The most incredibly stupid ignorant hateful thing I've read Follow

I'm sure that at one point, your grandfather or great-grandfather were told the same thing about sitting at the front of the bus.

Of course, there was a movement to wait to start issuing same sex marriage licenses until after prop8 was voted on, and yet another judge denied it. Anyone else sense a pattern here?

IMO, that puts them in the "at your own risk" category. They shouldn't have been issued while the situation was still pending in the first place. The judge in question knew this, as did everyone who received one. The reality is that there was never any legal justification for issuing them in the first place. Judges don't write the laws, they interpret them. The law at the time the licenses were issued said that they were illegal. The passage of prop8 confirms that that law was and is the will of the people of the state of California. That a group of judges believed differently for a few months time does not change that fact, nor should licenses granted purely because of (now verified) incorrect judgment be allowed to stand.



I think you're overthinking this. Nothing is taken away from those who have the licenses. They just don't entitle them to state benefits. Look at it another way. If the state changed the laws tomorrow and said that marriage (period) no longer entitled you to any benefits, all those marriage certificates would still exist, but the state would no longer be required to give them anything in return.

The more relevant legal question is whether the civil contract aspect of a marriage license would still be valid. Does that certificate count as an assumption of acceptance of the state's default marriage contract? I would assume it would (meaning things like power of attorney would be intact), but that's a separate question and really isn't what the proposition was about in the first place.

I know you're not so stupid that you think this is an apt analogy.

Gender is thrown into that mix, just not in the way you want to pretend to perceive it. Allowing two men who love one another to get married does not negatively impact anyone, while you walking into a ladies locker room and ogling them does negatively impact someone else.

Gender, sexual orientation, and race may not have discrimination on nearly the same scale, but they are certainly apples drawn from the same barrel.

ETA: However, I do understand why Totem and Amor are clinging to this last vestige of their Republican "morals." It's hard to lose a presidential election.


Edited, Nov 5th 2008 4:45pm by Belkira

Good point. Why don't you petition for an all gay locker room, then?



I do not see at all how those issues are connected...

So... if we let gay men get married... then... they will walk into locker rooms and ogle straight men?

Yeah, not seeing it.

I'm making the case that when you claim there is no difference between the sexes when it comes to marriage, I can draw a logical extension to that argument and say that upon the reasoning of sexual preference being no discriminator for anything, such things as gendered locker rooms have no bearing either.

In other words, if sexual preference has no merit in stopping an action, then all actions become permissable under the law-- at least when concerning legally aged adults.

Yes, this was a round-about way to get to this argument, but so is using race as a basis for same sex relationships.

Totem

And at the moment, all of those tax paying gay Americans are paying the difference for the heterosexual marriages who are afforded benefits.

Nice try, but if anything that's just anothre reason why gay marriage should be legal, since they're already paying taxes for benefits they are being denied.

None whatsoever, tarv.

My point is, if sexual preference is no longer a discriminator for behavior or a person's actions, then such things as freely entering into the opposite sex's locker room-- indeed, there should no longer be gendered locker rooms --should be permissable as well.

That is, after all, the crux of gay marriage propenent's argument: Sexual preference should not bar one from an activity or action. I'm just giving myself a little present like the gays are trying to give themselves.

Give a little, get a little. Seems fair to me.

Totem

Once again, not at all, Amb. Homos don't bother me in the slightest. As long as they don't jam their life style in my face (or any other appendage), I couldn't care less what they do or who they do. But once they use sexual preference as the legal foundation for something they want to do/have/engage in, they have to open up the entire can of worms.

Under the law you can't just say sexual preference is only important for gays, but nobody else can use it as a means to do what they want. Well, it just so happens that I want to see women in a state of sweaty undress and my sexual preference shouldn't be a hinderance to doing so.

Equality. That's all I'm asking for.

Totem

Not really. The can only has one worm in it. The gay marriage worm. There's nothing else involved.

That's my main gripe about being against gay marriage. It has nothing to do with you. It doesn't affect you. You won't notice it. Gay marriage could've been allowed for 1000 years, and you'd never need to know about it. It has 0 impact on you, or on any other heterosexual out there.

And I "pay" for the blue parking space that I don't get to use by having to walk farther to get to a store. This does not mean I'm being denied any right.



Are you actually going to try to argue that people should only receive benefits from the government in direct proportion to what they pay in taxes? The whole concept assumes that some groups will pay more in relation to what they get than others. So it's a violation of my rights when someone else receives food stamps, or qualifies for subsidized housing?

While we're on the subject, does this mean that I can sue the government for not paying for me to have a trained dog as a pet? Cause just because I'm physically different than a blind person doesn't mean my rights should be infringed, right?


I'm sorry. Your argument just doesn't wash. We have thousands of government programs that target benefits at groups of people based on a whole assortment of need. And guess what? One of those happens to be called "marriage", and to qualify for it, you have to be two adults, one male, one female, who've entered into a default (or self written) contractual agreement regarding their finances and power of attorney, inheritance, care of children, etc. Changing that criteria without even bothering to address *why* we grant those benefits to those people based on that set of criteria but rather purely because we've arbitrarily decided that in this particular case the criteria leaves out a group we've labeled as "disadvantaged" and we don't feel good about it just seems kinda strange, don't you think?


It's not wrong to restrict government benefits to sets of people. We do it all the time. You need to do more than that...

Which is YOU paying for YOUR right.

Your argument was that you don't want to pay for gay people to get benefits. Now try to focus on that and explain why the hell I should pay for you to get marriage benefits if you don't have to pay for me to get them? Or are you in support of removing marriage benefits from any couple?

I'm still waiting for gbaji to tell me to my face that I shouldn't be allowed to marry my girlfriend and start a family with the same legal protections he enjoys. =(