Same Sex Marriages

[Dan]

what? sorry didn't understand the first sentence... what i meant by using that example is that you can always claim to have predicted someone's answer/thoughts after they've told ya......

 

yeah, and ur point is? how are they comparable? and as a person who's so much into tradition, why are you using science to try and prove your points? i mean, we Armenians should respect the beliefs of our ancestors, right? our ancestors believed that faith could cure.. so if one of your significant other gets ill with cancer (god forbid), i am sure you would only pray and leave it all up to god...

 

your next pointless point? (sorry, i can't predict)

[Dan]

Why do you want everybody to knor you`re gay? Is it something to be proud of? When I meet gay people I`m not saying, he I`m heteroseksual!

being gay is part of my identity, and i am proud of it, yes. just as i am proud of being Armenian and British. in fact, those are the ONLY three things that i am proud of. however, pride should not exceed the margins of self-interest into hatred of others who are outside that pride circle (meaning heterosexual, non-Armenian, non-British people in my case)...

When you meet gay people, you do not need to say you're heterosexual. It's already taken into account, because your sexuality (and others' as well) is in my face every single day, wherever I go. and if i'm gonna be silent and pretend that i'm "one of you" just cos it makes you feel good about it [reassures you that you're doing the right thing, or what have you], then no, i'm not about to shut up or hide my identity... just like i'm not about to hide my Armenian patch on my backpack just cos there are Turks 'round the corner who might not like it and possibly hurt me..

 

By the way, are you married or planning to get married to a guy?

no, i am not married, and i am not planning on getting married any time soon. however, i don't think people know what their future would bring, and i want to keep my choices open (after having the right for the choice -- which is what this thread is all about - same-sex marriage)..

Edited January 11, 2004 by Dan

[Dan]

A Mockery of Marriage

The things heterosexuals do.

Deroy Murdock

 

Social conservatives are working overtime to argue that gay marriage would imperil straight matrimony. They say that if Jack and Joe were united, till death do them part, they would jeopardize husbands and wives, from sea to shining sea.

 

"We will lose marriage in this nation," without constitutionally limiting it to heterosexuals, warns Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. The Traditional Values Coalition, meanwhile, sees "same-sex marriage as a way of destroying the concept of marriage altogether."

 

It would be far easier to take these claims seriously if gay-marriage critics spent as much energy denouncing irresponsible heterosexuals whose behavior undermines traditional marriage. Among prominent Americans, such misdeeds are increasingly ubiquitous.

 

Exhibit A is musical product Britney Spears's micromarriage to hometown pal Jason Allen Alexander. The 22-year-olds were wed on January 3 in Las Vegas. Clad in sneakers, a baseball cap, ripped jeans, and a navel-revealing T-shirt, the vocalist was escorted down the Little White Wedding Chapel's aisle by a hotel chauffeur. Spears and Alexander, who wore baggy pants and a zippered sweater, soon were wife and husband.

 

Almost as soon, their marriage was annulled. Clark County Judge Lisa Brown accepted Spears's request and ruled that "There was no meeting of the minds in entering into this marriage contract, and in a court of equity there is cause for declaring the contract void."

 

The revolving-door couple's 55 hours of marital bliss were based neither on love nor shared commitment, but because "they took a joke too far," explained Spears's label, Jive Records.

 

Whatever objections they otherwise may generate, gay couples who desire marriage at least hope to stay hitched. Britney's latest misadventure, in contrast, reduced marriage from something sacred to just another Vegas activity, like watching the Bellagio Hotel's fountains between trips to the blackjack tables.

 

Consider David Letterman. His hilarious broadcasts keep Insomniac-Americans cackling every weeknight. Last November 3, he got a national standing ovation when his son, Harry Joseph, was born. Those who rail against gay marriage stayed mum about the fact that Harry's dad and mom, Regina Lasko, shack up. What message is sent by this widely hailed out-of-wedlock birth?

 

And then there's Jerry Seinfeld. This national treasure's eponymous TV show will generate belly laughs in syndication throughout this century, and deservedly so. The mere sound of those odd bass notes on Seinfeld's soundtrack can generate chuckles before any dialogue has been uttered.

 

But while Seinfeld boasts millions of fans, Eric Nederlander is not among them. Shortly after the Broadway theater heir and his then-wife, Jessica Sklar, returned from their June 1998 honeymoon, she met Seinfeld at Manhattan's Reebok Club gym. He asked Sklar out, she accepted and, before long, she ditched her new husband and ran off with the comedian.

 

Where was the social-conservative outrage at Seinfeld's dreadful actions? Can anyone on the religious Right seriously argue that the real risk to holy matrimony is not men like Seinfeld and women like Sklar but devoted male couples who aim neither to discard one another nor divide others?

 

Of course, not every American is an overexposed pop diva, network talk-show host, or sitcom multimillionaire. For rank-and-file heterosexuals, marriage can involve decades of love and joy. In 51 percent of cases, people stay married for life. Such unions are inspiring, impressive, and deserve every American's applause.

 

On the other hand, 49 percent of couples break up, according to Divorce magazine. The Federal Administration for Children and Families calculated in 2002 that deadbeat parents nationwide owed their kids $92.3 billion in unpaid child support. In 2000, 33.2 percent of children were born outside marriage. Among blacks, that figure was 68.5 percent. A 1998 National Institute of Justice survey found that 1.5 million women suffer domestic violence annually, as do 835,000 men. So-called "reality" TV shows like Fox's Married by America and its forthcoming My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé turn wedding vows into punch lines. In nearly every instance, heterosexuals — not homosexuals — perpetrated these social ills.

 

Gay marriage is a big idea that deserves national debate. Nonetheless, social conservatives who blow their stacks over homosexual matrimony's supposed threat to traditional marriage tomorrow should focus on the far greater damage that heterosexuals are wreaking on that venerable institution today.

 

:lol2:

Edited January 11, 2004 by Dan

[Stormig]

I get the point about the traditionalists' needing to stuff it, but I am not impressed with this "heteros make a joke out of their relationships while gays would give anything for that marriage." How do they know there won't be divorce?

[Dan]

i don't think this article is pro-gay.. in fact, i took it from a white nationalist, mostly anti-gay website..

 

exposing the bad sides of heterosexual marriage does not sanctify gay marriage... there will definitely be divorce in gay marriage lol... what are the chances of 2 people not disagreeing about something major in their "shared" life..? i think what the article is doing is basically laying out the hypocrisy of most heterosexuals in blindly defending the holiness of heterosexual marriage without actually looking at what's going on... and at the same time basically going on a crusade against gay marriage on the same bases which they are turning a blind eye to in heterosexual marriage...

[Stormig]

Interesting article -

 

Family Values

 

By Becky O'Malley, Berkeley Daily Planet

February 22, 2004

 

Today, Feb. 17, my parents have been married for 65 years. They are still living in their home by themselves, at 89 and 91. Our family is very lucky to have them still with us, still in good spirits and relatively good health.

 

 

We appreciate all they've done for us, and for others, during their long life together.

 

 

One of the nice things about growing up with two parents like mine was that they introduced their offspring to many different ways of enjoying life.

 

 

From my father, I learned to love music. Most nights when my sister and I were little, after he came back from serving in the Navy in World War II, he sang us to sleep with the deep bass voice that had made him a valued member of his undergraduate glee club. The repertoire didn't vary much, though it was democratically mixed: popular ditties from the '20s and '30s, college fight songs, spirituals, operetta standards, and always Brahms' Lullaby as the finale.

 

 

From my mother, I learned to love words. She knew about all the best children's authors of the era: Milne, White, Travers. When I got older, she'd read aloud with me from favorite poets. I particularly enjoyed our dramatic reading of Robert Browning's poetic thriller,"My Last Duchess." A high point of the week for both of us was the day the mailman brought "The New Yorker." My mother went right for the short stories, while I started off with cartoons but eventually moved on to the hard stuff. She also knew the best places to get used books, so we read lovely illustrated editions of all the 19th and early 20th century classics: Alcott, Hawthorne, Cooper, Scott, Dickens…

 

 

My mother has always known the best places to get everything to enrich life. She follows, without doing it consciously, William Morris's dictum "have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful," but her ace in the hole is that she's very good at finding what she believes to be beautiful at bargain rates. My childhood trips with her to "Father Dempsey's" thrift emporium taught me that you can turn your living space into a personal art gallery on any budget. She still loves to go to a garage sale of a Sunday.

 

 

My father liked outdoor excursions too when my sister and I were growing up, but nature walks rather than garage sales. He showed us the interesting things you can see on any outdoor path at a child's level: the way acorns come apart, and what caterpillars are up to.

 

 

My parents set a good example for their children; both my sister and I have been happily married for more than 40 years. We can testify to the many joys of a stable family life. My parents still take care of one another every day, and often, still, of their children, their grandchildren, and now their great-grandchildren.

 

 

That's what marriage is all about, in the end, people taking care of other people. Love helps, and of course passion (which is not the same as love) gets things off to a rousing start. But what marriage really means is that adults have voluntarily accepted the duty of looking after one another and of bringing up children if they have them. Many religions, including the Christian church, have traditionally viewed marital promises as being made by the spouses to one another, sometimes blessed by the approval of a priest or a congregation, but valid with or without the participation of the state.

 

 

When people agree to take on additional responsibilities to one another by marrying, the community as a whole benefits. That's why governments have historically conferred special privileges on those who are willing to get married, providing them with stable rules for property ownership, inheritance and tax benefits. Many countries such as France have two ceremonies, one in church and the other at city hall, to recognize the dual nature of marriage.

 

 

Of course people sometimes take care of one another even without marriage. Families, whether or not they are state-sanctioned, take care of each other much of the time. Friends do look out for friends, whether or not they've promised to do so. But the distinctive thing about the marriage contract is that it's both voluntary (unlike families) and intended to be binding (unlike friendships).

 

 

Until recently, the most obvious benefit of conventional marriage to the rest of society was that two grown-ups signed up in advance to raise the kids of the next generation. Religious groups have been wary about trusting members of other religions to do this important job, so they've often put barriers in the way of "mixed marriages." When my parents were married in 1939, they couldn't be married in church, because my mother was a Catholic and my father was not, though a priest did agree to marry them in my grandparents' home.

 

 

By the time I got married 21 years later, Catholics had dropped the rule against church weddings, but there were still state-enforced prohibitions of racially "mixed marriages." Not until 1967 did the U.S. Supreme Court outlaw "statutory schemes to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications."

 

 

Times change. Children in the upcoming generation of American families like ours have ancestors from Africa and Asia as well as from Europe. Their parents have gotten married in multi-religious or non-religious ceremonies. And 30 more years out, our descendants will be amazed to learn that it was once considered to be in the public interest to prevent consenting adults from promising to take care of one another, just because of what they do or don't do in their bedrooms. Statutory schemes to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of gender classifications will then seem as absurd as the unconstitutional laws against racially mixed marriages do now.

 

 

With the widespread availability of birth control, children are no longer considered an inevitable result of marriage, even when partners are of different genders. People who won't have children to take care of them in their old age need, even more, to make sure that someone has signed up for the job. It's not safe, in the age of Bush and Schwarzenegger, with managed care, attacks on Medicare, falling stock values, and looted pension funds in the news, to rely on government to provide a safety net.

 

 

But when children are part of the plan, it's even clearer that any kind of marriage prohibition is foolish. Those who want to conceive children can do so with or without marriage, but it's in the best interest of society to do everything possible to encourage those who want to become parents to find partners to help with the job. Religious groups, under our constitution, are allowed to have all kinds of silly rules about which marriages they bless, but we should expect more from the government. There is no good public policy reason for the state to dictate what the sexual relationship between parental partners needs to be.

 

 

My parents are different kinds of people, and that made them more creative and interesting parents, but the fact that one is a man and the other is a woman was not the most important difference between them. Every child deserves parents like mine. Many children have been successfully raised by single parents, but children are who come into the world, as I did, with two fine though different people already signed up to educate them about life and its pleasures, are very fortunate.

 

 

The new mayor of San Francisco has gotten a lot of praise for removing marriage barriers for same-sex couples, and he deserves it. There's no reason for the mayors of all U.S. cities not to do the same.

 

 

Becky O'Malley is executive editor of the Daily Planet.

[Anonymouse]

They want to enjoy the privilege of having a marriage license on their bedroom wall. They want, like most other decent people, to be able to proudly wear a wedding ring. And have children. Isn't it sufficient to us, that since gay couples may never have children of their own? Must we also deprive them of a wedding? Of a real wedding, blessed by a uhhhh? A man of ... uh ... Leviathan? Huh? And why must these 'friends' be denied the right to adopt another human being, and make that human being in the image of themselves. In the image of their gayness? Indeed, even if the child does not become gay, this child will have realized the stupidity of not recognizing gay marriage. "After all, look how I turned out!" he or she would say.

 

I once knew a boy who wanted a camel, the animal, not the cigarette. All his young life, he yearned for a camel. No one but he knew that he wanted to marry that camel. Why should not this boy now a man, have the privilege of marrying a camel? Why should not men and women who desire carnal knowledge with animals be able to marry? Why I ask you? I say, he or she who wishes to marry anyone or anything, be allowed by law, to do so. And I challenge the Churches of the world to set the same precedent set by the gay people of San Francisco and allow gay marriage, animal marriage and marriage (if desired) between men and plastic blow up dolls.

 

"Verily I say unto yous, if a man take another man, or a woman take another woman, or if a man or woman take an animal, or a statue, or some simulacrum of a man or woman, dog, animal of any kind, then that man or that woman must have the right to do so."

 

This statement, this magnificent statement, was made by G-d Himself when he came down from the mountain and spaked to Moses. But Moses, being too damned mainstream, too damned religious, too stuck in the old ways, allowed himself to forget this one commandment. The 11th commandment. And so, this word of G-d is now lost forever in the archives of ... of ... uh ... in the archives.

 

Let them eat cake, those who deny gays and other perceived perverts, let them eat cake at their wedding I say.

 

Dr. (Name on File because I do not wish to be responsible for this gibberish)

[shiner]

OK, thanks for the views.

Next up - marriages of multiple partners? You know, threesomes made permanent and all that.

Stormig,

Great question. I've been thinking about this too. And when those supporting gay marriage are asked about this they are completely BLANK.

 

In my view if you alter the definition of marriage for one group you have to alter it for all groups. And I can easily see threesomes and foursomes wanting to get married right after gays are allowed.

 

Which brings up a much larger issue. How can society respond to the complete breakdown of "marriage" as we know it? How detrimental can this be (or not)?

[SALTnPEPA92]

Personally Imma be straight with what Im going to say. I disagree with what they are doing, one they can't have children so whats the point. I respect them as in hey and bye i aint gonna go psycho on them, but i think it's silly and even f they adopted whos the child gonna call mommy and daddy

[Armat]

Stormig,

Great question. I've been thinking about this too. And when those supporting gay marriage are asked about this they are completely BLANK.

 

In my view if you alter the definition of marriage for one group you have to alter it for all groups. And I can easily see threesomes and foursomes wanting to get married right after gays are allowed.

 

Which brings up a much larger issue. How can society respond to the complete breakdown of "marriage" as we know it? How detrimental can this be (or not)?

Pardon me Shiner but what society are we talking about.There is no such thing as a society anymore in US.People are free to live their lives the way they want to.Marriage is a civil event or for that matter a personnal act and governments passing laws allowing one group to get all the benefits and others not is simply discrimination.Why me a married man with kids should worry about others none stright people getting the same benefits.How is that "breaking down" my marriage or "breaking society"

The very same attitudes were also part of the long racism that is still very much the underling fabric of this coutry.

I tell you and others what really breaks down "society".Lack of jobs,poor schools,negleted gettos,Bush's wars, just a few real" break downs"

[shiner]

Armat I don't know that's why I was just asking. But I still can't help feel funny/skeptical about marriage implying 3, 4, 5, 10 people.

[Armat]

Armat I don't know that's why I was just asking. But I still can't help feel funny/skeptical about marriage implying 3, 4, 5, 10 people.

That is unlikely and even then who should really care what others do.I am more concern about the priests raping young boys and having it on TV then what people do in private.