alrighty - its friday -time for mix-it-up comments from yours truly . . . .
Let’s face facts - homosexual couples are an anachronism to say the least - they cannot reproduce themselves within the confines of the couple. Thus they cannot exist beyond their own lives without aid from society at large. Whereas heterosexual couples (barring medical issues) can exist beyond their own lives without aid of society at large.
Then there is the issue alluded to earlier - allowing homosexual marriage opens the doors for all sorts of marriages - triad-marriages, poly-marriages, bestial-marriages, etc . . . by making marriage undefinable, they make it worthless - it’s like being special like everybody else - it simply means no one is special.
Marriage becomes meaningless because anyone and everyone regardless of gender, partner, commitment, intent, number, species or even life form can be “married” - man/woman, man/man, man/man/women, man/cat, man/cow, woman/donkey/apple tree, aardvark/lizard/boy/man/airplane - but I’ve been informed that this is progress and I should just accept it . . . .
[quote]lucasa wrote:
To act like the act and orientation are wholly separate or even distinctly separate is foolishness. True, one or two acts doesn’t make you hetero/homo/a sexual, but repeated acts overwhelmingly determine and define sexuality.[/quote]
You’re completely ignoring the role of culture and religious beliefs in sexual expression. When cultural/religious forces condemn a person’s sexual orientation, why do you find it surprising that his/her sexual expression doesn’t always follow suit? Why do you think there are so many closeted gay men and lesbians, even today? Does their sexual orientation magically change simply by virtue of being in the closet?
Right, it only denies gays/lesbians from the civil responsibilites/benefits that currently belong to hetero couples.
Hospital visitation, child custody, there are a LOT of things that are denied to them.[/quote]
LOL
This is exactly what he’s talking about when he points to the false analogy with racism. It’s not like half the hospitals in the country have redneck doctors, in a slow southern drawl telling ‘the queer to get hisself out of the straight hospital and over to the gay one’ while two beer-swilling nurses with white hoods and shotguns stand outside the OR door. Or like half our country is repressing half it’s population. Or like our Constitution, Declaration Of Independence, and Bill Of Rights guarantee a right to hospital visitations or say things like ‘all men are created equal’ and then society, quite in contradiction, says ‘but gays are different from birth’.
Only in a minority of states is the ‘right to adopt’ actually ‘denied’. Many more (more than twice as many) ‘allow’ homosexual adoption. I honestly can’t understand how one state can say sexual orientation doesn’t matter and then force another state to recognize a contract based on something that doesn’t matter. Not surprisingly, the majority of states are ambiguous.[sarcasm]Weird how poorly defined personality traits like sexuality are legally addressed with poorly defined laws. If only something like mores and culture would tell the gov’t it’s ambiguous and largely irrelevant, so then our gov’t can tell us to regard it as ambiguous and largely irrelevant. That would be the most efficient and beneficial way to do things.[/sarcasm]
As for hospital visitations, show me the number of ‘denials’ we’re talking about. I know I might be a little bit ridiculous here, but I would need actual evidence that the denial occurred (not just a friend of a friend or someone who works with someone), that it wasn’t undue (even heterosexual, asexual, and omnisexual people get denied entry to parts of the hospital), and that there was some damages incurred (it gets kind of hard to care if the doctor ‘hates queers’ but saves their lives for free and gives them ‘get well soon’ cards). I’m would be astounded if there are even 100 incidents where someone’s health was seriously injured by a doctor who refused access to their partner let alone that refusal compromising health. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, I’m just saying, most of these claims aren’t even worth putting in front of a civil court judge, let alone on a state or federal ballot.
[quote]dhickey wrote:
no you don’t. All of these could be addressed without all the hubbub. We’ve already been through this and you refused to comment. List all the priviledges you are concerned with and I will show you a legal and consitutional solution. i am quite sure you have zero interest in doing this and we all know why.[/quote]
Your memory must be failing you. Here are a few examples:
The right to make decisions on a partner’s behalf in a medical emergency. Specifically, the states generally provide that spouses automatically assume this right in an emergency. If an individual is unmarried, the legal “next of kin” automatically assumes this right. This means, for example, that a gay man with a life partner of many years may be forced to accept the financial and medical decisions of a sibling or parent with whom he may have a distant or even hostile relationship.
The right to take up to 12 weeks of leave from work to care for a seriously ill partner or parent of a partner. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 permits individuals to take such leave to care for ill spouses, children and parents but not a partner or a partner’s parents.
The right to petition for same-sex partners to immigrate.
The right to assume parenting rights and responsibilities when children are brought into a family through birth, adoption, surrogacy or other means. For example, in most states, there is no law providing a noncustodial, nonbiological or nonadoptive parent’s right to visit a child - or responsibility to provide financial support for that child - in the event of a breakup.
The right to share equitably all jointly held property and debt in the event of a breakup, since there are no laws that cover the dissolution of domestic partnerships.
Family-related Social security benefits, income and estate tax benefits, disability benefits, family-related military and veterans benefits and other important benefits.
The right to inherit property from a partner in the absence of a will.
The right to purchase continued health coverage for a domestic partner after the loss of a job.
There are 1,138 federal rights granted to straight couples that are denied to gay couples. If you want to package all of those rights under some other name, feel free to do so. If you aren’t willing to grant every one of those 1,138 federal rights, then you aren’t addressing the issue.
and one more for the road - gay men do have all the same rights that straight men do - they can all marry the woman of their choice and deal with the consequences . . . .
Your memory must be failing you. Here are a few examples:
The right to make decisions on a partner’s behalf in a medical emergency. Specifically, the states generally provide that spouses automatically assume this right in an emergency. If an individual is unmarried, the legal “next of kin” automatically assumes this right. This means, for example, that a gay man with a life partner of many years may be forced to accept the financial and medical decisions of a sibling or parent with whom he may have a distant or even hostile relationship.
[/quote]
You can’t get this without being married? You’re not even trying.
This isn’t a right and is unconstitutional. The employer decides who takes of what time, or if there are consequences for doing so.
Unconstitutional and a terrible idea gay or straight.
Didn’t they both adopt the child? Are they not both legal guardians? Can a contract not be drawn-up outside of marriage? I assume that there is some legally assumed contract for married couples. Can this not be duplicated?
Come on now. Gays are not allowed to enter into legally binding contracts?
Address social security with the fed. Why should marriage be a requirement for this unconsitutional program? What income and estate benefits?
Take up disablity benefits with you insurance company. None of the gov’ts business. Remember the freedom of association part of the constitution. An actual right.
Family related Military and Veterans benefits should be negotiated at the time of inlistment. Take it up with the fed. Why should state sponsored marriage be required for a federal benefit?
Take it up with your insurance company. This is not a right nor a priviledge that the constitution allows the gov’t to force upon a private business.
Well, most of them you listed are not specific to marriage and can be entered into by any adult. What’s left over is unconstitutional to regulate anyway. At least by the fed.
Yes, one group has been given unconstitutional rights and priveledges by law. Now you want to give these so called rights to gays but exclude everyone else that can’t get them. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. This is precisely why we needed a constitution.
The right to petition for same-sex partners to immigrate.
Unconstitutional and a terrible idea gay or straight.
[/quote]
I’d love to hear you expand upon both points. 1) Why is it unconstitutional? 2) Why is it a “terrible idea” to have a husband/wife immigrate. I’ve a few friends who are married to “foreigners” so I’m really looking forward to your response.
The right to petition for same-sex partners to immigrate.
Unconstitutional and a terrible idea gay or straight.
I’d love to hear you expand upon both points. 1) Why is it unconstitutional? 2) Why is it a “terrible idea” to have a husband/wife immigrate. I’ve a few friends who are married to “foreigners” so I’m really looking forward to your response. [/quote]
My dad is married to a foreigner and has two foreign children, I’m also interested in this.
Anything straights are allowed to do, gap people should be allowed to do too, simple as, end of.
But who wants to get married anyway and associate themselves with all that religious crap?
How about we simply put all of those religious nuts in one place where they can just associate with themselves and leave the rest of the world alone - we can give them Kansas - nobody wants Kansas anyway - we can put them on a “Religious” reservation like we did with the Indians - they can have subjugated sovereignty and we won’t have to worry about them or their silly morals anymore . . . .
[quote]dhickey wrote:
Yes, one group has been given unconstitutional rights and priveledges by law. Now you want to give these so called rights to gays but exclude everyone else that can’t get them. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. This is precisely why we needed a constitution.
[/quote]
At least you’re now admitting that straight couples do enjoy a significant number of responsibilities and benefits that are denied to gay couples. We’re making progress.
Your attempt to dismiss all of these marriage-related benefits as “unconstitutional” is pretty funny, but at least you can no longer argue that gays have the ability to achieve all of these same benefits through some means other than federally recognized marriage/civil unions. Several times, you tell gays to “take it up with the fed”. That’s precisely what we’re doing by asking for the ability to have our unions federally recognized.
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
How about we simply put all of those religious nuts in one place where they can just associate with themselves and leave the rest of the world alone - we can give them Kansas - nobody wants Kansas anyway - we can put them on a “Religious” reservation like we did with the Indians - they can have subjugated sovereignty and we won’t have to worry about them or their silly morals anymore . . . .[/quote]
Because god knows (pun intended) that it’s impossible to have morals unless you believe in religious fairy tales.
Here is a big part of the problem. The Pope’s words are turned against him and the church is said to be intolerant because they wonâ??t give communion to a lesbian couple. The Catholic Church is being hurt because they believe in the rules of their faith. Harry Knox is one of the many that do not respect the belief of religion. Why can’t Knox and others at the HRC respect the belief of the Catholic Church? I think if anything the article shows how at least Knox and the HRC are not respectful of religion so why should religion or the general public be respectful to the gay community?
Do you guys really believe that legally recognizing the legitimacy of a same sex couple will really lead to “gayness” being taught in schools or lizards marrying little boys? That’s some paranoid shit, and the “gay movement” sounds like some nazi propaganda about the “jew movement.” Get over it and let people live as they will, it does shit to you.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
I think if anything the article shows how at least Knox and the HRC are not respectful of religion so why should religion or the general public be respectful to the gay community? [/quote]
Do you think that if people like Knox were respectful of religion, churches would change their doctrine to accept gays?
I don’t see that happening, but I do agree that looking for common ground where possible is a good idea.
[quote]forlife wrote:
dhickey wrote:
no you don’t. All of these could be addressed without all the hubbub. We’ve already been through this and you refused to comment. List all the priviledges you are concerned with and I will show you a legal and consitutional solution. i am quite sure you have zero interest in doing this and we all know why.
Your memory must be failing you. Here are a few examples:
The right to make decisions on a partner’s behalf in a medical emergency. Specifically, the states generally provide that spouses automatically assume this right in an emergency. If an individual is unmarried, the legal “next of kin” automatically assumes this right. This means, for example, that a gay man with a life partner of many years may be forced to accept the financial and medical decisions of a sibling or parent with whom he may have a distant or even hostile relationship.
The right to take up to 12 weeks of leave from work to care for a seriously ill partner or parent of a partner. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 permits individuals to take such leave to care for ill spouses, children and parents but not a partner or a partner’s parents.
The right to petition for same-sex partners to immigrate.
The right to assume parenting rights and responsibilities when children are brought into a family through birth, adoption, surrogacy or other means. For example, in most states, there is no law providing a noncustodial, nonbiological or nonadoptive parent’s right to visit a child - or responsibility to provide financial support for that child - in the event of a breakup.
The right to share equitably all jointly held property and debt in the event of a breakup, since there are no laws that cover the dissolution of domestic partnerships.
Family-related Social security benefits, income and estate tax benefits, disability benefits, family-related military and veterans benefits and other important benefits.
The right to inherit property from a partner in the absence of a will.
The right to purchase continued health coverage for a domestic partner after the loss of a job.
There are 1,138 federal rights granted to straight couples that are denied to gay couples. If you want to package all of those rights under some other name, feel free to do so. If you aren’t willing to grant every one of those 1,138 federal rights, then you aren’t addressing the issue.[/quote]
You need to learn the difference between ‘negative rights’ and ‘positive rights.’
And then, you need to realize that there’s no such things as ‘positive rights.’
Also, the “1,138 federal rights granted to straight couples” are more correctly benefits given to married couples. Perhaps you can do some thinking as to why exactly the federal government considers marriage so important that they would give such special treatment to it. (But, from reading your posts here, I’m not too hopeful.)
[quote]forlife wrote:
usmccds423 wrote:
I think if anything the article shows how at least Knox and the HRC are not respectful of religion so why should religion or the general public be respectful to the gay community?
Do you think that if people like Knox were respectful of religion, churches would change their doctrine to accept gays?
I don’t see that happening, but I do agree that looking for common ground where possible is a good idea.[/quote]
The church should not have to change their doctrine to fit anothers view. Should they be tolerant? I think if another persons view doesn’t hurt anyone else than yes they should be tolerant, but they shouldn’t be asked to change their stance on an issue.
[quote]cremaster wrote:
You need to learn the difference between ‘negative rights’ and ‘positive rights.’
And then, you need to realize that there’s no such things as ‘positive rights.’[/quote]
The Supreme Court disagrees with you, but you’re welcome to your opinion.
The stability of marriage benefits society, the couple, and any children they may have, regardless of whether the couple is gay or straight.
[quote]forlife wrote:
cremaster wrote:
You need to learn the difference between ‘negative rights’ and ‘positive rights.’
And then, you need to realize that there’s no such things as ‘positive rights.’
The Supreme Court disagrees with you, but you’re welcome to your opinion.
[/quote]
Well, then I guess said court can explain how a right can or could exist when there is no economic system to support it.
Did some rights magically pop into existence when we got passed subsistence agriculture.
Well, that is so cool!
Is there a phase space of possible rights?
What other rights will come to be when we can find out how to make other people work for them?
edit:
Did white farmers have the right to have their cotton picked?
After all, the Supreme Court said so.
Was that a “positive” right and if not, how does it differ from nationalized health care?
