Bush Fighting Gay Marriage, Do we need a constitutional amendment?

ontrose - one thing that scares the heck outta me is there are religous leaders in my neck of the woods that want the seperation of church and state gone!!
They literally do want a theocracy.

Now that is a very scary thought. Now I'll probably ruffle a few feathers with this comment, but... I can see no good that has come from the Catholic church having so much power (especially in politics) over the last two thousand years... most, not all but most wars in the last two thousand years have been religious in their start. That is a scary thing.

Ontrose, the Catholics are not alone in their predeliction toward violence, abusive and unnatural relationships, and many other sins. That seems to be a common trait shared among all organized religions.

Another common trait is the necessity to either force others to adhere to one's own beliefs or suffer harm upon them.

I've learned long, long ago that the phrases "good Christian", "good Baptist", "good Muslim", or "good whatever (fill in the blank)" is more often than not an oxymoron, and I would suggest that if folks spent more time trying to correct their own faults rather than trying to control the lives of others that the world would be a far more pleasant and much less contentious place to live.

Swanny

Well said Swanny!

Actually it is. Aside from its personal, spiritual or emotional aspects, marriage is a contract which is legally binding. You have to go to court to sever it. Guess who makes laws.

Regardless of whether one approves of gay marriage or not, marriage as a legal institution, and applications to laws it affects, have been decided by government - including taxes, social security, real estate, insurance, inheritance, child rearing and custody etc. some of which are governmental programs or taxed by the government.

Although a constitutional amendment is the feds attempt to solidify centralized control on this issue, government at some level will decide what's legal and not as is their job as our representatives. Of course since you have a voice in who your specific representative is, you may express your discontent through correspondence and/or the ballot box.

If you don't think its the government's business to determine the purview of marriage as a legal institution in a representative democracy, whose business is it? If you say the people, then do the people decide via their representatives, the courts, popular vote, state or federal level? In other words, which aspect of government would you have represent and/or implement the wishes of the people on this issue? Government's business.

I think there should be a federal ban on gay marriage. Several states have either passed this type of law or put it up for a popular vote and it gets a great majority of the votes. Then the courts get involved and sometimes toss out the law, which is against what most of the people of the state. In this age, some state issues are becoming federal issues. For example, when San Fran was letting gays get married, there were people from all over the country going to San Fran to get married and then returning home. Thus forcing their home state to reconize their marriage. Same thing happens with people going to Vegas to get married. Since people are going across state lines to get married, it now becomes a federal issue. A lot of states are trying to pass bans on gay marriage, in a way to get things done before the federal government gets it done.

Hiya Swanny,
I know it is not just Catholics who have a predeliction toward violence. (NOTE: I am not talking about your average Catholic who does or does not attend church. I am talking about the leaders of the church(s) as far back as the Council of Nicea. Even before that...) I guess the point I was trying to make was that "Religion" as a whole has been the cause for the vast majority of wars that this world has had. In truth, religious wars go back in time as far back as there was written history.

I want to appologize for any offence I might have given to any Catholics that read my posts on this topic. None was meant as far as personal choice of religion goes.

Okay... enough political/religion stuff from me! As you can tell, I have some definate viewpoints on them.

This is a government issue, but frankly I don't think anyone, even the majority of people, have a right to tell gays they can't get married. There was a time when the majority of people in this country thought slavery was alright, then they thought segregation was ok. Just because the majority of people agree doesn't make them right or just.

And people, banning gays from getting married isn't going to stop them from being gay. It's not like homosexuality will disappear overnight just because the majority of people let it be known that this particular minority group isn't tolerated.

Please tell me how allowing gays to marry DIRECTLY harms anyone else. I don't care about the immoral issue of "Well, it's immoral, and letting them get married somehow in a round about way means it's ok for them to be gay, even though it isn't because God said so." Show me how allowing homosexual couples to become legally married will somehow harm this country economically, or harm others physically, etc.

Has anyone noticed this? There seems to be a tendency of the religious right to become verrrrrrry obssessed with anything having to do with sex. Why should anyone care what two consenting adults do behind closed doors? I dont really care. But the religious right is extremely concerned with it when it comes to homosexuals....and even lately the Right to Life folks have been on this propaganda trip saying that (even hetero/married) couples using birth control are immoral, breeding "animosity towards the potential child that COULD be born" just by using birth control.

Why are these perverts spending so much time obsessing over what the rest of us are doing in our private lives?

Where are you seeing the birth control stuff? I know Catholics have always looked down on any form of birth control, but I have not heard anyone else say that birth control is bad.

I don't think don't care if to gay people have sex. I believe it is wrong, but I'm not for any law that says that they can not have sex. I would like to see a law that keeps marriage between just a man and wife. We have laws that say that you can not be married to two people at the same time, but have not heard of anyone trying to get that thrown out or overturned.

If two people want to live together that is up to them, but marriage has always been between a man and a women. We are just trying to keep it that way. It is only in the last few years that gays have been trying to get married, or at least that it has come out into the spot light.

They've been trying for a good 10-15 years to get legislation passed to allow it, but do you know why they want to have the same ability to marry? They want the same benefits you share with your wife. A family of their own, someone they trust to carry on for them after they pass on, someone to share expenses with, someone to share their heart, soul, hopes and dreams with. And there is no way for them to do so legally at this point because such legal issues at this time requires a marriage certificate to gain the same respect and legal rights that you and your spouse share. You're just hearing about it now because it's finally the newest political buzz.

So what is it that makes you so much better than a gay couple?

Why is it that only a man and a woman can marry? Why leave it so general as only a man and woman and not be more specific about who can marry who? Black/White/Male/Bi/Female/Hetero/Lesbo/Rich/Poor/Disabled/Non-Religious it shouldn't matter. Such legislation is only going to purposely introduce discrimination into a document where it doesn't belong.

I've heard too many excuses that only a man and a woman can raise a child properly. That's [insert favorite derogatory statement here]. There are just as many studies proving the Leave It To Beaver factor wrong. There are stories every night on the news about children being sent off to Child Services because their mothers and fathers beat/torture/rape/neglect them. Do you hear the same story every night about gay couples with children? I certainly don't. I also hear stories about how Aunts and Uncles, and Grandmothers, and older siblings are taking care of families these days and more times often than not these children are growing up in stable family situations. They are loved, they have food, they have a roof over their head. They may not have a PS2, an IPod, a portable DVD player, and a gamer's dream laptop, but they have what really matters. Someone that loves them and will protect them. So the excuse that it's a better family unit will not fly with me.

We never lived in nor will live in the "perfect society" that everyone's trying to push this nation towards. There are too many different flavors in the melting pot these days to make everyone taste the same.

But I really want to know the honest answer. Why is it that a man marrying a woman is better definiton of marriage rather than two individuals (either hetero or gay) that love and want to take care of each other?

Hi I don't want to steer the topic away from Gay Marriage into birth control, but if you google a little bit you'll find plenty of articles covering this (recent?) trend to portray birth control as immoral.

With all due respect to your opinion about gay marriage, why do you feel it should be only btw a man and a woman? Simply from a biblical text standpoint? Or just "makes sense to you personally that way"? (I can understand that but should that mean it is outlawed?)

We all know there is plenty of mistranslated and out of date content in the bible if you're looking at it from that POV. Or if you are worried about what gay marriage would do to our population, don't we already have an overpopulation problem as it is? And it doesn't make society overall descend into immorality (another argument I've heard)...hetero folks are already pretty sinful in their own right.

I just want to understand why anyone would care about gay marriage when it doesn't affect anything one way or another.

I'm just a raging but willing to listen liberal. :-) I'm not even sure if I'll ever marry myself. I actually think if all people consent and are of legal age they should also be able to be polygamous. How's that for nutz? :-)

I try to look at most things by using logic. I'll admit that I'm a Christian but I try not to base everything from the Bible. Mainly, because people get turned off by it. Now logically speaking, gay couples are not suppost to happen. Sex is to be pleasurable but also to make babies. Now two guys or two women having sex might be pleasurable, but it is not logical and can not make babies. Babies normally breastfeed, now being a guy, I'm not sure if breast normally produce milk all the time or just after giving birth. But no guy would be able to breastfeed a baby. I now you might come back and say that they can get around it by using a bottle, true, but that is not how we are built. So logically, a man would marry a woman, have sex, produce a baby and then the woman would breastfeed until it was old enough to eat solid food. That is how things work and it makes sense.

I have not looked at how countries that have allowed gay marriages have changed. So I have no idea on how it will affect the country. But in this country, gay marriage has not been allowed until recently and that is due to judges ruling from the bench. I think Bush and the Republicans are trying to keep marriage the way it has been. They are not trying to change anything. At least that is how I see it.

okay...I can see the point of early physical mechanics...besides a woman was only created to birth and nurture future generations. That may still work in some fifth world countries today, unfortunately here in the US we have advanced enough that we no longer are limited to that way of sustaining the species.

There are very few children in modern societies that are breast fed. Most the milk is pumped and fed to the child through a bottle so the woman only serves as a factory when you use your definition of what a woman's role is. (btw breast milk starts typically a couple weeks prior to birth. It's a hormone setting, so if enough estrogen was pumped into a dude it could be possible for them to lactate is my understanding...ladies can correct me if you so wish.) So what would happen in your world if a woman died in child birth and all that was left to care for it was the male? Would the child starve (factory is closed down) or would the man feed it formula (a viable substitution)? Would the child be severely harmed for the rest of it's life because it was bottle-fed? More than likely not. There are many healthy children that were/are fed formula and not breast milk. So that arguement can not fully stand on it's own.

There are thousands of children born every year that are abandoned/adopted/orphaned around the world. Why do we not allow the care for them instead of focusing on legislating the breeding uses of heterosexual couples?

Judges are allowing same-sex marriages in some states because they INTERPRET the laws created by legislators. It's up to the legislators to provide clear and complete legislation without bias and discrimination so that the judges know exactly what was intended and therefore can determine legal or illegal. In the states that currently have same sex marriages I would guess that the Judges ruled that the legislation showed discrimination or lack of definition. They then based decisions on other laws passed in that state and found the discrimination this group of citizenry received illegal, thereby, making same-sex marriages legal for those states.

I would also think that there is much more to marriage than just making babies and sex (which is much more than just pleasure but emotional connection as well). So my logic tells me there's more to the story no one's wanting to tell.

Two things. First I'll address the "That's the way it has always been" argument. If we lived our lives by this rule we would not be where we are today. For instance, women were never allowed the vote, blacks were slaves, the mentally ill were tortured, there was no due process of law, anyone considered a witch was burned, being accused of being a communist was enough to get you in trouble with the government, etc. None of these things is considered right today, or even lawful. So, unless we are going to go back to the darkages and live as people lived before, the argument of "It's wrong because it's always been this other way before," doesn't fly.

Second, logic? There are a lot of illogical things when it comes to affairs of the heart. In fact, it used to be considered illogical for people to choose their own spouses. But also by this standard, it would be illogical for barren women to get married, for impotent men to get married, for the elderly to get married, for the poor to get married, for women whose children cannot handle breast milk to get married, etc. It is also illogical to allow children with genetic defects to be born.

I say take your ancient talk and your logic and keep it to yourself. If you don't want people telling you who you can and cannot marry, or how you can and cannot raise a child, then keep your own nose out of others business.