Posted on 08/23/2007 5:36:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Adults in the New Jersey are split over allowing gay and lesbian partners to enter wedlock, according to a poll by Zogby International for Garden State Equality. 48 per cent of respondents agree with giving same-sex couples the same freedom to marry as heterosexual couples, while 45 per cent disagree.
In addition, 48 per cent of respondents would let gay couples get married, 30 per cent would retain the current structure that allows New Jersey’s same-sex partners to enter civil unions, and 20 per cent would prefer to grant no legal recognition to homosexual partnerships.
In 2004, marriage certificates were issued to same-sex couples by local governments in the states of California, Oregon, New Mexico and New York. In May 2004, the state of Massachusetts allowed gay and lesbian partners to apply for marriage licenses, the first state-sanctioned homosexual weddings in the United States.
Civil union and domestic partnership laws in Vermont, Connecticut, California and New Jersey grant same-sex couples all state-level rights and obligations of marriage—in areas such as inheritance, income tax, insurance and hospital visitation. Other forms of domestic partnership exist in the District of Columbia, Hawaii and Maine. There are more than 1,000 federal-level rights of marriage that cannot be granted by states.
On Aug. 17, actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, who is expected to join the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2008, called for a federal constitutional amendment to settle the issue, saying, "I don’t think that one state ought to be able to pass a law requiring gay marriage or allowing gay marriage and have another state be required to follow along."
In June 2006, a proposal to enact a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage failed in the Senate after a 49-48 vote. In July 2006, a House of Representatives effort to constitutionally prohibit any form of marriage other than one "between a man and a woman" fell 46 votes short of the 289 required to pass.
Same-sex marriage is currently legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa, and at least 18 countries offer some form of legal recognition to same-sex unions.
Polling Data
New Jersey allows gay couples to enter into civil unions but not marry. Do you agree or disagree that New Jersey should give gay couples the same freedom to marry as heterosexual couples?
Agree 48%
Disagree 45%
Not sure 7%
Which of the following comes closest to your own point of view?
If gay couples want to marry, let them. It will ensure equality and will not affect marriages of heterosexual couples anyway. 48%
Allow gay couples to enter into civil unions, but not marriage. Allowing gay couples to marry will hurt the institution of marriage. 30%
Do not allow gay couples to marry or enter into civil unions. 20%
Not sure 2%
Source: Zogby International / Garden State Equality Methodology: Telephone interviews with 803 New Jersey voters, conducted from Aug. 8 to Aug. 10, 2007. Margin of error is 3.5 per cent.
The solution to this BS has been sitting in the fastener aisle at your local hardware store all along.
Some homosexual dude starts in about gay marriage, hand him two bolts and say, “If you can get these to mate up unaided, you and your beau du jour can go and get married.”
I think it's better to point out that a 'marriage' is one man and one woman. The magic number isn't "two"--it's "one". The fundamental problem with a "marriage" between two women isn't that there are two women in the relationship, but rather that there isn't a man. A marriage of one man to two women would be far less abnormal than one between two women or two men.
The notion that marriage should involve exactly one man isn't a notion invented by right-wing bible thumpers. Rather, it is one of the most culturally-universal concepts that has ever existed. An anthropologist could probably find more variations in the cultural meaning of laughter than in the number of men in 'marriages', at least in any society that's been around for 100 years or more.
Another mysterious poll.
On Aug. 17, actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, who is expected to join the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2008, called for a federal constitutional amendment to settle the issue, saying, "I don’t think that one state ought to be able to pass a law requiring gay marriage or allowing gay marriage and have another state be required to follow along."
ping
Surprising.
I would have thought a foul, liberal toilet like New Jersey would have sanctioned gay “marriage” long ago.
Whatever. Who cares? It’s New Jersey.
You are merely in PA my friend. NJ and PA do many cute partnerships and deals.
As our present generation isn’t commonly given to that depth of reason or logic, I assert that, while your statements are certainly true, something requiring less thinking may gain greater traction in the public square.
My approach is a simple, hands-on means of concretely demonstrating the inherent absurdity in the notion that two like-gendered persons may engage in anything classically recognizable as a “marriage”; that the very idea is implicitly excluded by the very definition of the term.
I think he was only referring to passing an amendment allowing the states to not recognize homo ‘marriage’ performed in another state. If I remember correctly, he was not in favor of passing a DOM amendment.
Yes, but people have enough orifices and enough ways to use devices in place of projections, that someone could respond to your challenge by claiming that, had you not so unreasonably forbidden the use of other materials, two bolts or two nuts could easily be joined using brazing torch to solder them together. Your insistence that the fasteners be "unaided" is nothing other than bible-thumping bigotry.
The "bible thumping" charge is IMHO best refuted by pointing out that the requirement that a marriage involve exactly one man has been consistently imposed in all societies, including those that are unaware of the Bible or even predated its existence. I am unaware of any society that has not imposed such a norm sustaining its existence for even 100 years. The notion that marriage may contain other numbers of men isn't contradicted just by the Bible, but by thousands of years of human history worldwide.
The only reason any sort of federal action would be required on the issue is that some states would seek to force other states to honor their views of marriage. If the state of New Jersey wants to declare that someone is lawfully married to his Renoir oil painting, and that the painting shall be entitled to inherit his estate in the event of his death, it should be free to do so. It should not be allowed to force other states to honor such declaration.
Yes, I fear that Pennsylvania is beginning its swirl down the liberal Democrat toilet. Lots of New York and New Jersey Democrats fouled their own nests and now they're fleeing the messes they created and coming here to foul us up.
I wasn’t exactly clear from his verbage if he wanted to make an amendment for or against gay marriage though. It can be read both ways.
That is the whole point though. It is an ‘I think’. It isn’t clear which way he meant it.
My heart broke when Curt Weldon was forced out.
I didn’t realize that New Jersey was part of the United States. I thought it was a foreign country.
Comrade Corzine sure makes me agree with you.
How in God's name did Bush and the Republicans ever let THIS happen?
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