[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Poor Vroom - can dish but no can take?
[/quote]
What the hell are you talking about? I’ve taken as much shit as anybody in the politics forums.
Anyway, seriously, I was yanking BB’s chain (and thought I’d made a post to that effect after his response even – I said that the politics area was boring lately and it needed to be livened up).
So, are you a stand-in for BB’s chain now?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
Not when your only goal is riling up the base, deflecting attention from Iraq, and keeping control of Congress despite your party’s abysmal performance…
Well, see, that is my point - I don’t think it is going to work. I think the voters are feeling a little riled up about the current state of affairs and I don’t think this distraction will purchase much.
[/quote]
I tend to agree, but still find the attempt loathsome and transparent.
[quote]Lorisco wrote:
Didn’t take long for people to get vroom’s number.
[/quote]
Watch it buddy, yer on speed dial fer chrissake.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Anyway, seriously, I was yanking BB’s chain (and thought I’d made a post to that effect after his response even – I said that the politics area was boring lately and it needed to be livened up).
So, are you a stand-in for BB’s chain now?[/quote]
Nope - Boston doesn’t need to me to defend him. But why is it you get to tweak, but I don’t?
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
I tend to agree, but still find the attempt loathsome and transparent.[/quote]
Truth is, so do I. There may be a time for this Amendment, were the DOMA to be challenged or the USSC to rule for gay marriage under some tortured Equal Protection analysis.
But we are nowhere near that - and there are huge problems no one is addressing substantively as we approach the 2006 elections. I think this shows the GOP’s weakness.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
But why is it you get to tweak, but I don’t?[/quote]
Well, tweak away, it just seemed you were getting into the middle of a discussion between two other people.
Have at it. Fire a shot. The trick is, considering I was tweaking our lawyer friend who can’t ever stop thinking like a lawyer and instead act like a normal human, you’ll have to pick something I actually meant, for your criticism and tweaking to be worthwhile.
That’s all. Yank it for all you are worth buddy, don’t let me stop you.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Well, tweak away […] Fire a shot […] I was tweaking our lawyer friend […] Yank it for all you are worth buddy […]
[/quote]
Let me be the first to say: Ewwwwww.
I would be in favor of an amendment to the US Constitution limiting marriage in the legally-recognized sense to a union between one human male and one human female. I am also somewhat uneasy about any wording that does not include definitions for “male” or “man”; and “female” or “woman”.
I would prefer to see any federal amendment, state amendment, or state law include wording defining “male” as having preponderantly one X and one Y chromosone in each cell, and “female” as having preponderantly two X chromosones in each cell (or some equivalent verbiage), for purposes of the amendment or law limiting legally-recognized marriage.
I do not know whether the motives of Mr. Bush and his advisors for pushing this issue at this time are good, bad, or indifferent. I did vote for Mr. Bush in the general elections in 2000 and 2004 because I saw him as the lesser of two evils.
Honestly, this is something I don’t understand: If marriage rates are around 50%, isn’t that, by definition, a failed institution?
Your religion won’t let gays get married?: fine with me. But why the animosity for same sex couples? There are a great deal of congressmen/women who are divorced…does this not detail the futility of marriage, as a political insitution?
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
nephorm wrote:
This will never pass.
No one thinks it will pass.
This is an obvious attempt to reinforce the idea that Democrats are godless hedonists with no respect for family values.
This is a response to an increasingly degenerate Senate and House that have given up power and any shred of respect they might have once enjoyed. The executive and judicial branches are doing all the heavy lifting, these days.
If you can’t remove “activist judges,” how do you get laws passed? How do you deal with a zealot who essentially holds unchecked veto power over any law he doesn’t like, and has lifetime tenure?
I think the answer to this is not to create an ad hoc amendment for gay marriage, but rather (perhaps) setting term limits or introducing other democratic reforms into the judiciary…
Great post, more or less sums up how I feel.[/quote]
Yup. It is a stupid amendment in response to a stupid judiciary.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
The idea of defining marriage to specifically shut out two consenting individuals will not work due to the general belief of most Americans that all persons should have equal access to the law.
Utter nonsense. Forty states have enacted laws denying the recognition of same-sex marriages.
Defining institutions in such a way not only compromises these beliefs but will further allow us to change the definitions of institutions that we already consider just; for example, rewriting definitions that that take inherent rights away from women, minorities or certain age groups.
I do believe that we can define marriage but it must be done in a way that does not discriminate–and it needs to be done so at a federal level to keep states from discriminating against human beings.
First, that would be impossible using your version of ‘discriminate’. If the law should accommodate ‘consenting individuals’, why would you then discriminate against those consenting individuals who would prefer to go beyond the magic number of two partners? Aren’t you discriminating against them by arbitrarily limiting a marriage to two people?
[/quote]
I am merely using an example as to how it could be written in such a way that does not use gender as a predeterminer. Personally, I don’t care how many people want to mary who or what…this was just an example I am not a lawyer so I wouldn’t be writing the definitions anyway. This is semantics and not worth a fight.
Why not? Does it not have the power to enforce federal laws? For example, the DEA does not care about state laws when it comes to drug crimes. The FBI regularly takes over the investigations of federal crimes when it deems it in it’s jurisdiction. The federal gov’t does have the power to not allow discrimination–just as it had the power to not allow slavery. Though, I don’t think we’d go to war over this one.
[quote]NealRaymond2 wrote:
I would be in favor of an amendment to the US Constitution limiting marriage in the legally-recognized sense to a union between one human male and one human female. I am also somewhat uneasy about any wording that does not include definitions for “male” or “man”; and “female” or “woman”.
I would prefer to see any federal amendment, state amendment, or state law include wording defining “male” as having preponderantly one X and one Y chromosone in each cell, and “female” as having preponderantly two X chromosones in each cell (or some equivalent verbiage), for purposes of the amendment or law limiting legally-recognized marriage.
I do not know whether the motives of Mr. Bush and his advisors for pushing this issue at this time are good, bad, or indifferent. I did vote for Mr. Bush in the general elections in 2000 and 2004 because I saw him as the lesser of two evils.
[/quote]
Whom can a hermaphrodite marry? Will we provide for this language as well.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I am merely using an example as to how it could be written in such a way that does not use gender as a predeterminer. Personally, I don’t care how many people want to mary who or what…this was just an example I am not a lawyer so I wouldn’t be writing the definitions anyway. This is semantics and not worth a fight.[/quote]
No, this has everything to do with it. If you assume to let any combination of consenting adults to engage in some form of marriage relationship because you want to honor their choices - the institution of marriage ceases to exist.
Yes, the federal government enforces federal laws - what you are missing is that the federal government has no ability to pass such a law to enforce it.
Now, the federal government did at one time require some states to ban polygamy as a prerequisite to joining the Union, but if the feds were to try and dictate to states what a marriage will be defined as, you’ll see the federalist fight of your life. And rightfully so.
And you’ll notice - slavery was abolished by a constitutional amendment, not an ordinary federal law.
Your point about the FBI missed - they are enforcing a federal law that has been passed. What I am talking about is whether the law could even be passed under the constitutional powers of the Congress.
Congress could, as it did in DOMA, define what a ‘marriage’ means in the usage of federal legislation, but it cannot tell states how to define marriage.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
NealRaymond2 wrote:
I would be in favor of an amendment to the US Constitution limiting marriage in the legally-recognized sense to a union between one human male and one human female. I am also somewhat uneasy about any wording that does not include definitions for “male” or “man”; and “female” or “woman”.
I would prefer to see any federal amendment, state amendment, or state law include wording defining “male” as having preponderantly one X and one Y chromosone in each cell, and “female” as having preponderantly two X chromosones in each cell (or some equivalent verbiage), for purposes of the amendment or law limiting legally-recognized marriage.
I do not know whether the motives of Mr. Bush and his advisors for pushing this issue at this time are good, bad, or indifferent. I did vote for Mr. Bush in the general elections in 2000 and 2004 because I saw him as the lesser of two evils.
Whom can a hermaphrodite marry? Will we provide for this language as well.
[/quote]
I feel sympathy for persons who are not clearly male or clearly female, but I would not favor legally-recognized marriage for such persons.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
nephorm wrote:
This will never pass.
No one thinks it will pass.
This is an obvious attempt to reinforce the idea that Democrats are godless hedonists with no respect for family values.
This is a response to an increasingly degenerate Senate and House that have given up power and any shred of respect they might have once enjoyed. The executive and judicial branches are doing all the heavy lifting, these days.
If you can’t remove “activist judges,” how do you get laws passed? How do you deal with a zealot who essentially holds unchecked veto power over any law he doesn’t like, and has lifetime tenure?
I think the answer to this is not to create an ad hoc amendment for gay marriage, but rather (perhaps) setting term limits or introducing other democratic reforms into the judiciary…
Great post, more or less sums up how I feel.
Yup. It is a stupid amendment in response to a stupid judiciary.[/quote]
This is just desperate pandering by a group of desperate people more worried about losing their power than they are about doing their jobs. It is a bullshit political move that will backfire on them this time because it is so blatantly transparent that even their “base” is not fired up about it.
Term limits in both the federal and state legislative bodies would have the best overall effect because job preservation would be removed.
The judiciary should be a lifetime appointment.
A judge is only activist when they don’t side with the flame thrower’s ideals.
Both the left and right cry about the same thing.
It just so happens to have gone against the right more than they would like over the last century.
Go figure.
[quote]NealRaymond2 wrote:
I feel sympathy for persons who are not clearly male or clearly female, but I would not favor legally-recognized marriage for such persons.
[/quote]
Sympathy huh? I bet.
–
I can’t believe anybody is buying the “war on gay marriage” that Bush is proposing, at least because it somehow represents a threat to marriage.
Marriage failure rates are already at institution leveling rates, and it happened before anybody started pushing for gay marriage.
I know it won’t happen, but if something were passed, it wouldn’t eliminate the problems with marriage, in any capacity. That’s what makes the thing such a crock.
It’s pandering to a religious group on trumped up reasons. I wonder if we’ve seen the president do anything on trumped up reasons before?
The whole thing is a shameless ruse.
On the non-legal and non-religious side, this is interesting:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
No, this has everything to do with it. If you assume to let any combination of consenting adults to engage in some form of marriage relationship because you want to honor their choices - the institution of marriage ceases to exist.
[/quote]
Only by the conventions of marriage as they exist now. This is what needs to change. Is it too much to think that forcing individuals to follow conventions that are outdated and discriminatory is itself counter-productive to democracy?
Then how do they enforce laws and who decides to enforce them? Is in not the federal government? Or do the states decide that they want federal intervention?
I am having a hard time seeing where feds rights ends and states rights begins. This makes no sense. They can either tell the states what to do out-right or they can’t tell them what to do at all. Which is it? Please explain this to me.
By whatever means necessary that we need to keep people from being discriminated. If the fed as you put it does not have the right to legislate to the states then an amendment preventing their discrimination is necessary – and in general discrimination of any kind.
So then where in the constitution does congress have the right to legislate certain matters and not marriage? Who decides what the states will decide and what the fed will decide?
All I am trying to do is to poke further holes in this flawed logic. It makes no sense that the Federal gov’t can exert certain powers over others–as stated earlier–they either can do it out-right or not at all.
If people are afforded certain rights under specific institutions then to deny specific persons access to that institution is then itself wrong–even if the convetions of such institutions are defined according to traditional religious practices.
[quote]vroom wrote:
The whole thing is a shameless ruse.
[/quote]
Vrooom,
Is gay marriage performed and or recognized in Canada? Also I am wondering if I were to get married in an other country would that marriage be recognized in here in the US? Similarly if certain marriages are recognized in certain states then how are those persons rights taken from then if they were to move to another state that does not recognize it?
I am wondering because it makes sense that if ones rights cannot be taken away–e.g., my marriage is recognized in the state of Minnesota even though I was married in North Carolina–then it doesn’t makes sense that laws would passed to specifically take those rights away.