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Posted on 12/11/2012 6:42:39 PM PST by billflax
The U.S. Supreme Court recently opted for two cases pertaining to same-sex marriage. Windsor v. United States challenges the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Had Edith Windsor's deceased “spouse” been a man she would have been saved $363,000 in estate taxes. The other concerns the Ninth Circuit’s overturning Proposition 8; a successful ballot initiative which prevented same-sex marriage in California.
Leave lawyering to lawyers, but when pendulums swing sometimes they return like wrecking balls smacking those who previously prodded the pendulum. Government, at least Washington, should not interfere in marriage. It has, sometimes at the insistence of those most adamantly defending marriage, but this underscores how treacherous Washington makes for an ally. Christ admonished “for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” Seeking federal backing too risks being crushed under government’s boot.
Political authorities overturning marriage represents the greatest invasion by government into what should be a private sphere in American history. Marriage is a religious concept long indelibly imprinted into Western Civilization. The federal government must refrain. States have a valid role preserving culture and not undermining our heritage, but marriage reflects a sacred covenant before God. Many who otherwise rarely attend church besides their weddings must implicitly understand its religious underpinnings.
It’s puzzling why non-Believers who surely represent the preponderance of same-sex marriage advocates care beyond the economic implications. If government's role lessened these impacts would be negligible. For instance, the hefty estate tax suffered by Miss Windsor is best rectified by eliminating confiscatory estate taxes, not redefining marriage. Two government wrongs makes not a right.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Marriage is between a man and a woman.
Always was always will be.
The fruits can call it anything they like, the government can do the same, if it is not between a man and a woman it is nothing but a convenience.
Amen.
I asked the Roman Catholic priest if my wife and I could refuse the state marriage license and he said that he was barred from marrying us if we had no state license.
States should give nothing other than civil unions similar to an llc or partnership. Anything a justice of the peace, vegas elvis imitator, or cruise ship captain can put together man can put asunder.
Thanks for your thoughts!
For a long time now government entities have provided tax deductions and other benefits to married couples.
If we truly want to get the government out of marriage, then we will have to get rid of all government benefits.
Also, much will have to be changed with regard to the relationship between parents and children. If most children were raised by their birth parents, then that relationship could be recognized separately from the marriage. However, with adoptions, surrogate births, etc. it is no longer obvious who has what relationship with the children. So government might have to play a larger role to make certain the children are properly represented if the government no longer officially recognizes the marriage.
It's a fustercluck either way.
It’s “Pseudo Marriage.” not “same-sex marriage.”. The latter is an oxymoron. Call it what it is not what the libs want to label it. Laws respecting marriage are “for the children.” / Michael Savage.
Interesting points, but methinks you have made it to complicated. Unless government intervenes, marriage remains one man and one woman.
Thanks
The government originally got into the marriage business by issuing a license for the purpose of stopping interracial marriages. The history of marriage traditionally has never been a function of the state. Marriage was first performed by God himself when he gave Eve to Adam. Why is it that our courts of today cannot see that marriage is the most obvious violation of what they call the separation of church and state?
A while ago the government decided that home ownership was a good thing. So they decided to give all sorts of benefits to homeowners such as tax deductions on interest, no capital gains tax when a house is sold, creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give banks more reason to make more home loans than they otherwise would, etc.
The end result was the housing bubble and crash of 2006.
A while ago the government decided that marriage between a man and a woman was a good thing. So they decided to give all sorts of benefits to married couples such as special visitation rights, implied powers of attorneys, special rights and responsibilities with regard to their children, special treatment when one of the spouses dies, etc. This could all have been handled by contract law. The couples could have been required to spend money on lawyers to acquire all of the rights and responsibilities that the government gave them for free by law. But the married couples wanted the freebies. So along come the gays who want the same freebies and the whole house of cards collapses. Either you have to get the government completely out and require heterosexual married couples to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars in lawyers fees to grant themselves the rights they now have by law for free, or you have to give all the same goodies to gay couples.
It would be really nice if life was as simple as you hoped it would be, but that train left the station almost a hundred years ago ... or more.
...so some rich, gay millionaire is trying to get out of paying their fair share?
Is that what’s at the heart of this?
“Marriage is a religious concept long indelibly imprinted into Western Civilization.”
No, it’s not. It’s an agreement between a man and a woman to pass on their genes in the most effective way available to them.
All states should recongize civil unions, partner a and partner b. Marriage should be left to church.
Nope nothing in there about passing on genes.
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Marriage is the familial, societal, governmental, and economic building block of our civilization, our society, our country, and our communities. It is a God-ordained, God-given institution, the first and most important one. It is fundamental to the laws of nature and of nature’s God, and absolutely necessary to the fulfillment of the ultimate stated purpose of the U.S. Constitution, which is “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to our Posterity.” It must be fiercely defended on every front from any and all who would pervert it or subvert it, or America cannot possibly survive. The attack on the natural family represents an existential threat.
Okay, none of the government’s business. So if I get married again, I can just declare it polyandry and still keep the military benefits from my first (deceased) husband, right?
Thank you for the ping and post.
The two of you could not be more wrong if you tried. Marriage benefits the government. Has for centuries. A healthy productive country depends on the family to sustain itself and a healthy government recognizes and rewards the family unit.
But America? Since LBJ and his Great Society programs; America has taxed and penalized marriage. Now we see illegitimacy rates, crime rates and weflare roles increasing at double digits. All the while our educational standards are plummeting.
As goes the American Family - so goes America. Our economy is dependent on Makers not Takers. And America's Makers are married.
“Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.”
-—Pope Leo XIII about 130 years ago.
It was always a danger, at least in the modern era. As far as the state is concerned, marriage is simply whatever judges, pols, or 51% of the people think it can be at any one time. And that’s it. A poll last year said that 40% of people think that marriage comes from the state.
Freegards
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