Posted on 01/11/2010 6:23:41 PM PST by steve-b
Together with my good friend and occasional courtroom adversary David Boies, I am attempting to persuade a federal court to invalidate California's Proposition 8the voter-approved measure that overturned California's constitutional right to marry a person of the same sex....
Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one's own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.
Legalizing same-sex marriage would also be a recognition of basic American principles, and would represent the culmination of our nation's commitment to equal rights. It is, some have said, the last major civil-rights milestone yet to be surpassed in our two-century struggle to attain the goals we set for this nation at its formation....
The dream that became America began with the revolutionary concept expressed in the Declaration of Independence in words that are among the most noble and elegant ever written: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
And those same men who authored our founding documents would have slain a homosexual.
“Free citizens dont expect their government to provide them with a model and a guide for behavior.
Then why are there such concepts such as rule of law? Why for example should a government penalise those who break contracts? Free citizens expect that the government can and has an obligation to protect them from other citizens. The government does provide a model and a guide for behaviour. The alternative is anarchy.
“Again, thats what communist governments do they decide what values the people ought to live by, and then use government power to make life more difficult for those who dont comply.”
Communists imply that there are no ‘values’ beyond those of economics. Get that straight. Conservatives argue that there exist traditional values by which society has operated for thousands of years, which are necessary for an orderly functioning of society.
You are siding with the communists here, not I, by arguing that there is no valid model wrt to marriage.
“that government has a right to tell people how to live their lives.”
Sure they do. The government says that killing other people is wrong. Is that a bad thing? The government says that theft is wrong. Is that a bad thing? The government tells us what to do all the time.
WRT to marriage, marriage recognition can confer tax penalties (imposed by marxists), who are trying to drive people to make the exact same conclusion as you are that society can do without marriage altogether. This is one of their strategies. Open your eyes, and see.
They don’t care if they get you in a ‘marriage equivalent’ (ie Common law), or outside of marriage altogether provided you say all the right things, such as what you are saying here. Society doesn’t need marriage in your words.
“But its such a minor issue, its like trying to fix the leak on your roof when there a fire raging in your kitchen.”
Minor? Hardly. What on earth makes you think this is a minor issue? We lose here, we lose period and it will take a very long time to correct at the cost of generations. This is one of those seminal decisions as Roe was close to 40 years ago.
“Look at the illegitimacy rate, look at the divorce rate, look at the birth rate. The family as an institution is all but dead in western society.”
You are right on all counts. Look at illegitimacy. Gay marriage is not the source and the cause, it is a symptom of degeneration.
“Gay marriage is minor distraction that fools conservatives into believing theyre doing something when theyre not.”
This train stops here. Pray the line holds, or we shall see a great deal many things that will challenge you to name them all.
These feminized males are the undoing of our society... They will run from a fight and spend all their time worried about their wee wees or someone else's.
These men believe their weenies come from heaven and that this (in their minds) gives them some sort of sanctified right to play 'god.'
The country is in the midst of a total economic meltdown, we are at war and these creeps (one of whom lost his wife in a terrorist attack) are in court playing with their wee wees...
Will we win this war with a mentality like these traitors?
These perverted men need to stop playing with themselves. This is hardly a a minor issue.
Cultural Marxism ultimately leads to economic Marxism.
Ted Olson lost his wife in a terroist attack, yet he is in court playing with his wee wee like any good socialist would???
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Within the civil society, “He (man) is free to discover his own potential and pursue his own legitimate interests, tempered, however, by a moral order that has its foundation in faith and guides his life and all human life through the prudent exercise of judgment. . . He rejects the relativism that blurs the lines between good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust, and means and ends.”
I was a Libertarian for about fifteen years, but changed my mind when I concluded that government has a large and legitimate role in the promotion of what Levin calls the civil society.
No matter what you might have heard, thought or were sure of (for whatever reasons), to date there is still no evidence anybody is born with their same-sex attraction and scientists who happen to be gay agree. In fact, science is quite hostile to the born-that-way theory.
Instead, we see some who leave opposite-sex relationships for same-sex relationships and some who leave same-sex relationships for opposite-sex relationships.
Francis Collins, head of Human Genome Project agrees there is no hardwiring here. Ted, and anybody who agrees with what Ted writes here should educate themselves on the subject rather than live their lives in ignorance.
That is precisely to which I alluded. Thank you for placing it in better terms.
The government is our hireling to keep the peace, just as a plumber is our hireling to repair leaky pipes. Neither has any business sticking their noses into my private business.
Marriage is not private business!
Precisely. The logic of that is ironclad, unless one disagrees with one or both of these propositions:
1. Marriage is worthwhile.One who disagrees with the former statement obviously has nothing to contribute to the question of how to maintain the institution of marriage. One who disagrees with the latter statement is -- no lesser words will do -- a fool and an ignoramus, and need to be taken seriously on any subject whatsoever.2. Government is less competent than private citizens.
“One who disagrees with the former statement obviously has nothing to contribute to the question of how to maintain the institution of marriage. One who disagrees with the latter statement is — no lesser words will do — a fool and an ignoramus, and need to be taken seriously on any subject whatsoever. “
“Marriage, while from its very nature a sacred obligation, is nevertheless, in most civilized nations, a civil contract, and usually regulated by law. Upon it society may be said to be built, and out of its fruits spring social relations and social obligations and duties with which government is necessarily required to deal. In fact, according as monogamous or polygamous marriages are allowed, do we find the principles on which the government of the people, to a greater or less extent, rests.”
Reynolds vs the US. 1878
MR. JUSTICE FIELD.
Well, duh. Activist legislators-from-the-bench don’t accept that government is at best a necessary evil; they think of it as their God on earth.
You don't need to "argue" to prove that fact. You just need to be able to use a "search" command on a fairly short block of text, a procedure a chimpanzee could probably be trained to perform.
Which is precisely why such matters need to be removed from the usurpations of government.
>> Sure, like anal sex /s.
That is one of the more crucial commas I’ve ever witnessed. Haha.
SnakeDoc
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