Constitutional Ammendment on Gay Marriage - Will We Embarass Ourselves?

[Aristotle]

Are we really going to embarass ourselves as a nation by having MARRIAGE as something specifically addressed in the Constitution?

Is this really so serious a matter that it deserves the same treatment as the right to speak, the right to vote, the right to peacefully assemble, or the right to a speedy trial?

If we pass a Constitutional Ammendment on this issue, it will be a black mark forever that reflects horribly on this time in our nation's history. I sincerely hope this idea never gets beyond Congress.

[Sebboe]

I am really opposed to this as an ammendment because the Contitution should be about freedoms that are ensured.

I think for many people, the matter of calling it a marriage as opposed to a civil union is a religious debate.

I am not opposed to gay marriages because to me, I am married in lawful matrimony, not holy matrimony and it would be unfair for me to say that this title should only be allowed based on traditional co-gender pairings.

The problem is that marriage is both a lawful and a religious bond at the same time.

I do believe that marriage was actually a religious bond before it was a lawful bond so I would not be offended if instead, they changed the law that said only religious people could be married and its a term only a church can give and from there let each church decide if same-sex marriage is acceptable. This would keep the argument within the church rather than in the Constitution.

[Wyden]

The big issue here (at least in my opinion) is the separation of church/state. I know it's also about the recognition of same-sex spouses with regards to healthcare and other benefits married couples have, but when you throw the constitution at something traditionally associated with religion, it comes down to church/state.

I think that whether gay couples are "joined in holy matrimony" is a decision the various clerical sects have to make. I also think it's unconscionable that any 21st century governing administration refuse recognize same-sex unions (whatever word you want to use for it), whether the ceremony is done in a church, temple or city hall.

It's a shame when the "most powerful man in the world" won't do what's right for fear of isolating some of his constituency (i.e. middle America and/or conservatives). I really hope it comes back to bite him in the ass this November.

[Graeblyn]

I kinda think it may come back to bite the GOP in the ass, so to speak. I mean, it's not as if anti-gay marriage people were going to vote for non-GOP candidates this November. Perhaps if Pat Robertson were running as a third candidate, Bush's decision to come out so strongly for a constitutional ban on gay marriage makes sense, but as it is, all he will do is mobilize liberals and normally politically apathetic gays (as well as gays like the Log Cabin Republicans, who voted for the Bush/Cheney ticket back when the two candidates said this was an issue for the States).

That having been said, I don't think it will have much of a real-world impact on American Gays, as individual States will recognize same-sex unions to the same extent they would otherwise - they just can't call it marriage. It basically is just legislative gay-bashing, which hurts, don't get me wrong, but in the end, it will probably just create a second-class version of marriage called "civil unions" with gays having to consult an attorney whenever we move to find out how that will impact our benefits and child custody issues. But, really we have to do that now. SO again, it doesn't have any practical impact on most gays now, apart from freezing any progress in the area of gay marriage for the couple decades or so it would take to get the supermajority of States on board to rescind the amendment.

It will be an apalling black mark on our history, but in the end I think we shall overcome it. That said, this will make the Patriot Act look like a footnote in any argument that the U.S. has turned its back on two centuries of democratization and social progression.

[Lokrian]

One of the big issues here is the state of marriage just in general. Family law is a shambles. The statistics more than bear this out. From the personal angle, I know a woman who gave birth to three children and then was kicked to the curb, the man remarried and is now having his first child with the new wife. The first wife's life was given over to child raising and now she has nothing, her life a ruin. She considers suicide daily.

While a lot of you drift through life blissfully ignorant of the effects the so called "culture war" has on real people, some of us live it daily. I was the only child in my two families not to get help going to college. My step mother objected to money going to me vs her daughter, and my step father, also divorced from my mother, pressured her not to help me as he was paying a lot in child support and aliminy which he didn't legally have to pay, so he held that over her head and drove a wedge between us.

These bonds of family and marriage did not develop over time all over the face of the planet by some sort of accident. Putting religion completely aside, issues of fidelity, love, children and financial responsability are important, and the decision to do away almost completely with marriage as a legally enforceable document in some states, while in others I guess it is still impossible to get a pre-nup enforced, there is chaos, there is confusion, and people are being effected by it.

Enter the gay marriage debate. On the news I hear it being preached marriage has nothing to do with child rearing or whatever, that it is about loooooove and warm gushy feelings. Folks, marriages used to be arranged. They are all about who is resposonsible for what in the context of family and child bearing. If homosexuals want to get hooked up, beautiful, but marriage as a legal insitution is a lot more complex than that, and lumping anyone who is leary of one more social experiment with family law in this country when we obviously are still realing from the previous wave of them as some sort of backward thinking moron who doesn't see the beauty of freedom in our great and blissful land is mind boggling to me.

Folks, if marriage doesn't have anything to do with something, it is love. One wishes it did, but it is clear from the present divorce rate that it doesn't. Some people who love one another don't marry. Some people who marry don't love one another. The people who preached that nothing really bad would happen if we loosened the legal bonds and just allowed divorce at will lied to us. It's not that I feel the people need to stick together if they don't love each other, it is that there are responsabilites to be fulfilled here. If two people don't love each other, fine, get divorced, but let's get back to some basics about how that goes down, who is responsible for what and why before we take another wild stab at deconstructing a few thousand years of common law and practice.

Furthermore, the situation between a gay couple is completely different. It is not well defined who the domestic part of the couple is, who is the breadwinner, if indeed they are a two income family, whatever. It is a totally different set of circumstances and it needs more than just a hasty patch and a wild "YAHOO, WE WON" during an election year to do this correctly. Marriage as it exists now does NOT apply to homosexuals, period, as the gay community will find out soon enough when the inevitable happens and they have to deal with divorce.

The people who should be embarassed are the people who use this issue as some sort of trumpet, make aspersions, declare the topic settled and that people who don't agree are an "embarassment", drive wedges between us all for political purposes, or whatever. It is incredibly clear that this is a deeply important as well as emotional issue for a great number of people, and throwing around grandiose moralisms about how it will inevitably be looked at by posterity in the dead heat of the middle of it is nothing but harmful. This is a time for all of us to listen to one another, talk to and not at each other. Slow down, settle down and let's get this right for once.

[Wyden]

There's a few things to keep in mind here. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Let's say one person in a gay union (I'm substituting the marriage word) works and the other maintains the home, should the employed partner be able to include the homemaker on his/her job's healthcare policy?

2. Should one of the partners die without a will, should his/her longtime partner be the beneficiary as would be the case if they were straight and married?

3. Should the couple have the same tax breaks (assuming there are any) as a heterosexual married couple.

I don't like the government telling gay couples that they cannot receive the same benefits as heterosexual couples because the state doesn't recognize their union. It's total horseshit.

[Talithia]

Originally posted by Lokrian

Furthermore, the situation between a gay couple is completely different. It is not well defined who the domestic part of the couple is, who is the breadwinner, if indeed they are a two income family, whatever.

Woah! Since when is one partner in a HETEROSEXUAL marriage "well defined" as the breadwinner? Or are we going to throw out the whole women's liberation movement, too, and expect them to all be nice little homemakers?

[Lokrian]

Originally posted by Talithia
Woah! Since when is one partner in a HETEROSEXUAL marriage "well defined" as the breadwinner? Or are we going to throw out the whole women's liberation movement, too, and expect them to all be nice little homemakers?

A woman who has children at the very least has to deal with the childbirth and period when the baby needs constant care. Things are developing slowly in the realm of time off work for these sorts of things, but for a lot of working class women it is just a hardship they have to work through. It's simply physically not an issue for men. It will be different for gay men adopting, lesbians perhaps having children of their own, sometimes with one staying home, perhaps sometimes taking turns having children.

There is also quite a body of legal precedant on who gets the children after divorce, though again, it gets confused. Furthermore, in cases where a woman has decided to go ahead and take that role, because of the supposed advances in women's rights, that certain segment of women have actually lost almost all the protection they once had on that issue. I even gave an example of that. Do you think it is fair what happened to this woman, who maybe gained a few pounds over the years, and I have seen her she is not HUGE, but the guy dumps her and her life as she knew it is over. All basically for sex, when you get right down to it.

I am not focusing here on one aspect of this. There are a lot of issues to be looked at. The way you brought this up, and with the immediate accusation that someone is trying to take away someone's rights, whereas what happens over and over again is rights have already been taken from a huge segment of the female population and then this has been labeled "progress" and no one questions it.

People are sitting here giving short lists of what they think is the only thing anyone should be thinking about, but it's just not the case. Some judges in the northeast and a mayor in San Francisco have succeded in whipping this issue into a political fast track that is not healthy with these sorts of issues.

I really wish people would take a deep breath and think, really think, what it means to take something that is that fundamental to society and change it, and go ahead and do it if that's what seems right and fair, but take the time to do it right, address the various issues that really are there, not invented or made up, but are just right there and need to be addressed, and not turn this into a mud slinging circus for this years political purposes and then leave a lot of people with a hell of a mess to live through before any of you take it up again as an issue since you don't have to live with it yourselves.

[Lokrian]

Originally posted by Wyden
There's a few things to keep in mind here. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Let's say one person in a gay union (I'm substituting the marriage word) works and the other maintains the home, should the employed partner be able to include the homemaker on his/her job's healthcare policy?

2. Should one of the partners die without a will, should his/her longtime partner be the beneficiary as would be the case if they were straight and married?

3. Should the couple have the same tax breaks (assuming there are any) as a heterosexual married couple.

I don't like the government telling gay couples that they cannot receive the same benefits as heterosexual couples because the state doesn't recognize their union. It's total horseshit.

Exactly right. these things need to be more precisely defined for gay couples, and indeed, perhaps need to be re-evaluated for heterosexual couples as well. All the government's vested interest in any of this is whether or not children are properly cared for and whether or not the financial interests of the adult parties to the union are protected in regards to how they divide labor in the household. I am surprised the gay marriage folks are so bashful about saying yeah, maybe the government should allow for domestic partnerships between multiple people. Especially, in a case where maybe one woman has more than one man interested in spending their life with her, this has historically been considered just beyond the pale, whereas men having multiple women is the norm in many places. What really is the difference? And why is it so evil for people to maybe love more than one person? Does this sound outlandish to you? It shouldn't. There are already, due to the fact that sex outside of marriage is now perfectly legal, many MANY instances of domestic issues relating to divorce and the financial responsability of children from mulitple spouses. Just not all at once. But what, what is the big difference between having one spouse and several other extra maritcal affairs and just being above board and saying, ok, I have more than one wife or husband? Pretending it's not an issue doesn't make all that go away.

And then there is divorce....

I had a history teacher who made an impression on me, when she pointed out this hubbub about women working "outside the home" is historically a bunch of bunk. Upper class women sure. But for the majority of women all through out history, the VAST majority, women have been working outside the home forever. We had been blinded to the needs of the working woman by a blissfull sort of Ozzy and Hariet mirage about what it is to be a woman in America. Now we are blinded by a different image. The image of the free woman who is above all this simply because she has "escaped" that which never actually existed to begin with. Women still have need of specific protections if they are going to be properly protected in society and still be able to confidently be mothers without fearing loss of financial viability. The whole thing is a mess, largely because it has been politicized and turned into a mob fest. You can't have a serious and substantive talk about these things anymore it seems. It's time and well past time to look at the entire issue of marriage and children and women's rights and unique needs in society for people who fall outside the "norm" and get things responsibly taken care of.

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Graeblyn
I kinda think it may come back to bite the GOP in the ass, so to speak. I mean, it's not as if anti-gay marriage people were going to vote for non-GOP candidates this November. Perhaps if Pat Robertson were running as a third candidate, Bush's decision to come out so strongly for a constitutional ban on gay marriage makes sense, but as it is, all he will do is mobilize liberals and normally politically apathetic gays (as well as gays like the Log Cabin Republicans, who voted for the Bush/Cheney ticket back when the two candidates said this was an issue for the States).

Considering every poll shows 65-70% of Americans opposed to gay marriage, I would have to say that it is *impossible* for this to "bite the GOP in the ass."

This is an incredibly safe issue for Bush.

The person this issue is dangerous for is John Kerry. He cannot support gay marriage because that would result in an instant loss for him. The overwhelming majority of Americans are against it.

He also cannot be totally against it because then he alienates his base.

He is forced into this weird flip flop situation where he is afraid to take a stand.

If you hate George Bush, you can thank idiots like Gavin Newsome, Mayor of San Francisco, for making this a national issue. This issue is massive dead weight for Kerry and is a win-win situation for Bush.