Posted on 09/08/2012 9:03:55 AM PDT by Why So Serious
Here is a better way to look at this ... the government should not be in the marriage business, and marriage is not a political issue. Gay people, for the most part, express a desire to get married for the benefits that are extended to married couple [rights like Social Security benefits, child care tax credits, Family and Medical Leave to take care of loved ones, and COBRA healthcare for spouses and children]. Government should allow people to engage in civil unions [this includes men and women], only. Marriage should be left to the churches. Then, any one can have a civil union [man/lady, lady/lady, man/man, mom/son, dad/daughter, brother/sister, person/multiple people] which extends to that civil union the governmental rights that married couple now enjoy which include the marriage tax credit, right to pass assets without taxation upon death, the right to make life ending decisions [pulling the plug]. The whole issue dies in a blink. This should not have to be a political thing. Moving the line in the sand never works ... better just to erase it. I believe that my wife and I are married in GOD's eyes and believe that we have a civil union in the eyes of government. It should not be anything different then a partnership, LLC, or LP.
Better not leave out ‘pets’ ... just sayin’
I agree 100%!!!
Because I am now single I pay $4000 dollars a year more in federal income taxes. Get the damn government out of the marriage business/social engineering!!!
So it’s really all about money and not getting government approval for sodomy with the ‘one you love’?
A ‘family’ the cornerstone of any society from the most primitive to the most modern. It stands to reason that the government will be concerned about its structure if for no other reason than to insure domestic tranquility.
I’m 58 and my son is 22. We both came to this conclusion independently of each other — local government offers civil unions, religious organizations offer marriages. DONE!
What’s interesting about the gay marriage issue is that many gays that pushed for it never get married after they are able to. I live in NY. Thanks to Cuomo, gays can get married. At work not a single gay person that posted signs on the subject, flew the equal rights flag or wrote letters to the editor ever got married. They aren’t even planning to get married. We ask why and we get some crap answer like “we don’t need a paper to tell us we are married...”
Families are stabilizing factors, that has nothing to do with the government being involved in marriage.
Homosexuals want marriage as a sign of society’s approval for their behavior. In most places, they can already get all the rest - but they want “marriage” so they can be “normal”.
Activists know that they could have civil unions pretty easily, what they want is the word “marriage”, so as to destroy it.
You want to destroy “marriage” as well, making government civil unions (which would merely replace marriage) the norm, and allowing “marriage” to fade into obscurity as it becomes a little religious ceremony for some, in their individual churches, something for personal consumption only, but not applicable to society at large.
You legalize homosexual marriage and polygamy either way in your proposal.
Libertarians are leftists who are attacking our culture and society, and morality using a different name.
The state should be the authority on marriage, and it’s up to the people of that state to define it.
Those that should butt out are the courts. It is not their domain and any court that acts otherwise should be impeached.
I agree.
Paint w/ a broad stroke much?
Libertarians only wish to get gov’t out of the things it has NO business being in...marriage being one. Leave marriage to those as religious based institutions and civil unions for anything else.
Stable family unit, all fine and dandy, but gov’t has made some animals more equal than others (tax credits, etc.). (Living) Wills and contracts should hold for all taxes, inheritance, etc. - again, get Gov’t OUT.
And, since they can’t procreate anyway, why worry about gay unions? There’s enough reason to fret these days about the ease of divorce in ‘normal’ couples than the fringe. Now, adoption, that’s a whole new argument.
Exactly, it is all about the argument. Remove the things that divide us and focus on what unites us.
How stupid is that? And it is because you are NOT married.
That makes way too much sense for the left to go along. It also does little to destroy the family, which is the real goal, as families are the backbone of society.
FWIW, marriage is primarily a matter of the Church, or the synagogue. But in the West, government has had the job of recording and confirming it, for legal purposes, and because proper marriages are the foundation of a sound society. As long as you have a Christian nation, that works fine.
Now, we are in something of a dilemma. Freedom of religion used to mean freedom to follow a sensible religion. But now it might be Islam, or pot smoking, or Satanism, or Wiccans, or polygamist sects, or who knows what. Where do you draw the line? People used to pretty much agree. But now there is no agreement. We won’t have a healthy marriage situation unless and until our country returns to traditional religious and moral values—not by force, but by consent and conversion freely consented to.
But although the primary authorities over marriage should be the churches, government has a role to play—if we can ever get the current mess straightened out. There is no way that you can have a free society without the widespread moral agreement that comes from religion, and we no longer seem to have that. Which is not to say that we could not have another Great Awakening, which is what is needed.
Sort of like the ACLU wanting to establish atheism as the defacto state religion by driving all competiting version out of the public square.
It is all about the money. The fact that gays cannot get married has been preventing sodomy, is that what you think? I have news for you, it is taking place without government approval.
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