Posted on 03/13/2006 5:47:36 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
Geographically, all that separates Virginia and Maryland is the Potomac River, which is approximately four hundred yards wide for much of its length. This proximity makes it commonplace for people to live in one state and work in another.
However, one thing I learned while I was attorney general of Virginia is that the geographical proximity doesn’t translate into cultural proximity. On many important social issues, the states are far apart. Maryland’s abortion laws, for example, go far beyond Roe v. Wade, while Virginia continuously tries to uphold the value of human life for unborn children in the womb.
The latest and most pressing example of this cultural divide between the states involves same-sex “marriage.” And it illustrates the need for a national solution to this contentious issue.
In late January, a Maryland judge struck down the state law that limited marriage to heterosexual couples. In her ruling, the judge wrote that “although traditions and values are important, they cannot be given so much weight that they alone will justify a discriminatory statutory classification.”
While supporters of same-sex “marriage” cautioned that “we’re still a long way from a final decision,” it’s unlikely that Maryland’s liberal Supreme Court will overturn the ruling.
That left opponents of same-sex “marriage” with only one option: an amendment to the Maryland constitution. That’s easier said than done—not because the measure would be so unpopular with the public, but because it seems unlikely to reach the public since they can’t get an “up-or-down” vote in the legislature.
By contrast, this November, Virginians will vote on a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. The measure is expected to spark what its senate sponsor calls a “great debate”—in his words, “becoming of Virginia.”
Hometown pride aside, at least Virginia is having that debate, which is more than can be said of Maryland, whose legislative leaders refuse to let the issue go before the voters.
So, as early as next year, a mere four hundred easily and often-traversed yards, the Potomac River, could separate the sides on one of the most important social issues of our day. What happens, then, in the all-too-likely case of a married same-sex couple moving from Rockville, Maryland, to Alexandria, Virginia? Will Virginia be obligated to grant “full faith and credit” to the Maryland decree?
For that matter, what benefits will Virginia employers have to offer to married gay employees who live in Maryland? Will they be the same as for married heterosexual employees who live in Virginia?
Advocates of same-sex “marriage” are counting on this kind of confusion and uncertainty. What’s about to happen in Maryland and Virginia practically begs courts to get involved under the guise of “ending confusion”—“confusion” entirely of their own making.
What we need is a solution that minimizes confusion without ignoring the repeatedly expressed will of the people. That solution is best achieved through a federal constitutional amendment: It’s called the Marriage Protection Amendment, and it is pending before Congress right now. It defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman throughout the United States and is the only way to prevent judges from re-defining marriage and turning the Potomac into something other than a river: a pretext for ignoring long-held “traditions and values.”
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Please go to the website for more info:
VA4Marriage.org - http://www.va4marriage.org/
"One Man, One Woman"
Goal: Pass an amendment to the Constitution of Virginia defining marriage as being between one man and one woman
CLICK HERE TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
for a Virginia Constitutional Amendment Defining Marriage!
See Our Op-Ed in the Richmond Times Dispatch
from Sunday, February 5, 2006
Click here to see how the 2006 General Assembly voted on the
State Marriage Amendment!
Marriage is the Foundation of the Family
Marriage between one man and one woman as a lifelong partnership has been recognized as the bedrock of the family throughout human history. Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family calls marriage "one of God's most marvelous and enduring gifts to humankind." A loving and compassionate society has never intentionally created motherless and fatherless families. A plethora of data and studies have validated again and again that marriage is the stabilizing force of any society.
Unfortunately, homosexual activists are seeking to destabilize marriage. They desire to redefine marriage as nothing more than a close relationship between consenting adults and seek to make any relationship equivalent to marriage. READ MORE HERE...
Most Common Questions
Q. Will the amendment ban same-sex marriage in Virginia?
A. Yes.
Q. Will the amendment ban so-called 'civil unions' in Virginia?
A. Yes, it will ban civil unions, domestic partnerships, and any other union, partnership or legal status that attempts to approximate traditional marriage. Legal contract rights will in no way be infringed upon.
Q. When will Virginians vote on the amendment?
A. As long as the 2006 General Assembly passes the same version of the amendment they passed this year and schedule a vote in accordance with Virginia tradition, citizens will have the opportunity to affirm marriage and amend their Constitution on November 7, 2006.
Q. What is the most important reason for protecting traditional marriage?
A. The most important reason to protect traditional marriage is for the well being of children. Traditional marriage provides the most stable and nurturing environment for the raising and education of children. A plethora of studies show that children benefit emotionally, physically, economically and educationally in a traditional, two-parent home.
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va4marriage is a project of The Family Foundation Action. va4marriage.org is a non-partisan project of concerned citizens, pastors and like-minded organizations dedicated to the passage of a Virginia constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman.
Traditional heterosexual marriages, for example of a widow after children are grown would fall into the first category. Heterosexual couples without the intent to raise children would fall into the first category until the wife became pregnant. Failing to qualify for the more rigorous standards for marriage would call for adopting the children when born. Child rearing is that serious of a commitment.
The entire purpose of marriage is to protect the development of future generations. We have allowed marriage to be watered down by no-fault divorce laws so that any ol' fling qualifies and if kids are born, oh well. We should focus on correcting that problem and let the disinterested, the infertile, the selfish, and the depraved live under the tenuous standards we have today.
Interesting post. At least you've thought about the issue.
Now, to your point: what happens when the husband turns around and says, "we agreed to a non-reproductive marriage, and now you've unilaterally increased the stakes -- and your own legal rights vis-a-vis mine, not coincidentally -- by getting pregnant without my assent. You practiced to deceive me. Fraud!"
Also, if you simply say, "well, the State will take the children away from non-qualified parents," then what you've done is destroy an ageless right of people to reproduce, and made it a revocable license extended by the State in return for certain policy objectives being kowtowed to first. Such as (arguendo and ad absurdum, as an exercise in destructive testing of the idea) the right of the State to insist that parents agree to raise their children as Greenies or Democrats, in return for the license to bear children.
What about that?
Nuke Baltimore! That would solve the problem.
If we're going to strengthen marriage, we either need to tighten divorce laws, change the underlying culture or both. Endorsing any sort of homosexual unions because of the sad state of heterosexual marriage is moving from the stick house to the straw house.
I think you'll be interested in my post 7.
Why?
For just one example, imagine the curriculum requirements that might make it into the schools if we give legal sanction to homosexual marriage.
Tier two is not marriage; it's a partnership.
Adoption.
Actually, your point isn't at all absurd. I give you the sixteen-year-old inner-city welfare child, gravita three, para two. It's been horrendously destructive.
The choice is ugly: either give the state the power to redistribute children to qualified households and watch those standards like a hawk, or allow the state to raise the children in a permanent majority underclass as we do today (in case anybody hasn't noticed). Personally, I would prefer to see the standards for marriage delegated to private charities carrying liability insurance by which to correct mistakes.
As I just posted on another thread:
By that time the educated parent is thirty-two. Her egg fertility has dropped in half. She will have a far higher incidence of birth defects. She will only have time for two, or at most three kids at a rational spacing. The only other option is to allow uneducated people to raise all the kids or import and educate new citizens. It's a recipe for demographic disaster.
This is why my home-educated kids were doing college level work before they became teenagers. Compressing the k-12 curriculum in math and history so that they could skip high school for college level technical and writing courses will have them so far ahead that they'll have time for a life that includes children.
We have a choice: an educated population of child-bearers on an advanced curve, a permanent underclass of breeders, or importing our future workers. It's time we faced reality.
Gays and their allies would not accept it. Traditional marruage supporters and their allies would not accept it. Game over.
Tier two is not marriage; it's a partnership.
That's semantics. The effect on society will be the same as marriage. And you can bet that classroom curricula will change whether you cal it a marriage or a partnership.
No. Tier two partnerships won't raise children.
No. Tier two partnerships won't raise children.
1. No politician would be brave enough to propose it even if it were a good idea.
2. The people will not support it.
3. The courts would eviscerate it, and rightly so.
4. It is so completely inconsistent with the Founder's vision of limited government power that they would puke on their velvet suits if the heard about it.
Solve those four problems, and you're golden.
Neither did the founders envision the welfare state we've spawned. Further, there's no forced confiscation here; there's a choice: They can get married and keep the kids, or give them up.
That doesn't mean they'd solve the welfare state by making a police state version of DCFS. Your "cure" makes the disease look like a picnic.
Oh, and you still haven't said what you'd do with gay couples who already have kids.
What you are forgetting when you say this is that single parents effectively give their children to the state (of course, so do many two parent families). This aspect of the design adresses the lesser of two evils: a single mother forced into a hard choice pursuant by her choice to get pregnant with the necessary result of a two parent family raising a child, or the government effectively raising a single parent kid?
I don't "like" either mechanism, but it beats gays, lesbians, single moms, easy divorce with children involved, and especially government raising kids. Let tier two have the no-fault system.
It doesn't have to be that way at all. In fact, it would work better without the existence of a DCFS. There's no reason placement couldn't be managed by any number of insured volunteer agencies.
Your "cure" makes the disease look like a picnic.
And yours is?
It isn't a cure, it's a tourniquet. It would seem you haven't spent much time in a MediCal hospital nursery, becuase if you had you'd know who is having the majority of children these days. My wife managed such a nursery. Now she works an infertility unit. Guess who the big paying customers there are?
Oh, and you still haven't said what you'd do with gay couples who already have kids.
Stop the bleeding and grandfather it. Leaving the situation as it is will inevitably lead to both gay marriage and continue abetting ephemeral heterosexual marriage, the result of which is the destruction of its meaning entirely.
I concur if only on processual grounds. The 2% don't drive the 98%, no matter how fabulous they think they are. Otherwise you embarrass the ideal of democracy.
For just one example, imagine the curriculum requirements that might make it into the schools if we give legal sanction to homosexual marriage.
I think it's already there, as witness the scandals in Massachusetts, Ohio, and California.
I really don't favor any countenancing of "marriage" for people who aren't heterosexual couples who entertain at least the possibility of children.
At the end of the day, a shackup is still just a shackup. I agree with you that much of the problem with marriage is the lack of seriousness with which people take it in the heterosexual community at large, and speaking from my personal perspective, with feminist mots like "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."
The woman who said that, Gloria Steinem, got married at 61 -- far, far too late to have children. Now she's divorced again. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this woman has a problem with the concept of marriage. And yet she spoke authoritatively to an entire generation of fertile women, on the subject of gender relationships.
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