While his column is primarily interested in examining how elites in the press manufacture news to conform to progressive dogma, Thomas Sowell’s “All the ‘News’?” reinforces an important point that I don’t think can be overstated by those who oppose same sex marriage on non-religious grounds—namely, that the problem is not so much with the arrangement as it is with the attempt by activists to forcibly broaden the definitions of traditional institutions in order to borrow on the gravitas of the established signifier:
As far back as the 18th century, Rousseau said that man is born free but is everywhere in chains. In other words, the social restrictions essential to a civilized society were seen as unnecessary hindrances to each individual’s freedom.
It never seems to occur to those who think this way that if everyone were free of all social restrictions, only the strongest and most ruthless would in fact be free, and all the others would be subject to their dictates or destruction.
Marriage and family are also barriers to the left’s desire to create a society built to their own specifications. Friedrich Engels’ first draft of the Communist Manifesto proclaimed the end of families but Karl Marx thought better of it and took that out.
In one way or another, however, the left has for more than two centuries tried to undermine families—including today redefining the words “marriage” and “family” to include whatever kind of people want to live together in whatever way for whatever reason.
If “marriage” can mean anything, then it means nothing.
Sowell sees in the progressive impulse a dark desire to rebuild the world in its image—and I would agree that, foundationally, at least, that is precisely where the ideology leads. But I’m perhaps less convinced than he is that the majority of adherents to progressivism proceed from such bad faith motives (most are incurious rather than craven)—though clearly many of its leading ideological voices do.
Be that as it may, what I do find compelling about Sowell’s argument, which mirrors one I’ve made here on several occasions, is that it notes the political importance of the battle over signification: namely, that the impulse to “redefine” or expand the definition of a traditional concept is, quite often, nothing more than a semantic ploy to invade the concept, pressure it from within, and force it to accomodate analogous but disparate ideas in an attempt to trade on the cultural gravitas of its host.
If what proponents of same-sex unions are after are all the rights and priviliges accorded married couples, I’d be completely open to such arguments (and in fact, have supported them in the past). But many activists tip their ideological hand by refusing to accept what amounts to a social compromise, insisting instead that society be compelled to recognize as “marriage” something that has never been recognized as such. And it has never been recognized as such for the common sense reason that it is a different social arrangement—not because most people are inveterate homophobes.
I don’t believe that pointing such out is akin to passing negative judgment on same sex partnerships. Conversely, however, I do believe that the semantic gamesmanship engaged in by many same-sex marriage proponents is, in fact, a bit of a trojan horse—the end game being to deconstruct social “restrictions” (often with the aid of the courts, and using the blurring of semantic distinctions brought about by the “redefining” of traditional concepts), without doing the difficult work of convincing people that such restrictions deserve to be either relaxed or abolished in the first place.
Couldn’t the same be argued that the Civil Rights movement used the same methods to achieve their goals throughout the 60’s? While I don’t consider same sex marriage a civil rights issue in any way, shape or form & think that the particular traditional/ societal norm & treatment of non-whites should have been addressed regardless of its traditions of history, it seems to me that in a way that type of approach did in fact speed along the debate & force the apparent & overt racism into the light of public debate. Something barely, if not completely, unaddressed after the Emancipation Proclamation. Granted the Civil Rights Activists were arguing for the rights already guaranteed to all citizens by the Constitution & subsequent Amendments, & in most cases taken away by either state or local laws or local government officials – police, courts, etc.
It’s like the way Go-gurt tries to glom onto the respectability, health benefits, and caché of Yogurt. Except NOBODY likes it when 58-year-old yogurt, however rich it might be, announces it wants to marry your seventeen year old son.
Our esteemed host wrote:
I think you have it wrong, Mr Goldstein. If that were the goal, it has already been achieved; we have no legal restrictions against two (or more) people of any gender combination at all shacking up. The previous laws against sodomy were almost completely unenforced, and when someone tried to enforce them, we got Lawrence v Texas, and that was the end of that.
The real reason for the push for same-sex “marriage” is because they wish to convince both us and themselves that homosexual arrangements are not simply something we should tolerate, but are things we should accept, things we should see as just as good, just as normal, just as healthy, as heterosexual marriage.
Well said. I’ve struggled with articulating my argument against same sex marriage only on the grounds of politics, not religion. Because I think it’s a socio-political powerplay, nothing else. I have no problem with unions or the sharing of benefits, but don’t invade the oldest institution of mankind, just to see if you can mould it to your liking. Very transparent.
PMain, I don’t think that argument applies in the strictest sense to the point it appears Jeff is making with this post, although those who favor gay marriage do try to use it. Civil rights should accrue to all humans by virtue of their humanity, while the term “marriage” doesn’t necessarily accrue to every possible living arrangement. I’m not sure if that makes any sense, but it’s the best I can come up with at the moment.
I think you guys are over-thinking this one.
Dr. Dobson – I don’t want gays living in the city of Denver.
Reasonable Jeff – I don’t care if they live here, but all their mail has to go to the address Gayville, Colorado. And if anyone asks them where they’re from, they have to say Gayville, not Denver.
Maybe same-sex marriage proponents are on the side of clarity and its opponents are the ones playing semantic games…I don’t care if they get married, they just can’t say they’re married.
Dana, “homosexual arrangements” is a truly awful phrasing. You should just know that. Secondly, gay partnerships are already as equivalently “good” and “normal” and “healthy” as heterosexual marriages. The question is why do so many feel that the blessings bestowed by the word “marriage” would make them any more so.
We may not have legal restrictions against such arrangements, Dana, but we also don’t call such arrangements “marriage,” and therefore, those arrangements are still rightly considered alternatives to marriage, and cannot, therefore, weaken the traditional notion of marriage.
But yes, the move is to make us accept the arrangement by expanding the definition of what we already do accept to include what we as yet have not (and here, I’m am talking about acceptance that the two arrangements are the same).
PMain —
I think you answer your own question. Traditions that set themselves up against Constitutional protections deserve scrutiny and scorn. But here, marriage is permitted to all; what is in dispute is the right to call something that has never been considered marriage “marriage.”
And FWIW, I’m not at all opposed to same-sex couples having a way of being automatically accorded the types of benefits that married couples get–it’s hard to imagine how that harms me in any way.
Alphie,
1. Same or different zip code?
2. Ditto for area code.
Yes, alphie. And I believe they should have to drink from separate water fountains as well.
Is that what you’re going for?
Noting that one arrangement is different from another is not a judgment—and it has the effect of clarifying by distinction. Whereas the “clarity” of which you speak comes by way of accepting obfuscation.
If a labrador puppy could type its name would be alphie.
Interestingly enough, if we were to have a straight pride parade, Labrador puppies would probably be involved.
Yep, one Labrador puppy in the arms of each of the Cowboy cheerleaders dancing along in their ass-less chaps.
Wait…
I consider this process to be “Fucking with the Dictionary”
And when you fuck with the dictionary, you fuck with ME.
I wasn’t going for that, Jeff.
I think you’re a reasonable guy.
Our neighbor, ally and biggest trade “partner” Canada has now legalized same-sex marriage. Same-sex couples can even serve in their military together.
So the issued is clouded whether we wanted it to be or not.
Are we gonna say we’ll take your oil and support in the GWOT, but…keep your same-sex married coupled away from us?
What is the status of legally married gay and lesbian couples when they come to America on vacation or to work (or train with our military), btw?
Does it vary by state?
For the love of God, alphie. Read the original post again, very slowly, until you understand the point. If you can’t understand, then please stop making a fool of yourself.
Duh, “eruo-trash.”
Well, unless it’s the canadiend whom we refer to as “upper mexicans.”
Amen, and well said. The attempt obviously involves the well-known propagandistic word game in which the traditional meaning of a word is borrowed upon, then actually destroyed. And the same tactic taken to an extreme in practice, with similarly defective consequences, is seen with Communism’s attempt to eradicate Capitalism, when the strength of Capitalism is instead necessary to undergird any semblance of Communistic success. Otherwise you only end up with Slavery.
And I, also, am sure that there are some cynical/narcissistic players around who would have to know exactly what they are doing, regardless of what they say they are intending.
I think alphie was speaking more to people like me, who consider homosexual behavior abnormal (in that, it isn’t natural to a re-producing species of mammals, and is unhealthy to society), and don’t even support civil unions for all takers.
This does NOT mean I regard homosexual people as sub-human, and wish they would all die. I regard them (in personal relationships, not in a legal sense) like I would a drug addict, as a fellow American, that is ingaged in distructive behavior. (like a democrat!) I’ve spent plenty of time around both categories, and had no problems treating them the same as anyone else, but I approve of their lifestyle no more than the guy that’s cheating on his wife. I don’t like any law that attempts to force me into accepting homosexuality as normal.
“same-sex union between a man and a woman’ has no meaning. Or more aptly stated it’s “fucking with the dictionary”.
That said, it is a fallacy to say homosexual’s civil rights have been violated since under the paradigm of marriage, a union between a man and a woman, homosexuals have not been banned.
And when homosexuals do take the vow of marriage they even manage to …gasp…pro-create.
Me thinks activists doth protest too much.
And God help us all if we’re doing what alphoo would call “over-thinking.”
Homosexuals tend to look at conventional marriage and see nothing more than a set of legal rights and a socially sanctioned relationship. If they want the rights, they can have them immediately provided they don’t insist on calling it marriage. The word, ‘marriage’, is narrowly defined as heterosexual and, moreover, the rite is a sacrament of the church.
Social acceptance is another thing. Being able to call your relationship ‘marriage’ is not going to confer instant respectability on a lifestyle notorious for its promiscuity. Respectability takes time. They want instant respectability.
Sorry, it ain’t happenin’.
It seems you look past Sowell’s suggestion that it is both “marriage” and ”family” that are the object of semantic gamesmanship. The redefinition of family offers the left a new avenue of influence with respect to a panoply of issues – tax policy, education policy, issues of “economic equality” and healthcare being top of mind. The process of deconstructing social restrictions is one that is parallel to an expansion of the inflection the left seeks to bring to the crafting of policy.
The redefinition of “marriage” is indeed a trojan horse, but it’s the redefinition of “family” that is lurking inside. I may be misreading you, but the direction of this thread suggests that I’m not, and, as such, I think the trojan horse tactic is being validated. It’s like yogurt. The redefinition of marriage sits innocuously at the top; the redefinition of family is that suspect icky mush of fruit-at-the-bottom.
That’s a bit crass, ahem. Let me reach way back into my tour of the academy and see if I can apprehend what J. Goldstein has posited.
He is accusing the left of staking out a claim within the social construct of “marriage;” i.e. appropriating the whole notion of it and grafting it onto same-sex unions. But as much as I have admired Sowell, I think he’s over-reaching here. He accuses the left of trying to undermine the “family,” when in fact “families” encompass a much broader range of situations now than when this neat little concept was enshrined. As far as I know, the notion of “a man and a woman” for marriage is not codified in any enforceable sense, unless it is retroactively placed into statute.
And I see that as not an undermining, but an expansion. Depends on what society will tolerate.
See how this works?
Yes—it’s a creeping fungus—react or die!!!
Good catch, Happyfeet.
Alf,
This would be the same country that has less submarines than Disneyland & less population than California, but a greater debt to GDP than the US – great point made, again.
God Bless the troops they have over Afghanistan, which I am wholeheartedly grateful for & quite proud to support (too bad you can’t say the same) but the day the US needs to be more like Canada in anything militarily, will probably be the day you make a legitimate point here… though to come to think of Rachel Marsden is quite the looker & thinker.
No offense to any Canadians out there, I am merely jesting you to belittle an blathering idiot. Your performance & support in Afghanistan has been wonderful, you media & former Prime Minster, not so much.
Jeff,
Forgive my first post, you are right I answered myself. I meant to say that they are using that as an argument to legitimize their stance, which unlike the Civil Rights Movement in the past, they have no basis legally to do so. Since you covered the traditional aspect, their approach to change the dialog or basic terminology & their preferred ending results, I wanted to make that point regarding the lack of legal justification, but I completely brain-farted or channeled my inner-alphie & got totally lost.
The recent attempt to mock the differences between same-sex and opposite-sex unions, by offering a bill to decertify heterosexual marriages that do not generate biological offspring within a certain number of years, has it exactly backwards.
Insty had it the other day as “IS MARRIAGE JUST FOR PROCREATION?”, but the historical question is whether PROCREATION is just for MARRIAGE. Over millenia, we’ve evolved different ideas about how families should be structured, and we’ve come up with this idea that we call ‘marriage’. It fundamentally is a mechanism for making men responsible for the children they produce.
The fundamental difference between a man and woman pledging that they’ll stick together ‘until death do us part’ and the same pledge on the part of same-sex partners is that the former can thereby produce ‘legitimate offspring’, and the latter can’t. Infertile heterosexual couples, and those who choose not to produce any children via birth control measures, may not produce any legitimate children either, but they also will not produce any illegitimate children.
If a man is unable to get his wife pregnant, but she cuckolds him, tradition and the law has still treated the child as legitimate; if he knows this has happened, and chooses to accept the situation, no one need know the child is not biologically his. In fact, even when modern DNA techniques prove a man is not the biological father of his wife’s child, he still is considered the legal father, and pays child support if he divorces the wife.
In a union of homosexual men, neither will bear any children, regardless of their fidelity. A member of a nominal lesbian couple could in fact be bisexual, choose artificial insemination, or even do it the old-fashioned way with a sperm donor strictly for procreative purposes (or become pregnant as a result of rape). In any of these situations, however, it is apparent to all that the child is not the biological offspring of its Two Mommies. We may hope that most lesbians who choose to become pregnant do so with the prior knowledge and full support of their partners.
The astute reader may have detected in this asymmetry that ‘same-sex marriage’ would logically grant to lesbians the same responsibility that cuckolds have for their wives’ children, but leave homosexual men off the financial hook. There is no explaining that away by pretending that these three kinds of pairings are all the same.
OK, enough said. Some days, y’all do my work for me.
It may seem odd, cynn, but I believe at the end of the day it really does come down to that one little word, marriage.
I hope your aren’t kidding yourself with the idea that there is substantial difference between the parties on this one. It seems to be a fairly universal sticking point.
On NPR, the hue and cry for gay marriage is almost always illustrated by people who have been together for like decades. Not people who would be at the get-married-and-start-a-family stage of life. They’ve never profiled a couple who begin their story with, “We met at a bar six months ago…”
Apropos of nothing maybe, but these guys can’t get out of bed in the morning without consulting Lakoff.
The attempts by homosexuals to gain marriage “rights” is to pretend that the union of two gays (or lesbians) is the same as the union of a man and a woman. It isn’t, and it defies common sense to say it is. And we all know why.
Dick Cheney’s daughter didn’t get pregnant by accident, and didn’t get into child-bearing mode without plenty of time to prepare. In the real world, that is a luxury that most men and women do not have.
I can appreciate, and respect, the lifetime partnership of a couple of dudes, also. But, frankly, compared to the straight couple down the road, their existence is basically risk-free, in many ways.
The reason why Gays want to level the playing field is the same reason why Sam Harris wants to abolish organized religion, why Bolsheviks wanted to reorganize Russian society, and many other pie in the sky notions. The idea is that there is conflict, violence, and imperfection in many spheres of life. So, why don’t we just strip it bare, start over, and this time, rationally, create a perfect setup? 90% of the time it leads to tragedy, of greater or lesser proportions.
This is not motivated by bad faith, it is motivated by idiotic notions of how humans behave, and how humans will react when they are told what to do by these overly intelligent control freaks.
I’m a spinster, so I have no moral authority on the subject. But I’m not terrified of gay people, which is a pathology on the right that has always perplexed me.
I don’t see anything in this thread that suggests either terror or hatred of gays. That’s a non-starter. It’s true, many men may have some scorn for gays, largely because they never have to accept the responsibility of raising children the way most straight men do, and the acceptance of such responsbility is, to most men, a cardinal feature of what it means to be a man. (BTW, most men feel the same way about old bachelors who are only interested in getting laid, also.)
The relations of the sexes have changed a lot over the past 40 years, but in many ways they are exactly the same as they always were. Men are looking for a regular sex partner and someone to take care of them. Women are looking for someone reliable who will enable her to nest and have children. Both sacrifice themselves for each other and for the children.
The gay thing is different, for an obvious reason, but not altogether different.
Thanks for the lecture! So, how does that address the legal status?
How does that affect legal status? I have no problem with legal status that is equivalent. PERSONALLY, I don’t even have a problem with calling it “marriage.” But I do understand the reasoning and feeling about those who do oppose it.
That many men may have some scorn for gays, largely because they never have to accept the responsibility of raising children the way most straight men do, is a cardinal feature of what it means to be gay.
Get over it.
See how this works?
Happy: stop looking at it from your POV. At this point in my life, with all my kids grown, and happy with my wife, I really don’t care what someone else does. But straight guys have to struggle, relative to their gay peers, there’s just no doubt about that. I’ve raised 2, and helped raise 3, and I’ve known guys—usually relgious guys—who have raised twice as many. And it’s hard. It’s EFFING hard. And generally gays don’t have to deal with any of that. And that is why there’s this scorn, or resentment, or whatever you want to call it.
It’s not unlike the attitude different social classes have for each other. People who work with their hands have a certain set of feelings towards people who work with their minds. And vice versa. And that’s how it works.
The last thing most people have time for, once they reach a certain age, is what other people think of them, unless of course it directly effects their ability to live their lives. So, if some gay guy feels that straights are looking down on him, so what, move on. I have known plenty of gays who look down on straights, too (and straight women, if not all women.) It’s just the way it is.
My pov would be that raising children well is something that pretty universally garners admiration and respect.
Steve,
I don’t understand what you (and Jeff) are saying.
I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of same-sex marriage myself.
But, I can’t think of any real reason to be against it.
So, as a good American, I support it.
More freedom is a good thing, right?
I agree, but, again, drawing on my own experience and the experience of religious people I have known, the only thing they are thinking about is how to pay the f***ing bills.
alphie – freedom isn’t really at issue here:
Alphie: Well, I don’t know if gays are being denied any important “freedom” here. I do think that people in general are balking at allowing gays to call their arrangements marriage, precisely because of the disconnect I have tried to describe.
Now, if you phrase it in terms of things like hospital access, or Wills, or stuff like that, the vast majority of straights would be open to that. If you call it “marriage” however, people will object. Even Andrew Sullivan understands this.
You try making the payment on your ex’s beamer that you stupidly cosigned for AND your own AND pay the rent in a suitably upscale neighborhood that is entirely unsuitable for raising kids in.
Substitute “son” for “ex” and we’re on the same page, I’m sorry to say.
Oh. I was just kidding. But it definitely could happen, and somewhere, doubtlessly is.
Come on, Steve,
Jeff just posted how horrible it was for the government to restrict the right of children to get fake tans.
Yet it’s okay to support the government when it wants to prevent two adults from getting married?
Que?
I think we should just agree lead-head (alphie) doesn’t “get it”, and leave him at that.
I don’t have any personal scorn or resentment(?) for individual gay people, for any reason.
My point of view is the big picture, the survival of our culture. While muslims are breeding like bunnys, westerners are barely keeping pace, or in some cases, producing negitive growth rates. The reasons are many, granted, but further normalization of alternitive lifstyles sure as hell isn’t helping. Neither is abortion, and the accelerating wresting of control over the family from parents.
Our society isn’t going to be conquered, it is going to be voted out of existance by simple demographics.
I don’t want future generations of Americans living under Shiara law because the present generation wants to commit societal suicide.
Maybe it’s just me, but I care about more than my own personal problems.
Sounds good, lee.
Let’s blame a tiny minority for all of societies ills and then punish them.
That plan works every time.
Now I’m confused. Your left wing has glib explanations for all of their stereotypes of conservatives. Maybe you just haven’t been paying attention, Cynn.
I’m against gay marriage because of the deconstruction of the family. National Review’s Stanley Kurtz has written a lot about this.
I’m not talking about blaming and punishing. I’m talking about identifying social ills, using traditional values as a guide.
Things become traditions by surviving multiple generations, where they gain value. Abandoning tried and true methods of propagation, in my opinion, is dangerous.
I think China is discovering that, or soon will be.
Here’s an article where Stanley Kurtz shows an increase in out of wedlock births as a consequence of the legalization of gay marriage. Gay marriage has already been tried and the results were not good for that society.
lee,
Blaming homosexuals for low birth rates and abortions makes about as much sense as blaming homeless people for skyrocketing real estate prices.
I doubt there’s much that makes sense to you alphie.
God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts…
I understand that it costs around $10,000 a year and rising to raise a child these days, lee.
I also understand most American families can’t afford to raise as many children today as they could have 30 years ago.
I also understand that some people are desperate to blame anything other than America’s rising income gap for these facts.
Hmmm…who could we scapegoat?
I’m not blaming homosexuals for the low birthrate.
It is, as others have pointed out, the deconstruction of the traditional family that is the danger. The steady drumbeat for “gay rights” is only one factor among many, but because there are other factors has no bearing one holding the line on this one.
By the way, are there instances where the homeless have caused nosediving real-estate prices?
Well, I would expect the homosexual birthrate to be low.
I don’t know, lee.
It seems like a real stretch to blame them. It reminds me of [url=”http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheGymnast.html” target=”_blank”]one of my favorite Seinfeld lines:
[/url]
KATYA: My father used to take me to the circus. When the elephants came by, he would scream curses at them, blaming them for all the ills of society.
JERRY: Well, they certainly take up a lot of space.
Personally, I blame Ted Kennedy for all the ills of society.
But realistically, Mohammoud needs to take his share too.
Elephants have very thick skin.
Stanley Kurtz, not so much.
“low birthrate”
How can that be? Each human can have only one birth, right? “You Only Die Once” is a movie but you’re only born once is just a truism.
But then I remembered. Some religions will let you be born again. Born again into a new life. So some humans are born twice. It’s just not fair, is it? Being born twice should be a civil right! Damn it, I want my second life. Everyone wants their second life!
Chant with me now – no second life, no peach. No second life, no peach. NO Second LIFE, No PEACH! NO SECOND LIFE, NO PEACH!
No, I’m not bored. Why do you ask?
Your World. Your Imagination.
No one ever wants to chant on blogs anymore. Why is that? There’s bound to be some stereotype that explains it perfectly.
We kind of figured that out weeks ago.
Well, actually, I didn’t look past it. I just didn’t address it specifically in this post, because here I was talking strictly about the “marriage” designation.
Just because I don’t mention it here doesn’t mean I don’t recognize it. So don’t you worry that I’ve been blinded and am thus validating the trojan horse strategy. I can assure you I see the big picture.
As for this:
The government isn’t preventing two adults from getting married. It is preventing two same-sex partners from getting married, because marriage is not the proper description for what it is they are doing, unless the definition of marriage is expanded to incorporate such arrangements.
For the government or courts to make that call is not really its place.
This is one reason to be “against” it. As I say, I support civil unions that carry with them all the supposed legal and financial benefits of marriage.
If this means, to someone like cynn, that I have some irrational fear of gays, I’m just going to have to live with her mischaracterizations and bigotry directed at those who don’t share her point of view.
The Milton was meant for Lee… sort of an oblique way of saying that there are ways of making a contribution apart from procreation…
Happyfeet wrote:
Oh, I do know that, very well. I also know that the truly awful phrasing is also truly accurate phrasing.
Cynn,
Far be it from me to assert that I really, truly, deep down understand all of everything – most particularly, that I know exactly what you think, but it seems that on this post, you may have missed the real crux of the matter. As Jeff noted in his post:
and a bit later:
In your first comment on this post, you note:
What you note, perhaps inadvertently, in your comment, is the very same phenomenon that Jeff, essentially, speaks of in his post. That at one point, the concept of “family” was pretty rigidly defined, and had immense gravitas and social currency. Subsequently, the term “family” has been greatly expanded, without much serious discussion about whether or not some essential characteristic or key attribute was being lost.
If one were so inclined to try to make a parallel argument from the left against the right, one might argue that the right has hijacked terms like unpatriotic and treason and traded on their emotional impact by stretching those terms to cover what would otherwise be considered principled objections and rational debate. I don’t think this is the case, but the semantic issue under question in this paragraph, is a tangent I mention only to illustrate what this process might look like from another viewpoint. And I would argue that the unwillingness to alter the fundamental concept of marriage on a whim is no more reflective of anti-gay sentiment, than the unwillingness to make treason an all-encompassing charge reflects a desire to see the world crushed under the boot of a global caliphate.
BRD
They have no status. Same as if they have a civil union in Vermont, or got married in Massachusetts or California for the short periods that marriage licenses were being issued for same-sex couples.
My mom’s a lesbian, and she and her partner of 24 years are splitting up/divorcing/whatever you want to call it. They had a union in their church when I was 12, and went to Vermont to have a civil union when it became available there. My stepmom was in the National Guard for eight years, and wasn’t able to acknowledge my mom or me and my sister. Don’t ask, don’t tell isn’t what it’s represented as, because they ask you questions about whether you have a boyfriend or husband back home. My mom and stepmom can’t get a judge in Oklahoma to recognize their civil union long enough to dissolve it. There’s no shared retirement benefits, or health benefits. There is also no assumption that in case of medical emergency, one partner can make a decision for the other.
There’s not really another word to be used that encompasses the type of rights and responsibilities that marriage entails, which is why there’s such a strong push for gay marriage to be recognized. If committed gay couples were really able to share legal and financial benefits, I think there wouldn’t be such a push for the use of the word ‘marriage’, but there’s not, so it seems easier to push to be included in the institution to reap the benefits rather than push to reap the benefits one at a time. If gays had the same benefits and responsibilities as marriage, I think most of this brouhaha would be reduced to the fringe players on each side.
Alice, it sounds as though:
1. Vermont’s legislature wrote a truly useless “civil unions” law.
2. Be that as it may, since it is a product of Vermont law, that would be where it can be dissolved. And
3. The whole point of the focus on the word “marriage” is—as alleged by opponents and confirmed by your mother’s and her partner’s predicament, is to have one state be able, in effect, to force the other 49 states to recognize them.
Thing is, if the activists would drop the insistence on the word marriage and focus on crafting standard civil-unions language to be promoted in the several states, the problem you mom and her partner are having, would go away a lot more quickly than it will with the word “marriage” attached.
cynn: You’re right: in the secular world it’s not. But if you were a practicing Christian, Jew or Muslim, you would think differently. That’s what I’m tallking about. No one has a problem with equal legal rights, but many have a problem with gays redefining and desecrating religious rites and trying to give their relationships an aura of respectability and sanctity when none currently exists.
The constitution does not give anyone the right to sit at a Woolworth lunch counter, nor does it force businesses to hire or serve people without discriminating by race. No. It took an active federal government using the commerce power to force businesses to stop discriminating. Much to the chagrin of racists, federalists, and conservatives. Some of whom were democrats.
As for gay people? i think they want families and marriage. Not to destroy it, but to live it. Doesn’t Sowell know any gay people trying to make families? Why not ask them if its because of Marx that they want that. I’d imagine its quite anti-marxist of them. To want to get married and want to make families. And for some reason, people like Sowell don’t get it. What morons.
emmadine – I would seriously doubt that any but an extremely small percentage of gay people want to “make families.” I’d be open to looking at any data you might have on that though.
Maybe you could scroll through some gay personal ads and see if “making families” emerges as a strong theme?
Oh yeah, that’s another situation where there’s lack of parity. When my dad went to Hawaii to get married, and then to Vegas, and God only knows where he’ll go this time to get married (cause I think he’s contemplating it yet again!), he’s never had to worry about maintaining residence in the state where he got married in order to get a divorce.
I doubt that most gays are interested in raising families and I doubt that they are interested in being sexually monogamous, either. Just based on my experience with gays.
All of this is making having children and raising them appear like some kind of commodity. It is not quite that. At least not yet.
There are traditional reasons for sexual morality and traditional reasons for marriage and traditional reasons for how children fit into this. Birth control and abortion have altered tradition somewhat. So has artificial insemination and other techniques. Divorce has had less impact, insofar as the financial responsibility for children still rests on the man, and, I believe, rightly so.
We’ll see how this develops. But right now, and in the aggregate, demands for “gay marriage” as opposed to common sense and compassionate concessions, are just a waste of time.
Many liberals say conservatives have horns and tails. Just based on their experience with conservatives.
Having been around the gay community to some degree or another for over 20 years, I can say with some certainty that many, many gays are interested in monogamy and family. More so with lesbians than gay men, but that’s to be expected given who usually puts the pressure in a relationship for commitment and family.
There’s quite a bit of sour grapes – “if we can’t have it, we don’t want it”. And you probably haven’t contemplated how incredibly hard it is to maintain a committed relationship when so much of the world is telling you, in one way or another, that you’re not as good or worthy or deserving of equal consideration as the rest of the world.
I doubt that many gays would share their personal beliefs with you anyway, given that it seems you’ve already made up your mind that they’re sex-crazed lunatics who have children to accessorize.
happyfeet: craigslist, for example is full of people looking for hookups. Probably most are straight. I don’t think they’re looking for marriage there. I should have clarified that when I said gay people want to make marriage and families, I meant the ones that are getting married. Now, there are going to be gay marriages that fail. Just like straight ones.
emmadine – I still think you are overreaching in positing that a significant number of gay marriages are predicated on a desire for children.
I was talking about gays, not lesbians, which changes the equation quite a bit. I’ve known a lot more gays than lesbians, although I did have a couple of lesbian girlfriends in my younger days.
I’d like to see these numbers actually quantified.
Alice, you have no idea how many gays I have known, how many friends I have had who turned out to be gay who were in fact checking me out, how many times I have been propositioned by gays, and how graciously I dealt with the whole thing. I also had three rather close gay friends die of AIDS.
“Incredibly hard”? Boo hoo. Hard is having to stay employed and make money when you have a baby you weren’t expecting and whom you have to support. The simple fact of the matter is that human sexuality is completely inconsequential and therefore boring beyond the actual partners and in any public sense unless the risk of procreation is present. And therefore the hardship of that class of people who are distinguished from everyone else only by the non-procreative nature of their sexuality is a lot less important than they or their advocates assume.
That’s why a standardized—and non-sucky—civil-unions law would address the substance of the complaint. If all states recognize civil unions, preferably better than Vermont does now, you get the parity, the godbags don’t get hissy over that whole changing-the-definition-of-marriage thing, and everybody’s happy.
Except the activists who wanted to impose same-sex marriage on the whole nation via the courts…
…via the courts in just one state.
Left that part out. Sorry.
– Actually McGehee, I believe, if memory serves me, there were at least six states, including the obvious Cal and Mass, where activists made serious runs on pushing through same sex marraige legislation, but in most instances a very rapid voter backlash settled the local issue decisively.
– From what I’ve seen, the slowness in states adopting good solid, well written civil union laws seems to lie as much at the doorstep of the adament activists themselves, where they refuse to accept anything less than a full adaptation under the banner of “marraige”.
– Sexual orientation is not a civil right, its a personal preference, and yet the gay community had managed to redefine the terms of the issue successfully in the sense that most of society was prapared to accept civil unions as a form of legal social status. As some authors have talked about, apparently theres a good deal more involved than just legal questions at the heart of the matter.
I said families. I’ve known them to exist with and without children.