Posted on 06/15/2007 8:20:07 AM PDT by Chuckmorse
I learn a while ag ther eare 2 kinds of marxists. The first is the outright communist, fervent and outspoken in their idiotic belief. The second is the evolutionary marxist. These are the ones who believe that small incrimental steps will bring about their utopia. The second is what we have in the majority of our government.
Government should get out of the marriage business entirely. In Texas, we have common law marriage. That should work for everyone. Why does anyone need a stinking piece of paper from the state? Just draw up a marriage contract. That the government would try to get involved is indeed communistic. Freedom to marry is a God given right.
“I just don’t see how letting other people who generally do not have kids get married ruins it for married people and their children.”
Their children would be (and are in Massachusetts) taught that these relationships are normal, and that children don’t necessarily need both a mother and a father. The advent of easy divorce (instituted, in part, by feminists in the 1970s bent on destroying “the patriarchy”) has gotten us used to depriving children of either fathers or mothers. I believe this is part of the reason why younger people find gay marriage so reasonable. They have only known marriage within the context of no-fault divorce. Many of them have been deprived of full-time mothers and/or fathers.
I have worked in inner-city schools. Boys especially need fathers. If feminists want to see one example of an area devoid of traditional marriage, look no further than the inner city. There is, of course, a lot of poverty there as well, but the breakdown of traditional families ensures continued poverty.
Children are being relegated to an after-thought by the sexual revolution, and I refer to the whole thing - sex outside of marriage, co-habitation, easy access to abortion, no-fault divorce and now gay marriage. This does not bode well for the future. When a child has two mommies, there is an underlying message that the father did not care to become involved in the child’s life.
“Have marriage rates gone down even in those states that have not legalized gay marriage? Has the marriage rate gone down in the US, when gay marriage has not been legal?”
I don’t know the answer, but your question is beside the point. Do we value traditional marriage or not? Do we wrap society around maximizing freedom of choice or do we continue with some restraints in the interests of society as a whole? Those who wish to maximize freedom of choice do not appear to understand the necessity of social restraints and norms.
Liberals have been attacking traditional marriage for some 40 years, and the attacks are working. I do not think that sexual anarchy is a good thing. The most aggressive predators gain the most from such situations. We need restraints in order to protect weaker individuals like children and poor young women. (Love ‘em and leave ‘em to care for the child for the next 18 years.)
You could make the same statement about a child with one mommy. Or, perhaps you could take the point of view that perhaps Daddy did care, but the court system shut him out of the child's life. We have support enforcement, but we do not have equivalent 'visitation enforcement' to assure that dads who pay get to see their kids.
Besides, whether gay marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnerships are sanctioned by a state or not, there is nothing to stop a pair of lesbians with a male friend and a turkey baster. The observations you make about these fatherless children will continue to be made. Why not have a system that at least makes two people (if the non-biological parent so desires) financially responsible for the life they decided to bring into the world?
Is "traditional marriage" where a woman was not enabled to get herself a job to leave an abusive spouse, only to be branded a "divorcee" (and be suspect the rest of her life) worth returning to?
Even if the answer is yes, how do we put that toothpaste back into the tube?
And why should homosexual people, not being part of the problem of drive-thru marriage, serial monogamy, no-fault divorce, or child abandonment, be made to wait longer at the gates, because the heterosexuals screwed up matrimony?
The children will be exposed to the most vile "homo ed" imaginable, and parents will be unable to stop it.
They're going after the kids.
There have already been incidents of "fisting ed" in MA gov't schools. Now that "homosexual marriage" (i.e., sodomy) is a recognized legal institution, hell's the limit.
LOL! Because "homosexual marriage" is a meaningless term. What does it mean?
Marriage is a lifelong commitment between a man and woman for the purpose of begetting and raising children and the mutual care of the spouses.
Two men committed to sodomizing each other on a regular basis doesn't constitute a marriage.
Nobody supports teaching fringe sexual practices in school, nobody with a brain, anyway. That goes for stuff that's done by straight people, too. Excesses of all kinds in the government schools needs to be stopped, whatever the nature of it.
But, what does that have to do with the government regulating the genders of who it distributes benefits to?
It means that two people of the same sex get the same deal that two people of opposite sexes can get in regards to taxes, employment benefits, visitation rights, etc.
Marriage is a lifelong commitment between a man and woman for the purpose of begetting and raising children and the mutual care of the spouses.
I've had a vasectomy, and my lady is post-menopausal. If and when we get married, we're going to be no more "productive" than that couple of gay guys down the street that you're worried about.
Me? Or Chuck Morse? Cause I don’t want to come across as a pot-stirrer (on Free Republic) or be seen as a troll.
Check Chuck’s ‘in forum’ page, and you’ll see what I mean.
“When a child has two mommies, there is an underlying message that the father did not care to become involved in the child’s life.”
“You could make the same statement about a child with one mommy...”
“And why should homosexual people, not being part of the problem of drive-thru marriage, serial monogamy, no-fault divorce, or child abandonment, be made to wait longer at the gates, because the heterosexuals screwed up matrimony?”
You’re making the assumption that one type of marriage is as good as another. People with your views ensure that we will continue to conduct yet another social experiment on ourselves, since gay marriage has never existed until recently and we have no idea what the long-term ramifications will be. How will these children fare as adults? Wait another 30 years, the same way we did with no-fault divorce. It takes time for the results of these experiments to become apparent. The reason why the sky has not fallen in Mass. over same-sex marriage is because the children are only a few years older, not 20 or 30 years older. Gradual social erosion is much more common than drastic change.
It amazes me that some people think that it is a matter of high principle to set up marriage so that children can be deliberately deprived of a mother or father. Left-wing people continue to attack traditional marriage, and when they see the results of their attacks, the erosion of traditional marriage, they point to that as a reason to procede with gay marriage.
A lot of us here sense that all of this is leading us to a bad place. We’re already paying a price for past social experiments and you favor enacting more of them.
Democratic rights and the struggle for socialism
We defend the unrestricted right of women to abortion on demand and uphold the right of gay people to marry . . .SOCIALIST EQUALITY PARTY
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/ap...stat-a28.shtml
Full Equality and Liberation
Capitalism divides the working class, based on sexual, racial and national distinctions. Black liberation, women’s liberation and lesbian and gay liberation are essential to socialist revolution and impossible without it. We fight for real social, economic and political equality for women and for an end to discrimination against lesbians and gays.
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ORGANIZATION http://www.internationalsocialist.or...ewestand.shtml
THE STRUGGLE FOR GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS!
Gay marriage
Why should gays and lesbians not have the same rights as heterosexuals?
Behind the attack on gay marriage
Socialist Worker looks at the roots of the right wing’s offensive
We won’t accept any "separate but equal" compromises Birth of a new movement for civil rights
THE SOCIALISTS WORKER! http://www.socialistworker.org/Featured/GayRights.shtml
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM - LESBIAN and GAY LIBERATION
1. Educating Children in our schools on lesbian and gay concerns and on the equal validity of same sex and opposite sex attractions; let the cycle of homophobia be broken with this generation.
SOCIALIST PARTY USA http://sp-usa.org/literature/lesbiangay-flyer.pdf
FREEDOM SOCIALIST PARTY - RADICAL WOMEN!!
This trailblazing socialist feminist organization is the revolutionary wing of the women's movement and a strong feminist voice within the Left. Immersed in the daily fight against racism, sexism, homophobia, and labor exploitation, Radical Women views women's leadership as decisive to world revolution . . . vast ranks of militant women from the working class, especially women of color and lesbians.
http://www.socialism.com/
Socialist Party Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender group
Thousands of people took to the streets last Saturday for London's gay Pride. The Socialist Party Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Group and the youth group International Socialist Resistance (ISR) marched on the parade and distributed leaflets that were part of a joint campaign against homophobic bullying.
SOCIALISTS FOR PRIDE http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/200...tml?id=np8.htm
Communist Party of Canada
"Another important advance over the last year has been the movement for marriage rights and other forms oflegal recognition for same-sex couples. Once again we condemn Parliament's definition of marriage as "a union between a man and a woman."
http://www.communist-party.ca/news/...1/equalnjus.htm
The false debate on gay marriage:
Personal emancipation impossible under capitalism "Many radicals, and even some self-described Marxists, have been at the forefront of the movement advocating for the legal recognition of same-sex marriage."
http://www.internationalism.org/inte...y_marriage.htm
Midwest Socialist Conference
Resisting US Empire!! Separate is not equal—the fight for gay marriage
http://www.campusactivism.org/displayevent-395.htm
Lesbian Socialist Journalist Deserves Her Bias
In an August 20 essay appearing in the Sioux City Journal, syndicated columnist Bonnie Erbe discusses the unfolding story of a journalist who had been stripped of her writing duties because she campaigns for lesbian and gay rights in her off-time and is a registered member of the Freedom Socialist Party.
http://www.glaad.org/publications/ar...il.php?id=2353
Making marriage laws indifferent as to gender.
• Repealing all censorship laws.
• Defending the rights of gay and lesbian refugees and couples in immigration and removing HIV from the health test for visas.
• Defending and extending gay and lesbian programs on national and community broadcasting.
• Funding for lesbian and gay community-based information and education programs.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS AGENDA AND POLICY http://www.dsp.org.au/ds/lesgay.htm
EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ANARCY
"The women's movement also illustrates another promising development the tendency to organise in small groups and collectives. Other movements, such as parts of the gay movement, claimants unions, squatters, self-help health groups, and so oil, are good for the same reason."
http://www.totse.com/en/politics/ana...g_anarchy.html
MARXISTS CRITIQUE - SOCIALISM AND THE POLITICS OF GAYS AND LESBIANS
"Gay and lesbian liberation must become more thoroughly, militantly, and sophisticatedly radical in order to enable gays and lesbians to struggle successfully against heterosexism and homophobia. Gay and lesbian liberation must fight against the forces which oppress gays and lesbians by pushing forward what gay and lesbian liberation uniquely has to offer towards the progressive development . . . emergence of proto-communist modes of sexual community and culture."
http://www.etext.org/Politics/Altern...v1n5_msp5.html
Socialist Party of the USA - Educate Children on Lesbian and Gay
"1. Educating Children in our schools on lesbian and gay concerns and on the equal validity of same sex and opposite sex attractions; let the cycle of homophobia be broken with this generation.
2. Supporting and defending our gay and lesbian youth.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM - GAY AND LESBIAN LIBERATION! http://sp-usa.org/literature/lesbiangay-flyer.pdf
Socialists rally behind gay marriage
PARIS, May 11 (AFP) - France's opposition Socialists, spurred on by their allies in the Greens party - one of whom plans to celebrate France's first gay marriage next month - on Tuesday urged the French to back homosexual marriage.
Socialist party leader Francois Hollande told AFP he would ask his party to file a draft law that would put civil marriage on France's statute books, no matter what the gender of the two people asking to be married.
"Every society should be organised on the principle of equal rights and respect. As a result, marriage should be open to everybody," Hollande said.
http://www.expatica.com/source/site...8&story_id=7488
Gay pride: Moving forward, remembering the past
"There are many things that can divide the movements – homophobia, anti-communism, racism and male supremacy, just to name a few.
http://www.pww.org/article/view/1454/1/94/
Honor for Gay Rights Activist
Advisory Council for the City Center wants an Ulrichs-Square
After a history lesson, the representatives of several political parties (christian democrats, socialists, greens, and communists), agreed unanimously to dub a long-time unnamed square in Ostertor near the Café Engel "Ulrichsplatz".
http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/celebra...bremeneng.html
Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory
"Beyond simply resurrecting a modernist Marxism for the new millennium, the authors thoughtfully incorporate lessons we on the educational Left have learned from feminism, anti-racist theory and struggles, indigenous knowledge, and anti-homophobic theory and struggles, in pursuit of a new radicalism for these times of ultra-exploitation.
http://www.ieps.org.uk.cwc.net/marxreviews.html
Walt Brown (Socialist USA) Volunteer attorney, Consumer Justice Alliance.
Minority Issues: Brown is a member of the NAACP. We strongly support affirmative action, civil rights, and anti-discrimination laws and programs to end institutional racism. We call for the repeal of all sodomy laws and anti-lesbian and gay restrictions, and the legalization of same-sex unions.
http://selectsmart.com/president/Socialist.html
Same-Sex Marriage
Moreover, they hold, marriage has little to do with religion. While they often intersect, they are not dependent in any way. (Refer to the above commentary.) Men and women of no particular faith or god can and do join in marriage. Since marriage is not governed by any religious authority when it comes to “straights,” why shouldn’t it be the same for gays?
http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/j...july_04_27.html
The International Communist League
For the Right of Gay Marriage...and Divorce!
Marriage and the Capitalist State
Workers Vanguard
“Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
“On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution. “The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”
—Communist Manifesto (1848)
“The family structure—whether monogamous or polygamous—necessarily oppresses women. As Marxists we understand that the family serves a real social purpose and cannot simply be ‘abolished,’ even in a workers state, but must be replaced with alternate social institutions.”
http://www.icl-fi.org/ENGLISH/2004/GayMarriage-824.html
United action needed to repeal same-sex marriage ban
Pursuing only de facto couples' rights would be a mistake because this means leaving the marriage ban unchallenged. The Marriage Amendment Bill wound back the our rights by deliberately excluding us from the legal and social rights enjoyed by heterosexuals. Ignoring a repeal campaign on the marriage ban would be a travesty. United national action, rallies and forums is what we need to get this bill off the books and win full equality for [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex] people.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/596/596p9b.htm
PHOENIX ANARCHIST COALITION
There was a call put out for "all Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queers of color, Drag Queens, Sex Radicals, Political Militants, and ALL OTHERS being excluded from "traditional" culture to meet for a peaceful march and demonstration of protest outside of the Presidential Debate." Meet with everyone else at Daley Park at 3pm.
http://www.phoenixanarchist.org/modu...id= &topic=17
International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party
Black liberation, women's liberation and lesbian and gay liberation are essential to socialist revolution and impossible without it.
We fight for real, social, economic and political equality for women and for an end to discrimination against lesbians and gays, and youth. We support the struggles of all oppressed groups against any form of discrimination.
http://www.socialister.dk/english/standist.htm
Keep the Juices Flowing
Sex, and enjoying it, is natural, it's a major part of our lives. When we have consenting sex, with however many partners, male, female, gay, straight or bisexual, why shouldn't it be with passion, pride, excitement and experimentation? If no one is hurt or exploited, if power isn't used over another, then our sex is just that - our own.
It's in the interests of all our class to discuss sex and sexuality, to control our own bodies, and to learn lessons about what's good and what's not. Good medical advice aside, the moralists, politicians and middle classes have no right to hinder us or intefere.
The Spunk Library collects and distributes literature in electronic format, with an emphasis on anarchism and related issues.
http://www.spunk.org/library/sex/sp001711.html
Female Bonding And Lesbian Identity
In this chapter, I will be arguing that lesbian practices in relation both to popular and counter-cinemas in the 1970s and 1980s were produced, primarily, in discourses of lesbian feminism. I shall not be attempting any comprehensive overview of feminist theory and politics, however; nor, to address the broad range of feminist engagements with Marxism.
http://home.clara.net/pgraham/bklst.htm
A Socialist Approach to the Bill of Rights
The constitution of the GDR abolished the concept of illegitimacy, [a key ideological weapon of the ultra-right] and guaranteed homosexual rights long before the modern LGBT rights movement.
http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/94/1/67/
CLASS DIVISIONS IN THE GAY COMMUNITY
At the same time alternatives to Marxism are in crisis. The gay movement, as any sort of radical coherent force, collapsed into the reformism of the Labour left in the 1980s. That has been followed by an even more stark collapse of its ideas. No sooner had identity politics and the tactics of groups like Queer Nation in the US and OutRage! Consequently, Marxism can find a ready audience among gays and lesbians
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org...j78/morgan.htm
Civil partnership law stalled
Socialists and progressive people should expose the hypocritical nature of those who are say they are widening the legislation when they have no intention of doing so. Workers' Liberty
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/view/2340
Behind the attack on gay marriage
Socialists are for the full liberation of women and gays. Full sexual freedom is a precondition for genuine human liberation. The fight for gay marriage should be linked to the fight for national health care and abortion rights
http://www.socialistworker.org/2004-...dAttacks.shtml
League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP)
Communist Organization for the Fourth International (COFI)
Defend Gay Marriage The right of gays and lesbians to marry is moving to the front line in the long struggle for gay rights. The increasingly reactionary character of our ruling class, and its mounting defense of conservative social and religious institutions, dictate a showdown.
http://www.lrp-cofi.org/PR/gay_marriagePR70.html
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CURRENT
The false debate on gay marriage: Personal emancipation impossible under capitalism
Many radicals, and even some self-described Marxists, have been at the forefront of the movement advocating for the legal recognition of same-sex marriage.
http://www.internationalism.org/inte...y_marriage.htm
Communist Party of Great Britain
Homosexuals have often been scapegoated or persecuted. They can be portrayed as deviants who threaten the family - the basic economic unit of capitalist society. Homosexual rights is therefore a key demand. Homophobic attitudes divide the working class and aid those advocating the authoritarian state.
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/documents/cpgb/prog_demands.html
Permanent Revolution in the U.S. Today
Speeches by Freedom Socialist Party delegates to the Trotskyist and Revolutionary Socialist Conference, San Francisco, November 30-December 1, 1985
Among the topics up for discussion at the conference were the reasons for the degeneration of the SWP; the coming American Revolution and the role of Trotskyists within it; the centrality of feminism and lesbian/gay liberation in our time. The Freedom Socialist Party (FSP)--which left the SWP in part because the SWP refused to place women's emancipation on the level of a first-class . .
Our analysis of gay and lesbian oppression is based upon the Marxist theory expounded by Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
http://socialism.com/library/perm1.html
Untying the Knots: Marriage Equality and the Struggle for Civil Rights As the LGBT movement works for marriage equality, we need to also fight for the rights of immigrant families, and at the same time, need to challenge the use of marriage as a weapon against low-income women and their children. http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/view/762
Stonewall Democrats Create Black Caucus
The Republicans have often used the LGBT community issues such as "gay marriage" to distract African American voters from the issues that actually matter in their lives.
http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/10/stonewall_democ.php
California NAACP Endorses Same-Sex Marriage Bill
"In a place like California, you can not possibly work for rights if you don't work for gay rights," said Alice A. Huffman, California NAACP president. "You either believe in the rights of everyone or you are in the wrong business."
http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Sect...entDisplay.cfm
This toothpaste is already out of the tube, and somebody's still got their finger on it, squeezing even more.
If social conservatives want to remove that finger, and maybe even put some of the toothpaste back in the tube, they have got to come up with arguments that make sense to the mushy middle. Right now, that middle is uncomfortable with the label "gay marriage", and there is an opportunity there.
Those favoring alternative marriage arrangements are pounding that mushy middle with images of successful same-sex-parent families. Those opposing alternatives are just crowing on and on about how "marriage is being destroyed". I don't see any impediment to heterosexual young people finding each other, marrying, and starting families. They don't feel that letting the homosexual couple down the street marry, or civil unionize, or domestically partner is taking any rights or options away from them.
Poll after poll shows that they're the group that is most amenable to these alternative arrangements, even though many of them are products of broken heterosexual marriages. When the people who are the most adversely affected by social experiments of the past are relatively unopposed to further social experiments, then its only a matter of time before the finger squeezes out all of that toothpaste.
Their generation has grown up knowing homosexual people, and not just from television. Come up with a reason that convinces them that marriage is just for heterosexual people, and you'll win this battle.
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