Posted on 10/28/2008 6:33:09 PM PDT by nickcarraway
If Prop. 8 wins, Newsom will be scapegoated. But the recriminations should focus on Ronald George.
I voted against Proposition 8, just as I voted against Proposition 22 in 2000, on equality-under-the-law grounds. I hope the anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment fails on Tuesday.
But I'm increasingly beginning to suspect it will pass. Backers have mounted a shrewdly framed TV ad campaign that doesn't have the harsh edge many expected from die-hard opponents of gay marriage. Its focus on the possibility that school kids might be taught about gay marriage has touched a chord among parents. (No, I don't think this claim is preposterous, given how our legal and education communities work. I just don't find the prospect particularly scary.)
Prop. 8's odds have also been greatly increased by vast donations pouring in from the country from cultural and religious conservatives who see the fight as pivotal to preventing gay marriage becoming the norm around the nation and even the world. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told The New York Times that Prop. 8 was "more important than the presidential election."
So the stakes are high -- and the recriminations will be intense if Prop. 8 succeeds. I think San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will be haunted forever by his braying, arrogant soundbite after the May state Supreme Court ruling declaring gay marriage legal in California: "The door's wide-open now. It's gonna happen, whether you like it or not!" It was off-the-charts smart for the pro-8 forces to replay the clip over and over in their ads.
For my money, though, any recriminations should focus on California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George. This state was gradually moving toward a gay-marriage consensus. But it just wasn't there yet when George, in his own way, declared it's gonna happen, whether you like it or not.
I found George's legal reasoning to be sound and persuasive. But given his past moderation and unadventurousness, his decisive vote to impose gay marriage on California was deeply uncharacteristic. It may well have been principled. Yet given George's history, it looks far more like posturing for the history books than anything else.
There's a lot of that going on around at the highest levels of state government. The guy at the top of the executive branch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) hunted for global acclaim by signing sweeping, unprecedented climate-change legislation and by pushing a sweeping, unprecedented (and plainly illegal) health insurance mandate. The guy who used to be the most powerful leader of the legislative branch (Fabian Nunez) hunted for the same acclaim by working with Arnold on both his crusades.
This spring, it was the guy at the top of the state judicial branch's chance to bask in global acclaim -- and Ron George jumped at the opportunity. But he may have hurt the cause of gay marriage far more than he helped it.
FYI, the elected officials did not strike down the people’s vote, four activist judges did. What part of being conservative are actual in favor of?
Three strikes.
If supporting liberty and the pursuit of happeness make me a lowlife, put me at the top of your list.
When being married gets you governmental benefits of any kind, it is no longer private.
That said, I equate gay marriage with polygamy, interspecies marriage, intergenerational marriage, multiple spouses marrying multiple spouses, and any other 'arrangement' the degenerates of our society care to put together.
If marriage means anything, it means nothing. Current law lets any arrangement get legal rights if they choose to. Prop 8 is about making the concept of marriage obsolete.
Then why would you vote to restrict them? Apparently, if you have your way, they won’t have the same rights as the rest of the adult taxpayers.
Actually, the reverse is true, "Prop. 8's odds have also been greatly diminished by vast donations pouring in from the country from cultural and religious liberals".
Ron George, and his cohorts, need to be removed from office by the voters at the earliest opportunity.
No, I don't believe that most people get married for, "happiness." Have you ever met a person who said they got married for, "happiness." You really don't understand marriage at all. Marriage is a social institution to help order society, and it is most important for raising children. I checked a few dictionaries as well, and I didn't see anything about happiness.
Marriage means a lot of responsibility and not putting a participants needs or desires first. Now, hopefully, marriage will result in happiness, but that's not guaranteed, and it is most likely the result of a lot of work and unselfishness.
If marriage is a right, what does the state of California owe me? I am a single, heterosexual man, who is not married. If I have a right to get married, how do I exercise my right to get married?
I don't understand your logic. Expanding those who can marry makes the concept obsolete.
Explain that to my wife, she wants to renew our option. : )
As for your new question and change of direction, may I suggest e-harmony.com.
I did answer your previous questions, see my post. I have never seen anything written in history that the purpose of marriage is, “happiness.” Please provide me with something authoritative that says otherwise. As well, I told you about the research in other countries that shows when homosexual marriage or civil unions start, heterosexual marriage becomes meaningless.
There is not constitutional right to marry. You are very off base in your reasoning. You can not restrict a right that people do not have.
You are talking the “No on 8” talking points. Well, it would make some ex con happy to come to your house and rape you and your adopted kids while your boyfriend watches, so I guess there is nothing wrong with him pursuing happiness. It is just a pesky technicality.
I don't like the guy my sister married, but I went to her wedding and wished them well.
Do you see how you can vote to acknowledge a freedom even if the person uses it to do something you don't like. It's the price of living in a free country. People will do things you consider wrong, a sin, or stupid. But they have the right to do so. Get it? What is the source of your right to make that determination for them?
Individuals who work in the marriage business such as wedding photographers, cake decorators, those who rent out halls, etc. will all be required to work for gay clients or else face financially ruinous lawsuits.
Most gays will prefer to go to gay-friendly wedding businesses, but there will be a few extremists with chips on their shoulders that will hunt out Christian wedding businesses in order to initiate lawsuits.
The freedom of a few gays to wed, will result in the prevention of 1000's of traditional religious folks from continuing to make a livelihood in the wedding business.
Neither does someone who "marries" a giraffe.
Neither do five males who "marry" as a group.
Neither does a son and his elderly mother, who decide to "marry" so they can receive certain benefits.
Shall I continue?
In this article, Stanley Kurtz addresses exactly what you are talking about, "the conservative case for homosexual marriages." i.e. that denying marriage to homosexuals is denying them rights.
Please read it. This is the first paragraph:
MARRIAGE IS SLOWLY DYING IN SCANDINAVIA. A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood. The Nordic family pattern--including gay marriage--is spreading across Europe. And by looking closely at it we can answer the key empirical question underlying the gay marriage debate. Will same-sex marriage undermine the institution of marriage? It already has.
I can't convince you that happiness is a goal of marriage, you either believe it or you don't. I must say I find your position peculiar. Shall we have a poll.
A. to obtain wealth
B. to sire children
C. Social standing
D.Happiness
The Queers believe that sexuality should not be commoditized, regulated, and codified by such archaic constructs as marriage.
Human sexuality should be reduced to its true raw animalistic components.
By voting No you are just encouraging the whiny, shuckin'-and-jivin' "We're just like you normal people" homosexuals to continue on their path to assimilation into the banal bourgeois culture.
You should be ashamed!
The irony is you are voting to defend the court’s usurpation of the voters’ right to vote. By you estimation, we shouldn’t have initiatives, just courts to tell us what the California Constitution means at the moment.
People take risks. One of them is who you marry. For you to project the results of some study to deny people rights is deplorable. And in another country is scientifically non-verifiable and probably non-applicable.
Even if the results were scientifically transferrable, I say, so what?
look at what's happened to freedom of the press. Look what we have going on. But I would not change the constitution because of it.
What are you really afraid of?
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