extends to photography that is created to be distributed for money”

    That is not what is being done in this case. And I think it will turn on that – again, I am just an amateur, but I read federal court opinions every week, usually several. And judges hate decisions that compel one group of businesses to serve gay people but allow another group of businesses to refuse to.

    My position is that you can not compel a business person to provide services to whomever comes to their door with the money to purchase their services. However, that is not the law, nor the desire of 90% of the people in this country – people WANT businesses to be forced to deal with others that offend them, IF, those businesses want the license offered by the government to operate.

    If you agree/support that the federal government has the authority to negotiate treaties then there is no room to object to that AUTHORITY when they choose to negotiate shitty treaties. If government has the authority to compel a business to serve everyone that require no special accommodation and the service or product is offered to the general public as long as the buyer has the capacity to pay, then that authority continues even if someone is offended by those that seek their service or product. If it was good to help black people then it is not bad to help gay people.

  671. happyfeet says:

    I think pre-trial what sounds nice is just strong coffee spikered up with a little brandy…. Especially if it’s cold outside

    Weirdly, Erie this morning was vastly colder than is the land of Cleve tonight… And they’re not that far apart

    A lot of rain came through so maybe it brought warmer air along

  672. Pablo says:

    If government has the authority to compel a business to serve everyone that require no special accommodation and the service or product is offered to the general public as long as the buyer has the capacity to pay, then that authority continues even if someone is offended by those that seek their service or product.

    I’d like to know where that authority emanates from, Constitutionally speaking.

  673. JHoward says:

    Jeff, just to clarify, in that context my remarks were not directed at marriage, which I’ve both elevated and lamented, depending on its element, the element being the first thing to define before physical law ever gets involved.

    There the word ‘wholesome’ doesn’t not apply to the current treatment of the institution or the legal status of marriage, the State having already trampled both. Whatever the State can yet now be leveraged into doing pro-marriage doesn’t have anything to do with wholesomeness either, except by political majority opinion and I think we know what we think about majority opinion.

    Like you say, about marriage the status quo is what we have.

    As a measure, wholesomeness should never concern the State. Only the constitutional rights and basics should.

  674. leigh says:

    your digital camera shows the results right away. i used to develop my own film and print the results. freaking half the battle has been fought these days.

    Same here and I agree that all the sweatwork and those gross chemicals were indeed a hassle. I still don’t think that anyone and everyone can take a decent photograph. I’ve seen too many shitty examples of people’s ‘work.’

  675. newrouter says:

    “Now: ACCEPT WHAT I TELL YOU MARRIAGE WILL BE, REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU SAY WITH YOUR VOTES, HOMOPHOBIC ASSHOLES!””

    you betcha

    Faced with an opposing position that will not compromise in the face of its calls for sensitivity and its cries of offence, such a [new] mode of discourse lacks the strength of argument to parry challenges. Nor does it have any means by which to negotiate or accommodate such intractable differences within its mode of conversation. Consequently, it will typically resort to the most fiercely antagonistic, demonizing, and personal attacks upon the opposition.

    link

  676. LBascom says:

    I will applaud that progressivism has ruined yet another institution, one of such importance and high spiritual trajectory that I said as much in this thread.

    I believe you were advocating the government dissolve all ties to the institution of marriage. Did I get that wrong?

    You haven’t just lost whatever argument you thought you were making, Lee. And you haven’t just lost my respect

    I can dig it. And I didn’t figure that out way up there at “gay hatred”.

  677. newrouter says:

    I still don’t think that anyone and everyone can take a decent photograph.

    all i’m saying is that digital has lowered the skills needed for entry. composition et al can be learned. printing shit with chemicals is a nuanced skill that photoshop can overcome.

  678. JHoward says:

    I love it when JHo and the staunch one get together for a common goal.

    Here: let’s rewrite the Constitution thus: “Congress shall make no laws.

    Come on, Jeff; don’t mistake me on marriage. Somebody just tell me how any lines will ever drawn about either the next ten thousand or the last ten thousand laws, measures, or acts passed to reenact prior Rights or reestablish what had been sound practice and yes, status quo before we realize we’re just writing our way into an unsupportable tangle of divided ethics that are never going to reconcile but are going to regulate everything we do.

    Obamacare alone is going to confront hundreds of thousands of law abiding citizens with legal contradictions such that they’re going to break some law somewhere by doing something and another by not doing the same thing.

  679. JHoward says:

    I believe you were advocating the government dissolve all ties to the institution of marriage. Did I get that wrong?

    You mean other then when (I’d said) it should enforce private contracts?

    Yes.

  680. Pablo says:

    I believe you were advocating the government dissolve all ties to the institution of marriage.

    I wouldn’t say all, but certainly most. For starters, they ought not be dictating its parameters.

  681. newrouter says:

    the marriage thing is about the fed tax code installing another interest group into it’s embrace. deductions for : name a stupid/gay pet peeve

  682. newrouter says:

    that is why the silly orangeman should be attacking the proggtard tax regime with a flat tax. but stupid does stupid.

  683. SDN says:

    I’m forced to wonder why those who think that freedom of association is a bad thing don’t propose a Constitutional amendment to take that clause out of the First Amendment.

    Then I realize that its’ for the same reason gun banners don’t propose an amendment to repeal the Second: they would lose, they know it, and they would rather convert us into a government of men not laws so their whims can prevail.

  684. Slartibartfast says:

    Ok, I am now equipped with a gun safe, which is populated for the nonce solely by my .22LR bolt-action Marlin. Which I shot for the first time yesterday, through open sights. The open sights suck, BTW; am considering just putting a scope on and calling it a day. I can head-shot a zombie at 50ft, reliably, but at 100ft it’s dicey.

    Also got the wife a Ruger LCR in .38 special, which she will be able to pick up on Thursday, thanks to our cooling-off laws.

    Which: if you already have a gun, why do you have to cool off at all? It’s crazy.

    Now I can look for a handgun of my own. Waffling between .357 magnum and 9mm. I’m pretty much stuck between the simplicity and reliability of a revolver and the convenience of having over a dozen rounds in the magazine.

  685. tracycoyle says:

    JD: Yet you call for exactly that which you claim the Federal government does not have the power to do. Convenient, that.

    Government is already involved and I’d prefer if it were not. Gay marriage does not end marriage. I think the Right has conceded too much ground to the Left – if the Right believes that same sex marriage will destroy the institution of marriage – and I think most of us agree that is their intent – then the Left will do all it can to push same sex marriage down everyone’s throat for the sheer enjoyment of watching the Right destroy their cherished institution rather than ‘share’ it with gays. I’d prefer to engage in the process of strengthening the institution and arguing that bringing same sex couples INTO marriage strengthens THOSE relationships that are going to happen any way and to foster a sense that the OBLIGATIONS of marriage are just as much an obligation to same sex partners as opposite sex partners and that standards will be upheld in the rearing of children for both sets of partners.

    One of the most sacred institutions we have, a foundation of society, and an opportunity to engage a small – but loud – segment of society into that institution…I have fought for 15 years to tell gays that conservatism is their natural home politically – individual rights and liberties, and often all I get from my back is screams to get them the hell away.

    Marriage is an institution that is in trouble in this society and turning away people that want to participate and support the institution is….just not smart politics….

    Thanks to leigh and Lbascom for the nice words.

  686. Darleen says:

    tracy

    the issue becomes one of the First Amendment … you still haven’t address the fundamental difference between someone who is selling hot dogs and someone writing pamphlets.

    Hot dogs are non-speech commerce. Pamphlets ARE speech and fall within the direct purview of the 1st amendment.

    Ditto abortions … one cannot compel a doctor or nurse to participate, any more than the state can compel a doctor/nurse to participate in administering a lethal injection in a death penalty.

    You must realize that ministers EARN their living, including stipends for performing weddings. Following your “if you receive money, you give up your association rights” logic, then yes churches will be forced to perform same-sex weddings or polygamy weddings.

  687. Darleen says:

    tracy

    if marriage is radically redefined to include same-sex couplings, there is no argument against polygamy.

    It’s the rape of language. Who knew we’d get to a point that when someone says “rape” we all stand back, stroke our chins and say “exactly what do you mean by that?” rather than react in the horror “rape” deserves as a reaction.

    It’s because we’ve so stretched out the definition of rape to include stuff that has nothing to do with “real rape” (I even hate to say such a thing! Argh) that it has lost it meaning.

    Now we are going to do it with “marriage”? Now marriage will be about setting up a relationship for State/Federal benefits and any person (or number of people) will be allowed in “to make it fair”.

    Why NOT maiden sisters (not for sex, but to grant benefits to the survivor), a group of friends or a son taking care of his housebound, elderly mom?

  688. newrouter says:

    Marriage is an institution that is in trouble in this society

    start with the divorce laws honey. and the stupid grrl power stuff.

  689. newrouter says:

    Government is already involved and I’d prefer if it were not.

    so you are for a flat tax on income honey.

  690. newrouter says:

    One of the most sacred institutions we have,

    let it burn

  691. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I don’t have anything to add, I just want to drive the comments over seven hundred.

  692. Mike LaRoche says:

    I don’t think we’ve had a comment thread this long since pdbuttons’ haiku thread two years ago.

  693. happyfeet says:

    Merry Christmas Mr buttons

  694. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Waffling between .357 magnum and 9mm. I’m pretty much stuck between the simplicity and reliability of a revolver and the convenience of having over a dozen rounds in the magazine.

    I believe I read somewhere the 9mm is more common than .357, and therefore more scavengeable.

    If you’re really worried about zombies.

  695. tracycoyle says:

    Darleen, perspective. That is the difference. The Constitution says government can’t ban speech and Eugene and I assume you, argue that the same ban applies in the reverse – you can’t mandate speech. The hot dog vendor and the photographer each have a product for sale – a customer comes and seeks to purchase and our society has decided that the hot dog vendor must produce but you and Eugene and others argue the photographer can’t be compelled because the product, in a different context, is protected from being banned.

    I don’t LIKE the idea that government can compel anyone to serve a customer they don’t want to. I don’t think there is anything in the Constitution that gives it that authority – but I feel the same way about social security, medicare, and obamacare – but I am distinctly in the minority. Anti-discrimination laws are infringements on our right to associate…but that ground was conceded a long time ago and I haven’t seen anyone here on this site advocate for repealing them. Now a group comes demanding anti-discrimination for their benefit and people are all against it. Sorry, that ship sailed.

    Now..as to abortion – I really would prefer somewhere else to here for this: do no harm. That is the principle doctors/nurses hold dear and government has seen fit to support them. Abortion does harm – at least it is being argued as such (and to some degree I agree), so I am willing to let doctors/nurses ‘off the hook’ on the specific procedure of abortion choices.

    As for churches, I would argue that religious sanction can’t be compelled. I know the left is fighting to destroy institutions and again, I will not defend them because it is not about liberty that the Left is fighting for, but I will say that churches that get involved in political fights, churches that perform marriages to non-supplicants risk being categorized as businesses offering a product/service to all comers don’t have much leg to stand on when the line they cross gets moved.

    I don’t make any argument against polygamy. Although one could be made that rights and responsibilities in a ‘marriage’ become untangled and confusing and that confusion would require vast amounts of litigation to resolve, much the same as civil unions does – whereas marriage has been well established.

    And I understand you consider it ‘radical’ redefinition. I don’t.

    I dislike your use of the term rape of language for exactly the reason you abhor it – it’s the wrong use. Language changes. Yes, a change in language can cause a change in form but is it happening here? Or did the change already occur and the language is just catching up? Which is kinda my point – arguing the change in the word is like closing the barn door – same sex relationships have been happening for a long time, and for at least 20 years they have been generally accepted. V and I partnered in 1994 and V adopted CJ in 1995. We were accepted as a family by friends, family, neighbors and the communities we lived in. Including at one time, rural Montana.

    Language is catching up with reality – same sex couples have been around for a while and accepted by vast (but maybe not a majority) amount of society. The vast majority of the people HERE, in this thread, accept that same sex couples exist and have no desire to break them up or marginalize them. Language is a lagging indicator, the institutions have already changed.

  696. Ernst Schreiber says:

    New idea for a revenue stream for Jeff. He posts a Gay Marriage: abomination in the eyes of the Lord, or the wave of the future? poll, and then charges $1.25 for people to vote.

    For $2 you can leave a comment as well.

  697. Ernst Schreiber says:

    If a place of business has a “we won’t serve the Irish” policy, and that offends you, why would you do business with them? Why not go to the guy with the “Irish kindly welcomed” sign? Or if there isn’t one, encourage somebody to put one up? Or better yet, start your own?

  698. newrouter says:

    I don’t make any argument against polygamy. A

    thank allen you clown

  699. newrouter says:

    Language is catching up with reality

    so fag marriage was 1980’s. good allen the troll is “gay”

  700. newrouter says:

    or Gay

  701. newrouter says:

    white wymens are dumb the darky wymens are dumber. viva la sharia!!11!!

  702. Darleen says:

    tracy

    Of course gay relationships are accepted … but why does that mean we have to radically redefine marriage to recognize them? Companies extend benes to domestic partners, some churches conduct commitment ceremonies. So why the insistence on being included in a definition that has never ever included such relationships? Since the sexes are not fungible, ss relationships are not fungible with os ones. So call it something else, because it is something else.

    Call it what you want, but it isn’t marriage. Or if you insist on calling it marriage it destroys what the word is. A person can’t say “I just got engaged to be married” and have people know exactly what that means.

    It’s the corruption of language to promote a societal change.

    You see it in publik skools all the time.

  703. tracycoyle says:

    Because it is marriage – for all the reasons marriage IS, it is. I understand you don’t see it that way or agree with that, that it CAN’T be the same. I agree it is different, but not.

    Every marriage is different, each is unique and they all change over time. No one will doubt that the commitment and love V and I shared was deeply felt and it absolutely was not the same as a husband loves a wife. I know. I once was in an opposite sex marriage. I’ve been in both, same and opposite sex marriages. They were different…and not. Everything that you want a marriage to be, we had. It wasn’t a marriage in any legal sense – no church sanctioned it, no state validated it.
    (there were 10 years between relationships and I was never in any lesbian relationship prior to V, there was no abuse in the marriage…she was just…amazing)

    Darleen: It’s the corruption of language to promote a societal change.

    The change has occurred. It happened before the language changed, the language is just trying to catch up.

  704. LBascom says:

    The change has occurred

    Says who?

  705. tracycoyle says:

    I do. You did (you kinda being a generic person on the Right because I don’t actually know your position LBascom). The general acceptance of society of gay relationships as ‘valid’ in the sense they would not be subject to criminal/civil sanction and broken up.

    When the schools let me pick up our daughter, visit my partner in the hospital, buy our home together, when our families sent Christmas cards and our neighbors invited us over for bbq and family celebrations. When employers let us put pictures of our families on our desks and churches invited our children to their community functions.

    Forget the culture and it’s attempts portray gays in their maligned ways, good people recognized that good people were part of the community and what they did in the privacy of their own homes was their business.

    Parents want the best for their children and when one comes out gay, they still want the best for them. Regardless of what Dick and Liz Chaney thought about homosexuality 40 years ago, they want their daughter to have all the same liberties and chances any other child has.

  706. Ernst Schreiber says:

    In theory, a guy could have his testicles removed, a boob job, a shit-load of estrogen injections etc. and call himself a woman, but that wouldn’t make it true.

    Nor does the fact that it happens and is somewhat accepted make it true.

  707. tracycoyle says:

    Maybe not, but if everyone calls her ma’am, then it really doesn’t make any difference.

    If the vast majority of society treats a gay couple as ‘married’ in everything but name, then the name becomes meaningless…at least any distinction it might suggest.

    V and I used the term, partnered. We didn’t need the term for people to treat us as a couple and no one that I noticed ever called us ‘married’. The designation ‘married’ would have changed nothing in our social lives but would have had a significant impact in our legal one…primarily, it would have allowed me to adopt CJ.

  708. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Not that anyone cares at this point, but I think what it all comes back to is how one defines the basic building block of society –the family or the individual. If society begins with the family, then the defenders of the status quo are correct. If it’s the individual, then why not let three guys two gals and llama form a union?

  709. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Maybe not, but if everyone calls her ma’am, then it really doesn’t make any difference.

    Respectfully, I prefer my language reflect reality rather than create it, (which is what I think you’re trying to do with your argument that the language hasn’t caught up to the reality.)

    Creating reality via languistic contortion is what leads to chocolate rations increasing to 10 grams from 15.

    Fortunately though, we’re only at the unexpectedly stage

  710. Ernst Schreiber says:

    The reason I think you’re trying to create reality rather through language rather than confroming language to an altered reality is that the push for “marriage” is to lay a claim to society’s approval rather over and beyond tolerance or even acceptance.

    Just to round out the previous comment.

  711. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Forget the culture and it’s attempts portray gays in their maligned ways,

    Maligned how? Like the way popular culture, as expressed in the media, maligns Republicans? Conservatives? Ordinary Middle-Class suburbanites? Entrepeneurs? The Military? The CIA?

    I mean, let’s face it, there hasn’t been a really good gay villain since Martin Landau tried to toss Eva Marie Saint off of Mount Rushmore.

  712. tracycoyle says:

    My partner passed last year and I don’t ever expect to partner or marry again – and I plan on living to 137. V and I were together almost 19 years and our daughter turns 18 in a couple of weeks. I don’t need or care about approval, acceptance or even tolerance at this point. If I really didn’t care about the issue from an individual liberty point of view – and yes, I think the individual is the first building block: my principle is the individual is sovereign – then I could just sit back and watch because I think the die has been cast. If society survives the potential disasters of economic disaster, technological collapse and malignant fortunes, same sex marriage is a done deal – only how long it takes is in dispute: this generation or the next.

    The cultural representations of gays still has significant stereotype qualities – and I note mostly accurate ones – but it doesn’t reflect a portion of gays that live their lives much like V and I, part of your average suburbia communities.

  713. serr8d says:

    My partner passed last year and I don’t ever expect to partner or marry again

    I know from where you come. We were married 26 years; our daughter turned 24 this year. One and done, buddy, one and done.

  714. SDN says:

    Slart, one reason to get the .357 is that you can practice with cheap(er) .38 Special while keeping 3-4 boxes of .357 for the zombies…..

  715. serr8d says:

    There’s legal precedent for SCOTUS to protect marriage

    Nevertheless, there remains a way for the Court to resolve the narrower legal issues presented to it without foreclosing public deliberations on the more profound philosophical questions about marriage. A recent decision out of the United States District Court in Hawaii, in the case Jackson v. Abercrombie, suggests a way for the Supreme Court to move forward without (further) undermining its prestige and integrity. If the Supreme Court is looking for morally neutral ground upon which to stand, it could do no better than to read this decision carefully.

    Like California, Hawaiians struck a considered compromise on the marriage question. Hawaii extends to same-sex couples who enter into civil unions all of the rights and privileges of marriage, and reserves the term “marriage” for one-man-one-woman unions. For this reason, the challenge to Hawaii’s laws, like a similar challenge arising out of Nevada and the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 that the Supreme Court is preparing to hear, threatens to lure the judicial branch onto dangerous ground. The courts cannot require these states to recognize same-sex relationships as marriages on the ground that same-sex couples are entitled to the benefits, protections, rights, and responsibilities of marriage; these states have already extended those entitlements to same-sex couples. The only remaining basis for judicial action on behalf of same-sex couples is a ruling that the intimate commitment of a same-sex couple is a marriage. That ruling would codify in the fundamental law of the land in the moral beliefs of judges.

    … If the state is not allowed to distinguish among different types of personal relationships, then it has no ability to identify the social benefits of any type of private sociability. The district court noted this danger in the Abercrombie decision. “Once the link between marriage and procreation is taken away, and encouraging a socially desirable family structure is deemed irrational, there is no rational limiting principle for other types of relationships” to be excluded from marriage. This is not a slippery-slope argument. It is a matter of the limits of language.

    This is a narrow ground for rulings in the marriage cases. It leaves unaddressed the important questions of what marriage is and of how it should be defined in law. That is precisely why the Court should find this approach attractive.

    The ruling found that marriage is an institute well worth protecting, and found so without using troubling moral arguments. I’m thinking this case will be used as a light in the darkness, and serve as a model for the SCOTUS ruling.

  716. serr8d says:

    Don’t get a 9mm, Slart. The .40 eclipses that mightily. Wheel guns are fantastic, but limited to 6 rounds.

    There’s a reason DHS purchased 450 millions rounds of .40’s. It’s good stuff.

  717. Slartibartfast says:

    I believe I read somewhere the 9mm is more common than .357, and therefore more scavengeable.

    If you’re really worried about zombies.

    I hear you.

    Slart, one reason to get the .357 is that you can practice with cheap(er) .38 Special while keeping 3-4 boxes of .357 for the zombies…

    This is kind of what I was thinking. .38 special is everywhere; if’n I can’t find .357, I can still shoot .38sp through the same gun.

    But as I said: still waffling. The wife is fixated on common ammo, which probably means I will be going the .357 route and we’ll just stockpile a whole lot of .38sp normal zombies, keeping .357 in reserve for the giant, mutant, blade-wielding flesheaters. I’d go Smith & Wesson’s 686 Plus (7-shooter; 4″ barrel. Or maybe S&W 627, which actually has an 8-round cylinder.

    I’m thinking Sig, Glock or Ruger for 9mm. Ruger’s 9mm offerings seem kind of scant, while Sig’s are legion. Too many choices.

  718. Slartibartfast says:

    But the Ruger GP100 looks affordable and good, so I may go that way.

  719. serr8d says:

    Oh. Carefully reading back, I find that TracyCoyle is actually a female. I had her pegged as male, for whatever reason.

    So much namby-pamby indecision and inexactitude. I should’ve known all along I suppose… }

  720. Slartibartfast says:

    For 9mm I am looking Sig P250 or Glock 17 or 19.

  721. leigh says:

    Tracy, I recall you have posted about your daughter before.

    I, for one, would like you to stick around if you choose to. I don’t think you are a troll at all. You are quite thoughtful and have a different perspective on this situation than do most of us. It is seldom that I have run across an honest to goodness non-leftist lesbian and I would like to hear more of your views if you choose to share them.

    Thanks for your honesty.

  722. dicentra says:

    That in fact MIGHT have been the original intent, except of course men and women were forming bonds long before ‘marriage’ was ever thought of.

    You don’t know that. None of us has the ability to peer into the mists of the past and see what our “primitive” ancestors were doing, not even anthropologists and their educated guesses. We can only look at what we know to exist and to have existed and to evaluate its consequences.

    Nothing changes for YOU if I choose to be with a same sex partner except your comfort level with my choices –

    My comfort level is not an issue, because this isn’t about me or you or anyone else. It’s about what happens when society embraces a concept of marriage in which sex/gender is irrelevant. Non-chalance, even by the whole society, means jack when it comes to consequences.

    if marriage is such a fragile institution that it’s defense must be at all costs, then by all means, wage it.

    Can I wage this war without being branded a h8r? Do I get the legitimacy of my convictions?

    I appreciate that you’ve come here and presented your case in a calm and measured manner. Unfortunately, others are less willing to oppose me on philosophical grounds and would rather make me into the next Hitler. The attempt to deny business permits to Chick-fil-A got shouted down this time, but those mayors had reason to think that what they were doing was OK. Five years from now, if current trends continue, such persecution will be accepted as “fair.”

    I’m not sure how letting same sex marriage happen destroys marriage.

    If the value in marriage—its very core—is the union of the two sexes, then SSM erases that. Instead, marriage is any two people who dig each other sexually and want to form a household and share bennies. Of course it doesn’t stop heteros from marrying each other, but it does mean that marriage only unifies the sexes by accident, not by design.

    Look: I totally understand the pro-SSM position. It’s about equity, fairness, anti-bigotry. It’s an attempt to get society to stop treating gays like freaks and perverts and to allow gays to participate in family life the same as anyone else without getting the stink-eye.

    I’m sorry. It’s a tough row to hoe. My first two boyfriends and several other crushes were closet cases who desperately fought against their feelings but couldn’t switch them any more than I can. I ache for their predicament.

    But the unfairness isn’t in the law or custom: the unfairness is that people are gay to begin with.

  723. Jeff G. says:

    My sister has been living with her girlfriend for years. Her girlfriend has a child from a previous marriage to a man. I don’t hate my sister nor her partner, nor am I bigoted against them. In fact, the stability of the relationship has proven beneficial to my sister, who has a bit of a wild streak in her.

    I fully support their relationship. Unless the wish to call it a marriage. For many of the reasons I’ve outlined over the years (I’m particularly concerned with what a left-leaning court w/ a “Living Constitution” interpretive framework, petitioned by leftwing social engineers, might do with such a redefining of the term), and for many of the reasons dicentra, among others, have outlined here.

    My position here is legally conservative. In other instances, I’m far more legally libertarian (I voted for instance to allow pot to be sold in CO). But in each case I try to consider the question through the lens of constitutionalism in general and federalism where applicable. I believe that’s the way the system was designed — and appeals to feelings or inconveniences simply can’t be allowed usurp the underlying governmental structure that should be used to decide these kinds of issues.

  724. dicentra says:

    What leigh said.

    You’re not a troll and deserve to be answered with courtesy.

    I’m also sorry to hear about the loss of your partner. That must be exquisitely painful.

  725. tracycoyle says:

    Dicentra: None of us has the ability to peer into the mists of the past and see what our “primitive” ancestors were doing, not even anthropologists and their educated guesses.

    While my daughter has an interest in anthropology, mine is only a casual notice but even at that, understanding that small family groups forming tribes long before there were written records is not much of a reach.

    Dicentra: Can I wage this war without being branded a h8r? Do I get the legitimacy of my convictions?

    I think I have been respectful, and I note that the Left does not fight for liberty and I don’t defend them. I also note that the Right is not without blame – I get crap from both sides. I think people’s beliefs are vitally important and I think they should be respected.

    The Chick-Fil-A fiasco was just dumb – but I don’t think anyone credits politicians with a reasonable level of intelligence. The Alderman that sparked the issue in Chicago serves the area commonly referred to as Boys Town: the predominantly gay area of the city. And unlike the Castro District in SF, it is not monolithic. I know the area well, know some of the movers and shakers and the serious ones banged their heads on desks and walls when he (the Alderman) got all stupid on camera. I heard later he was basically told to shut up – he is not a member of the community but panders well. I BTW did not go to Chick-Fil-A on appreciation day, but did go for the first time later that week…CJ and I both like the waffle fries…

    Dicentra: If the value in marriage—its very core—is the union of the two sexes, then SSM erases that. Instead, marriage is any two people who dig each other sexually and want to form a household and share bennies

    I would argue that as an institution, it has been seriously degraded by heterosexuals that don’t take it very seriously. Wouldn’t the institution be strengthened by allowing those that want to take it seriously to participate?

    You and everyone else might be right. Allow 1 couple out of every hundred to be gay and the 99 other couples will consider the institution not quite as important or sacred. If anyone can marry, what significance can it hold? Maybe marriage is like our Republic…it needs moral people because it can’t bestow morality. What good is a vow to love, honor and cherish when the groom slept with three of the bridesmaids in the last year before the wedding? I respect marriage.

    You don’t need marriage to make babies. Giving everyone ‘the bennies’ without the commitment seems to be a good way to weaken the institution more, not preserve it. 72% of black children are born out of wedlock, 38% of white children are. Gays didn’t do that.

  726. dicentra says:

    About how the fight to solidify and strengthen marriage far predates the SSM issue:

    [R]edefining marriage to include same-sex relationships was not ultimately about expanding the pool of people eligible to marry. Redefining marriage was about cementing a new idea of marriage in the law—an idea whose baleful effects they had spent years fighting. That idea—that romantic-emotional union is all that makes a marriage—couldn’t explain or support the stabilizing norms that make marriage fitting for family life. It could only undermine those norms.

    Indeed, that undermining already had begun. Disastrous policies like “no-fault” divorce, too, were motivated by the idea that a marriage is made by romantic attachment and satisfaction—and comes undone when these fade.

    Same-sex marriage would require a more formal and final redefinition of marriage as simple romantic companionship, obliterating the meaning the marriage movement had sought to restore to the institution.

    I would argue that as an institution, it has been seriously degraded by heterosexuals that don’t take it very seriously. Wouldn’t the institution be strengthened by allowing those that want to take it seriously to participate?

    I wish that were true, because I know that there are plenty of gays who are perfectly capable of holding up their end of a lifetime commitment and of being responsible, capable parents. (And, of course, heteros who are behave despicably toward and within marriage.)

    What good is a vow to love, honor and cherish when the groom slept with three of the bridesmaids in the last year before the wedding?

    Hey, I’m with you on that. I’m a 49-year old virgin because I’ve never found someone to marry. (NO. REGRETS.) You can’t have healthy marriage without healthy sexual behavior prior to the vows, and promiscuity isn’t healthy for anyone. Our sexuality is the most tender, sensitive part of ourselves, and we do ourselves terrible injury with the vulgarity and carelessness with which we treat it.

    I hope we (or some of us) can disabuse you of the feeling that our objection to SSM is predicated on being squicked-out (OMGross! Ghey Sex!) I’m squicked-out by the thought of my parents and siblings going at it (actually, by the thought of pretty much the whole population doin’ it), and my subjective reaction has jack-all to do with whether it’s right or wrong.

    I wish there were a way to help people in your situation that wouldn’t harm our already-degraded concept of marriage and sex, but I can’t see one. Civil unions are still a second-rate arrangement that feels like a compromise, but gays won’t stand for being unequal there, either, nor would I blame them.

  727. tracycoyle says:

    Dicentra, V and I were friends, part of a larger social group, for almost a year before the idea of a ‘date’ even occurred. And I caught her off guard with the request. When we partnered she had been a divorce attorney for over a decade and swore no marriage for her (if someday marriage were available to gays), but she asked me to make one commitment, that no matter how hard things got, that I would try to make it work one more time. Once or twice I had to remember that commitment. Our almost 19 years together is a rarity in the gay community – though we had friends together longer – having friends that survived twenty and more years together without a piece of paper or societal support, often without family support IS the definition of commitment that goes way beyond the ‘romantic love’.

    Society and we have changed. There is a lot terrible with ‘traditional marriage’ as practice in our history and I am glad we changed it. However, to the link you provided:

    “So it’s not surprising that the leading opponent of redefining marriage today, Maggie Gallagher, was active throughout the ’80s and ’90s in this marriage movement. She wrote a book in the late ‘80s on how the sexual revolution was “killing family, marriage and sex” and “what we [could] do about it;” in a 2000 book she made “the case for marriage,” showing the many ways that marriage is better for couples than cohabitation.”

    Victoria noted the damage divorce and ‘a casual disregard for the vows’ was causing to marriage way back in the day when we first met and she talked about divorce and her clients. That is why I think the same sex marriage debate is a distraction for heterosexuals – an excuse to lay the blame. And why I think I think the argue FOR marriage should include those gays that ‘get it’.

    In the end, I argue for liberty and individual rights, I am opposed by definitions and society’s needs. My individual liberty doesn’t matter because it is for the good of all, the good of the society, it’s for the children….I get it from both sides.

    Dicentra: I wish there were a way to help people in your situation that wouldn’t harm our already-degraded concept of marriage and sex, but I can’t see one

    I didn’t need help, V and I and CJ didn’t need help, we needed government to treat us like other couples. No one in our daily lives ever came with open hostility to us (but I know there was hostility because others told us it was there) because no one challenges me publicly….apparently I intimidate people. V asked why I didn’t mind public displays of affection when she had been a lifelong lesbian and public activist and she even hated to hold hands in public. I don’t her I don’t care what others think. We were a family and we did family things, if people had problems with it, I don’t care about their problems.

    For all the reasons I think conservatism is the natural political home for gays, proponents of gay marriage – not the leftist hate mongers that use ‘rights’ only as a battering ram against individual rights – but serious people that get it are a natural ally in the defense of marriage. WE WANT a strong institution of marriage. WE BELIEVE in a strong institution of marriage. WE AGREE that it helps solidify the couple, the community and society. When you support an institution on a foundation of individual rights you strengthen the institution and our form of governance. Every time this society has fought for the individual right, it has done well for them and itself. When it has fought against the individual right ‘for the good of society’ it has damaged them and itself.

  728. dicentra says:

    WE WANT a strong institution of marriage. WE BELIEVE in a strong institution of marriage. WE AGREE that it helps solidify the couple, the community and society.

    You are providing good arguments in defense of your position. Almost thou persuadest me to be pro-SSM. :-)

    I’m afraid I must stay where I am, though, solely on the basis that society’s foundation must not exclude one of the sexes, and that the ideal of uniting the cosmic complementarities must be upheld, if for no other reason than to civilize men (though there are many other reasons besides.)

    Now if we could get women to raise the price of nookie, men might have to grow the hell up before they get some. A powerful motivator indeed.

  729. tracycoyle says:

    I don”t want you to be pro-ssm, I want you to be pro individual liberty!

  730. Jeff G. says:

    I believe people here are relentlessly pro individual liberty. What some of us object to is being told we’re anti-individual liberty if we don’t accept as marriage something that is has never been marriage — with no reason I can see, still, to do so when other remedies are available and would strike the proper compromise.

    Beyond that, part of a belief in individual liberty is tied to a belief in the republican constitutionalism that is our system of governance. And tied to that is federalism. I’ve already said that if a particular state agrees to redefine marriage that’s up to them. The states are intended to be the proving grounds for new ideas.

    What I won’t abide is having the robed priesthood deny the voters their right to decide how to structure the civil society provided what they decide meets the conditions laid out in the Constitution.

  731. tracycoyle says:

    No disrespect intended, and I don’t seek a fight – your house, I’m a guest. We see it differently. I try not to compromise on a principle just because people vote to do so.

    And while I respect the SCOTUS, it has shown it’s fallibility too often. It has also MADE people do what they should have chosen to do. As an EXAMPLE, not an equivalent: Loving v VA. Regardless of the form of government, the use of government to establish a moral position, be it from the Right or the Left is just not it’s purpose.

    And..
    Jeff G: I’ve already said that if a particular state agrees to redefine marriage that’s up to them

    …as long as other states are not bound by their efforts. And republican constitutionalism is not about just what a majority wants. Today, no state requires that a couple married in another state get remarried if they change their state of residence. No state requires a couple that adopted a child while residents of another state, re-file for adoption of the child. That is part of the Full Faith and Credit clause that DOMA invalidates. I am uncertain of your position on DOMA, but I gather it is supportive. I think that undermines federalism.

    It took until the 90s for the last state to give a wife her individuality in marriage (GA I believe), but the majority of states took until the 60s and 70s. Marriage isn’t what it used to be….thankfully.

  732. newrouter says:

    Marriage isn’t what it used to be….thankfully.

    so say the radical feminists and their war on men

  733. newrouter says:

    Today, no state requires that a couple married in another state get remarried if they change their state of residence.

    using the traditional meaning of marriage. and using the traditional meaning of marriage adoption follows suit. if an idiot state wants to marry “freaks of nature”, i don’t see how ffc can be used to force the nation to adopt that as a standard

  734. tracycoyle says:

    Yea, I’m really radical to believe that a husband doesn’t OWN his wife’s body and therefore he can be accused of rape by his wife. Radical concept…

  735. newrouter says:

    Yea, I’m really radical to believe that a husband doesn’t OWN his wife’s body and therefore he can be accused of rape by his wife. Radical concept…

    these days women divorce men and own them. forward!

  736. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I’m pro-ordered liberty.

    Which isn’t quite the same thing as pro-individual liberty, which shades off into creeping license around the edges all too much.

  737. tracycoyle says:

    Ernst, I understand. One of the reasons why we need moral people, their self-governance. I’m not a big fan of Burke.

  738. LBascom says:

    newrouter says December 10, 2012 at 6:02 pm

    Damn, newrouter swings and misses at an astounding rate, then, suddenly…he cleans the freak’in bases.

    *baseball clap*

  739. Ernst Schreiber says:

    And republican constitutionalism is not about just what a majority wants. Today, no state requires that a couple married in another state get remarried if they change their state of residence. No state requires a couple that adopted a child while residents of another state, re-file for adoption of the child. That is part of the Full Faith and Credit clause that DOMA invalidates. I am uncertain of your position on DOMA, but I gather it is supportive. I think that undermines federalism.

    You a Roger B. Taney.

    How’s that for ironic?

  740. newrouter says:

    Yea, I’m really radical to believe that a husband doesn’t OWN his wife’s body and therefore he can be accused of rape by his wife. Radical concept…

    some states she’s got 30 days to consider. forward!

  741. Ernst Schreiber says:

    You and

    [grumble grumble]

  742. newrouter says:

    newrouter swings and misses at an astounding rate,

    stopped clocks and monkeys with typewriters

  743. bh says:

    Hush your mouth! I kid, I kid, Tracy, as I’m a bit a fan of that Burkean spirit.

    Certainly one might appreciate tradition, continuity, and prudence in the affairs of humans. Heck, I’m this way about things I don’t even necessarily worry about all that much or when I think a change would be preferable.

    One can advocate for something quite well but nothing is as persuasive as a long history to judge by.

  744. newrouter says:

    Yea, I’m really radical to believe that a husband doesn’t OWN his wife’s body and therefore he can be accused of rape by his wife. Radical concept…

    you signed a contract with the male to have children. can the woman decide the time and place?

  745. Ernst Schreiber says:

    One can advocate for something quite well but nothing is as persuasive as a long history to judge by.

    Or by watching how they run when the Eschaton Immanentizers get the bit between their teeth.

  746. newrouter says:

    Yea, I’m really radical to believe that a husband doesn’t OWN his wife’s body and therefore he can be accused of rape by his wife. Radical concept…

    rape is a forcibly domineering another person. can you rape someone who you contractually agreed to be forcefully penetrated and have agree to previously?

  747. newrouter says:

    here we be into “all sex is rape” stuff from the loony left

  748. bh says:

    Or by watching how they run when the Eschaton Immanentizers get the bit between their teeth.

    I know it’s been mentioned — just right there for instance! — but maybe it’s worth me throwing in my two cents as well. So… my wise words are… I couldn’t agree more.

    People with religious objections are currently being forced to supply contraceptives and aborticafi-somethings. I have absolutely no reason to believe that this wouldn’t be used in a similar manner.

    Some of the very same people telling me this isn’t any big deal were also telling me that it wasn’t a big deal that Obamacare told people what they had to include in their health plans for employees.

  749. tracycoyle says:

    Ernst….I had to go look him up. What reading I did, limited as it was, I bet we would have had some good discussions. But I at am a lost about your perception of our similarities (even with the highlight to focus on…)

  750. dicentra says:

    I want you to be pro individual liberty!

    All of my great-great-grandparents were polygamists. The government put a gun to their heads and made them stop. We LDS were never petitioning the rest of society or the gubmint to recognize the plural marriages, but we were still forced to stop after some pretty egregious persecution (prison, taking kids off the streets and forcing them to rat out their parents, denial of the franchise, and finally the threat of state seizure of all LDS property, including our precious temples that we’d spent decades building).

    So I’m not exactly unfamiliar with the idea of “non-traditional marriage” and how such liberty can be infringed upon.

    If polygamy were made legal again, I don’t know if the Mormons would readopt it or not. If we did, it would redound to MY benefit.

    And yet I’m still against it being made legal in these the United States of America. My ancestors’ polygamy had two primary purposes: (a) a welfare program to take care of all of the widowed and abandoned women (many with children) that had come to the Godforsaken Great Basin (adult women far outnumbered men) and (b) a rapid repopulation program for the new colonizers.

    Those two purposes have evaporated, so the reinstating of polygamy would lead to what we see with its current practitioners: all of the women flock to the alpha males, leaving the betas, gammas, and deltas out in the cold. (That’s not good for genetic diversity or for social stability, as unattached males cause nothing but trouble, as China is going to learn pretty soon.)

    The polygamist cults in the West designate only a few of the young men “worthy” to have wives; the rest are unceremoniously dumped out on the curb, where the state must take care of them until they can fend for themselves in the strange, “sinful” world. These polygamists also mooch heavily off the welfare programs. The first wives’ marriage is legal, but the rest are not, so the other wives can declare themselves single mothers with children.

    Even if their marriages were recognized as legal, the husband’s income isn’t going to support all those kids, and the state will become their source of income. When the Mormons did polygamy, it was administered by Church authorities, and those who were to take extra wives had to be financially capable of doing so.

    If we do that in our society, all hell breaks loose, not to mention where the Muslims would take it. Polygamy is not inherently degrading to women: where a man has four wives, if he counts as one and they all count as 1/4, then yes, that’s a problem, but among Mormons, it was more like four women plus (against) one man, who was outnumbered in all things and had to negotiate it all the best he could.

    Individual liberty is usually the paramount concern, but when it comes to families and human sexuality, individuals must sacrifice their desires and preferences for the benefit of the next generation.

    And sometimes adults get hurt by that. It sux but there it is.

  751. Ernst Schreiber says:

    So… my wise words are… I couldn’t agree more.

    Homecraft Brew has indeed made you wise my cheesy friend.

  752. tracycoyle says:

    Dicentra, your knowledge of that issue exceeds mine, however it is not different from my understanding of the issues with polygamy. Property and viability of the family being part of my objections – many of the issues with civil unions, that many aspects would have to be litigated apply to polygamy also. With ssm as a derivative of osm, most of the issues have been litigated.

    Within a relationship the dynamics are going to be pretty unique and in general I am for government keeping out of it (I have a quote in my book from Scalia on the 9th amendment and child rearing that comes to mind).

  753. happyfeet says:

    a gay in a manger is single perforce
    cause marriagings for him jesus won’t endorse

    the stars in the heavens shine down in mute shame
    how can a messiah be so freaking lame

  754. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I at am a lost about your perception of our similarities (even with the highlight to focus on…)

    In Dredd v. Scott Taney invalidated the Missouri Compromise which had kept slavery out of the federal territories, and the states created therefrom, on the grounds that we needed a one size fits all solution to the question of conflicting state laws regarding the legality of slavery.

    Or as you called it, federalism.

    The irony part should be self-explanatory.

  755. bh says:

    Gotta admit, I also feel wise in now noting that you are also wise for noticing my wisdom in remarking upon yours.

  756. LBascom says:

    Iiee!… stopped clock it is.

    Moving on;

    As an EXAMPLE, not an equivalent:

    Why? why would you do that? No, it’s not equivalent, it’s an example of something else.

    Loving v VA. Regardless of the form of government, the use of government to establish a moral position, be it from the Right or the Left is just not it’s purpose.

    No, no, no. Loving is a constitutional position, based on inalienable rights. SSM is the moral position, straight from the progressives holy writs of Marxist theory indoctrination.

  757. tracycoyle says:

    For bh:
    Edmund Burke sought to place a limit on individual freedom by tradition or proclamation in the sense that a statement uttered centuries ago would be binding:

    “To provide for these objects, and therefore to exclude for ever the Old Jewry doctrine of “a right to choose our own governors,” they follow with a clause containing a most solemn pledge, taken from the preceding act of Queen Elizabeth, as solemn a pledge as ever was or can be given in favour of an hereditary succession, and as solemn a renunciation as could be made of the principles by this Society imputed to them. “The Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities for ever; and do faithfully promise that they will stand to maintain, and defend their said Majesties, and also the limitation of the crown, herein specified and contained, to the utmost of their powers,”

    “So far is it from being true, that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their posterity for ever.”

    Thomas Paine refutes Burke and the idea that the past can dictate to the future:

    “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow. Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead that are to be accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this world, he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be its governors, or how its government shall be organised, or how administered.”

    “Those who have quitted the world, and those who have not yet arrived at it, are as remote from each other as the utmost stretch of mortal imagination can conceive. What possible obligation, then, can exist between them- what rule or principle can be laid down that of two nonentities, the one out of existence and the other not in, and who never can meet in this world, the one should control the other to the end of time?”

    “The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living or the dead?”

    Burke’s support of our Revolution seemed often at odds with his own support of the Monarchy…

  758. tracycoyle says:

    newrouter : you signed a contract with the male to have children. can the woman decide the time and place?

    Please continue to offer your support of the proposition that we need to return to a traditional way of life…makes my job of convincing others much easier….

  759. dicentra says:

    Hey Tracy, I hope you stick around at pw. Jeff has some great stuff that has naught to do with SSM (which we all don’t agree on even here), and you might find it interesting.

    The Intentionalism stuff is ground-breaking. You have the chops to understand it without being a jerk (unlike certain others with whom we’ve had, um, words).

    If you dare, there’s the Martha Stewart Chronicles, which is X-rated and hilarious. Your discretion, of course.

  760. newrouter says:

    Burke’s support of our Revolution seemed often at odds with his own support of the Monarchy

    maybe the burkester saw 2 different situations?

  761. bh says:

    Tracy, I’ve read quite a bit of these same texts. You’ll note that I mentioned the spirit of Burke.

    Why not mention his contempt for the French Revolution if we’re to consider this, though? It arose from the same spirit.

  762. newrouter says:

    in a marriage can a man claim his wife “raped” him and will the court system consider it?. just want to know the “rules”

  763. newrouter says:

    because in ssm if “one freak of nature” does sumthing to his spouse another ” freak of nature” doesn’t like is that rape?

  764. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Gotta admit, I also feel wise in now noting that you are also wise for noticing my wisdom in remarking upon yours.

    Do I sense a Winston Wolfe moment coming on?

  765. bh says:

    It might be worth mentioning that the invocation of individual liberty is not a totemic “game-winner” in discussion/argument with me, btw.

  766. LBascom says:

    in a marriage can a man claim his wife “raped” him and will the court system consider it?.

    If it was a broom handle in the hinny[sp?] against his will, sure.

    Good luck if the judge is a wise Latina though…

  767. sdferr says:

    Burke may happen to be inadequate to all things, yet for my money he’s a damn sight more trustworthy on political matters than Paine, who reveals in that passage why he oughtn’t be trusted any farther than he could have been bodily thrown.

  768. Ernst Schreiber says:

    [T]he reinstating of polygamy would lead to what we see with its current practitioners: all of the women flock to the alpha males, leaving the betas, gammas, and deltas out in the cold. (That’s not good for genetic diversity or for social stability, as unattached males cause nothing but trouble, as China is going to learn pretty soon.)

    Much to Russia’s chagrin, I imagine.

  769. bh says:

    That Winston Wolfe was a noted curmudgeon, of course. Always reminding us that we should be careful and that perhaps we’re not as smart as we think we are.

    [Fine, I couldn’t think up a joke that didn’t come right out and just use his notable line.]

  770. newrouter says:

    “rape” seems a strong term in a “marriage” context. what with peeps using their body parts with each other before and after the event.

  771. bh says:

    I don’t know if we’ve ever spoken about this before, sdferr, but I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised that we both have real problems with Paine’s political philosophy.

  772. newrouter says:

    Edmund Burke sought to place a limit on individual freedom by tradition or proclamation in the sense that a statement uttered centuries ago would be binding:

    after seeing the ” grrls gone wild video” he would probably agree. the female sex has much to atone for.

  773. bh says:

    The obvious self-negation in Paine’s statement above should be quite apparent now that he’s dead, of course.

  774. sdferr says:

    Paine’s a nascent totalitarian is all. Danger Will Robinson. Gooey Rousseauvians are coming over the hills.

  775. tracycoyle says:

    Dicentra, although I seldom comment, I’ve been reading Jeff’s stuff for years – I agree with him far more than I disagree. I’ll go back and read the link, but if I recall my opinion of the issue goes back to a movie with Rodney Dangerfield where he gets Kurt Vonnegut to write an essay on one of Kurt’s works and he gets an F on the paper because the professor said he completely missed the intent of Vonnegut. :)

    bh, Paine supported the French until he saw democracy’s fallacy and my opinion of how Burke could accept our revolution and oppose the French is based on several things, not the least of which seemed to be his genetic (shared by most Englishmen) dislike of the French, the support of a monarchy in general and proximity. I think an American revolution was REALLY far away but the French revolution was practically next door. Of course the method of revolution was a little different..the ‘colonists’ were trying to be gentlemen and the French…the French were barbarians.. ;)
    I have read a lot of Burke and there are times I think there were two of them…

  776. Ernst Schreiber says:

    This is the Burke quote that’s relevant to the discussion at hand:

    If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feeling will be drawn that way… and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate.

  777. LBascom says:

    Sdferr, the sad part is, Paine is the spirit of our current generation (pun?). I’m telling you, the youth of this generation believe themselves more endowed with wisdom than all who came before, and are intent on remaking man to their image.

    ‘Cuz God is lame and Facebook RULES!.

  778. sdferr says:

    I’m not so sure Paine’s a good model for the contemporary crop LB. Seems to me he was at least hard working at his ambitions, whereas the usual suspects today far more resemble Beavis and Butthead to my way of thinking.

  779. tracycoyle says:

    bh, Jefferson echoed the sentiment several years later (re the past and future generations). As an agnostic my affection for Paine goes in directions not likely to be embraced here. However, like Mill, astute observation did not lead to great suggestions for addressing them.

  780. LBascom says:

    Yeah, I can’t disagree.

  781. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Back to School!

    You remember that thing we had about 30 years ago called the Korean conflict? And how we failed to achieve victory? How come we didn’t cross the 38th parallel and push those rice-eaters back to the Great Wall of China? Then take the fucking wall apartbrick by brick and nuke them back into the fucking stone age forever? Tell me why! How come? Say it! Say it!

  782. bh says:

    I’m an agnostic myself, Tracy. So is Jeff. So are a number of others around here.

    What bothers me about Paine in that example is that we’re not giving past generations a vote. We’re taking from them their considered opinions. That is to our benefit, not to their cranky old personnages.

    What does Paine himself tell us to make of his opinion? Ignore me, he says, I’m dead.

    I’ll grant him his wish in this instance.

  783. newrouter says:

    , Paine supported the French until he saw democracy’s fallacy and my opinion of how Burke could accept our revolution and oppose the French is based on several things, not the least of which seemed to be his genetic (shared by most Englishmen) dislike of the French, the support of a monarchy in general and proximity. I think an American revolution was REALLY far away but the French revolution was practically next door. Of course the method of revolution was a little different..the ‘colonists’ were trying to be gentlemen and the French…the French were barbarians.. ;)
    I have read a lot of Burke and there are times I think there were two of them…

    bloviate much?

  784. newrouter says:

    not the least of which seemed to be his genetic

    cut to the chase and call them racist you stupid proggtard. go for it!

  785. sdferr says:

    “. . . how Burke could accept our revolution. . . ”

    It wasn’t a question that the Americans were “far away”. It was that Burke saw with the Americans how their rights as Englishmen were being systematically dismantled by over-reaching from England, and this, to him was a matter very very near.

  786. newrouter says:

    I think an American revolution was REALLY far away but the French revolution was practically next door.

    wiki

    The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)

    The French Revolution (French: Révolution française; 1789–1799)

    proggtards unite your stupidity is all that blinds you

  787. tracycoyle says:

    bh, :) If those considered opinions are the foundation of our current laws then acceptance of the law is a vote for them. I don’t oppose historical knowledge, nor do I dismiss it but change happens. I appreciate your desire to grant Paine his wish, I just wish you’d be equally generous to his peers.

    That is probably uncalled for – I don’t know your positions or opinions and who knows we might agree more than I know or expect. In my comments above I have tried to stay to my own opinions rather than writings of others.

  788. newrouter says:

    That is probably uncalled for – I don’t know your positions or opinions and who knows we might agree more than I know or expect. In my comments above I have tried to stay to my own opinions rather than writings of others.

    by citing burke. carry on troll.

  789. sdferr says:

    Change does indeed happen tracy, yet so also does preservation. The blends of these two are the grounds of all political action at question, with the aim at what is better foremost. And lo and behold, here we are.

  790. bh says:

    No worries, Tracy, no offense taken.

    Yes, change happens. Sometimes for the best. Sometimes not. I hope to live to 120 so I can see as much of it as possible. (Of course, I’m mainly just waiting for the hoverboard from Back to the Future.)

    There are any number of issues where I would prefer what is was not. I appreciate that few if any of those are as personally relevant to me as this issue is for others. I get that. (I think I do anyway.)

  791. tracycoyle says:

    sdferr, good point but I don’t understand his support for our cause when it was clear what he expected of France was much different:

    You would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shamed despotism from the earth, by showing that freedom was not only reconcilable, but, as when well disciplined it is, auxiliary to law. You would have had an unoppressive but a productive revenue. You would have had a flourishing commerce to feed it. You would have had a free constitution; a potent monarchy; a disciplined army; a reformed and venerated clergy; a mitigated but spirited nobility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay it; you would have had a liberal order of commons, to emulate and to recruit that nobility; you would have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and to recognise the happiness that is to be found by virtue in all conditions; in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction, which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality, which it never can remove; and which the order of civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in an humble state, as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid, but not more happy.

    Monarchy, class distinctions….

  792. tracycoyle says:

    bh, I plan on 137…that gives me about 82 years or so to look back to today as ancient history. I want to preserve the institution of marriage…just expand it a little. :)

  793. sdferr says:

    Seems to me the answer is more or less self-evident. The Americans, moving from their expectations as Englishmen already habituated to a regime of rights, behaved as Englishmen so habituated would be thought to behave, whereas the French did not. Burke says at the very beginning of the passage you cite:

    You had all these advantages in your ancient states, but you chose to act as if you had never been molded into civil society and had everything to begin anew.

  794. tracycoyle says:

    Right…the colonists were gentlemen, the French were barbarians!

  795. sdferr says:

    They chose to be barbarians in this context. They were certainly not barbarians theretofore, as Burke makes clear.

  796. newrouter says:

    sdferr, good point but I don’t understand his support for our cause when it was clear what he expected of France was much different:

    tough to do in the future troll. you baracky folks suck big kenyan dick!

  797. newrouter says:

    Right…the colonists were gentlemen, the French were barbarians!

    troll yea the effing guillotine was fun. baracky asshat!

  798. newrouter says:

    tracycoyle says

    she suxs the long baracky dick after michelle does it.

  799. Pablo says:

    a gay in a manger is single perforce
    cause marriagings for him jesus won’t endorse

    the stars in the heavens shine down in mute shame
    how can a messiah be so freaking lame

    Lady Gaga may be more what you’re looking for in a Savior.

  800. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Right…the colonists were gentlemen, the French were barbarians!

    Actually, for the most part, that’s correct.

    The distinction you’re looking for is in the difference between a political revolution and a social one.

  801. newrouter says:

    The distinction you’re looking for is in the difference between a political revolution and a social one.

    it be a baracky troll.

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