Posted on 08/05/2010 5:41:02 PM PDT by Maelstorm
Let's look at how the gay-marriage thing in California has unfolded so far:
The state’s Supreme Court in 2008, on a one-vote margin, decides to redefine marriage to dump one key parameter that had always and everywhere in human history been part of marriage: that it be between complementary sexes, not identical ones.
Within months, the voters of the state overrule the court, amending their constitution to say that, no, you can’t redefine basic social institutions against the will of the people. The losers sue the state.
And Wednesday, a federal judge – a judge, as in one – overrules the people, ruling, among other things, that “gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.” It doesn’t?
Gay “marriage” advocates cheered, of course, saying it’s a great advance for equality. Ask yourself, however, this: What changed, precisely, because of the decision (presume, for a moment, that all appeals courts agree with Judge Vaughn Walker).
Does this, as gay “marriage” advocates often say, remove some impediment to their preferred relationships?
No, it doesn’t. The fight isn’t about the freedom to love, since the law says nothing (nor should it) about who can love whom, a fundamentally private matter.
Does this change practicalities, such as the right to co-own a house or leave legacies to a gay lover?
No, it does not. Even in places that, like Wisconsin, have not redefined marriage, one may make wills, mortgages, adoptions, benefits arrangements and the like with whom one wants. For its part, California had civil unions carrying all the benefits of marriage.
Does this alter the ability to a couple to tell each other they’ll be faithful unto death, of one flesh, as married couples (ideally) do?
No. People have always been able to say and mean whatever they wish to each other. Again, the law has no say in such private matters.
Does this allow gay couples to be regarded as if they were married by friends? Does it allow acquaintances to think of long-time lovers as being married?
Again, no. People have long done this, and some churches have long been blessing such couples. That’s their right, of course. They require no judge to do so.
Does this mean that everyone else, including especially perfect strangers, must also now grant gay relationships the same unique and special public respect that until now society has always and everywhere reserved for married couples?
Yes, it does. That’s what the decision was exactly about: Commanding society to view homosexual relationships with a favor that society has been unwilling to grant.
Don’t take my word: As the New York Times explained it, gay-rights activists have increasingly sought same-sex marriage not simply to “lessen discrimination” but also as “an emotional indicator of legitimacy.” The paper quoted one activist as saying that to not redefined marriage “is to deny respect for the essence of who we are as gay people.”
Which is why the state’s civil unions, which conferred the practical benefits of marriage, weren’t enough: They sealed the relationship privately, while only marriage itself could mandate public approbation.
Gay-marriage backers constantly mock an idea they cannot grasp, that redefining marriage will damage it. What – they say – suddenly you’ll love your wife less? Obviously not, but as established a few paragraphs back, marriage isn’t a private affair. Its strength as a social institution – as the relationship at the core of the family – has certainly been damaged, too, by the explosion in divorce, but that’s no reason, either, to euthanize the whole thing.
The reason gay “marriage” damages marriage is not because it changes individual couple’s relationships but because it commands us all to accord as much respect to homosexual relations as society always has done to genuine marriage. Insofar as many people, by their own varied moral reasoning, freely choose to see homosexual relationships as somehow disordered, they will respond to this mandate, then, by according less respect to traditional marriage.
Early research shows this is how it actually works, just as easy divorce, while not necessarily changing any individual couple’s relationship, nonetheless reduces the social expectation that marriage is permanent. If marriage often amounts to a temporary thing, then people see it so even when it comes to couples who seek permanence.
If this is so (and I think the evidence shows it is), then Judge Walker’s decision will have won for gay couples an “emotional indicator” of a "legitimacy" that will rapidly diminish to meaninglessness.
Meanwhile: Paul Mirengoff sees collateral damage:
“Judge Walker's decision is the fruit of a lengthy process through which an eilite within the legal profession has worked tirelessly in an effort to blur, hopelessly, the distinction between the law and personal preferences of that elite. If the decision stands, its main impact will be a diminution, probably past the tipping point, of public confidence in the law and the courts.”
And: Orin Kerr at Volokh sees Walker as having missed entirely the rationality is society not wanting to have too-rapid change imposed on it.
And: Kathryn Jean Lopez talks to Dan Brown of the National Organization for Marriage, who tells of the violence and hate that defenders of traditional marriage have encountered. He outlines what’s at stake:
“Gay marriage has consequences. The goal of this movement is to use the law to reshape the culture so that disagreement with their views on sex and marriage gets stigmatized and repressed like bigotry. Children will be taught, whether parents like it or not, that traditional faith communities’ views on marriage are based on hatred and bigotry. In the new America they are attempting to build, core civil rights will be sacrificed for imaginary ones that will then be used to exclude most religious people and institutions from the public square. We are already seeing the beginnings of this great purge in the academy, and it will march from there through professional licensing and institutions in ways that will affect a great many people.”
Because married couples produce off-spring and families that strengthen the nation.
“Judaism was a rebellion against paganism”
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In its inception, it was instructions from YHWH on how to survive as a migrant nation in the sinai desert.
Later men twisted it to suit themselves. That was a movement toward paganism, not away.
.
“he problem we face today is that fringe sexuality has been given equal ground with heterosexual monogamy which is stupid and irrational but that is the world we live in. There is also no good reason to reward homosexuality.”
I’d like one person to attempt to rationally explain how any homosexual relationship is better than your average heterosexual relationship in terms of the state’s welfare. A heterosexual relationship produces children, ie the nation’s future, its tax base, its productivity, and it’s workforce.
A homosexual relationship produces? Well, nothing, other than some pretty entertaining hissy fits.
The two types of relationships are by no means equal. Why should the federal government reward an inferior lifestyle that produces nothing in the same way it rewards its future sustenance?
You can show me your castrated prize bull all day long, but I’m not going to pay you for it when there’s another one that’s going to produce prize calves because it’s fertile.
Well they intend to try. California schools already have courses in many areas that specifically indoctrinate kids as young as kindergarten to accept homosexuality as normal. It isn’t and will never be but they most certainty intend to shut those of us who disagree up whether it be through fine, loss of work or any number of other forms of intimidation.
Gays are love them, or love them, there is not leave it.
All religions can backslide into partial paganism. I see this everywhere today.
“Gays are love them, or love them, there is not leave it.”
I can still beat the crap out of them!
The old time psychiatrists didn't like it and had some good explanations. These days any shrink who condemns it has ruined his career
Exactly.
This is not about rights or laws, they can do all that with civil unions and powers-of-attorney.
It is about all of us - each and every one - accepting and believing and promoting this type of “marriage” as being the same in every way, and just as acceptable and normal as traditional man-woman marriage.
And they will NEVER be happy until that happens, and it will NEVER happen.
I continue to get the impression that many gay people, in fact most of them, are deeply ashamed. They don’t want to admit it. But they want to FORCE us to accept them as normal to somehow give them legitimacy.
I will never do that. Period.
It is a perversion.
If you analyze it from a rational perspective accommodating a homosexual relationship is artificial and is dependent on govt for it to maintain any status at all. Gender is real and for real 100% sex you need two members one from each gender. We may call same gender relations sex but it really isn’t. Sex is an activity that could if both partners are fertile produce offspring. Homosexuals can not produce offspring with their same sex partners at least not without radical scientific intervention which is something we as a society will one day be asked to pay for just to be “equal”.
The alternative is to have a third party involved which only complicates and legal status and guardianship of offspring. All children who are not biologically connected to the parents are more likely to suffer abuse. I know we have seen several studies which were conducted for the sake of activism trying to norm homosexuality but there should be real questions about encouraging partnerships in a group where drug abuse, suicide, domestic violence, sexual disease, sexual abuse, mental disorder, and relationship instability is much higher. Add a child who has no biological relationship to one or both parents and you are setting up a very dangerous combination.
The very first male couple that was allowed to Foster children in the UK was found to have molested them. The social workers ignored signs in the form of lewd pictures which the men had been taking of the boys age 8 -15.
What gets me is the unreality of the way homosexuals are dealt with. They are given kid glove treatment and people refuse to apply even a fraction of the caution that known science and research should warrant.
Even conservatives are reluctant because the gay lobby is such a bully. Anyone who thinks this doesn’t affect them is living in a naive little bubble.
Exactly, good post, as are many on this thread.
If it is a matter of calling it "Marriage" or "Holy Matrimony" or "Civil Union", then maybe the answer it to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and render unto God the things that are God's.
The State, whether it be the State of California or the Government of the United States, does not deal in "holiness" or religious meaning. The State deals with inheritance law, allowable deductions on your 1040 Form or your California Income Tax Form, who gets stuck with paying alimony in case of a divorce, etc., etc.
A ceremony performed at the Courthouse by a Justice of the Peace "by the authority vested in me by the State of California" deals only with "the things that are Caesar's". God is not even mentioned ...... or else the ACLU would file a "separation of Church and State" lawsuit.
Only religious marriage ceremonies ever mention God and each religion defines what it and what is not considered "Holy Matrimony".
So, why don't we take the definition of "Holy Matrimony" out of the Courthouse and out of the hands of secular Judges and put it back in the Church or the Temple where it belongs?
Let the State issue the licenses and make the laws regarding "the things that are Caesar's" and have the State deal only in the creation of "Civil Unions" FOR EVERYBODY.
So, the State wants to consider that Adam and Eve or Adam and Steve are in "Civil Union" that allows them this or that tax category and allows the State to decide who will get how much of the other person's stuff if they break up. Fine. Whatever floats the State's boat.
Once you jump through the legal hoops, you then get a Certificate from the State proclaiming that Person A is now in a "Civil Union" with Person B ...... a purely legal act that has no more moral or spiritual implications than forming an S Corporation for your small business.
In the meantime, for example, the Catholic Church will maintain that Adam and Steve are NOT joined by Holy Matrimony.
As a matter of fact, if Adam and Eve never bothered to go to the Church to obtain the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, the Catholic Church will maintain that NEITHER Adam and Eve NOR the other Adam and Steve are "married". In the eyes of the Catholic Church, BOTH couples are "living in sin".
Not even a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States can change that.
So, if you want "Holy Matrimony", and you want to render unto God the things that are God's, you go to your Catholic Church or Baptist Church or Synagogue and the Priest or Minister or Rabbi will perform the ritual, before God.
Then God, not the pencil-pushers of the State, the will define "Holy Matrimony".
"Marriage" is a term that has very deep religious connotations and the State, by the First Amendment, has no business redefining the term or using the term if it differs from the traditional religious meaning.
So that is the solution:
Have the State only declare "Civil Unions" FOR EVERYBODY. Have the State stick to "the things that are Caesar's". Have the State stick to tax regulations, inheritance laws and divorce lawyers fighting over alimony payments.
Have the Churches and Temples "stick to the things that are God's" and decree, according to their own religious law and traditions, who is actually in a state of "Holy Matrimony" in the eyes of God.
"But .... but ...... Adam and Steve claim that they have a 'Marriage' when all they have is a 'Civil Union'!"
So? What does it matter what Adam and Steve call it?
"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." .... Abraham Lincoln
>> If they had dreamed this kind of mess ...
Maybe they didn’t exclude the possibility of such things.
The issue has wobbled incrementally out of our control, and into the hands of corrupt law and bureaucracy. Who didn’t anticipate the potential problems with Prop 8 as it might be ruled Unconstitutional? The implications are disastrous for traditional values, institutions, and corporations that recognize the benefits of the ‘whole’ family.
Advancing law that governs ‘non-criminal’ behavior is not unlike a crap shoot where the gamble is to have govt rule in your favor while risking the chance it will rule against you. The natural form of society is better equipped to manage social issues, and capable of discouraging undesirable behavior.
Concerning marriage, the govt should have no role whatsoever including issues that involve discriminatory charges against organizations not supporting homosexual relationships. If for example a photographer decides not to offer services to homosexuals, then that photographer must not be charged with criminal discrimination for that choice.
Repeal, repeal, repeal. We have too many damn laws.
BTW, I don’t consider abortion a ‘social’ issue - it’s a crime against humanity; those tiny little humans.
Many of them are also many of them harbor horrible secrets. The one gay man I know the best was molested by his gay uncle. I know for certain he showed interest in girls before this event forever changed him. I know that not all gay men have been molested but I find it alarming how many have been. Yet this is mostly ignored along with the fact that self identified homosexuals are more likely than the general population to commit sexual abuse.
You are right they will never be normal because they aren’t and most people know instinctively what normal sexual relationships are.
Precisely! They don't want tolerance, they want acceptance.
I’ve never encountered the degree of outright hostility and intolerance as I have when discussing this issue. A lot of people have simply been brainwashed by the media and refuse to think rationally. It is amazing how pervasive it is. It was bad with Global Warming too but not nearly to the degree as it is with the failure of sexual liberalism.
All liberal sexual policy has failed horribly. Gay marriage is just another that will fail but as has been the case in the past a lot of people will fail with it. The problem is that the media refuses to be critical of liberal sexual behavior outside of where it is politically advantageous.
The cost to society is huge, if you include the rise in kids born out of wedlock their dysfunctions, and the rise in sexual disease, the cost of mental health care, you end up with numbers in the billions all for the sake of a group of people who don’t want to be sexually responsible and have had as a goal the destruction of the basic family unit.
That’s it. It’s a language thing. There is now and will be a need to draw a distinction. The word “marriage” is being altered in meaning. There is still a need to draw that distinction. Maybe it will be “traditional marriage”. That will be the new target? That was my first inclination, but I like “holy matrimony” better.
That’s what the decision was exactly about: Commanding society to view homosexual relationships with a favor that society has been unwilling to grant.
Re-education camps, here we come.
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