Posted on 12/04/2003 11:37:40 AM PST by Holly_P
Big difference. The threat to those of racist mindset wasn't that inter-racial marriage changed the definition of what a marriage was. They were afraid precisely because it was a real marriage, with the "frightening" (in their opinion) prospect of "mixed-race" offspring.
That's not at all the issue with "gay marriage."
With the tiny, miniscule exception that one is right & the other is wrong.
I just talked to my grand father who was around in 1960 and before. He told me that he didn't know anyone who argued that inter racial marriage was immoral. He knew plenty of people who were against it because they were just plain bigots.
Of course that doesn't prove anything any more than your assertations of "trust me" does.
No doubt it will. And a generation after that, videos of little kids having sex with animals will be shown during ABC's family hour, and nobody will think anything of it. None of the inconstancy of man-made morality has anything to do with objective right and wrong. You are talking about how popular perceptions & sensibilities change over time -- I don't dispute that, I just maintain that it is irrelevant. Morality is not determined democratically.
Homosexuality is an identity, just like heterosexuality or skin color. It is not an act.
Right NOW, you can't see that. I suspect many people in 1958 would similarly have been unable to conceive of someone seriously equating race relations with homosexual marriage, yet here we are. Since you obviously aware of the changing (liberalizing) trend in culture, what makes you think it's going to suddenly stop at some point? It's an arbitrary standard to claim that a person who is 17 years and 364 days old should be a non-sexual being and lacks a right to form binding agreement, but that the next day they are suddenly ready to do whatever they want. There's no reason why future cultural "progress" can't define that age of consent down to at least the age where a child can speak. Just because it's unimaginable to YOU doesn't mean it's not going to happen.
In the end, I don't see allowing two gay people to marry as a slide toward rampant immorality. I think divorce is probably worse for nation's character. Cheers.
I happen to agree on both counts. I don't particularly care what sort of contracts homosexuals wish to form in order to codify their defilement of each other -- I do oppose calling it marriage, because the government can no more legitimately declare two men "married" than it can declare a dead man "alive". I don't think health insurers, adoption agencies, etc., ought to be required to treat someone as a spouse who really isn't. But we're all pretty much screwed already anyhow, so I won't care that much if "gay marriage" becomes commonplace. But for this author to compare race to homosexuality is thoroughly insulting.
Well, good for Rosie O'Donnell! :-)
Bill and Mary are entitled to opt in to a legal and cultural arrangement with a rich tradition and array of formal trappings, but George and Poindexter are not. There is no regulated system for them to simply "opt in" to. They have to go step by step and set up all the legal arrangements themselves.
That's inconvenient, but what is sad for George and Poindexter is that people in their lives don't accord their relationship the same respect as they do Bill and Mary's.
I feel for them, I do, they were born (or they became, whatever) different from heterosexuals, and, well, life is going to be different for them.
Perhaps, though, we need to use the head more than the heart, and think long and hard before committing the awesome power of government to the quixotic task of leveling that particular playing field.
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