Posted on 06/26/2015 12:40:06 PM PDT by Marie
My two cents on the gay marriage thing.
Gays didn't destroy marriage. Neither did the Supreme Court. Hetrosexuals did that a long time ago. They forgot that marriage is not supposed to be based on romantic love. Historically, it's a contract between four entities. The man, the woman, G-d, and the State. Each party is supposed to have both rights and obligations to the other.
But we (hetros) made marriage about 'feelings' and romantic love. We chipped away at our obligations to the state and forgot that we have actual obligations to our partner. We decriminalized infidelity. We created no-fault divorce. We wanted all of the benefits, without all those messy obligations.
We got what we wanted. A meaningless, hollow union. Now we dare cry that gay people want to play in our park and get the benefits, too?
Conservatives are going about this all wrong. Don't fight gay marriage. Fight to make marriage mean something again.
- require premarital counseling and a six month (legal) engagement prior to the act.
- make prenups mandatory. (and they should include the management of future children and alimony.)
- criminalize infidelity with jail time (even when the sex act has the consent of the partner) and an automatic loss of all parental rights for the offender.
- End no-fault divorce. Make a list of legitimate reasons to leave a marriage and stick to it. (abuse, infidelity, addiction, etc)
- limit child support to $500 per child - no matter how much the father makes (women can't eat their cake and have it, too)
- have automatic 50/50 parental custody (with exceptions for abuse and addiction)
- once a divorce is initiated, there must be a 12 month 'cooling off period' where all of the rules for infidelity apply. They're still legally bound by the contract and if they stray, all of the jail time and loss of fortune and child custody apply.
Make people THINK before jumping into the lake in a fit of lust and infatuation. Create consequences for not honoring the contract. Make the contract difficult to break.
As long as it's a free ride for all of us, why do we even care who comes along?
If people still want to make *that* social contract and commit to one another once the institution has weight, then great.
Knock yourselves out.
But we won't do it because we (conservative hetros) love not having any actual responsibility. We fear the real commitment. We want the 'easy out'. We don't want to face the consequences for our actions. We don't want to have to pay a price for failure. We want to gimme, gimme, gimme and not worry too much about giving back.
My husband and I fell in love and got married. He’s my soulmate, and I’m his.
I’m not going to apologize for that, pretend regret, or act as though our falling in love somehow aided and abetted queers.
What are you talking about? Does the Bible preclude love in marriage?
Bingo.
We blame liberals for watering down the institution, then panic at the thought of restoring the ‘bite’.
They’re proving that this is NOT all the fault of a dark liberal plot. We went along with it because it made our own sins easier to excuse and to bear.
Where is marriage mentioned in the First Amendment?
It didn’t. The gays were just jealous of your relationship because theirs are so fleeting and transitory. Straight married couples don’t use rest stops as a version of their bedroom.
The Free Exercise Clause.
Gingrich is a liberal. I’m not sure if Limbaugh is.
I agree with you. All of the fuss they’ve raised is about validation.
Yep. I think part of the problem is, those who really believe in traditional marriage often avoid the problems associated with these things, because they stay married to partners that also believe in traditional marriage. So, since they don’t experience the havoc in their own lives, they don’t appreciate how damaging these laws are to society as a whole.
The others, well, like you said, they care less about the cost to society than the freedom to skip out on their obligations.
So liberals aren’t to blame? because conservatives did not do what to the Supreme Court?
Yeah, yeah. This is FR so I could say “Barry Goldwater got divorced” and someone will say “he’s a liberal”.
Love is necessary. Chemistry is necessary.
But so is thought. Decision-making. Consequences for ‘falling out of love’ and breaking the physical contract.
The ability to ‘fall in love’ is instinctive and animal. The will and commitment to maintain that is human. The ability to overcome and work together to restore that which has faded or been broken is nothing more than human will.
How does saying, ‘there should be consequences for breaking the contract’ harm YOUR marriage at all?
You can blame yourself for killing marriage but don’t include me or Catherine. We both have good, long-term marriages based on love and mutual respect. Actually, her moniker is based on an historical character who stood by her marriage while her husband threw her under the sedan chair.
It doesn't. Why on earth are you assuming it does?
We went into our marriage with a great deal of thought. We were together for over two years before marrying; we wanted to make sure we knew each other completely. Both of us knew we would be doing this once, and once only. Divorce has never been an option for us.
Falling in love didn't preclude any of that.
That there was NO divorce till Henry VIII is not really accurate.
Divorces were routine among the nobility and especially royalty, bought and paid for to the pope. Papal dispensation, sudden discovery of invalidating degree of kinship, etc. Part of Henry’s outrage at being denied on by the pope is that they were so common for kings.
Elanor of Aquitane, for instance, divorced the King of France and married the King of England.
If I remember correctly, the Pope even provided a dispensation for one Emperor to commit bigamy.
The pope in Henry’s case probably did not develop a sudden rush of integrity to the brain. He was a prisoner of the Emperor, a nephew of Catharine, and simply wasn’t free to gratify Henry.
She was some kind of woman, all right.
Yours was an excellent point, and one I didn’t even think of. I believe I need some coffee...
I’m not saying anyone who got divorced is.
Did you watch Wolf Hall? It’s fairly anti-Catholic (of course, the ignorant people who hate Catholics here never heard of it) but it’s VERY well done and Catherine is an interesting character within it. I truly recommend it but, again, if you’re a Catholic as I am, it may not be your cup of tea. I looked at it the way Alice saw the looking glass. But so well-acted and directed!
Well, then, “no true Scotsman” seems to apply.
What are you going to do about it now?
More than half the people on this thread are in a foaming-at-the-mouth panic over the thought of giving weight to the institution of marriage and reinforcing consequences for violating the pact.
Liberals may have put all of this into motion, but we were sooooo willing to go along. And this very thread proves that we still are.
NOBODY here has the right to say one cross word about gay marriage or lament the degradation of the sacrament unless they’re willing to give weight to the promises made.
As long as we’re happy to have our easy-outs, then we have nothing to defend.
Very few of us have the fortitude to hold the line.
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