Getting California Out Of Marriage Business Proposed As Answer To Prop. 8 War [Giving Gays Ideas]

At California's historic hearing on Proposition 8 earlier this month, Supreme Court Justice Ming Chin briefly imagined a scenario that might solve the legal conflict over a gay marriage ban.

What if the government were to get out of the "marriage business," Ming asked, and issue civil-union licenses to both straight and gay couples?

The justices agreed such a change would have to be handled by the Legislature, and discussion closed.

On March 10, five days after the court hearing, two California college students got the OK from state election officials to try to put Ming's question before voters.

The students are circulating petitions for a ballot initiative that would strike the word "marriage" from state laws and substitute "domestic partnership."

The change would keep all the rights of marriage now on the books. But it would nullify Proposition 8 and make the new partnership category applicable to both gay and straight.

"We want to take marriage out of the battlefield," said Ali Shams, a University of California, San Diego, student who co-authored the language.

Many people say their religion tells them marriage is between a man and a woman, Shams said. But many also believe gay people have a right to equal treatment.

Do you think our forefathers behaved like dogs and cats, mating at will with no thought of who they were or what they came from?
Keeping track of such things is the responsibility of individual people, NOT the government.

Back in the day of our forefathers you could challenge a person to a duel if you suspected they were having an affair with your spouse, or if you caught your spouse in the act of committing adultery you could kill them with little concern for being arrested and charged with murder. Now laws are totally different,.

"Gay Marriage" is the "Trojan horse" method of attack by homosexual activists and advocacy groups in the effort to legitimize the perverse behavior of homosexuality in the courts and by legislation. Should homosexual marriage be legalized then by judicial fiat homosexuality would be legitimized across the board. This means that school children by law would be taught that homosexual behavior is a "safe" and "normal" alternative "sexual lifestyle" choice and by law parents will have no grounds to object (regardless of the negative spiritual, moral, psychological, biological, and medical consequences)

IOW unconditional approval and acceptance, kowtow or be hauled in front of a "diversity" tribunal and be charged/convicted of hate crimes. The perverts want to use the heavy hand of the government to force parents to let their children to be indoctrinated with their perverse idea of reality.

The goal of liberalism is to destroy all institutions to which the citizenry might maintain loyalty, other than the state. Liberals war with private property because they don't want people to be independent of the state. They war with tradition because they can't tolerate any idea that preceded the state. They war with God because they can't allow a power to exist that's higher than the state. They war with the family because they can't allow any loyalty beyond the state.

The goal of the same-sex “marriage” movement is to destroy a traditional institution that links people organically to their ancestors and to their future offspring. When the state recognizes marriage, and specifically the traditional understanding of marriage, it is a sign of deference by the state to some higher value. The left can't tolerate that. The state, in their view, is to be submitted to, not to submit. So they insist on empowering the state to change the institution of marriage into something that is non-traditional. This means the state becomes master and tells us what our institutions are going to be, rather than the other way around. If they can't do that, then they'll simply discard the entire institution.

“my dear FReeper, marriage is the only special legal protection a woman or a child HAS.”

That is patently false. Family courts side with the woman almost automatically, marriage or no marriage.

“Shacking up, promiscuous sex, various children by various anonymous dads, and fluid household and protection and providence arrangements destroy us.”

Well, they do, but special government marriage doesn’t stop them, obviously. You can argue that there’s a moral hazard as regards promiscuity and abandonment without special marriage status. I don’t think so. The best the state can do is provide economic incentives to getting and staying married (which it has largely failed to do). Family/social pressure is the key ingredient.

“The goal of the same-sex ‘marriage’ movement is to destroy a traditional institution that links people organically to their ancestors and to their future offspring”

You see, this is where your argument breaks down. You say liberals seek to replace private authority with state authority. That is the case, in my opinion, with extending marriage status to gays. That is, it is the explicit goal to force society to accept them as legitimate by seeking state protection.

However, that is not what’s under discussion here. We’re talking about severing both gay and traditional marriage from the state. We’re talking about converting marriage into a purely private arrangement. That is precisely the opposite of “destroy[ing] all institutions to which the citizenry might maintain loyalty, other than the state.”

“We no longer need to pass property on legally, or determine paternity???”

Ugh. First of all, determining paternity today has very little to do with marriage. We have blood tests for that now. The original point was for the father to control paternity so that he could pass on his property to his son. You see, state marriage started when women couldn’t own or manage property except under very limited circumstances. The woman was in many ways the legal property of the man. Far cry from today, when both are equal (to a certain extent. They’re not so equal when it comes to custody, etc.), and both can enter into contracts on their own.

According to the article, these students are proposing to "make the new partnership category applicable to both gay and straight." That keeps state in the business of marriage. It merely substitutes the term "domestic partnership" for "marriage".

Fair enough. I know many FREEPERS who feel the same way. It is a tough situation all around. I hate the government being involved in our lives at all, but I realize that we are always going to have for some things...the problem is that we have accepted the government in EVERYTHING and that is just a problem. I just think of how many babies would be alive today if the states had the right to ban abortion. Yes we would have 20 states (at least) who have abortion, but not 50. I believe it is the same with gay marriage. We might end up with 20 states approving gay marriage, but it won’t be 50 unless the government gets involved. You and I might look at it differently.

I disagree entirely. Marriage and the family are fundamental institutions of society, and thus society has an interest in protecting marriage (and the families so produced) as an institution. You act as if a marriage is no more significant to our civilization than hiring a teenager to mow your lawn and giving him a written paper promising to pay him “x” amount. By disestablishing marriage, and replacing it with these so-called civil unions (what an idiocy the entire concept of a civil union is) which are “gender free” and have nothing whatsoever to do with an organic tradition dating back millennia, you're being nothing short of nihilistic.

This is just one more example of the crippling disease that infects nearly all of Western Civilization. We stand for nothing anymore other than “tolerance”, which in practice means we stand for nothing. There is no value, no institution, no tradition worth protecting other than the idea that there is no value, no institution, and no tradition worth protecting. In practice, that's what liberal “tolerance” is. Nihilism. And that nihilistic void won't last long, it'll be filled by something else. Something tangible, like Islam (check out European dhimmitude) or the state.

“You act as if a marriage is no more significant to our civilization than hiring a teenager to mow your lawn and giving him a written paper promising to pay him ‘x’ amount.”

If marriage is more sacred than contracting for your lawn to be mowed, it is so because families, religious institutions, and society in general venerate it as such. Not because the state does. The state treats marriage as marginally more serious than yardwork, but nowhere near as serious as we treat it ourselves.

“By disestablishing marriage, and replacing it with these so-called civil unions (what an idiocy the entire concept of a civil union is) which are ‘gender free’ and have nothing whatsoever to do with an organic tradition dating back millennia, you’re being nothing short of nihilistic.”

It is disheartening to see even people on FR falling for conventional state worship. Unless you believe in the state’s central role in our lives, you believe in nothing. Nothing! What a crock. Equalizing gay and straight marriage in the eyes of the law would not make us treat them as equal in our own lives. Traditional marriage will always be preferred by society, for the simple fact that it’s productive.

If the tradition is truly “organic,” which I assume means natural, why can’t it persist on its own, without a central authority consciously deciding to prop it up. That doesn’t sound natural to me. Sounds rather artificial.

Tone it down with the ‘good grief’.
I’ve been researching back through 25 generations of my Grandmother’s family and were it not for ‘government’ sources I would not have been able to locate many links in the family tree.
This is an attack on families. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, census information, military documents, death certificates are all a part of any research into a family’s genealogy. I have found the church documents to be helpful, but not completely reliable without the added substantiation of the government documents.
With so many out of wedlock births, absent fathers, sperm and egg donors etc... Sadly we are building future generations who will not know where they came from. The loss of that identity is, I believe welcomed by some who wish to pursue a collectivist society.

Completely agree with your statements.

There are those here who do not see the need for government to sanction marriage at all and I can see their point. My problem is that once we go on down that road, young people will not see the need for marriage either. We will be building a society based on family units with constantly rotating moms and dads. We already have that to a degree. 40% of children born out of wedlock. There are only sperm donors no true fathers.

You're a prime example of why libertarians get one percent of the vote. This isn't to say you don't have an impact. You do. You provide political cover for leftist politicians, allowing them to claim they're on the side of "freedom" when they propose such nonsense as replacing state sanctioned marriage with state sanctioned gender-free civil unions.

A society is impacted, and thus its citizens are impacted, by the way its family structure exists. People are not just the Human Autonomy Units that libertarians perceive them to be. They are discrete individuals and they are shaped in part by the society in which they live. The desire to protect marriage, a multi-thousand year old social institution which has been a foundational part of our civilization, is not an act of state worship. The idea that it is is a typical libertarian schoolboy reaction. Yeah, some people want to do "x", so they should be able to do "x", even if it means tearing down a multi-thousand year old institution and replacing it with some artificially constructed "civil union" concept. When people reject this, as they have over and over whenever allowed to vote on it, they're defending natural human society against leftist/libertarian social engineers who either hate our culture (leftists) or are indifferent to it (libertarians).

Equalizing gay and straight marriage in the eyes of the law would not make us treat them as equal in our own lives.

Who's going to equalize them in the eyes of the law if not the state? Since you consider state sanctioned marriage laws that don't include same-sex pairings to be an example of government going beyond its bounds, it's rather bizarre that you didn't think of that. And if the state does equalize the two, how will this impact the public schools when they begin to teach children about marriage? Will not the state step in and dictate that the kiddies will have to be taught all about the same-sex pairings? What will happen if a Christian store owner decides to give a Valentine's Day discount to couples, and doesn't include same-sex couples because he finds them to be sinful. Will he not be hauled into court by the state and charged with discrimination?

I can see you've thought this through really well. (rolls eyes)

Is there any more to bearing children than passing property on to a son?

Is there not a social family unit, designed by God, of the greatest benefit to mankind, which protects children the best physically, morally, educationally, spiritually, and psychologically?

How do children turn out best? Raised like feral hamsters? Or like children with a mom and a dad?

Who has the best outcome? The single parented child or the double parented child? What do statistics tell you about such measurable indicators as:

1. life expectancy
2. actual survival of childhood, including in the womb;
3. physical health
4. psychological health
5. educational proficiency
6. wealth
7. likelihood of graduating high school
8. likelihood of graduating college
9. delinquency rates
10. drug abuse rates
11. alcoholism rates
12. suicide rates

comparing children raised by a committed married couple and children raised by single parents?

There is NO BENEFIT to abolishing civil marriage. There is SERIOUS DETRIMENT to abolishing civil marriage.

That’s why it is part of the communist party platform. Destroy the family, destroy the civilization. The children become worthless adults desperately in need of leadership. Enter Big Brother.

Good post!

Negative cultural trends can occur in any society, but they will be very difficult to reverse if codified into law. Same-sex “marriage” or “civil unions” are based on several damaging ideas that have arisen since we plunged into a second childhood starting in the 1960s. These are:

1) Nominalism. The idea that there are no permanent truths and that we can define anything, even something that has been around for thousands of years, in a manner totally contrary to its reason for its existence and it won't make any difference.

2) Marriage is for the personal gratification and/or financial benefits of adults, not for the benefit of children, and not to channel male behavior in a positive direction (i.e., that of being responsible for women and children's well-being).

3) If any “outside” group demands something, then “social justice” demands that they be given it, even if it means trashing a cherished institution or forcing an unwilling majority to comply. So if a few women want into VMI, then VMI must capitulate. If a single atheist wants to join the Boy Scouts, then the Boy Scouts must drop their oath to God.

4) Equality and “non-discrimination” trump all other concerns, even concerns about preserving and perpetuating our civilization and our most cherished and necessary institutions.

As Clark Coleman has written, stopping those ideas from being codified in stone is reason enough for not supporting the redefinition of marriage, even if it didn't have any other negative effects (though it does).

Exactly....it is straight out of Karl Marx.....egalitarianism....Marxists understood that the only way to destroy America was to destroy the family unit. The biological family created healthy, independent, emotionally stable, successful,competitive, intelligent, rational people—more so than any other societal formations.

Feminist groups, Homosexual groups, Black Power groups, unions, were all taken over by Marxists to destroy the family. Hetersexual white males were the Founders and geniuses that created this society and they are the target to be destroyed and emasculated by the Marxists. Thus the main drugging of all white intelligent boys in our school system...plus the destroying anything that makes a healthy male....(kick ball, competition in sports, trophies, playing with toy guns, etc.) They demonize everything my father did as a young boy, plus his gun he carried to elementary school to hunt on his way home.

Marxists have controled our mainstream press and most media outlets and art organizations for decades. Propaganda has been subtle and nonstop and have infiltrated all public education (now it does not even have to be subtle because of the idiots our schools have produced). Even Kindergarten is all about creating good little Marxists who tattle on bigoted, homophobe parents....they will be the equivalent of the Hitler Youth.

During the Roman and Greek times when homosexuality was rampant in the pagan societies, it was common for the elites to take young boys under their wing and use them in their little orgies. They trained them in the art of homosexuality. It is learned.

Homosexuality is about hedonistic pleasure....never love. All sorts of sexual perversions were practiced....even burning babies on altars. Women were also used in the orgies but were always second class citizens at most. Homosexuality is about self idolatry and always harms societies because it is never about self sacrifice....what raising healthy children and having lasting relationships demands.

You are right. The reason for the sexual bond in heterosexual marriage is for the protection of women and the children. Throughout caveman days, if a woman had no male protection, she and her children would die.

For survival, the societies that practiced marriage and monogamy (Jews and Christians) flourished while other pagan or muslim or Hindus or marxist cultures could never create stability (the trust and healthy children that starts in two parent families) and thus an atmosphere for freedom, invention, commerce and creativity.

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