Same Sex Marriage?

I support same-sex marriage.

Alternatively, I support a religious organization's right to not perform a same-sex marriage if it goes against the beliefs of that religion.

That said, I do not think the federal, state, or local governments should discriminate against marriages performed by the state (which all are ultimately). Once you take religious belief out of the equation, it is discriminatory not to allow it.

Agree completely with this. It seems to me that most of my friends support gay marriage, no matter what our political and religious beliefs are, and our children are just baffled as to why there's any opposition. It's just a matter of time. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. We do what we can by supporting candidates with our time and money who agree with this.
 
Agree completely with this. It seems to me that most of my friends support gay marriage, no matter what our political and religious beliefs are, and our children are just baffled as to why there's any opposition. It's just a matter of time. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. We do what we can by supporting candidates with our time and money who agree with this.

I've noticed that as well yet the ballot measures keep getting shot down. For those of you in Iowa, didn't every judge that supported gay marriage in the last election lose their seat? I thought I head something about that but not being in Iowa I didn't look too deep into it.

Either people are publicly supporting it and then inside the solitude of the election booth are voting the other way or the opposition is just turning out in greater numbers than the proponents. I suspect the latter was the case with Prop 8 in California.
 
However, I do believe that those in same-sex relationships should be afforded the same legal rights as those in differing-sex relationships. I do see where the separate-but-equal distinction here becomes problematic and I like ChrizJen's suggestion of letting the government handle secular unions and having religious institutions handle "marriage" in its religious form.

I believe all "legal" marriages should be performed by a judge or other secular person licensed by a state government body. Those wanting a church wedding can do that also, but those should be about as legally meaningful as a Baptism or Confirmation or First Holy Communion or Bar Mitzvah. In other words, no legal significance at all.

IMO a ceremony performed by a licensed Elvis impersonator at a sleazy Las Vegas wedding dump is more valid than any done by a priest/minister/rabbi/high priestess/witch doctor in a religious setting.

Jim
 
Either people are publicly supporting it and then inside the solitude of the election booth are voting the other way or the opposition is just turning out in greater numbers than the proponents. I suspect the latter was the case with Prop 8 in California.

Unfortunately, where we live, we've had to support politicians who are fighting anti-gay marriage measures. We haven't had the opportunity to vote for gay marriage.
 


I've noticed that as well yet the ballot measures keep getting shot down. For those of you in Iowa, didn't every judge that supported gay marriage in the last election lose their seat? I thought I head something about that but not being in Iowa I didn't look too deep into it.

Either people are publicly supporting it and then inside the solitude of the election booth are voting the other way or the opposition is just turning out in greater numbers than the proponents. I suspect the latter was the case with Prop 8 in California.

I think a lot of the time the opponents are more motivated to get out there and vote. I know a lot of people who support gay marriage aren't really passionate about it but the opponents all seem to be quite passionate about it.
 
If marriage is religious by default, then what about the hundreds of thousands of heterosexual couples who were not married in a church setting or by a minister? Are their marriages valid? Can heterosexual atheists be married?


Gosh, I sure hope so! Either that, or I'm living in sin!
 
I have no issues with same sex marriage. If two people love each other enough to want to committ their lives to one another then let them.
 


And we can understand why, since in the 11 times a referendum has been put on a state ballot to legalize gay marriage, it has lost, in most cases overwhelmingly and thirty states have constitutional amendments explicitly barring the recognition of same-sex marriage.

So yes, we can understand why some want to remove voters from deciding the outcome of this issue!;)

I've noticed that as well yet the ballot measures keep getting shot down. For those of you in Iowa, didn't every judge that supported gay marriage in the last election lose their seat? I thought I head something about that but not being in Iowa I didn't look too deep into it.

Either people are publicly supporting it and then inside the solitude of the election booth are voting the other way or the opposition is just turning out in greater numbers than the proponents. I suspect the latter was the case with Prop 8 in California.



I fear I can't respond because of the ban on religion here. Oh, how I wish I could, though.
 
I am so impressed with this thread. I was thrilled to get up this morning and find it still open and that everyone is managing to have a civil conversation about this:thumbsup2

Against.

Society has to be able to draw the line somewhere and I believe it should be drawn to exclude gay marriage. I believe this because from a legal perspective if you permit gay marriage I don't see how you prevent any type of marriage. Why not three in a marriage, or four?

If it is a "right" of any two adults who "love" each other to get married, why doesn't that "right" extend to any THREE adults who "love" each other.

Also I am not comfortable with the topic gay marriage being taught in schools.
I am another one who thinks first, that the slippery slopes is not really valid at all (largely for the huge legal differences between marrying 2 people vs. many as outlined by ZephyrHawk below). However, if we can figure out all of the legallities I really have no issue with any number of people being "married." I grew up reading Heinlein and think his line families sound lovely. Not for me, but fine for those who want it.


Marriage, from a legal perspective, is a contract. There are some specific things that apply solely to the marriage contract, and they can be interpreted differently depending on what state you're in. For instance, in most places, the child born of a married woman is automatically considered to be the child of the husband. Unless he can prove otherwise, he's on the hook for that kid until it's 18. This doesn't change if the child is raised in a family of two women, or adopted into a family of two men. The 'spouse' is on the hook. But what happens in a family of multiple wives? Are the other wives on the hook for each other's kids? What if one wants to divorce, do the other wives get custody rights? Do the parents of the other wives get "grandparents rights"? Although rarer in human culture, what happens in a family of multiple males? Do the dad's just decide who gets to be the presumptive "father" of the kid (notably, in Nepal where this is still practiced to a small extent, the mother says who the father is and everyone just agrees that she is right)? Is it all left to genetic testing? Or is everyone just on the hook as if they all adopted it? How is that sharing parcelled out?

Now let's talk about inheritance. Generally, when you die, your assets go to your spouse or, in their absence to your children in equal portions. Now of course, anyone can make a will and give everything to their beloved parakeet if they so desire, but what we're talking about is probate and how things are split up intestate. In a polygamous/polyandros marriage do the spouses share equally? Is the spouse that's been married longer accorded more assets? What about the children from each, how do they share? More laws would need to be written.

Then you get into some really weird stuff. A lot of states still criminalize adultery. Now if one man has two wives, but the wives aren't married to each other (perhaps because there's no gay marriage), does that mean the man is criminally adulterous when making love to either of them? Is it okay if all three are involved in the act?

These are hard questions to answer, but more important, the way they would be answered is by having each and every one result in a brand new law. Each and every state would attempt to do their laws differently, and there would be challenges to all the laws at the state and federal level. In other words, it would be a pain in the butt.

Our current legal system is made to deal with two partner unions. It has enough trouble dealing when those two partners separate and/or find new partners. Conversely, our legal system (save in those states that have specifically enacted anti-gay-marriage laws) doesn't segregate people by sex. Ultimately, not much need be changed by instituting laws making gay marriage/civil unions legal.

As a rights thing, it's more difficult to argue against multplicity in marriage (as the devout Mormon in my law school class could tell you). I personally don't have a huge problem with it (as long as there's no abuse going on). I wouldn't mind having another husband!
You explained the legal aspects and complications so well:thumbsup2 I pretty much agree entirely with all of it other than I really do not want a second husband--but I would not mind at all if YOU had one:goodvibes

OK, but...if you really think about it...beyond the confusing tax stuff...how would that truly impact YOUR life, if the slippery slope were true? I don't understand the attraction between that large family on TV right now, but what on earth do I care if 4 women want to be married to one guy? If anything, it leaves more single men for the rest of the single women!

As long as minors are protected and bio-cousins (or siblings etc) can't marry, if someone thinks that they will be happy with 5 husbands, and they can find 5 guys to agree with it, I can't see how it would impact my world.

Should ANY marriage be "taught" in schools? How is marriage taught in schools anyway?
I agree with this as well.
I understand wanting the symbolism of getting "married" but if a civil union granted all the same rights as marriage just with a different word I think it would be a workable compromise. Sometime you have to accept the practical as opposed the ideal. I'm all for same sex marriage but I wouldn't get all worked up over a word. I'm still for same sex marriage though.

As for this being a civil rights issue as opposed to political, those aren't mutually exclusive. Civil rights only exist once they are protected and that protection has to come from the government.

The way to get this thread shut down is to argue back and forth. If someone is against gay marriage don't tell them why they are wrong or try to change their mind. They are entitled to their opinion as those who are for it. It is the arguing that will get the thread closed, not the civil discussion.
We as a country realized that "separate but equal" is anything but in 1954. (oh, and a note about putting things to a vote--this would likely not have happened if voted on--civil rights are nearly always voted down when left in the hands of voters--I really don't know why that is:confused3 I guess most people are just very resistant to change).
It's not older than Christianity (or Judaism), b/c Christians/Jews believe God instituted marriage just after the Creation of the world/universe...Ie, Adam and Eve.

Just to throw another twist out there, I couldn't care less about the legal standing of my marriage. My marriage, the one I care about, was done before God and witnesses. My vows were made before God. My determination to make the best of my relationship with my husband is formed by the fact that I vowed to do so to both my husband and to my God.

Yes, I filled out and filed the proper government paperwork, but that was a side issue and had nothing to do with my heart and convictions.:confused
3
Yes, but you (and I and many other straight couples) do get a lot of benefits from that paperwork that others are denied. Tax benefits. Insurance coverage. Custody issues. Ability to make decisions for and visit a seriously injured spouse. Family and Medical Leave stuff. Etc. Heck, my ability to get a visa and live in a foreign country while my husband works here is tied directly to the fact that we are LEGALLY married.

:rolleyes1

Why stop there? Given some of the logic we are seeing this thread, we might as well "reform" legal marriage so:

- people can marry animals

- people can marry children

- people can marry a dead person....

Yep, let's just say "anything goes"......
As pointed out previously, all of the above (okay, minus possilbe thinking zombies:lmao:) does not involeve CONSENT which is key.
Actually, there still is some debate over the intellectual capacity of a zombie to make an informed decision on marriage. Some higher functioning ones, such as Bub(from Day of the Dead) may very well be classified as a consenting adult zombie. So, it appears that you stand corrected.;)
:lmao: Oh I love seeing humor injected into a serious topic--keep us all on our toes!

And we can understand why, since in the 11 times a referendum has been put on a state ballot to legalize gay marriage, it has lost, in most cases overwhelmingly and thirty states have constitutional amendments explicitly barring the recognition of same-sex marriage.

So yes, we can understand why some want to remove voters from deciding the outcome of this issue!;)
Voters did not decide the outcome for women's rights nor for the abolition of slavery or Jim Crow laws either. The majority is pretty well known for not voting in rights for the minority historically. I don't think this is any different.
 
You know, the more I think about the whole marriage/civil union divide, the more I like it.

Let all marriages be the ones done in churches. If you're getting hitched in a court house or by a justice of the peace, it won't be a marriage, only a civil union.

Civil unions will be what is recognized by the state exclusively. Your civil union will be the basis for all tax and legal matters.

Marriage would be confined to the church and has no legal bearing, not any whatsoever. It would be defined by any church or religious body as whatever that religious body defines it as.

Marriages are an act of unity before that person's God (or Gods or dieties or spirits), and would be strictly defined as one this way.

Civil Unions would then become acts of becoming as one legal person for the purposes of domicile, partnership and the raising of children.

I like it a lot!
I disagree.

I don't disagree that, since there seems to be an issue with the sanctity, perhaps there should be two separate labels. But the legal, government-licensed status should be the one entitled marriage. It's not reasonable to have a large portion of the population suddenly become "civil-unioned" to, respectfully, kowtow to some religions.

It doesn't even matter if those already wed would be grandfathered. Truly. Churches don't own marriage. My parents were married by a Justice of the Peace. NOBODY is going change that. Friends of my brother were married by him - a civilian - by special permit. They're MARRIED. They're not civil unioned, or special permitted, or whatever other status anyone would wish to bestow on them.

Anybody who wants separate but equal is welcome to it - but find a different name for the religious ceremony, not the legal status.
 
Okay if anyone can just call themselves married anyways why not leave the government unions as marriages?

As for Canada, they are ALL marriages. We don't do this seperate but equal BS.
Great! Now if you could just get rid of the cold and the snow, I'd move up there! Why is Canada so - oh, not even progressive, just sensible, while the United States isn't?
 
snarling coyote said:
Ahhhhh. . .but you forget how important the authority of a religious body can be for some people.
But not for everybody. And why should any religious body be able to influence what the government does? Let the churches join couples in Holy Matrimony, while the government authorizes marriage.
 
Seriously I have my doubts about marriage for anyone regardless of sexual preference. I think its a bad idea. I am not any good at it and neither are millions of other Americans.

Why should I worry about what letting gays marry will do to the sanctity of marriage? We are so quick to marry and divorce these days I find very little sanctity or whatever left. Let them screw up their lives legally too if they want to do so. I think they deserve the same rights other couples have. I think maybe the gays lesbians will last longer married than the straight couples do because they perhaps understand what it means more than we straight folks seem to these days.


On my end of things I think if you love each other you love each other no piece of paper changes that. The only thing it does is give you certain rights.
 
Marriage is a religious term but it's in the law and in all of the documents.
Yes, good point. Marriage must either be exclusively religious (in which case anyone can declare themselves married, in accordance with their own religious beliefs), exclusively legal (in which case everyone must have equal access to the benefits of marriage), or it must be both-but-two-different-things. That last choice is the current reality.

Religious marriage is a matter for churches to decide for themselves. (Indeed, Roman Catholic marriage is radically different from Muslim marriage, and there's nothing wrong with that.)

By contrast, legal marriage is something that must be equally accessible to all - or more properly, no religion's definition may be asserted over that of another's, therefore the legal definition of marriage must encompass and allow for them all, unless we are prepared to declare certain religions anathemas within our nation. (We have done that before; if that is the intention some folks have, then they should have the integrity to stand up and declare that their intention is to have the nation suppress a specific religion in that manner.)

Having a word mean different things in different contexts is okay. There are myriad words in the English language that mean different things in different contexts, and even examples of where a word means something different in a legal context than it means in other contexts.
 
I believe this because from a legal perspective if you permit gay marriage I don't see how you prevent any type of marriage. Why not three in a marriage, or four?
I'd rather not, because I was socialized to prefer two in a marriage - even more specifically, I was socialized to prefer a marriage to a woman. However, that's my (and your) hang-up. There is no evidence that 2+2 is less stable than 1+1... Logically, a strong 2+2 marriage seems like it may be a more stable environment, if society could shake these damaging hang-ups. A four-legged table is sturdier than a two-legged table. I recognize that our own closed-mindedness about such things is not an ethic, but rather a detriment.

Also I am not comfortable with the topic gay marriage being taught in schools.
The important aspect here is that schools work to relieve our society of the damaging impact of the preconceived notions that seem to have sway in many case, notions that disrupt peaceful co-existence and progress. There are myriad examples of this (and we could probably pull-together a list, just from the thread titles of the threads within which you and I have disagreed with each other).
 
How would a polygamous divorce be handled? Child custody and designation of property rights would be a nightmare."

"... We choose to ... do ... things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win..."​

Sometimes it seems to me that we've forgotten what it means to be Americans; what it means to look forward to the future wondering what it will be like, not cringing in fear of change or otherwise trying to make the future conform to our current reality.
 
This! And like the op, I'm Christian. I really don't understand why it is anyone's business, whether they are religious or not, if two people who are in love get married.

Okay, how about a father and daughter or a mother and daughter for that matter? Should they be allowed to get married if they are attracted to each other and are in love? It's not their fault they are already related and they do really love each other, right? Does society frown on that type of relationship? Aren't their rights being denied then?
 
A few points to ponder......

The real issues involving the legal rights to marry are not about romance or sex. The real issues are the right to be a family, to be able to visit your spouse in the hospital without interference, to be able to have the same Social Security Survivor Benefits as others, to be able to share in any other benefits that are extended to others in committed relationships.

I am a 60 year old woman who was born the way I am. I am in a committed relationship of 15 years. We own a home together, all of our finances are comingled, we make all decisions together, our families consider us a couple and recognize who and what we are to each other. BUT we have no rights in our state.

Yes, we have gone to the lawyer and gotten papers drawn up so that we can make medical decisions for each other and to insure that we will inherit each other's property. But my partner makes considerably less money than I do and when I die she will not have any claim to my Social Security like a hetero couple. She will be poor. Yes, she will have whatever money we have in IRA's and our home, but it's just not right.

The point is not whether a family is composed of one man and one woman. The point is that a family is a family. We lead upstanding lives, attend church, take care of others, work hard for what we have, pay our bills, have lots of friends and family, and ARE A FAMILY. We need the same rights, protections and benefits of any other family. We already have the same responsbilities.

I personally don't care if you want to call it something other than marriage. Make up whatever word you want, but stop treating us like we are somehow less than the rest of the community. We are the community, we are your parents, your children, your friends, your coworkers, your aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews.

And I believe that when I stand before God at the end of my life the things I will be welcomed into the kingdom for the things that I have done, the love that I have shared and the good that I have left behind.

Thank you for reading.
 
Okay, how about a father and daughter or a mother and daughter for that matter? Should they be allowed to get married if they are attracted to each other and are in love? It's not their fault they are already related and they do really love each other, right? Does society frown on that type of relationship? Aren't their rights being denied then?

If they are consenting adults, then I don't care what they do. It does not affect me in any way.
 
Let the churches join couples in Holy Matrimony, while the government authorizes marriage.

This I like. I do not like the idea of giving up "marriage" to the churches as I was married in a courthouse 16 years ago and I would be most peeved to be told today that I'm not actually "married", I'm just "civil-unioned". And what would that make my husband, anyway? I refuse to start calling him my "civil partner"!

But the churches can certainly have sole right to the phrase "holy matrimony".

Okay, how about a father and daughter or a mother and daughter for that matter? Should they be allowed to get married if they are attracted to each other and are in love? It's not their fault they are already related and they do really love each other, right? Does society frown on that type of relationship? Aren't their rights being denied then?

Oddly enough, I can support a man and a woman marrying each other without supporting a father and daughter marrying each other. Funny that... :rolleyes: However, I'm guessing YOU support incest, since you think marriage should always be between a man and a woman. It's a slippery slope, after all.

Anyway, trying to argue that any kind of marriage leads inevitably to incest is ridiculous. There are already consanguinity laws on the books, and always have been (with some minor variations regarding cousins). After all, HETEROsexual marriage was not a slippery slope leading to incest, which really it should have been, if we are going to buy the "slippery slope" argument at all.

Consanguinity is against the law for many very sensible reasons including medical (incest breeds sick babies) and social (there's never any true equality between parents and children).

We have enough examples in history (the Egyptian pharaohs, the British royal family) to show why consanguinity should be avoided. We even have modern examples - hemophilia is rampant in Pakistan, where cousin-marriage is common.

So yes, you bet society frowns on incest. And it's got nothing to do with gay marriage.

(Polygamy, on the other hand, is TOTALLY Biblical. :laughing:)
 

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