[civilian_number_two]

Spoon, you already have those "rights" with your brother, etc. Assuming you're talking about the ability to declare another person your legal dependent, and the notion of power of attorney in terminal illness. You do know that family is easily granted that right, don't you? I don't care what you call them, anyway, rights or priveleges. you could call them granfalloons for all the shit it means to me. But this is what gay marriage makes less likely:

Alvin is in a relationship with Simon. Alvin's parents disown Alvin and don't speak to him for 40 years. Simon stays with Alvin all the way through his cancer. Alvin falls into a coma without the foresight of a living will. Simon knows Alvin would like to die with dignity, and it is legal to do so where Alvin and Simon live. Alvin's parents show up and ecide to keep him on life support for months. They deny Simon the privelege of seeing Alvin in the hospital. When Alvin dies, his parents take him out of state to a resting place that is less convenient to Simon, and which is also not the plot that he and Alvin picked out a decade ago, when they planned to rest side by side.

Don't ask me where Theodore was during all of this.

Here's another one: Shelley and June have been together for 10 years and they decide to have a baby. Shelley's parents are unsupportive during her pregnancy; in fact they essentially disowned her 15 years ago when she came out to them. Sadly, Shelley dies due to complications associated with pre-eclampsia. Shelley's parents arrive at the hospital and take the baby home. June was never able to adopt the baby, and as she has no blood relationship with it, and since Shelley's parents don't approve of her lifestyle, she is never allowed to see the baby for the rest of her life.

Getting back to other things made available to married couples, and saying that it's wrong not to allow them to everyone, well go ahead and make your argument. There are reasons that the circumstances regarding married coupld have evolved in our society, and traditionaly these reasons have had to do with children. The marriage contract essentially is an incorporation contract, creating of two individuals a single business entity. You can easily create such a contract with your brother, if you intend to cohabitate for the rest of your lives and especially if you plan to adopt children together. Your ability to create this contract from scratch does not make the marriage contract redundant. It is the fact that it is a standard contract and that it is easily recognized in society as well as in the courts that it is so easy for folks to become married. This is as it should be; we want people to marry, since we are pro amily and all that.

The long and short of it is this. We recognize gay couples. We have not declared homosexuality to be illegal. We allow gays to live together and to adopt as family units. Denying gays the right to legally-recognized marriages is a step backward, in the direction of saying there is something fundamentally wrong with their union to begin with. The ads for the "Vote Yes on Prop 8" side which are plastered all over California roadways show a man and a woman holding the hands of their children. So the "yes" argument is basically saying that to vote "Yes" is to vote for the preservation of the traditional family. Ok, so the "yes" side means eventually to deny gays the right to adopt. The "Yes" side also should be taking children away from single mothers and making divorce illegal. Artificial insemination should be denied to single women, especially lesbians who have no intention ever of bringing a man into their child's life.

Again, there is a very specific set of reasons that the marriage contract became the standard arrangement that it is, and it is inconsistent to recognize gay couples (very recently we did not) and to deny them the ability to marry. It is nothing short of bigotry, and I can prove it with this simple question: what is the argument specifically against gay marriage? Your answer may not attempt to reduce marriage itself not may it be not derived from religion or from tradition.

[Spoon Poetic]

You can't share your health/auto/etc insurance with just whomever. If I wanted to share it with my brother/whatever I couldn't do that. All those situations could apply to people who are not married and do not wish to marry for whatever reason, but could still really use the benefits. Hell, Brad and Angelina are not married and yet are adopting (an army of) kids together and stuff. Not like they need the benefits (being rich and all), but a not rich yet otherwise-similar pair might really like these benefits that come from marriage, but not want to get married.

And again... I never argued against gay marriage! People, stop putting words in my mouth! I am all for gay marriage and if I could have voted that amendment down I would have (when it passed in my state I couldn't yet vote, though I did what I could). It's HUGELY bigotry to deny those privileges to gays and I never said it wasn't. I just also extended it to say that it's unfair to deny those privileges to anyone.

I am also one of those people that says, civil unions don't cut it. People argue, "yeah but if all the benefits were exactly the same, then how about let's not call it a marriage, then it's perfect for everyone, right?" NOT. That's like the idea of "separate but equal." Even if the black and white schools were identical in everything but the colour of the kids there, it's totally wrong because it's differentiating. That's how I feel about civil unions.

So for people to keep telling me that what I just said was a bigoted argument against gay marriage is actually quite offensive.

The marriage contract essentially is an incorporation contract, creating of two individuals a single business entity. You can easily create such a contract with your brother, if you intend to cohabitate for the rest of your lives and especially if you plan to adopt children together.

Not true.

The benefits you receive from marriage - SOME you could get with your brother/best friend/living-yet-not-romantic-partner/etc but there are others you cannot. Inheritance where there is no will (or the will leaves out some stuff, like the sock collection or whatever), sharing insurances, Social Security/pension/etc, sharing of veteran benefits, ability to have sick days to care for sick spouse, joint taxes, exemption from taxes on the inheritance that's left to you by the spouse, even some private organizations (clubs, whatever) will allow a free/discounted membership to a member's spouse, etc... You can only get this stuff through marriage. And yes, there are people out there that want these benefits and responsibilities to go to someone that is not their spouse.

I think we've pretty well established that there's no need for the "traditional family" so using children as an excuse to keep these benefits exclusive to married people isn't going to fly.

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 07 November 2008 - 01:58 AM

[J m HofMarN]

The whole priviledge vs right thing is rather silly, and if you're not against gay marriage, why are you arguing that its benefits are priviledges? There is no guarantee for priviledges, and as such there would be little basis for gay marriage.

And the things you mentioned are basic rights that keep the family structure from asploding. Both of Civ's points mentioned families disowning their gay children. There is statistical evidence behind this. For a great many gay couples, their partner is the only family they have. But legally they havent even got that, which creates all sorts of problems. These basic necessities like visitation, like child custody, like rights to decide medical care and collect survivor's benefits. Those are not priviledges. A priviledge is an optional thing. Going out to eat every Sunday is a priviledge. Eating is not. Getting custody of your children is not a priviledge. Neither is getting in to see a dying loved one. That's a right, pure and simple.

As for the offering marriage rights/priviledges to everyone, no. Marriage is meant to prove stability. It's a societal marker as much as a legal and romantic one, and sort of a status thing. Why would we want to open it up to all the troubles that random marriage-lites would cause? I decide to move in with my friend, and so we have a marriage-lite. Then I realize that he is a neat freak and have to move out, so now in addition to that I'm suddenly in the middle of a divorce-lite. Also, financial ramifications abound, and what about if I wanted to have a marriage with my girlfriend or boyfriend, but also have a marriage-lite with my brother? What would the authorities do then? Would this be homicest?

And if you're not going to (supposedly) commit yourself forever and ever to another person, why do you want to have the long term benefits of a marriage with them? It just doesnt make sense to me.

[Deucaon]

If anyone is against the banning of homosexual marriages in California then they are against universal suffrage. Period. Why don't the gays move to... I don't know... a place that allows gays to marry and isn't a desert? On second thought, all gays in America should move to a state with a small population thus becoming a majority there thus legally changing any laws they wish... like San Francisco on a state level. Also, I find it ironic that the gay capital of the USA is named after a devout Catholic.

[J m HofMarN]

"Why don't all the queers move to their own country" is just a very short step from "let's put all the queers on a train and move them to their own country. With barbed wire around it."

Suffrage is the right to vote. No one is denying that folks have the right to vote. However I do deny people the right to make stupid ballot initiatives for the sole purpose of infringing on the rights and dignity of other people. You should not be able to just make a constitutional ban on something simply because you're a biggot. There should be some kind of requirement to prove the possibility of harm to society, or the benefits of your initiative, before you get it on a ballot. An initiative to, say, ban pie on Tuesdays should not be considered, but an initiative to ban arsenic in tuesday pie should.

[Deucaon]

"Why don't all the queers move to their own country" is just a very short step from "let's put all the queers on a train and move them to their own country. With barbed wire around it."

It seems that "moving because they want to" and "moving because they are forced to" is the same thing to Hoffman. This is what happens when you skip 3rd grade English, kids.

Suffrage is the right to vote.

SRSLY? I thought it had something to do with the distribution of grilled cheese sandwiches.

No one is denying that folks have the right to vote. However I do deny people the right to make stupid ballot initiatives for the sole purpose of infringing on the rights and dignity of other people. You should not be able to just make a constitutional ban on something simply because you're a biggot.

Except people only have as much "right" and "dignity" as the government allows (in the Democracy that is determined by the will of the majority of people who vote). Thus if you are against the law being passed then you are against universal suffrage or the democratic process or both.

There should be some kind of requirement to prove the possibility of harm to society, or the benefits of your initiative, before you get it on a ballot. An initiative to, say, ban pie on Tuesdays should not be considered, but an initiative to ban arsenic in tuesday pie should.

And who would decide what is "just" and what isn't? You?

Inb4 obsolete opinions by dead philosophers.

[J m HofMarN]

I really cant believe you're defending your statement that, if homosexuals want equal rights, they need to basically start their own country. This (correctly) points out that the denial of rights is due to people not wanting gays around, and wishing they would go away.

You cannot link a repressive ballot initiative to universal suffrage. Suffrage is a right indeed, but being able to infringe on others rights with that is not. My rights end where yours begin, right?

Oh for fuck's sake. No, no you're not against democracy if you're against prop 8. Universal suffrage was for some time not legal based upon consensus of our leaders and voters, but you cannot very well say that the suffragettes were against suffrage/democracy. See also: slavery, union rights, civil rights, segregation, etc etc.

And who would decide what is "just" and what isn't? You?

Sure!

[Gobbler]

Ohhhhhhhh, the gay-country discussion is back! I'm all for it!

Let's wrap 'em all together and found a new state for them - hey, it worked well with Israel before, didn't it? So let's just follow that idea and found Gayland in the country that opposes them the most.

Which is the Vatican, I guess.

Oh, it will be ever so much fun! Imagine Gayland creating their own football team! Exchanging tricots after the game was never this consequential. And don't even get me started on the tactical man-to-man marking...

[Deucaon]

I really cant believe you're defending your statement that, if homosexuals want equal rights, they need to basically start their own country. This (correctly) points out that the denial of rights is due to people not wanting gays around, and wishing they would go away.

Well if they (or whichever minority which wishes to enforce its will on the majority) want to change laws then they can either move or convert the majority of voters (to their way of thinking). I really cant believe that you don't understand the concept of Democracy.

You cannot link a repressive ballot initiative to universal suffrage. Suffrage is a right indeed, but being able to infringe on others rights with that is not. My rights end where yours begin, right?

Ah... huh. Well the people of California have determined that marriage between same sex couples isn't a right.

To be frank, I would rather (though I disagree with the banning of marriage between same sex couples) laws be created/reformed by the will of the majority rather than by a small group of "Elitists" who think they know what's best for everyone.

Oh for fuck's sake. No, no you're not against democracy if you're against prop 8. Universal suffrage was for some time not legal based upon consensus of our leaders and voters, but you cannot very well say that the suffragettes were against suffrage/democracy. See also: slavery, union rights, civil rights, segregation, etc etc.

So you're not against Democracy if you don't agree that a referendum is legally binding because past American political leaders were hypocrites? That makes a lot of sense.

This post has been edited by Deucaon: 07 November 2008 - 06:31 AM

[civilian_number_two]

Deuc. Seriously. You could propose a referendum to allow leaded gasoline. It could be shown that leaded gasoline is cheaper. You could run a great campaign and the opponents, who would argue that leaded gasoline is poisonous to humans and all other mammals, could fail because of lack of funding or the crazy price of gas or spurious arguments from questionable scientists or whatever. You could succeed and then conclude that it was the will of the people that leaded gasoline was safe. Even though it is not!

We do NOT live in a Democracy. We live in a Republic, wherein we select intelligent and well-versed representatives to act in our best interests. The weakness often is that we are individually often quite smart, while collectively we are often idiots. This is why we often prefer good speakers to good writers, folksy guys who like baseball and who drank their ways through college over brainy fellows who were summa cum laude in their business management schools. But in general we do ok and we trust these folks make the decisions for us. When they put something to a referendum it is often because they lack the courage to argue it in the house. They decide that by making it an appeal to majority rule, they can pass something they know is right while avoiding any political fallout. They are being irresponsible and they are failing to do the hard part of their jobs. Not everything should be decided by some grasrrots Democratic vote. Any claim you actually believe that is just emotional game playing. You know better, so lay off.

As for this one, they just put it to majority rule to decide whether gay couples should be considered legitimate and eligible for marriage. Imagine if they had made a referendum out of black civil rights. Prop 8 would have been a regressive political move even if the No side had won.

Spoon, you're right that a civil contract to replicate marriage "priveleges," enacted to create those bonds between individuals who are not married, is not likely with a conventional contract. For me, that's not the interesting part of this conversation. It is a common rebuttal to the gay marriage thing, to reduce to absurdity the idea of two women wanting to live together as spouses ("well, if we let them do it, whgy can't ANYONE?") Ok, ok, you have something there, but honestly I don't care. The interesting question to me is why did none of that come up when only straight man-woman couples were considered eligible for marriage? Why is it that if we consider same-sex couples, NOW we have to add this level of complication?

I know you mean well and have no ill feeling for gay couples, so please don't bother to tell us all that again. I can't speak for the others, but when you take pains to reassure me of that, it makes me feel like you've misunderstood me. I don't believe that you want to restrict the lives of gay couples. So let's get back to the interesting question:

Why does the universal civil union argument come up only when we talk about recognizing gay marriage? What is it about gay marriage that makes the nature of the marriage union stand out more prominently than when marriage is exclusive to straight couples? I propose two possibilities:

1) when folks start talking about changing sometihing, the natural tendency is to see just how much it can be changed (a kind of impishness);

2) people, including, like it or not, yourself, see something inherently different about gay couples, and don't really consider thm on equal footing with straight couples. Therefore extending to them the legal priveleges of marriage seems unfair and so the tendency is to cry foul and to call the whole marriage thing into question (a kind of dog-in-the-manager reaction).

Propose other possibilities or pick one of those two camps.

[J m HofMarN]

Well if they (or whichever minority which wishes to enforce its will on the majority) want to change laws then they can either move or convert the majority of voters

Democracy usually does not require the mass relocation of voters to work. Democracy is about people being able to live peacefully together without infringing on eachothers rights so much that a group of people has to leave the democracy. Using the slipperly slope argument that folks love to use against the gays, once we allow gayland to secede, we'll next need to do the same for indian territory, muslims, etc etc and then the US ends up being just North Dakota.

Ah... huh. Well the people of California have determined that marriage between same sex couples isn't a right.

To be frank, I would rather (though I disagree with the banning of marriage between same sex couples) laws be created/reformed by the will of the majority rather than by a small group of "Elitists" who think they know what's best for everyone.

They can determine anything they like, it does not make things morally or even constitutionally sound. The courts and the legislative should still have their say in this, and they will. Checks and balances, remember? That sort of system, of being able to appeal an idea or a law, is perfectly democratic. If a law, simply because it is passed by an elected congress, an elected president, or an electorate, is declared to be eternal and unquestionable, ya aint got no democracy no more.

And I would rather that government, in a country where many people cant find the country they desire to rule on a map, be in the hands of the educated and well versed rather than in the hands of folks who are going to wander around banning gay marriages, or abortions, or muslims as soon as someone whips them into enough of a frenzy to do it.

So you're not against Democracy if you don't agree that a referendum is legally binding because past American political leaders were hypocrites? That makes a lot of sense.

No, no you're not. Checks and balances. Also, were the suffragettes against democracy? Why or why not?

[Spoon Poetic]

Spoon, you're right that a civil contract to replicate marriage "priveleges," enacted to create those bonds between individuals who are not married, is not likely with a conventional contract. For me, that's not the interesting part of this conversation. It is a common rebuttal to the gay marriage thing, to reduce to absurdity the idea of two women wanting to live together as spouses ("well, if we let them do it, whgy can't ANYONE?") Ok, ok, you have something there, but honestly I don't care. The interesting question to me is why did none of that come up when only straight man-woman couples were considered eligible for marriage? Why is it that if we consider same-sex couples, NOW we have to add this level of complication?

I know you mean well and have no ill feeling for gay couples, so please don't bother to tell us all that again. I can't speak for the others, but when you take pains to reassure me of that, it makes me feel like you've misunderstood me. I don't believe that you want to restrict the lives of gay couples. So let's get back to the interesting question:

Why does the universal civil union argument come up only when we talk about recognizing gay marriage? What is it about gay marriage that makes the nature of the marriage union stand out more prominently than when marriage is exclusive to straight couples? I propose two possibilities:

1) when folks start talking about changing sometihing, the natural tendency is to see just how much it can be changed (a kind of impishness);

2) people, including, like it or not, yourself, see something inherently different about gay couples, and don't really consider thm on equal footing with straight couples. Therefore extending to them the legal priveleges of marriage seems unfair and so the tendency is to cry foul and to call the whole marriage thing into question (a kind of dog-in-the-manager reaction).

Propose other possibilities or pick one of those two camps.

I fit into neither. I thought it was unfair that married people get benefits before I even knew there was such a thing as "gay" (I was a sheltered ten-year old). The argument comes up for me more often than just when talking about gay couples; it just tends to come up more when talking about gay couples because typically that's the only time anyone ever bothers to talk about marriage "rights" in the first place.


I have always just found it silly how high marriage is put up on a pedestal, when really, "the sanctity of marriage?" Puh-lease. You already know how bogus that is. And yet the state of being married is this huge goal that everyone's supposed to strive for - the perfect state of being. I just feel that all kinds of relationships/non-relationships should be treated more equally, that's all. Our society doesn't need to be built on the institution of marriage anymore, so I don't see the need to reward it. Even pretending that gay couples could get married, you still have the single parents (or grandmas/sisters/etc that take care of the children etc), paramours, eternal bachelors, polyamoric triads, asexuals - all excluded from this special club where you get lots of neato rewards.



If you want me to quit defending myself on how my stance concerning gay couples etc., then quit accusing me of things. Such as lumping me into your "camp 2." Maybe I am calling the whole marriage thing into question, but it has nothing to do with seeing anyone differently than anyone else. And that's the whole point. Married people get treated differently than everyone else, while I'm seeing them as all worthy of the same treatment.

I'm not saying it's as huge of an issue as gays having the right to marry, and I'm not going to go campaigning to tear down the institution of marriage. It's just the way I feel about the whole thing, and makes for an interesting debate.

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 07 November 2008 - 05:31 PM

[Deucaon]

Deuc. Seriously. You could propose a referendum to allow leaded gasoline. It could be shown that leaded gasoline is cheaper. You could run a great campaign and the opponents, who would argue that leaded gasoline is poisonous to humans and all other mammals, could fail because of lack of funding or the crazy price of gas or spurious arguments from questionable scientists or whatever. You could succeed and then conclude that it was the will of the people that leaded gasoline was safe. Even though it is not!

That's the great thing about a Democracy/Republic. Both sides can explain why their opinion is better and/or more just. I understand that it doesn't always work like that but its better that than having a small group of "enlightened" Elitists deciding for everyone.

We do NOT live in a Democracy. We live in a Republic, wherein we select intelligent and well-versed representatives to act in our best interests. The weakness often is that we are individually often quite smart, while collectively we are often idiots. This is why we often prefer good speakers to good writers, folksy guys who like baseball and who drank their ways through college over brainy fellows who were summa cum laude in their business management schools. But in general we do ok and we trust these folks make the decisions for us. When they put something to a referendum it is often because they lack the courage to argue it in the house. They decide that by making it an appeal to majority rule, they can pass something they know is right while avoiding any political fallout. They are being irresponsible and they are failing to do the hard part of their jobs. Not everything should be decided by some grasrrots Democratic vote. Any claim you actually believe that is just emotional game playing. You know better, so lay off.

Important issues can and should be decided with a referendum if the system is meant to represent the will of the people. Otherwise we end up with countries like the Glorious People's Democratic Republic of America.

As for this one, they just put it to majority rule to decide whether gay couples should be considered legitimate and eligible for marriage. Imagine if they had made a referendum out of black civil rights. Prop 8 would have been a regressive political move even if the No side had won.

Well with states who have a sizable Black population, I'm sure they the "Yes" side would definitely win. For the other states, I doubt Americans are as inheritably bigoted as you make them out to be but if they are then tough. And yes, if I was a White living in a Black dominated area that discriminated against Whites, I would sell my property and move. But I hold the conviction that people (whether they be White, Black, Yellow, Red, Brown, Pink or Purple) here in Australia and in America aren't as racist as you make them out to be. And before you bitch to me about "fundamental human rights" and whatnot, let me remind you of what happens when the minority decides for the majority: Apartheid, Nazism, Bolshevism, etc.

[civilian_number_two]

Deuc, the US Civil War was fought between two Democracies over which rights ought to be determined by individual States and which rights ought to be universally determined at a Federal level. Many States seceded over this argumnent; while folks are right to say that the war was not just about the right to own slaves, in fact every slave state seceded. Folks then volunteered to fight and die for their right to own slaves, among other things.

Folks fought and occasionally killed over the subject of civil rights, about 100 years after the civil war. Democracies in the couth had enacted laws segregating people by colour, and some folks were unhappy to see that go.

Looking back, it's hard for even the most racist among us to imagine the sort of people who could think and behave like that. Our attitudes have evolved after our legal environment was forced upon us by a governing body, a body which was made to enforce its orders at the point of guns. So, yes, people are just as capable of racism as I imagne them to be, and yes, elitist bodies ought to be able to make decisions for me. We do have a say in this process, even if we don't make ourslevs heard on every decision. We have a say every time the government is up for renewal. Also there are numerous levels of public involvement in the legal and political process that don't have to include holding a referendum every time the White House Christmas tree needs new bulbs.

Spoon, I don't agree that the institution of marriage is obviously and inherently bogus. I am rather in favour of marriage. I don't think folks are rushing out to get married so that they can take advantage of the benefits of the contract; really, there are few and they are not so far-reaching as you imagine. Folks get married by and large because they believe in the sanctity of the instuitution. Funny enough I just came from a wedding; the couple forked out $35000 to make that thing happen (which they will never make back from these so-called benefits), so I dare say they considered it important. Puh-lease.

[Spoon Poetic]

So some people consider it important. *shrug* I never said it wasn't important to some people. Doesn't mean that married people have benefits that are exclusive to them, and whether or not that is necessary or right can be argued (and has been...). But can you tell me why the state of being married should be this thing we're all pushed to strive for? Or why it's right for marriage to be rewarded?