Posted on 05/24/2012 7:01:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
President Obama is apparently tired of pretending he opposes gay marriage. Good.
Good, because lying to the American people is always wrong, and because now the American people will have a clear choice: a president who supports gay marriage, or a president who sides with the majority of the American people, including 61 percent of North Carolinians.
I'm tired of pretending, too.
Conservative elites, including those at Fox News, have shamefully kowtowed to the politically correct opinion on gay marriage.
Some do so reluctantly because they have been cowed into believing defeat is inevitable.
Some do so because they think the "base" is wrong on gay marriage, and they want to bring the Republican Party slowly on board with their own avant-garde moral values.
Tuesday's vote in North Carolina should explode the cover of both camps.
By a margin of 22 points, the people of this moderate swing state that voted for Obama in 2008 decisively rejected gay marriage.
Both Obama and former President Bill Clinton came out strongly against the marriage amendment.
The GOP elites, including conservative elites? Nowhere to be found.
The marriage amendment outpolled Mitt Romney by approximately 18 points. Did he come out for the marriage amendment? No. The silence is deafening.
But Romney is not alone in his lack of courage. Not Ron Paul, not even (it saddens me to say) Rick Santorum showed the courage -- or the common sense -- to voice support for North Carolina's marriage amendment.
Fox News does not celebrate this victory. Sean Hannity does not celebrate this victory. Sarah Palin is not tweeting tonight on North Carolina. Laura Ingraham does not cover this issue.
Marriage is an orphan issue.
Elites are busy running from it, believing the fantasies spread by Human Rights Campaign and other gay marriage advocates that somehow an issue that garners the repeated majority support of Americans -- in every state from North Carolina to California -- is bad for the GOP.
Elites are running from marriage -- with one huge and notable exception: Rush Limbaugh.
On May 7, as Joe Biden was endorsing gay marriage, Limbaugh once again rushed in to state the obvious political consequences no one else is acknowledging:
"I tell you what they're doing. When they say that they are not interested in the votes of white working-class Americans, that's a big chunk. That's the old Reagan Democrats and so forth. White working-class voters -- the middle class, lower middle class -- they're not interested in that. They're not interested in the mainstream. They're not seeking reelection from the mainstream, unless the mainstream is the unemployed, college students and militant radical minorities."
Sometimes people ask me, given the wall of hatred now directed at anyone who opposes gay marriage, why do I continue to fight?
Two reasons:
The first and most important is that marriage matters. Gay marriage is based on a falsehood about human nature: Gay unions are not marriages -- they do not serve the same purpose as unions of husband and wife.
Gay marriage is a profoundly political creature -- an attempt to use government to redefine reality itself that is unjust and will have consequences.
The second equally important reason is this: I simply cannot stand to see the party of Ronald Reagan abandon the American people out of a misplaced deference to political correctness, fear and willful stupidity.
Tuesday, North Carolina became the 32nd state in a row to vote against gay marriage when its citizens were given the chance.
If gay marriage becomes a reality in this great nation, it will not be because the American people have not done everything they can to make their voices heard.
I am not concerned with what people do in their private lives. I have good friends who are homosexual.
Why can’t these people make up a new word for a unifying contract between themselves? They need not coopt the word “marriage” as they did the word “gay” and bastardize it.
“Gay” people are anything but.
They dont’ want to call it anything else. They want the societal approval that goes with “marriage” — and don’t care what the consequences are for society. The Left is using the new army of militant homosexual activists to advance their agenda of destroying society.
Political correctness seems to trump everything.
The silence is deafening. It wasn’t too many years ago that George W. Bush called for an amendment to define marriage. He and others then talked about marriage as a building block of society.
At that time we were allowed to say we were opposed to homosexual marriage. But now, with political correctness, we’re not allowed to voice opposition. Intimidation by the liberals is causing people to be silent.
Now, with one side aggressively pushing homosexual marriage, and the other side just ignoring the issue, guess which side has the momentum on their side???????
I think homosexuals decided to co-opt the word marriage because they want that official stamp of approval on what they are doing. As part of their public relations campaign, they have convinced too many people that the idea of a “civil union” or “domestic partnership” is “separate but equal”, and thus not worthy of discussion.
And that ties in the with the liberal narrative that homosexual marriage is the “civil rights issue of the 21st century”.
Liberals are controlling the debate on this issue, that’s the bottom line. If you control the terms of the debate, control what can be said and what cannot be said, then you set the stage for eventually winning the war on the issue.
I'd add "NC uniformly rejected gay marriage".
Other than the liberal enclaves of Charlotte, Asheville, and Chapel Hill, the entire state voted for the amendment. Even the fairly liberal Piedmont - Winston Salem, Greenboro - were for it, albeit only slightly.
And this was after millions were poured into a campaign against the amendment. And, after blatant lies were repeated over and over in the media - for instance, nothing...nothing at all... in the amendment mentioned "domestic abuse", but I saw commercials touting that the amendment would reduce protection for battered women.
Occasionally, people see through all of the lies and get things right.
Personally I think “marriage” should be the word reserved for what you do in a church, synagogue, or other place of worship. Marriage is a covenant that involves a third party - God. And places of worship should be able to decide whether or not they want you to be married within their religion. (i.e. if you’re gay, you can’t “marry” in the Catholic church and that’s nobody’s business but the Church.)
Civil marriage, whether you’re gay or straight - should be called what it is, a partnership. It involves no covenant, it’s just a piece of paper from the state. It should be cheap and easy to dissolve, because right now the state makes way too much money from the making and breaking of this contract the state calls “marriage.”
That’s what the Amendment did in NC. It prevented anything from being a marriage except a marriage. The state will not recognize a civil union that looks like a marriage.
“Civil marriage, whether you’re gay or straight - should be called what it is, a partnership.”
If you and 4 other people enter into a partnership, should you receive the benefits of marriage?
Because for the queers, half of the issue is about money and benefits, and the other half is about destroying religion in America and in the process, morality and America itself.
civil marriage is EXACTLY what the homosexuals want and that is what civil unions are EXACTLY.
the ABA though their model law think tank are proposing exactly what you advocate. It is a means of sanctioning homosexual activity as normal.
Marriage has NOTHING to do with religion in the eyes of the law.
Marriage has nothing to do with love in the eyes of the law.
Marriage is about furthering the continuation of society though children, ensuring property rights, and inheritance.
If ANY couple wants to do a private agreement, there are “cohabitation contracts” available at your local staples or office depot for $29.95.
I have to disagree with you on that. I am ok with same-sex civil unions (but it is a close call for me). The church has a sacrament called marriage, and the civil authorities recognize marriage the union of one man and one woman (in most places).
Many, many laws have a moral value at their base. Some may disagree with that moral value, or want that value to be ignored by the law— when it suits them. I believe the majority of people find same-sex lifestyles morally wrong—whether based on religious beliefs, other moral values or even tradition. It may be one thing for homosexual behavior to be de-criminalized (which only occurred by Supreme Court fiat in the last 20 years, reversing the Bowers vs Hardwick case of the 80s), which most people accepted reluctantly. It is quite another thing to require that government, that is, US, approve the lifestyle by equating its unions with marriage. For many, civil unions are no less of a problem.
As for civil marriage not being a covenant, or containing one, laws on that have changed also. No-fault divorce is a relatively recent concept, and I don’t believe it is a positive one. Marriage SHOULD involve commitment, otherwise it should not be recognized for gay or straight people, in my view. If there is no covenant or commitment, what value does marriage have at all?
I misstated. I meant to say it should be called a contract. And I kind of don’t care if, civilly, 4 people enter into a contract. That’s their business and their problem. I don’t even think the state should be doing “marriage ceremonies.” Just had the people who want a civil marriage a blank contract form and fill it out. Suddenly, I think civil marriage becomes a lot less appealing and maybe people will have to think about the differences between “marriage” and what the state gives you, which is a pale imitation of marriage.
But I don’t believe the state should be granting benefits to people by virtue of being “married” anyway. The only benefits that should accrue to “married” people from the state should be those for people raising children - i.e. tax deductions for dependents, etc.
I know it’s not a popular opinion, but there you have it.
You’re right, marriage should involve commitment. That’s why I don’t think what you get from the state should be called a marriage or should even pretend to be a marriage. The state can’t enforce commitment in a relationship; only a religion can even attempt to do so.
“Marriage has NOTHING to do with religion in the eyes of the law.
Marriage has nothing to do with love in the eyes of the law.
Marriage is about furthering the continuation of society though children, ensuring property rights, and inheritance.”
So maybe what we call marriage in a church and what we call marriage in the civil sphere should not be called the same thing. Because they’re not.
they NEVER have.
what you record at the courthouse (the voluntary recording system of 200 years ago was full of fraud) is just a civil marriage recording. There is nothing religious there.
Even priests have to be notaries in order to notarize the marriage licence. If not then it is the courthouse clerk who is actually marrying you under the law.
you can not seperate marriage from state. you can not abandon marriage to the state in any form. By arguing mere faith, you have surrendered and LOST all the arguments on logic and reason to the homosexuals VOLUNTARILY.
The state should have an interest in preserving valid marriages. There are wives to consider, as well as children. I understand that some might think this is none of the government’s business, and I might go along, as long as government (that is, the rest of us who work for a living and pay taxes) don’t have to come to the rescue of abandoned wives and children whose husband/father walk out of their non-marriage.
The state can enforce commitment to a marriage, which is why there are still some divorce laws in place. You can separate but you can’t fully extricate yourself from your commitment without state sanction. Reasonable people can differ on this, of course.
Then there are liberals, who would probably agree with you on government not being involved in marriage (although their reason is to destroy the institution of marriage), while at the same time being perfectly happy with laws that limit how much fat or sugar restaurants can serve, for example.
Just three words for you to consider: Camel. Nose. Tent.
Consider the amount of harassment delivered to anybody who is against gay marriage (or against gay anything). The “elites” didn’t want the Velvet Mafia’s ire upon them.
We have two candidates for president, one is supportive of queer marriage and one is a former governor who actually instituted it in his state.
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