Same Sex Marriage Thread - Part III

[INDY500]

O! K! L! A! H! O! M! A!

Federal judge: Oklahoma ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional - CNN.com

More like Oklahomo.

Disgusting!! Regardless of one's beliefs on SSM marriage the fact that, once again, a single judge has overruled the will of the people (75% of voters in OK) and asserted the power to redefine marriage is another blow against the separation of powers, state's rights, religious conscience and self-government.

Oklahoma only codified in its constitution the definition of marriage that had existed since its founding as well as the same definition that existing when the U.S. Constitution was written. Has the constitution changed? Has the U.S. congress passed new civil rights laws regarding marriage? If society has truly changed then let those changes be reflected in the written law, not the "look what I found that no one noticed before" newly interpreted law. Process matters.

Panem et circenses while the Republic crumbles under debt, lawlessness, corruption and apathy.

 

[Irvine511]

gosh, an awful lot of activist judges out there!

or maybe it really is unconstitutional to deny rights to a group of people based on their sexual orientation! maybe it really is unconstitutional to decide civil rights by majority rule!

maybe!

 

[anitram]

Once again, INDY shows he has no comprehension of how the common law works.

 

[Irvine511]

but he sure knows more than this so-called judge who says non-constitutional things like:

“moral disapproval of homosexuals as a class, or same-sex marriage as a practice, is not a permissible justification ... [the ban is] an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit ... Excluding same-sex couples from marriage has done little to keep Oklahoma families together thus far, as Oklahoma consistently has one of the highest divorce rates in the country ... Equal protection is at the very heart of our legal system and central to our consent to be governed."

and what with OK's sky-high divorce rate, heteroes need all the help they can get, and we do that by punishing gay people!

i wonder if the INDY of 1967 would have said the same thing when another "disgusting" activist judge overturned OK's interracial marriage ban? all this talk about Constitutional purity, and natural rights, and maximizing freedom ... NOT IF YOU'RE GAY!

 

[PhilsFan]

Yes, but in INDY's defense, consequences.

 

[Irvine511]

Yes, but in INDY's defense, consequences.

i don't want to live in a world where i'm not allowed to vote away the rights of other people.

 

[INDY500]

but he sure knows more than this so-called judge who says non-constitutional things like:

“moral disapproval of homosexuals as a class, or same-sex marriage as a practice, is not a permissible justification ... [the ban is] an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit ...

"arbitrary and irrational"? Talk about self-righteous. Ok Irvine. What's "rational" about limiting marriage to two people? Seems rather "arbitrary" given history and other current cultures around the world.

Excluding same-sex couples from marriage has done little to keep Oklahoma families together thus far, as Oklahoma consistently has one of the highest divorce rates in the country ...

Non-sequitur, divorce rates are dependent upon marriage rates for one thing. And how will SSM improve divorce rates among heterosexuals?

Equal protection is at the very heart of our legal system and central to our consent to be governed."

Equal protection before the law, while a basic human right, is not an unlimited blanket right anymore than religious conscience is an unlimited blanket right. Do you know the history of the 14th amendment? Do think it was ratified as a constitutional imprimatur of any behavior?

 

[PhilsFan]

"arbitrary and irrational"? Talk about self-righteous. Ok Irvine. What's "rational" about limiting marriage to two people? Seems rather "arbitrary" given history and other current cultures around the world.

Marriage, as the government is concerned, is primarily a financial institution. So limiting marriage to two people is mostly tied to that.

Non-sequitur, divorce rates are dependent upon marriage rates for one thing. And how will SSM improve divorce rates among heterosexuals?

How will it hurt divorce rates among heterosexuals?

 

[Irvine511]

"arbitrary and irrational"? Talk about self-righteous. Ok Irvine. What's "rational" about limiting marriage to two people? Seems rather "arbitrary" given history and other current cultures around the world.

yup, arbitrary and irrational. this is what we've seen in court cases across the country, including the SCOTUS. it is arbitrary to single out gay people for marriage discrimination, and there is no rational basis for such discrimination.

what public good is served by preventing gay people from getting married?

Non-sequitur, divorce rates are dependent upon marriage rates for one thing. And how will SSM improve divorce rates among heterosexuals?

more people will get married, for one. i also think the discussion on SSM has been of enormous benefit to society.

read this: The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss - Liza Mundy - The Atlantic

i know you won't read the whole thing, so here's the conclusion:

So yes, marriage will change. Or rather, it will change again. The fact is, there is no such thing as traditional marriage. In various places and at various points in human history, marriage has been a means by which young children were betrothed, uniting royal houses and sealing alliances between nations. In the Bible, it was a union that sometimes took place between a man and his dead brother’s widow, or between one man and several wives. It has been a vehicle for the orderly transfer of property from one generation of males to the next; the test by which children were deemed legitimate or bastard; a privilege not available to black Americans; something parents arranged for their adult children; a contract under which women, legally, ceased to exist. Well into the 19th century, the British common-law concept of “unity of person” meant a woman became her husband when she married, giving up her legal standing and the right to own property or control her own wages.

Many of these strictures have already loosened. Child marriage is today seen by most people as the human-rights violation that it is. The Married Women’s Property Acts guaranteed that a woman could get married and remain a legally recognized human being. The Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia did away with state bans on interracial marriage. By making it easier to dissolve marriage, no-fault divorce helped ensure that unions need not be lifelong. The recent surge in single parenthood, combined with an aging population, has unyoked marriage and child-rearing. History shows that marriage evolves over time. We have every reason to believe that same-sex marriage will contribute to its continued evolution.

The argument that gays and lesbians are social pioneers and bellwethers has been made before. Back in 1992, the British sociologist Anthony Giddens suggested that gays and lesbians were a harbinger of a new kind of union, one subject to constant renegotiation and expected to last only as long as both partners were happy with it. Now that these so-called harbingers are looking to commit to more-binding relationships, we will have the “counterfactual” that Gary Gates talks about: we will be better able to tell which marital stresses and pleasures are due to gender, and which are not.

In the end, it could turn out that same-sex marriage isn’t all that different from straight marriage. If gay and lesbian marriages are in the long run as quarrelsome, tedious, and unbearable; as satisfying, joyous, and loving as other marriages, we’ll know that a certain amount of strife is not the fault of the alleged war between men and women, but just an inevitable thing that happens when two human beings are doing the best they can to find a way to live together.

more concretely:

If you doubt that straight households are paying attention to same-sex ones, consider Danie, a woman who lives with her husband and two children in Bethesda, Maryland. (Danie asked me not to use her last name out of concern for her family’s privacy.) Not long after she completed a master’s degree in Spanish linguistics at Georgetown University, her first baby was born. Because her husband, Jesse, works long hours as a litigator, she decided to become a full-time parent—not an easy decision in work-obsessed Washington, D.C. For a while, she ran a photography business out of their home, partly because she loves photography but partly so she could assure people at dinner parties that she had paying work. Whenever people venture that women who work outside the home don’t judge stay-at-home moms, Danie thinks: Are you freaking kidding me?

She takes some comfort, however, in the example of a lesbian couple with whom she is friendly. Both women are attorneys, and one stays home with their child. “Their life is exactly the same as ours,” Danie told me, with a hint of vindication. If being a stay-at-home mother is “good enough for her, then what’s my issue? She’s a huge women’s-rights activist.” But while comparing herself with a lesbian couple is liberating in some ways, it also exacerbates the competitive anxiety that afflicts so many modern mothers. The other thing about these two mothers, Danie said, is that they are so relaxed, so happy, so present. Even the working spouse manages to be a super-involved parent, to a much greater extent than most of the working fathers she knows. “I’m a little bit obsessed with them,” she says.

Related to this is the question of how gay fatherhood might impact heterosexual fatherhood—by, for example, encouraging the idea that men can be emotionally accessible, logistically capable parents. Will the growing presence of gay dads in some communities mean that men are more often included in the endless e‑mail chains that go to parents of preschoolers and birthday-party invitees? As radically as fatherhood has changed in recent decades, a number of antiquated attitudes about dads have proved strangely enduring: Rob Hardies, the pastor at All Souls, reports that when his partner, Chris, successfully folded a stroller before getting on an airplane with their son, Nico, he was roundly congratulated by passersby, as if he had solved a difficult mathematical equation in public. So low are expectations for fathers, even now, that in Stephanie Schacher’s study of gay fathers and their feelings about caregiving, her subjects reported that people would see them walking on the street with their children and say things like “Giving Mom a break?” Hardies thinks that every time he and Chris take their son to the playground or to story hour, they help disrupt this sort of thinking. He imagines moms seeing a man doing this and gently—or maybe not so gently—pointing it out to their husbands. “Two guys somehow manage to get their act together and have a household and cook dinner and raise a child, without a woman doing all the work,” he says. Rather than setting an example that fathers don’t matter, gay men are setting an example that fathers do matter, and that marriage matters, too.

it's good for gay people. it's good for straight people. it's good for children.

it's so win-win-win it's hard to know where to start.

Equal protection before the law, while a basic human right, is not an unlimited blanket right anymore than religious conscience is an unlimited blanket right. Do you know the history of the 14th amendment? Do think it was ratified as a constitutional imprimatur of any behavior?

behavior? marriage is just a behavior? surely you're not calling a sexual orientation a behavior, since we all know better than that, and it would demonstrate the fact that you have no argument beyond "it's a choice!"

the 14th amendment denotes life, liberty, and property, which is understood to include rights and freedoms as well.

here's what the unanimous Loving v Virginia decision made clear:

"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

 

[martha]

what public good is served by preventing gay people from getting married?

You keep asking this like you're going to get an answer.

 

[martha]

Disgusting!! Regardless of one's beliefs on SSM marriage the fact that, once again, a single judge has overruled the will of the people (75% of voters in OK) and asserted the power to redefine marriage is another blow against the separation of powers, state's rights, religious conscience and self-government.

California Proposition 14 (1964) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Redefining property rights! Disgusting!!!1!!1!!

Spoiler

State's rights?? Are we going there?

 

[LuckyNumber7]

MORAL AMERICA don't you understand?!?

 

[Irvine511]

California Proposition 14 (1964) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





Redefining property rights! Disgusting!!!1!!1!!

Spoiler

State's rights?? Are we going there?

I also remember Prop 187. A law that was votes on by the virtuous people of California and passed 59 to 41%.

 

[martha]

That damn thing. It broke the Republicans out here; they still haven't recovered. Boo-freakin'-hoo.

 

[Galeongirl]

I'm still curious about those consequences of allowing gays to marry, still haven't heard a proper argument one sofar. And from experience, I got zilch. Gays have been getting married for over 10 years here now, and what's the consequence for the country? Gays are getting married. That's about it..

 

[PhilsFan]

It is a nasty little trick, isn't it? Take advantage of public distrust of minorities by appealing to "the children," have it go to a public vote and when that vote is eventually declared unconstitutional (because you can't vote discrimination into law), claim that the judges are activists overturning the will of the people.

 

[Irvine511]

I'm still curious about those consequences of allowing gays to marry, still haven't heard a proper argument one sofar. And from experience, I got zilch. Gays have been getting married for over 10 years here now, and what's the consequence for the country? Gays are getting married. That's about it..

It is a nasty little trick, isn't it? Take advantage of public distrust of minorities by appealing to "the children," have it go to a public vote and when that vote is eventually declared unconstitutional (because you can't vote discrimination into law), claim that the judges are activists overturning the will of the people.

perhaps the answer really is that we're calling gender and gender roles into question. that when two men are able to function not only as capable partners but capable parents, it calls into question what heterosexual men often excuse as a function of their gender. it might be that's what's so threatening -- men can't weasel their way out of homemaking or parenting duties because she is better at it, because we have examples of men who are just as good at it as women.

as the article i linked to pointed out:

Related to this is the question of how gay fatherhood might impact heterosexual fatherhood—by, for example, encouraging the idea that men can be emotionally accessible, logistically capable parents. Will the growing presence of gay dads in some communities mean that men are more often included in the endless e‑mail chains that go to parents of preschoolers and birthday-party invitees? As radically as fatherhood has changed in recent decades, a number of antiquated attitudes about dads have proved strangely enduring: Rob Hardies, the pastor at All Souls, reports that when his partner, Chris, successfully folded a stroller before getting on an airplane with their son, Nico, he was roundly congratulated by passersby, as if he had solved a difficult mathematical equation in public. So low are expectations for fathers, even now, that in Stephanie Schacher’s study of gay fathers and their feelings about caregiving, her subjects reported that people would see them walking on the street with their children and say things like “Giving Mom a break?” Hardies thinks that every time he and Chris take their son to the playground or to story hour, they help disrupt this sort of thinking. He imagines moms seeing a man doing this and gently—or maybe not so gently—pointing it out to their husbands. “Two guys somehow manage to get their act together and have a household and cook dinner and raise a child, without a woman doing all the work,” he says. Rather than setting an example that fathers don’t matter, gay men are setting an example that fathers do matter, and that marriage matters, too.

i guess this is upsetting for some heterosexual men. they really are having their position questioned, and it must be difficult to realize that manhood isn't a fixed thing. it must be scary, to have someone expect you to cook dinner and tend to the emotional needs of a 3 year old. for women too, who are also trapped by these gender role expectations -- the notion of "i'll let my husband take them for the afternoon." let him? he's their father!

a friend of a friend has a fairly popular blog about being a stay-at-home dad. part of the blog is how he never expected this! what a surprise! how funny life is! his wife does so well! he still works from home! gosh, how funny! yes, i'll write a blog about my wacky adventures! i'm a SAH dad! ker-azy!

would a mother ever write a blog about how, gosh oh gee, i'm suddenly a SAH mom! weird! let's turn it into a sitcom!

it applies sexually, too. as we've all noticed from the debates, the anti-gay organizations seem overwhelmingly preoccupied with anal sex. just look at the Duck Dynasty guy. much of what is upsetting is thinking of a man in a receptive sexual position -- how can you be a man but be penetrated by a man? men aren't women! and yet, men who are receptive sexually are still men, and they are still masculine, and in another situation they might be the insertive partner.

i think that's what's so upsetting -- understanding homosexuality as natural and unchosen upsets many men's understanding of themselves, and tosses out the notion that gender is a fixed thing. not that men and women aren't different -- indeed, they are, just look at differences between gay men and lesbians -- but that there are many different ways to be a man, and many different ways to be a woman. it's not so much about eradicating differences between the gender but expanding our understandings of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. for all the psychobabble, it might be as simple as that.

how can i be a man if i can't denigrate gay men?

likewise, how can we be married if gay people are also married?

 

[Galeongirl]

That is an interesting point there... maybe that is why it's really not an issue here, as our gender roles are less black and white than in the US. Here it's perfectly acceptable for a father to be a stay at home dad, if the mother has a good job. It would also not be weird for a dad to take his kid out to the park, or do other things in the old outdated mother role.



Fun thing I notice is that the anti SSM people have FAR more issues with men-men relationships than lesbian ones... Bit of hypocrisy there? Or is it truly a deep routed fear about the change of masculinity?

 

[Irvine511]

Because misogyny.

 

[anitram]

I think that any straight couple which has a "modern" marriage would be hard pressed to care that gay marriage is a legal reality.

By that I mean a couple which shares in the household and child rearing duties (guess what, my husband can dust just as well as I can and I am perfectly able to mow the lawn), in which women are free to pursue their career ambitions even if it means they don't have dinner on the table every night at 6 pm, where both parties understand and participate in the joint finances, where there is no "head" of the household and so on. These people have already turned the traditional definition of marriage on its head.

 

[Irvine511]

men can be warm and nurturing and bake cupcakes, and women can be stern taskmasters and teach you how to change a tire.

some men can do both, and so can some women.

 

[martha]

You guys are redefining things. Stahp.

 

[Galeongirl]

I think that any straight couple which has a "modern" marriage would be hard pressed to care that gay marriage is a legal reality.

By that I mean a couple which shares in the household and child rearing duties (guess what, my husband can dust just as well as I can and I am perfectly able to mow the lawn), in which women are free to pursue their career ambitions even if it means they don't have dinner on the table every night at 6 pm, where both parties understand and participate in the joint finances, where there is no "head" of the household and so on. These people have already turned the traditional definition of marriage on its head.

I think that's pretty much the way things are here. Sure, there still are people stuck in the past where the male is the head of the household and women exist to raise babies, but they generally live in our Bible belt and mind their own business. They're not shouting out loud that we all have to conform their standards, they just want to live the way they do. And we let them, as long as it's conform the law. Sure there are some issues here and there with vaccinations and such, but you don't see them protesting gay marriage.

 

[Irvine511]

so, kind of random, but this was just made much more personal for me.

a friend of mine has a friend.

said friend of friend and his partner needed some work done on their grout. the company came, gave them an estimate, and then retracted the quote once she found out they were gay. she did not want to do business with them.

that is illegal in DC. (it's not in VA). it would also be illegal in CO.

and so it goes with our baker and the wedding cake. it's the exact same thing.

 

[Pearl]

so, kind of random, but this was just made much more personal for me.

a friend of mine has a friend.

said friend of friend and his partner needed some work done on their grout. the company came, gave them an estimate, and then retracted the quote once she found out they were gay. she did not want to do business with them.

that is illegal in DC. (it's not in VA). it would also be illegal in CO.

and so it goes with our baker and the wedding cake. it's the exact same thing.

Ugh. What was she afraid of, a disease or something she spent anymore time with them?

 

[Irvine511]

She said she'd come over to do the estimate. She walked in, saw the two men, said her services were no longer available, and left.

But DEEPLY HELD RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS, guys!

 

[Pearl]

She said she'd come over to do the estimate. She walked in, saw the two men, said we services were no longer available, and left.

But DEEPLY HELD RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS, guys!

She better get used to having gay clients because none of you are going anywhere.

 

[Galeongirl]

I truly cannot comprehend how people could get away with that. Here you'd have a public outrage defending the gays, not the offenders!

 

[martha]

so, kind of random, but this was just made much more personal for me.

a friend of mine has a friend.

said friend of friend and his partner needed some work done on their grout. the company came, gave them an estimate, and then retracted the quote once she found out they were gay. she did not want to do business with them.

that is illegal in DC. (it's not in VA). it would also be illegal in CO.

and so it goes with our baker and the wedding cake. it's the exact same thing.

The hell.

I'm sorry. On behalf of straight people, I'm sorry.

 

[martha]

She said she'd come over to do the estimate. She walked in, saw the two men, said her services were no longer available, and left.

But DEEPLY HELD RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS, guys!

Some people are unclear on the concept:

12:28-34pp -- Mt 22:34-40
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" 29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' 31 The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." 32 "Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." 34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.