Gay Marriage
by Kreme on Nov.14, 2008, under Computer
My stance on gay rights is pretty simple, and I think the issue was covered and dealt with rather effectively 150 years ago or so:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So reads Amendment XIV to the US Constitution. So how, exactly, is a law preventing a gay couple from getting married not in direct violation of this law? Equal protection, people. No law which shall abridge the privileges…of citizens. Pretty fucking clear, isn’t it?
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November 29th, 2008 on 16:03:25
The Constitution is the greatest document ever written and has made millions of people free, so you and I agree on your quote from Article XIV and the other pertinent articles. But marriage is far older than the Constitution and serves a far different purpose. It has existed for thousands of years, not to protect the civil rights of adults but to protect the lives of children. We men tend to wander, but children need fathers who stay in the family. Marriage has always been a public commitment to the whole community that says, “I will stop wandering and be a father to my children and a husband to their mother.” Today, at least in the United States, adults have the financial ability to do whatever they want with whomever they choose, and that’s fine. So form the union you and your partner prefer, with whatever privileges you choose. But keep the sacredness of marriage as it always has been–a way to protect children.
November 29th, 2008 on 22:54:03
Okay, I’ll bite…
Let’s look at your logic: Marriage is needed to keep men from wandering. Let’s take that as the basic assumption. Now, how does this relate to gay marriage?
If you said “Marriage is to keep men from wandering. Therefore, we need to have strong criminal penalties against adultery”, I could follow your logic. But, no one is talking about throwing married men who commit adultery in jail.
Maybe you want to say that men must be married before having sex with a woman, so they won’t wander. But, no one is talking about throwing promiscuous men in jail either.
The other point is to “protect the children”. So, tell me preventing allowing Bob not to marry Steve will protect the children? What exactly are you “protecting the children” from?
Now, you might feel that homosexuality is a sin. That’s fine, and that’s your right as an American. However, there is no law in the U.S. that prevents people from having gay sexual relations with each other. There is no law in the U.S. that prevents gays from living openly with each other. The Supreme Court threw out such laws because it violates the privacy of consenting adults. So, we obviously can’t be protecting the children from seeing adult live in what you might consider a sinful relationship.
What does preventing gay couples from marrying does do is prevent gays who do have children from engaging in long term committed relationships with their partners. And, yes, gays do have kids — either from previous relationships or via adoption.
Let’s see how this affects the children you want to protect. Steve and Bob live together, and Steve has a biological child. As far as the child is concerned, he has two parents: Steve and Bob. However, as far as the state is concerned, only Steve is the parent. If something happens to Steve, the state could take the child out of his home and throw him into the foster care system because the state does not recognize that Bob is a legal guardian of this child.
So, preventing homosexuals from marrying does nothing to protect the children and does nothing to prevent men from wandering. In fact, preventing homosexuals from marrying actually hurts children because it takes away legal guardian benefits from the other partner.
December 3rd, 2008 on 13:45:08
Neuvodia, the length of time that marriage has been around, as we define and understand marriage, is NOT thousands of years. It’s not even hundreds of years. All those people in the bible were polygamists, remember? As recently as the 19th century married women were PROPERTY, and still are in some parts of the world.
But regardless of all that, you say that people can form the union they want with whatever privileges you chose. Guess what, homosexuals cannot do that. They are prevent by law from doing that, and those laws are a direct violation of the 14th Amendment. That’s my point. If you want to argue, you need to argue how the 14th Amendment doesn’t protect all citizens, and not what your moldy old religious text has to say about it. Based on that argument, men would still have the right to sell their daughters into slavery.
Thank you, but I am not going to allow my country’s laws to be usurped by some pre-medieval document that promotes slavery for family members, not to mention execution for adultery. And yet, we don’t see the fundies harping on bringing back public stoning for adulterers, do we?