Natoma said:
If marriage is a religious construct then the government has no right saying that gay men and women cannot participate in it. It is up to an individual church to recognize said marriages, and then the government to confer upon those marriages all the rights conferred upon all marriages, as per equal protection.
That is if it is indeed a religious construct.
Legally, it's a bunch of words saying if this then that, but socially, it's religious for most people, to varying degrees. A civil ceremony is always somehow inferior, everybody wants a church wedding.
Hey I feel the same way about heterosexual sex but you don't see me going out of my way saying ick on the whole straight thing. That is completely unnecessary.
Then at some level, you don't accept straight people.
That's if we are really talking about acceptance and not just tolerance. Seems to me that you were referring to acceptance by the walking down the street holding hands reference. If I see candy bar wrapper on the sidewalk, I might just walk on by, I don't really accept that it should be there, but I grit my teeth and tolerate it and hope it gets cleaned up by somebody. That's not the kind of thing you are looking for, I'm guessing, so it's about acceptance, not tolerance.
And yet no one tries to legislate you from marrying your girlfriend.
Actually since I am not into churches, it's not likely I will ever want to get married, just out of principle, but I could possibly be coerced into some hypocritical ceremoney to placate others. Ever time I enter a church I want to do something evil.
Outside of the religious aspect, it's a contract, with really hairy and evil loopholes if you break up, pretty much economic suicide unless you marry upscale.
Anyway, thing is, you and I are not the same, the status quo is about hetero relationships, it has deep meaning and significance to the majority of the population, most of that religious, some not, but it's something established already. Vows have been taken, changing what the vows were about after the fact on the altar of politically correctness is not going to be enthusiastically embraced so you are barking up the wrong tree.
We went for the mastercard version of civil union. Look up the history of the fight for Civil Unions in Vermont and Hawaii. The direct result of that fight was DOMA.
This is not the first time, nor the last time, this fight will be engaged.
So, keep at it, I don't think this paticular case really means a lot since there is no way you are going to get same sex unions in the US refered to as marriages anyway. If marriage is defined as hetero, so what, it's just saying what the status quo has been for centuries upon centuries. In fact by defining it, they are implying it needs to be defined because there are other situations out there, so you are getting recogition that way.
Himself said:
Suggesting to everybody that the contract with their god that they signed up for to last all their lives should be rewritten and potentially devalued to be politically correct is not a great tactic.
And yet people get married all the time with no predisposition toward any particular god. What would all those religious types who see those marriages occur, but not for the purpose of building a contract with god, say about that?
Ask them. They will probably say something different depending on what religion they are on about. Put it this way, there are what 5-10% of the population that is gay, what percentage of the population would you say is religious and has had a church wedding? I would guess much higher than 10% and I think 10% is optimistic for the gay population anyway.
Governments create laws for the good of most people, not level things off to placate everybody. I wouldn't care if all the tax breaks and incentives for married couples were eliminated myself. But that's pretty selfish since it doesn't apply to me.
Heterosexual sex is everywhere you look. On the TV, in ads, in the news, etc. And yet, it holds a different meaning than when homosexuals do the same thing? That's what I call a double standard.
One of the drawbacks to being in the minority I guess. I see quite a bit of gay related things on tv all the time, if it's only 10% it seems like more, seems a reasonable percentage.
I'm not turned on by heterosexual sex. It disgusts me in ways you probably only know when you think of homosexual sex. Yet I am not attempting to equate my disgust with heterosexual sex to the same level with beastiality.
To me it's the same feeling, perhaps it doensn't feel the same to you, everybody is different.
