needless to say, there are some people that think this is a bad idea. I have no idea why they feel this way, so maybe someone here will offer an opinion.

what I really don't understand is why anyone would think that allowing 'Same-sex marriage' will in any way change non-Same-sex marriage.

I would guess that people with strong religious beliefs may feel that it's wrong because they were taught it was wrong, but do the same people feel that they need 'protection'? do they feel they're being attacked?

what happened to the no church / state thing?

bush says:
"I have consistently stated that I'll support (a) law to protect marriage between a man and a woman. And, obviously, these events are influencing my decision,"
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&e=3&u=/nm/20040218/pl_nm/bush_gays_dc

One thing I'm unclear on is there seems to be a difference between ``civil union'' and ``marriage'', and I don't know what it is. Someone help me out.

I can't help you with your quest for knowledge, though. I have no idea why people are opposed to it.

I'm not opposed to it but I don't understand the point.

The point? I'll categorize them into two types, rational and irrational:

rational
--------
All the same reasons that civil-unions are wanted: the legal benefits and/or responsibilities.

irrational
----------
Love and social/public recognition of the formal committment.

Ok, perhaps I should have used rational/less-rational.

-brendan

Marriage is an actual contract (sort of ... depends on the state apparently), where as a civil union is just a recognition of certain criteria. I could be completely wrong here, but that is my understanding.

The REALLY interesting [censored] has yet to hit the fan... What Newsom is doing is pretty blatently illegal... but when it comes down to State's rights versus what Bush wants to do... that's when it's gonna get good.

Gavin Newsom is simply trying to start something. He's being a catalyst, but blatently going against a state prop. law.

The point is that they want the same rights and benefits that any married couple would have. If two people are lucky enough to be in love and want to be married it shouldn't matter what their sex is, more power to them.

lastdan:

what I really don't understand is why anyone would think that allowing 'Same-sex marriage' will in any way change non-Same-sex marriage.

If “marriage” is defined as “an exclusive union forged between one man and one woman” then “same sex marriage” becomes non-sensical. This is the reason most people opposed to same sex marriage object to it: the concept necessarily changes the definition of the word “marriage”. The same issue would be raised if marriages with multiple partners were in question.

what happened to the no church / state thing?

Well marriage is already a church/state thing. It’s clearly a religious institution (at least in many cases), but it’s also a union recognized by the state for legal purposes. With the same sex legislation, religious intuitions are feeling like the state is stepping on the church’s toes by redefining a religious term into a secular one.

Bitt:

One thing I'm unclear on is there seems to be a difference between ``civil union'' and ``marriage'', and I don't know what it is.

The difference would be that a “civil union” has no pretext of being religious in anyway; it is merely a legal union useful for determining what rights coupled individuals have together.

What rights and benefits do married people have ? All I ever hear about is complaining about "marriage penalty" for taxes. There may be some insurance benefits extended to spouses at some companies but we don't need another law for that companies can give benefits to whoever they want.

> What rights and benefits do married people have ?

Custody rights over biological/adopted children.
Visitation rights in hospitals as well as the right to make medical decisions on an incapacitated spouse's behalf.
Access to employer sponsored health plans.
Inheritance and common property and rights and responsibilities.
etc.

What rights and benefits do married people have

That's a good question. Here's a few;
1) In most states under most circumstances, prenups not withstanding, in the event of a divorce assets would be split 2 ways.
2) Spousal visitation rights in hospitals and prisons.
3) Next of Kin rights with regard to insurance, being told sensitive information by police/doctors etc.
4) Right to apply for certain documents. (It's going to be interesting when someone applys for a K1 "Marriage" Visa.)

The get biggest marriage 'penalty' is actually for widows/widowers. Widows/widowers get to keep the married tax allowances and not revert to the single allowances. So if a widower and widow marry, between them they lose half of their allowances.

(My two Cents) (Coming from someone calling himself Belezeebub maybe you should take it with a spoon full of sugar)

LQQK ----------- ADULT CONTAINT -----------------

YOU HAVE BEEN WANRED


I personally don’t care more then three drops of piss for or against same sex marriage. Its none of my business what you do in your own home and with your own body.

I don’t think the government should be wasting tax dollars and time thinking about laws for or against this issue.

For all I care you could marry your Empeg player, I’ll wish you years of happy downloads and may none of your children grow up to be an IPOD.

That being said my personal opinion is 1 man 1 women per marriage (kind of like legos men and women interlock.

But if you want to marry someone or something the same as you go for it be happy, life is too short to worry about what other people think.

As long as I don’t come out of my apartment and see you making out on the hood of my car I am ok with it.

Athiests get married all the time.

The problem with that argument:

I don’t think the government should be wasting tax dollars and time thinking about laws for or against this issue.

is that the government already supports straight marriage. If it didn't have anything to do with that, no one would care, I think.

Athiests get married all the time.

Isn't that just proof that the courts have already diluted marriage by interfering?

<ducks>

I’ll wish you years of happy downloads and may none of your children grow up to be an IPOD.

That's just classic.

To frame it in civil rights terms (IMHO):

Civil Union = Separate but Equal
Marriage = Equal Rights

That's my take. As much as Separate but Equal was wrong, denying the GLBT portion of the popluation marriage rights is wrong. It's a fairness issue. I don't see where history or religion should have any bearing. I know there's a lot of people who don't agree. Racists don't think blacks and whites should marry either. It doesn't make them any more right by saying that 'historically blacks and whites haven't married'.

I'm not ducking.

-Zeke

Well marriage is already a church/state thing. It’s clearly a religious institution (at least in many cases), but it’s also a union recognized by the state for legal purposes. With the same sex legislation, religious intuitions are feeling like the state is stepping on the church’s toes by redefining a religious term into a secular one.

I think this is the nub of the problem. It's a situation familiar to anyone in software engineering: the same routine has been doing two, not actually very similar, jobs, for years on end and separating the two becomes very difficult, as the whole thing means different things to different clients.

In this case, there's marriage as a religious rite, which is clearly the sole concern of the religions in question, just as other rites (for instance, the rites making someone a deacon/elder/whatever one's denomination calls it) affect nobody outside that religion. And then there's marriage as a mechanism of state: a recent study in the US found 1,500, that's fifteen hundred, places in state and federal law where married couples are treated differently from any other pairs of people.

Personally I see the unavailability of mechanisms of state to gay people in the same light I'd see unavailability of mechanisms of state to black people, or to women: that is, unacceptable in a modern society. And fixing the inequality would seem to require either barring that mechanism of state to straights, or opening it up to gays. That is to say, doing one of three things, depending on where the church/state boundary gets drawn: drawn on the state side, entirely ecclesiasticising marriage by striking out those 1,500 statutes, or drawn down the centre by calling the state-side thing "civil union" and then rewriting 1,500 statutes to use that as the term defining these couples, or drawn on the church side by entirely secularising marriage and offering it, as a democratic state must, equally to all. The third of those sounds like much the least paperwork and any religions that were bothered by that could always talk about "Christian Marriage" or even, if they wanted, "True Marriage", so long as those phrases occurred in no statute book and barred entry to no mechanism of state.

So where did this icky entanglement of religious and state goals come from? I was at an Anglican wedding recently, where the guy giving the address, who was clearly a very pious, thoughtful, and caring person, said the usual things to the congregation about Christian marriage being all about commitment, affection, and support, but then rather gave the lie to that by saying that it was also about "a man and a woman, as God intended". Oh right, gays aren't capable of commitment, affection, or supportiveness then, vic, is that what you're saying? If they are, and if those things are what Christian marriage is about, then why debar them from it?

Some years ago I was at a Southern Baptist wedding, and the celebrant was also clearly very religious, in a different way. He was also much more overt about what he thought Christian marriage was about. "Christian marriage is all about children -- about Christian families. Children are the arrows we shoot into the future(*), and I hope this young couple shoot many fine arrows in their married life." Here at last is something gays are less good at: reproducing. (Yes, there are gay foster parents, and there are lesbian couples with children fathered by someone not a life-partner of either woman. But still a much greater proportion of straight couples than gay couples have children, if only because gay couples never find themselves in that situation by accident.)

Christian marriage is a population thing, just like opposition to birth control is a population thing. It's all about increasing the ranks of the Army of God as compared to armies of other gods, or of godlessness. And anyone who thinks such base considerations, such slavishness to the evolutionary imperative, dropped off human religious radar millennia ago, should go and look at what happens in Northern Ireland when predictors of population trends produce studies showing the Catholic/Protestant ratio moving closer to 50/50: uproar breaks out.

So it's no wonder that, through most of history, states have liked marriage too -- they're just as keen on increasing the ranks of their armies as any religion. If there had ever been a state that didn't, demographics would have seen them off in the course of a few generations as their neighbours outpopulated and outfought them, or even as natural disasters or predation wiped them out more thoroughly than more populous states nearby.

On an arguably overpopulated, but certainly fairly sufficiently-populated, world, such considerations needn't any longer be informing state policy. And the effectiveness of those measures towards the goal of population growth is itself based on a rather strange premise: that of the "floating voter", the person whose sexual inclination is affected by mechanisms of state incentivising him or her one way or the other. Even if such people exist, the goal of enhancing population growth by resolving them onto the straight side of the fence hardly seems worth the cost in marginalisation of large numbers of committed, affectionate, stable -- married in all but name -- gay couples.

Peter

(*) A line by the rather pagan Kahlil Gibran, of course, and IMO unusually sexually suggestive for such a time and place, but I guess if it sounds Biblical that's good enough.

Anyone know if they can they make the other half of your civil union testify against you in court?

Matthew

I think this is the nub of the problem. It's a situation familiar to anyone in software engineering: the same routine has been doing two, not actually very similar, jobs, for years on end and separating the two becomes very difficult, as the whole thing means different things to different clients.

For what it's worth, it's not this way in other countries. I know that in Mexico, your church / religious wedding has no legal meaning whatsoever. You then show up in court and have a J.P. do a legally binding ceremony for you. I have no idea whether a Mexican J.P. will wed two men or two women, or what the exact terminology is for "wedding" vs. "civil union" in Mexican law. But, certainly, the U.S. system isn't the only way of doing it.

Its none of my business what you do in your own home and with your own body.


That statement illustrates a mindset that causes the whole gay marriage thing to be controversial.

Say "Gay Marriage" and the first thing people think of is Sex. "Ewwww-- sodomy, nasty same-sex unnatural unbiblical behavior. Ban it before it destroys us all."

But sex is only a part of marriage. From my perspective, not even the most important part of marriage. (Perhaps when I was 40 years younger than I am now my opinion might have been different, but with the wisdom of age and experience...)

Gay marriage is about civil rights and responsibilities. Health insurance, community property, inheritance, the list goes on and on.

Yes, "what you do in your own home and with your own body" is nobody's business but your own, but it should not be the focus of the debate.

tanstaafl.

Excellent post, Peter. I agree with a lot of your assesment of the situation (especially the part where you were agreeing with mine!)

I do wonder, what really should constitute a secular definition of marriage if the state is going to stay involved. By that I mean, why should the Mormans (or anyone else for that matter) be limited to only one wife?

In the end, I wish "church" marriage and "state" marriage were not the same thing. We live in a secular society, so it really is the government's responsibility to address people's needs in a fair and equitable way. If two people are raising a child and one decides to stay home and take care of said child instead of working, it really isn't fair to deny that person health benefits. It really isn't a spiritual or belief issue at that point. I think it's good for society to allow parents to stay home and spend personal time with their children as they develop, and while I personally feel uncomfortable with same sex partners raising a child as a family unit, I'm even more uncomfortable with the idea that one of the pair might have to be denied medicle benefits in order to give a child his or her full attention.

At this point I see no easy solution, because both church and state are involved and it's pretty ingrained in both. However I see this, though, in the end same-sex marriage is coming whether people like it or not. I think Bush is really only giving lip service to the issue at this point to please his conservative base; he knows there isn't going to be any amendment to the constitution.

Athiests get married all the time.

Curse you, Bitt. I was going to chime in with the whole state/church thing, then you posted this and I realized I was in a glass house.

I'm afraid this will be rather long, bear with me.

To kick things off I'd like to offer a quote from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity from the chapter entitled "Christian Marriage". It was mainly written concerning divorce and athiests who get married (listen up Bitt!) but he says a few things which could apply here:

Now everyone who has been married in a church has made a public, solemn promise to stick to his (or her) partner till death. The duty of keeping that promise has no special connection with sexual morality: it is in the same position as any other promise. If, as modern people are always telling us, the sexual impulse is just like all our other impulses; and as their indulgence is controlled by our promises, so should its be. If, as I think, it is not like all out other impulses, but is morbidly inflamed, then we should be specially careful not to let it lead us into dishonesty.

To this someone may reply that he regarded the promise made in church as a mere formality and never intended to keep it. Whom, then, was he trying to deceive when he made it? God? That was really very unwise. Himself? That was not very much wiser. The bride, or bridegroom, or the 'in-laws'? That was treacherous. More often, I think, the couple (or one of them) hoped to deceive the public. They wanted the respectability that is attached to marriage without intending to pay the price: that is, they were impostors, they cheated.

It is that last sentance, I assert, that also applies to homosexual couples.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me clarify something:

there seems to be a difference between ``civil union'' and ``marriage''

Christians define marriage as an institution ordained by God, between a man and a woman. Other religions have similer definitions. WE DO NOT WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO INTRUDE ON OUR DEFINITIONS. If two people want to form some kind of government-regulated contractual bond between them (civil-union), whatever their gender, that is fine. But it is NOT a marriage. I think now you will see how that quote relates to all this. Homosexual couples "want the respectability that is attached to marriage without intending to pay the price" same as the athiest couples. The price, in this case being, finding a partner of the opposit sex and having the discipline to learn to get along with them dispite your differences, as well as, of course, beliving in the God you are making these vows to.

Now, if homosexual couples want to go to some secular huminist church and get married, fine. But neither I nor The Methodist Church (or Baptists, or Cathloic, or whatever, I simply said Methodist because that is the church I happen to belong to) is required to acknowledge it.

what happened to the no church / state thing?

Athiests get married all the time.

Isn't that just proof that the courts have already diluted marriage by interfering?

Yes.

So the best course of action is:

calling the state-side thing "civil union" and then rewriting 1,500 statutes to use that as the term defining these couples

because we, as Christians, are not interested in compromising our beliefes just so a few overpaid/underworked government employees can do a bit less "paperwork". I would also propose that, since all those laws were written with heterosexual couples in mind, they all be re-worked and re-debated over, since the public (this being a democracy and all) might feel differently about them knowing they might apply to any gender combination.

Christian marriage is a population thing, just like opposition to birth control is a population thing.

I'm afraid you are wrong on both accounts. As I said before, this is about God, and what He has chosen marriage to be. Marriage is a religious term. Allowing the government to say just anybody is married is on the level with the government saying that whenever anybody eats bread and drinks wine they are having Holy Communion. They arn't, they are simply eating bread and drinking wine.

I won't get into the opposition to birth control thing because I don't understand it compleatly and don't agree with it. I do understand it enough to know it's not about population.

Ughh, I might get flamed for this, but what does religion have to do with this discussion? Almost every post in this thread discusses religion when this is in fact a legal matter. At least, assuming we are talking about the US, we are supposed to have a separation of church and state. Laws define who can get married (married according to a legal definition not a religious one) and religion should not have a part in that. The only reason we even have a legal definition of marriage is because married couples have certain legal rights/responsibilities that single people do not have. I don't understand why it seems to be so hard for people to separate the concepts of religious vs. legal marriage. A legal marriage is on recognized by the government and a religious marriage is recognized by some specific religious group. There is no reason why these two definitions need to perfectly overlap. I wouldn't vote for a law that told the church who they where allowed to marry so why should religious beliefs have any impact in who can get married in a courtroom?

-Mike

p.s. Then again I am also against most legal benefits for married couples, so why do I care in the first place?

Rather than pick and choose who this is in reply to, I'm just gonna reply to the original post....

First of all, who in the hell does ANYONE think they are to assume they have the right to tell others who they can or cannot pledge themselves to? I don't care what sexual preference, religion, color, etc. someone is; they all deserve the same rights.

Secondly, to the Christians on the board who have made comments alluding to the idea that only Christians have marriage, you may want to open your theocentric minds and take a look at reality. Christians are not the only people who have a right to get married, nor does Christianity have a coner on the marriage market.

Reagrdless of what any of you may think, there ARE other religions in the world. And they even have marriage.

The problem here is not that gay and lesbian couples are dying to have a Christian wedding. It's that they want the same rights as anyone else. Taxes, etc. Oh, yeah, and the ability to marry the person you love.

If it were simply a matter of the Christian church not allowing it, most likely the majority of gay and lesbian couples would just give them the finger and go have a Buddhist (or other) ceremony.

Yeah, Buddhists can get married, too. And Shinto, Muslims, etc. etc. etc.

But the problem is, the secular government won't accept their marriage. And everyone here knows that. And arguing the semantics of the difference between "marriage" and "civil ceremony" is a load of crap. And again, everyone here knows it.

If you ask me, having a problem with people being in love and wanting to show it is about the least Christian concept I can think of. Just because hate is hidden behind "faith" doesn't mean it isn't hate.

I might get flamed for this

No by me. It's an honest question and it shows why alot of people miss the point in this. Marriage was originaly a strictly religious institution that has been adopted by the government. As long as the government ran it by the church's rules most people were happy to leave well enough alone (a bad idea). But it has become clear (first through ease of divorce and now through this matter) that the government is not interested in playing by the chruch's rules any more, all we are saying is "If you don't want to play by our rules anymore, fine. But give us back our name."

I don't know how much of that was directed at me, but here is my responce for what it is worth. I'll be quoting myself in yellow:

to the Christians on the board who have made comments alluding to the idea that only Christians have marriage, you may want to open your theocentric minds and take a look at reality. Christians are not the only people who have a right to get married, nor does Christianity have a coner on the marriage market.

Christians define marriage as an institution ordained by God, between a man and a woman. Other religions have similer definitions.

Now, if homosexual couples want to go to some secular huminist church and get married, fine. But neither I nor The Methodist Church (or Baptists, or Cathloic, or whatever, I simply said Methodist because that is the church I happen to belong to) is required to acknowledge it.

The problem here is not that gay and lesbian couples are dying to have a Christian wedding. It's that they want the same rights as anyone else.

Fine, give them those rights. But don't pretend it is the same thing as marriage.

If you ask me, having a problem with people being in love and wanting to show it is about the least Christian concept I can think of.

I have no problem whatsoever with people loving one another. Neither does the Bible. The second highest commandment is to love one another. But the Bible expressly forbids sex with a person of the same sex. It also makes clear that marriage is intended between two people of the opposit sex. You may love all you want. It has nothing to do with homosexual marriage or sex.

Fine, give them those rights. But don't pretend it is the same thing as marriage.

Fine. If the term "marriage" is so important to Christians, then you can have the term all to yourselves for all I care.

Now convince the rest of the members of your religion to get their noses out of the government and let gays and lesbians have the same rights / benefits as "married" Christians. In the civil sense, I mean.

Marriage was originaly a strictly religious institution that has been adopted by the government.

But why is it that as a religious person you (or anyone else who cares to reply) can't separate these concepts? For a lot of people (myself obviously included) marriage has little if anything to do with religious beliefs and I think that is why many people get offended when they are told what to do by a church. FWIW, I have no personal interest in this matter (being both straight and painfully single), but I don't understand why people feel that their religious beliefs should affect other peoples lives.

-Mike

Now convince the rest of the members of your religion to get their noses out of the government and let gays and lesbians have the same rights / benefits as "married" Christians. In the civil sense, I mean.

Well given my disclaimer that I think that now that we are talking "civil-unions" (between any combonation of genders) and not "marriages" (people of the opposit sex) the laws giving us those rights should be back up for debate (by our standard democratic process I mean). The U.S. populance might not want to grant same-sex couples the same rights they agreed to grant to opposit sex couples when the laws were made, and in so changing the laws would deny rights to opposit sex coupples that same sex coupples might not have them either (which is perfectly fair).

Given that, put it on a balot and I will vote for it. As far as convincing anybody......I'd love to convince my religion to get their noses out of the government. It would make it easier for me to tell the government where to stick it when they want to go and redefine marriage.