Gay Marriage

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by AVRO1
Yes I do. Quebec allows same sex marriages and Canada's government will pass a law this week for it.
One of my cousin got a civil union with her girlfriend.

They do not have the same rights as you do since they don't have the right to marry who they love, which is what marriage is about. To me it's a contract between 2 persons who swear to be faithfull to each other.

If it's right for me to be able to marry who I love then it's also right for gays. It would be hypocritical for me to say the contrary.

Oh so they aren't "Married".

Karaya

[Charon]

However, the USA was actually established by men who believed in natural laws that devolved from their Creator, and who based their own legislation on them. They and those who followed them accordingly crafted laws outlawing not only homosexual marriage, but the practice of homosexual sex.

The founding father's religious beliefs ranged pretty broadly. Some were traditional, conservative Christians but many were not, including some of the greatest. You have people like Franklin, an agnostic/spiritualist. At least nine Free Masons (Washington included) who followed general new testament principals in treating others with kindness and charity, but who deviate enough in their beliefs and rituals to be attacked by evangelicals. You had Jefferson who made the Jefferson Bible by selectively cutting and pasting the “good” philosophies of Jesus in order to: "separate those ethical teachings from the religious dogma and other supernatural elements…" So, to make such a broad statement about the religious convictions of the founding fathers, particularly with such an old testament type issue, is less than convincing.

Of course, to confuse matter even more, many of our greatest founding fathers, and those leaders who followed, also owned slaves and found both religious and secular arguments to support it. The same continued through the Jim Crow era up to the Civil Rights movement, again with justifications for separate but (not really) equal. Humans are flawed, even founding fathers and 19th and 20th century politicians, and human predjuice can be rationalized with little difficulty if the majority is in the mood.

any more than the Church or the State has been successful in legislating murder, rape, incest, drugs and corruption outta existance. No matter WHAT the Church or State says or does.. 'they're queer, they're here.."

Wow, Hang. So if you're gay that’s in the same category as murder, rape and incest? Throw in the Jews, Gypsies and resettlement to the east and you might be able to do something about that menace.

Frankly, I'd rather they crawled back into whatever closets they live in and stayed the heck off my babble box. I'm hugely unimpressed by thier strident whines for 'equality' and I suspect most 'straight' folks once they get over their knee-jerk PC 'approval' of the 'rights of gays' will quietly vote their propositions into oblivion should they try and force the issue with the electorate.

A lot of people wanted Vietnam veterans to just go away during and after the war (until it became hip in the early 1980s). Hard to find a TV show for a while without a crazed, drug addicted Vietnam vet going on a rampage. Damaged goods, drug addicts, drains on society, baby killers…

I've worked with gay people, socialized with gay people and have a gay sister in-law who has been in a committed relationship for three years. At no point has their gayness impacted me personally. Not at work, not socially and not in my family relationships. If I don’t like it on television I can make it go away with the tip of my finger.

Occasionally, my sister in-law giving her partner a back scratch or a hug -- the type of loving gestures I give my wife -- has given me the willies. But that's my problem. These are human beings that I have never seen want anything more than to live a normal life with the deck of cards they have been dealt. Not a one made this “choice.” All they want is to not have to live a lie or hide who they are in order to make other people happy. People who they don’t know and who they don’t impact in any tangible way other than their “feelings.” How radical. There’s a saying I came across in a funny Spacemoose cartoon: “Your rights end where my feelings begin…” Ironically, that was busting on out of control political correctness on college campuses, but it applies here too.

Charon

[AVRO1]

Originally posted by Masherbrum Oh so they aren't "Married".

A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.
They get the same benefits, which in essence makes it the same.

AGAIN, Gays should NOT be entitled to the same benefits my wife and I have. It goes beyond "rights".

That's a weak argument since it's based on your personnal opinion on the subject which isn't any better then anyone else's.

I don't like religious conservatives so I want my government to make their religions illegal.
Do you want your government to makes laws this way ?

If you can't give me a logical reason why they should not get the same benefits as you, you got no argument.

So bring it.

[Chairboy]

Gotta say I'm impressed with this thread.  If the O'Club was really outta control, this would have degenerated into an explosively diarheaic mess of elephantine proportions, but it's been pretty civil, especially considering a. the subject and b. the strength of emotion behind the conflicting opinions.

Let's tackle religion next.    

i kid, i kid....

[Seagoon]

Hi Charon,

Originally posted by Charon
So, to make such a broad statement about the religious convictions of the founding fathers, particularly with such an old testament type issue, is less than convincing.

I posted this in another thread, but it applies just as much here.

The following is not a quote from a Christian conservative, it is a quote from Robert P. George, a law professor at an Ivy League University, he is also an expert in the history of the development of American Jurisprudence and has written books on the concept of both natural law and its antithesis legal positivism. Many of his published works center on the connections between British Common Law, Natural Law, and the thought of the founding fathers and Supreme Court Justices through the year. He is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University.

"The concept of "natural law" is central to the Western tradition of thought about morality, politics, and law. Although the Western tradition is not united around a single theoretical account of natural law, its principal architects and leading spokesmen–from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King–have shared a fundamental belief that humanly created "positive" law is morally good or bad–just or unjust–depending on its conformity to the standards of a "natural" (viz., moral) law that is no mere human creation. The natural law is, thus, a "higher" law, albeit a law that is in principle accessible to human reason and not dependent on (though entirely compatible with and, indeed, illumined by) divine revelation. St. Paul, for example, refers to a law "written on the heart" which informs the consciences even of the Gentiles who do not have the revealed law of Moses to guide them (Romans 2:14—15). Many centuries later, Thomas Jefferson appeals to "the law of nature and nature’s God" in justifying the American Revolution.

Most modern commentators agree that the Founders were firm believers in natural law and sought to craft a constitution that would conform to its requirements, as they understood them, and embody its basic principles for the design of a just political order. The framers of the Constitution sought to create institutions and procedures that would afford respect and protection to those basic rights ("natural rights") which people possess, not as privileges or opportunities granted by the state, but as principles of natural law which it is the moral duty of the state to respect and protect. Throughout the twentieth century, however, a lively debate has existed on the question whether the Constitution incorporates natural law in such a way as to make it a source of judicially enforceable, albeit unwritten, constitutional rights and other guarantees."
 
Now, no Founding Father, signatary to the constitution, or supreme court justice ever expressed a belief that marriage could occur or should be allowed between two homosexual persons of the same gender, neither can the principle be found in any of our "legal history" including that of English common law (Britain's standing anti-sodomy laws enacted by parliament which were for the most part overturned in 1967 dated back to the 16th century).

So Charon, are you asserting that the original framers of the US Constitution and indeed the American legal system somehow allowed for a right to "gay marriage" but that this right was somehow interrupted somewhere between the founding of the USA and the present day? Or is this in fact another example of legal positivism, i.e. people believe that it is a desirable ends and therefore they construct a new privilege that allows it?

- SEAGOON

[AKS\/\/ulfe]

Did they expressly deny the right?
-SW

[Chairboy]

Originally posted by Seagoon
So Charon, are you asserting that the original framers of the US Constitution and indeed the American legal system somehow allowed for a right to "gay marriage" but that this right was somehow interrupted somewhere between the founding of the USA and the present day? Or is this in fact another example of legal positivism, i.e. people believe that it is a desirable ends and therefore they construct a new privilege that allows it?

Implicit in the design of the constitutional fathers was to create a system to allow the disenfranchised to be protected.

Unfortunately, the current legal efforts on the part of people who share your beliefs regarding marriage are to actually amend the constitution to specifically forbid something that they did NOT when the document was created.

Past examples of 'new privilege' being created in the interest of justice include giving women and black americans the right to vote, so this would hardly be a new precedent, but it's noteworthy that gay advocates are NOT trying to pass a constitutional amendment, it is their foes that are trying to explicitly outlaw federally a matter that should be handled at the state level.  In effect, the anti-gay crowd is the aggressor.

[Suave]

Married people shouldn't enjoy special rights period. In fact, you shouldn't need to have a license to be married, George Washington didn't have one. There should be no tax on marriage. Some religions and cultures practice bigomy, the government is essentialy telling them that their religion is wrong and bad. People should be free to marry whatever gender they want, but they shouldn't enjoy any special rights because they're married. Nobody should, that's the root of the problem. Gays want the same rights and law given benefits that married people do. Hell married people should have the same rights as every other american. Because they enjoy special rights, married people are a different class of citizen, or as Chairboy said drawing from Animal Farm, "more equal then others." Of course I'm a libertarian and a constitutionalist, and I have about as much use for dogmatic law as the authors did.

You should all heed Chairboy, I think if he and Shamus combined their mental braun they could even bend a spoon or something.

[Hangtime]

Wow, Hang. So if you're gay that’s in the same category as murder, rape and incest? Throw in the Jews, Gypsies and resettlement to the east and you might be able to do something about that menace.

Ouch! Not the intent Charon.. but it sure sounds that way on a re-read. I was trying to respond to Seagoons comments regarding the 'criminal' nature of homosexuality in the eyes of the law... the point being that legality has diddly to do with the reality... can't legislate crime away, all you can do is put a price tag on it.

How I (or you or anybody else) personally feel about 'open' homosexuality is not the point.. the question is do gays have a right to be gay, and enjoy the same privledges and benefits as 'straight' people. It then follows that should the answer be 'yes', does the constitution guarantee that right.

The issue is not one that deserves constitutional ammendment, rather, the issue is one that needs societal change to come to fuition. As far as I'm aware, folks like me still are in the societal majority, but it's also obvious that this is changing rapidly.. the subject is, (IMHO) one for States to decide, it should follow the normal appelate course up to the SC and eventually it'll be decided there.. I hope.

[Torque]

the real hidden agenda behind it all is that religious institutions could be at risk of losing tax-exempt status, academic accreditation and media licenses, and could face charges of violating human-rights codes or hate-speech laws if gay marriage passes.

[Chairboy]

As far as I know, christian churches aren't sued for refusing to marry people of different faiths.  I've heard of plenty of cases where a church said 'nope, unless he converts we ain't doing it'.

If people HAVE sued, they sure haven't made any headway.

[Charon]

I figured as much Hang…

Seagoon, Chairboy has a pretty good response. Similarly, "natural law." has been open to the whim of whatever culture deemed natural and unnatural. There is no single, codified “natural law.” Homosexuality exists in nature, and has existed in humanity since the beginning as not the optimal course of nature, but certainly a natural one. Some cultures have seen it as being unnatural from a moral perspective and some don’t seem to have worried all that much about it, including Aristotle’s who is mentioned in your post quote on natural law.

A hundred years before the founding of America, colonial interpretations of “natural law” allowed the killing of witches. During the founding of America, the continuance of slavery was clearly sanctioned in the U.S. Constitution with salves falling under property rights. A woman’s right to vote didn’t feature into the version of natural law fully embraced by our founding fathers, and was left up to the states with predictable results. The same applies to Women’s property rights. If you want to be rigid about the view of natural law embraced by the founding fathers then it’s time to start turning back the clock beyond gay marriage, and undue the damage that has resulted from the legal positivism in these areas. Unless you just want to cherry pick which “natural laws” suit your agenda. Frankly, without too much trouble you can find secular and religious groups that will support the repeal of suffrage and civil rights.

Souther Baptists, for example:
“The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to his people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.”

I suppose if a wife disagreed with her husband’s choice for president, she had better get with the program. Isn’t that part of natural law, supported by the scriptures and “how it was” 2,000 years ago? I can dredge up any number of missives from white Christian supremacists supporting natural law in relation to current race issues. In a more Darwinian angle, the Nazi’s based much of their race policy on a “natural order.” You can also find Christian sects that find sex for reasons other than procreation unnatural. Masturbation as a sin. Interracial marriage as unnatural. Marriage between religions as unnatural. Eating pork as unnatural. You can also find Christian and other religious sects that have no moral problems with homosexuality and gay marriage. This pastor is particularly thoughtful on the issue, and put in plenty of research to arrive at his personal Christian foundation towards homosexuals: Bruce Lowe

I’m a believer in individual, civil rights. If this were about something like gay affirmative action, I might be on the other side of the debate.  But, “moral” or not, gay behavior does not impact me as an individual in any tangible way, does not impact society IMO (I believe in personal responsibility and the responsibility of parents) and see no reason to deny someone else that which I enjoy just because I don’t like who they are.

Charon

[Manedew]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
You have the right to marry your same gender Avro?

In Oregon and 48 other states, we don't... and never did...  Gay or straight

Well you can marry the same gender in Vermont ... and I actually don't think we are the only ones.

_____________________________ ___

Most of you dare not even be scientific about this? or do you even understand science?

I've made several points ... even gone through pains to try to educate some of you,  but you ignore them?

do you not understand?

or not care?

just waiting for your turn to talk agin and say how it should be obvious with common sense....

_____________________________ _
GunS and other 'common sense' folks


just answer me .. what is an average human ?...  what's the standard deviation from that?  

how far can you be from the mean human until your a 'freak' that gets throwen into your bucket of mutation?  If your attracted to same sex?  If your born thinking your a diffrant sex?  If your born with genetic oddities like XXY?  If your born with ambigous gentials?

do you assume from the start to seperate humans into male and female?  IF you do where do you draw the line ... not one of you common sense types wants to answer such things?  Proably becuase you can't answer it.

if you do, how do you account for the rest? do you throw them out of your stats?

I mean really what can you PROVE 100% about humans.  very little.. and I ask, but you folks don't answer.  Are you trolling me?

Science is very good at showing how many assumptions we make. 'Common Sense' is alllll about assumptions.  

Just tell me, with your sharp-common sense minds, where you would draw the line?  Who's a freak?  Who's normal?  Who's a mutation?  A girl can look normal but have a XXY? What if a girl is just a lesibian, something in her head?  

tell me ... since you guys like your definitions of marriage so much ... define the sexes for me..... don't leave anyone out.

[Elfie]

Originally posted by Silat
Elf you have your religious beliefs which have nothing to do with facts and science.
If you believe in ghosts that is your right. I dont.

That all depends on your belief system Silat

IF....you believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then yes, I am basing my statements on fact. Otoh, if I was your shoes and had your belief system, then your statement would be correct.

Just curious, why this response to one of my posts where I was responding to -Dead?

[Skuzzy]

Originally posted by Chairboy
Gotta say I'm impressed with this thread.  If the O'Club was really outta control, this would have degenerated into an explosively diarheaic mess of elephantine proportions, but it's been pretty civil, especially considering a. the subject and b. the strength of emotion behind the conflicting opinions.

Let's tackle religion next.    

i kid, i kid....

OT: 2 weeks ago, this thread would not have made it past page one, maybe two.