Posted on 05/14/2004 3:22:20 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
As Massachusetts prepares to begin marrying same-sex couples Monday, opponents are viewing legalization of gay marriage as a setback on the scale of the US Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, and they see a similar long fight ahead in their efforts to overturn the court decision that is leading to a new social era.
As many opponents of gay marriage see it, same-sex unions will make homosexuality more acceptable and fracture family values. On a practical, political level, the reality of gay marriage will make the opponents' battle for a state constitutional amendment to ban it more difficult than ever.
''I don't know whether this ranks as high as the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision," said Ronald A. Crews, former president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, who has helped lead the fight against gay marriage here for several years and who also strongly opposes abortion. "If it's not equal to, then it is second only to that."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
I am amazed that you would find a simple "marriage is for the benefit of raising healthy children for society" somehow an enlightening argument.
You need a serious reconsideration of your whole concept of life and what gave rise to your present philosophy if post#24 was revealing to you.
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Ah, a Calvin and Hobbes fan! Yaaay!!
I, for one, will never recognize the "legitimacy" of homosexual "marriage" OR civil unions....no matter what some arrogant godless judge says.
The sodomites have a big surprise coming if they think Christians in this country will roll over on this one.
It's about a LOT more than benefits. Noted homosexual spokespeople had admitted that their real purpose in promoting same sex marriage is to change society. These quotes should convince you:
From LA Times of March 12: ...
Paula Ettelbrick, a law professor who runs the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, recommends legalizing a wide variety of marriage alternatives, including polyamory, or group wedlock. An example could include a lesbian couple living with a sperm-donor father, or a network of men and women who share sexual relations.
One aim, she says, is to break the stranglehold that married heterosexual couples have on health benefits and legal rights. The other goal is to "push the parameters of sex, sexuality and family, and in the process transform the very fabric of society." ... [snip]
An excerpt from: In Their Own Words: The Homosexual Agenda:
"Homosexual activist Michelangelo Signorile, who writes periodically for The New York Times, summarizes the agenda in OUT magazine (Dec/Jan 1994):
"A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society's moral codes, but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution... The most subversive action lesbian and gay men can undertake --and one that would perhaps benefit all of society--is to transform the notion of family entirely....It's the final tool with which to dismantle all sodomy statues, get education about homosexuality and AIDS into the public schools and in short to usher in a sea change in how society views and treats us."
Chris Crain, the editor of the Washington Blade has stated that all homosexual activists should fight for the legalization of same-sex marriage as a way of gaining passage of federal anti-discrimination laws that will provide homosexuals with federal protection for their chosen lifestyle.
Crain writes: "...any leader of any gay rights organization who is not prepared to throw the bulk of their efforts right now into the fight for marriage is squandering resources and doesn't deserve the position." (Washington Blade, August, 2003).
Andrew Sullivan, a homosexual activist writing in his book, Virtually Normal, says that once same-sex marriage is legalized, heterosexuals will have to develop a greater "understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman." He notes: "The truth is, homosexuals are not entirely normal; and to flatten their varied and complicated lives into a single, moralistic model is to miss what is essential and exhilarating about their otherness." (Sullivan, Virtually Normal, pp. 202-203)
Paula Ettelbrick, a law professor and homosexual activist has said: "Being queer is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender, and seeking state approval for doing so. . Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family; and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society. . We must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and of radically reordering society's view of reality." (partially quoted in "Beyond Gay Marriage," Stanley Kurtz, The Weekly Standard, August 4, 2003)
Evan Wolfson has stated: "Isn't having the law pretend that there is only one family model that works (let alone exists) a lie? . marriage is not just about procreation-indeed is not necessarily about procreation at all. "(quoted in "What Marriage Is For," by Maggie Gallagher, The Weekly Standard, August 11, 2003)
Mitchel Raphael, editor of the Canadian homosexual magazine Fab, says: "Ambiguity is a good word for the feeling among gays about marriage. I'd be for marriage if I thought gay people would challenge and change the institution and not buy into the traditional meaning of 'till death do us part' and monogamy forever. We should be Oscar Wildes and not like everyone else watching the play." (quoted in "Now Free To Marry, Canada's Gays Say, 'Do I?'" by Clifford Krauss, The New York Times, August 31, 2003)
1972 Gay Rights Platform Demands: "Repeal of all legislative provisions that restrict the sex or number of persons entering into a marriage unit." [Also among the demands was the elimination of all age of consent laws.]
I already pung y'all to this partilular thread, but note post #32 by Valpal1 - outlines what's happening in Massachusetts, the battle plan so to speak. Also note what Gov. Romney is espousing this weekend!!! Nausea to the maximum.
In order to accomplish gay marriage, the debate has changed the subject from the imposition of obligations to the granting of rights. This reversal has been immensely successful in making the argument that gays should be granted the same rights as heteros. In fact, its been so successful the religious right has engaged in accepting the premise and has also been suckered into it.
However, the redefining of the reason for state involvement has a dangerous and is eventually lethal to the concept of the obligations of marriage. Because marriage will be heretofore a concept that grants rights to the parties and not obligations, the laws and the court orders will begin to reflect this change. Spouses that get abandoned will not get as much support from the state as before.
This will be enhanced by the existence of the precedence of cases which gays will be bring forth. Their cases will be mostly concerned with dividing property and most likely determining who by virtue of having earned the property are most entitled to it. The result of this is we will move farther away from the concept that spouses are responsible for the children and their spouse if a marriage terminates. In short, the losers will be the the weakest members of the family and by extension the society as a whole which will be forced to pick up the pieces.
You're much more easily convinced than I am. Let's take some of Valpal1's points:
The purpose of marriage, in law, nature and tradition is to provide a stable relationship for the purposes of procreating and rearing children.
"Marriage" does not exist in nature, there is procreation. A relative few species are monogamous, the vast majority will procreate with a new opposite sex partner every mating season. Marriage exists in law and tradition only, with religion being the tradition part. Legalized gay marriage would only change the legal part, the traditionalists can continue to do as they please. As for the "procreating and rearing of children", we do not deny the benefits of marriage to heterosexual couples who have no intention or ability to procreate, nor do we remove the benefits of marriage upon the last child leaving the nest.
The benefits and protections the law offers to married persons are to reduce the burdens and encourage child rearing.
Again, joint tax return filing, reduced auto insurance rates, and spousal coverage under health insurance plans are not limited to those who engage solely in child rearing. We also have many homosexual individuals raising children, and no matter what you think of their gay parents' behaviors, are the children themselves not entitled to the economic benefits that their caretakers would derive from marriage?
Marriage is a procreative institution by nature, tradition and law.
When a man and a woman married pre-1960, there were only very ineffective conception control methods, and procreation resulted much more often than not, there being more fertile individuals than infertile ones. Science has now changed that, and fertility control is nearly 100% in the control of the parties to the marriage. The link between marriage and near-automatic procreation has been broken for more than forty years.
On the other hand, fertilization techniques have advanced to the point where a lesbian no longer needs to even be a friend of a man in order to become a mother. The FMA is going to stop neither form of science.
Judicial activism to redefine it may change the law and traditional culture, but it will not change nature.
No, but science is changing nature every day, and will continue to do so.
There will be ugly, unintended consequences for future generations as a result of this judicial tyranny and stupid social engineering.
This one's a bit vague, but everything has unintended consequences. I sincerely doubt that the availability of gay marriage will make heterosexual young men find heterosexual young women any less attractive, its a giant stretch to think that some sort of societal "approval" will change people's basic sexual proclivities. We will certainly, as a species, have enough of a breeding population to keep from dying out.
A lot of the posts on this, and other gay marriage threads are of "the sky is falling", "America is finished" variety. If that were true, then we should have vanished sometime ago, we've had court-legalized murder for well over thirty years from now. Abortion doesn't make America any better of a place to live, but it hasn't destroyed our ability to produce great people, even if we don't produce as many great people as we would have without abortion.
In the case of gay people, the only children that would not be produced are the ones that gay people, trying to live a socially acceptable straight life, produce before realizing that they cannot live a lie any longer. Those kids become the substance of the "carp about existing gay families" that Valpal1 decried.
If the voters of Massachusetts get an amendment to vote on in November, 2006, and the only thing they've heard is that the sky is falling, the fact that the sky is indeed still above them will cause them to dismiss the right as being wrong on this. If there are abuses of the gay marriage statutes in Massachusetts, conservatives need to play those things up; if civil unrest comes from the gay side, there's another point to make, but I anticipate more violence from the anti-gay marriage side. I hope it doesn't happen, we all know how the media makes devils out of abortion clinic bombings, and hurts the pro-life cause.
You mean rising insurance premiums, caused by rising malpractice rates, caused by out of control litigation, won't kill group insurance first? The gay people that are going uninsured right now are being paid for by the very same insured parties that are being priced out of the market right now. What do you think happens when a hospital doesn't get it's accounts receivable collected? They just up the prices on those who do pay.
Believe me, if the likes of NPR and Newsweek are asking for anti-gay marriage reactions, you can be absolutely sure they will take the least articulate, loudest bible-thumping, most screechingly hateful among you, and put them up on a pedestal. They'll be happy to interpose pictures of smiling couples who are celebrating their freedom, and middle America will contrast the two images.
If you really want to stop gay marriage, don't give any fuel to the fires of the leftist media.
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