U2democrat
Blue Crack Addict
From the Richmond Times Dispatch:
Oh jeez...what a day to be a Virginian.
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DaveC
Blue Crack Addict
Oh good lord.
That's fucking ridiculous.
You know what? Let's just fucking get rid of democracy.
That's fucking ridiculous.
You know what? Let's just fucking get rid of democracy.
U2democrat
Blue Crack Addict
neutral
genius of compression, Forum Moderator
pax
ONE love, blood, life
Oooohhhh, maybe they'll issue a parallel plate with a picture of Jude Law and Johnny Depp making out.
THAT would be hot.
THAT would be hot.
dandy
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
nbcrusader
Blue Crack Addict
What other "specialty" plates are available in Virginia?
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
Hope they make a traditional divorce plate soon after.
U2democrat
Blue Crack Addict
nbcrusader said:
There are TONS. I have a Jamestown one on my car, some of the money goes to restoration. My parents have UNC specialty plates, some of the money goes to the school. There are many more.
nbcrusader
Blue Crack Addict
The description of the plate sounds pro-marriage (and, as a married guy, I think marriage is a good thing).
It's not like it is a picture of two stick figure guys in tuxedos with a circle and line through it....
It's not like it is a picture of two stick figure guys in tuxedos with a circle and line through it....
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
nbcrusader said:
I think given the current political temperature and the fact that marriage is exclusive the message is a little obvious.
nbcrusader
Blue Crack Addict
Given the vast number of specialty plates in support of various things, what would be an acceptable "marriage" plate?
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
nbcrusader said:
Honestly I think the idea is ridiculous to begin with.
I think the fact that one is married would exhibit that they are pro marriage.
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
paxetaurora said:
hells yeah. or russel crowe and clive owen for those of us into the more masculine look.
wow, i was going to post this exact same article, but looks like u2democrat beat me to it.
fucking astonishing. really -- is there nothing else going on in VA worth debating over?
Virginia, 2005 will look in 40 years the way Mississippi in 1964 looks today. history is on our side; soon enough, gay people will finally be recognized for who they are -- living, breathing, human beings with lives and loves as worthy as anyone else's -- and this second class citizenship status will be tossed into the dustbin of history. Virginia is on the wrong side of history ... and not for the first time, either ...
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Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
nbcrusader said:
oh please. the term "traditional marriage" has only come into parlance with the rise of equal marriage rights. saying "traditional marriage" is EXACTLY the same thing as saying "no gay marriage." it's fully politically loaded, and anyone who cares enough to purchase such a silly license plate knows exactly what they are saying.
and if you think marriage is such a good thing, why not let everybody participate?
think about it ... what a better way to encourage stability and monogamy?
nbcrusader
Blue Crack Addict
BonoVoxSupastar said:
Are specialty plates are ridiculous in general? Or is this just a plate that you would not pay extra to display on your car?
nbcrusader
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Irvine511 said:
Read the description of the plate. It says nothing of "traditional marriage".
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
nbcrusader said:
my understanding is that you pay an extra dollar for a specialty plate, and that plate usually goes towards whatever cause (usually non-political) you are supporting -- in CT, we had a "preserve the Sound" plate, in MD i see lots of "Treasure the Chesapeake." you can get Manatee plates in FL, etc.
usually environmental, or for better schools, or whatever.
they are always, always non-contraversial and something that most people would agree with. i.e., schools are good, polluting the Long Island Sound is bad, etc.
then again, at the VA DMV when i got my license, i did see a "Sons of the Confederacy" plate. so maybe things are different in Virginia.
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
nbcrusader said:
The TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE plate, showing two interlocked golden wedding bands over a red heart, joins scores of others for supporters of everything from fox hunting to Holstein cows, he said.
all specialty plates have words on them, as i mentioned, "Treasure the Chesapeake."
this one will have the words "TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE" on the plate.
nbcrusader
Blue Crack Addict
Irvine511 said:
I guess we've come to the point were marriage is controversial....
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
nbcrusader said:
Personally, they are ridiculous in general.
But it you are going to buy one then buy one that puts money towards a charity you believe in, a team you support, or to show you are a vet etc.
But why something that's obvious. Why drive a mini-van full of kids and then advertise you're married?
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
nbcrusader said:
No, just the way conservatives have twisted it and turned it into a political issue.
U2democrat
Blue Crack Addict
The thinking of the Confederacy lives on here in the old capital. 
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
nbcrusader said:
you've got it exactly backwards.
marriage is great. it's the denying of marriage rights to a group of people on the basis of an involuntary trait and imposing a 2nd class citizenship status upon them that is contraversial.
U2democrat
Blue Crack Addict
hey irvine, did you notice this story from wonkette?
nbcrusader
Blue Crack Addict
BonoVoxSupastar said:
I think Gavin Newsom had a head start on that one....
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
U2democrat said:
acutally, i heard it on NPR today, and then saw the link on Wonkette.
of all the celebs in DC (or as she calls them, famous-for-DC-types), she's the one i most want to meet!
U2democrat
Blue Crack Addict
wonkette is wonderful for us political junkies. 
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
nbcrusader said:
nope. it started with Lawrence vs. Texas. but some people have been arguing for gay marriage since the late 1980s.
Here Comes The Groom
A conservative case for gay marriage.
Last month in New York, a court ruled that a gay lover had the right to stay in his deceased partner's rent-control apartment because the lover qualified as a member of the deceased's family. The ruling deftly annoyed almost everybody. Conservatives saw judicial activism in favor of gay rent control: three reasons to be appalled. Chastened liberals (such as the New York Times editorial page), while endorsing the recognition of gay relationships, also worried about the abuse of already stretched entitlements that the ruling threatened. What neither side quite contemplated is that they both might be right, and that the way to tackle the issue of unconventional relationships in conventional society is to try something both more radical and more conservative than putting courts in the business of deciding what is and is not a family. That alternative is the legalization of civil gay marriage.
The New York rent-control case did not go anywhere near that far, which is the problem. The rent-control regulations merely stipulated that a "family" member had the right to remain in the apartment. The judge ruled that to all intents and purposes a gay lover is part of his lover's family, inasmuch as a "family" merely means an interwoven social life, emotional commitment, and some level of financial interdependence.
It's principle now well established around the country. Several cities have "domestic partnership" laws, which allow relationships that do not fit into the category of heterosexual marriage to be registered with the city and qualify for benefits that up till now have been reserved for straight married couples. San Francisco, Berkeley, Madison, and Los Angeles all have legislation, as does the politically correct Washington, D.C., suburb, Takoma Park. In these cities, a variety of interpersonal arrangements qualify for health insurance, bereavement leave, insurance, annuity and pension rights, housing rights (such as rent-control apartments), adoption and inheritance rights. Eventually, accordng to gay lobby groups, the aim is to include federal income tax and veterans' benefits as well. A recent case even involved the right to use a family member's accumulated frequent-flier points. Gays are not the only beneficiaries; heterosexual "live-togethers" also qualify.
There's an argument, of course, that the current legal advantages extended to married people unfairly discriminate against people who've shaped their lives in less conventional arrangements. But it doesn't take a genius to see that enshrining in the law a vague principle like "domestic partnership" is an invitation to qualify at little personal cost for a vast array of entitlements otherwise kept crudely under control.
To be sure, potential DPs have to prove financial interdependence, shared living arrangements, and a commitment to mutual caring. But they don't need to have a sexual relationship or even closely mirror old-style marriage. In principle, an elderly woman and her live-in nurse could qualify. A couple of uneuphemistically confirmed bachelors could be DPs. So could two close college students, a pair of seminarians, or a couple of frat buddies. Left as it is, the concept of domestic partnership could open a Pandora's box of litigation and subjective judicial decision-making about who qualifies. You either are or are not married; it's not a complex question. Whether you are in a "domestic partnership" is not so clear.
More important, the concept of domestic partnership chips away at the prestige of traditional relationships and undermines the priority we give them. This priority is not necessarily a product of heterosexism. Consider heterosexual couples. Society has good reason to extend legal advantages to heterosexuals who choose the formal sanction of marriage over simply living together. They make a deeper commitment to one another and to society; in exchange, society extends certain benefits to them. Marriage provides an anchor, if an arbitrary and weak one, in the chaos of sex and relationships to which we are all prone. It provides a mechanism for emotional stability, economic security, and the healthy rearing of the next generation. We rig the law in its favor not because we disparage all forms of relationship other than the nucelar family, but because we recognize that not to promote marriage would be to ask too much of human virtue. In the context of the weakened family's effect upon the poor, it might also invite social disintegration. One of the worst products of the New Right's "family values" campaign is that its extremism and hatred of diversity has disguised this more measured and more convincing case for the importance of the marital bound.
The concept of domestic partnership ignores these concerns, indeed directly attacks them. This is a pity, since one of its most important objectives--providing some civil recognition for gay relationships--is a noble cause and one completely compatible with the defense of the family. But the way to go about it is not to undermine straight marriage; it is to legalize old-style marriage for gays.
The gay movement has ducked this issue primarily out of fear of division. Much of the gay leadership clings to notions of gay life as essentially outsider, anti-bourgeois, radical. Marriage, for them, is co-optation into straight society. For the Stonewall generation, it is hard to see how this vision of conflict will ever fundamentally change. But for many other gays--my guess, a majority--while they don't deny the importance of rebellion 20 years ago and are grateful for what was done, there's now the sense of a new opportunity. A need to rebel has quietly ceded to a desire to belong. To be gay and to be bourgeois no longer seems such an absurd proposition. Certainly since AIDS, to be gay and to be responsible has become a necessity.
Gay marriage squares several circles at the heart of the domestic partnership debate. Unlike domestic partnership, it allows for recognition of gay relationships, while casting no aspersions on traditional marriage. It merely asks that gays be allowed to join in. Unlike domestic partnership, it doesn't open up avenues for heterosexuals to get benefits without the responsibilities of marriage, or a nightmare of definitional litigation. And unlike domestic partnership, it harnesses to an already established social convention the yearnings for stability and acceptance among a fast-maturing gay community.
Gay marriage also places more responsibilities upon gays; it says for the first time that gay relationships are not better or worse than straight relationships, and that the same is expected of them. And it's clear and dignified. There's a legal benefit to a clear, common symbol of commitment. There's also a personal benefit. One of the ironies of domestic partnership is that it's not only more complicated than marriage, it's more demanding, requiring an elaborate statement of intent to qualify. It amounts to a substantial invasion of privacy. Why, after all, should gays be required to prove commitment before they get married in a way we would never dream of asking of straights?
Legalizing gay marriage would offer homosexuals the same deal society now offers heterosexuals: general social approval and specific legal advantages in exchange for a deeper and harder-to-extract-yourself-from commitment to another human being. Like straight marriage, it would foster social cohesion, emotional security, and economic prudence. Since there's no reason gays should not be allowed to adopt or be foster parents, it could also help nurture children. And its introduction would not be some sort of radical break with social custom. As it has become more acceptable for gay people to acknowledge their loves publicly, more and more have committed themselves to one another for life in full view of their families and their friends. A law institutionalizing gay marriage would merely reinforce a healthy social trend. It would also, in the wake of AIDS, qualify as a genuine public health measure. Those conservatives who deplore promiscuity among some homosexuals should be among the first to support it. Burke could have written a powerful case for it.
The argument that gay marriage would subtly undermine the unique legitimacy of straight marriage is based upon a fallacy. For heterosexuals, straight marriage would remain the most significant--and only legal social bond. Gay marriage could only delegitimize straight marriage if it were a real alternative to it, and this is clearly not true. To put it bluntly, there's precious little evidence that straights could be persuaded by any law to have sex with--let alone marry--someone of their own sex. The only possible effect of this sort would be to persuade gay men and women who force themselves into heterosexual marriage (often at appalling cost to themselves and their families) to find a focus for their family instincts in a more personally positive environment. But this is clearly a plus, not a minus: gay marriage could both avoid a lot of tortured families and create the possibility for many happier ones. It is not, in short, a denial of family values. It's an extension of them.
Of course, some would claim that any legal recognition of homosexuality is a de facto attack upon heterosexuality. But even the most hardened conservatives recognize that gays are a permanent minority and aren't likely to go away. Since persecution is not an option in a civilized society, why not coax gays into traditional values rather than rain incoherently against them?
There's a less elaborate argument for gay marriage: it's good for gays. It provides role models for young gay people who, after the exhilaration of coming out, can easily lapse into short-term relationships and insecurity with no tangible goal in sight. My own guess is that most gays would embrace such a goal with as much (if not more) commitment as straights. Even in our society as it is, many lesbian relationships are virtual textbook cases of monogamous commitment. Legal gay marriage could also help bridge the gulf often found between gays and their parents. It could bring the essence of gay life--a gay couple--into the heart of the traditional straight family in a way the family can most understand and the gay offspring can most easily acknowledge. It could do as much to heal the gay-straight rift as any amount of gay rights legislation.
If these arguments sound socially conservative, that's no accident. It's one of the richest ironies of our society's blind spot toward gays that essentially conservative social goals should have the appearance of being so radical. But gay marriage is not a radical step. It avoids the mess of domestic partnership; it is humane; it is conservative in the best sense of the word. It's also about relationships. Given that gay relationships will always exist, what possible social goal is advanced by framing the law to encourage those relationships to be unfaithful, undeveloped, and insecure?
August 28, 1989, The New Republic.
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