Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 2:27:34 PM
Marriage license neutering advocates frequently ask those who oppose their agenda, “How does this hurt your marriage?”
I will get to my reply to that later. I wanted to turn this around.
What we should be asking all of these same-sex couples with new, neutered marriage licenses who will be making appeals to emotion in an effort to get people to vote “no” on Proposition 8:
“How will Proposition 8 hurt you, even assuming that it invalidates all same-sex ‘marriages’ licensed from June through Election Day as well as precluding them from Election Day forward?”
The answer is: It won’t hurt them in any way, save perhaps their feelings, in the case of those who have falsely rested their feelings on what the California Supreme Court says about a matter that belongs to the people. California has domestic partnerships that apply all of the legalities the state applies to marriage. See for yourself in the state’s Family Code law. The only difference is that it isn't called "marriage" and it doesn't have a marriage license. Since the federal government doesn’t recognize unions missing a bride or groom as marriage, any couples registered as domestic partners in California will not be hurt at all by the passing of Proposition 8. If they haven't yet registered as domestic partners, then how can they be as committed to each other as they claim?
What it would hurt is their carefully crafted incrementalist activist agenda game plan where they plan to use the tyranny of four California Supreme Court justices to wreak havoc in other states.
But you know, in researching, I learned something I didn’t know about California’s Domestic Partnerships. They discriminate against both-sex couples! See for yourself right here. That’s right - a man and woman who love each other and share a life are barred from forming a state-recognized domestic partnership, unless one of them is a seasoned citizen. Where have these “equality” activists been on this issue? Why haven’t they made a big deal about this violation of human rights? After all, if only licensing bride-groom coupling as marriage is a violation of rights, then so must be the restriction on domestic partnerships.
But let’s get back to the original question. We get asked, in the case of neutered marriage licensing, “How does this hurt your marriage?”
To which I reply:
Marriage is an institution. If you change it in law, that institution is changed for all. Saying that either bride is not required or a groom is not required dilutes the legal meaning of marriage and destroys the very foundation for what makes marriage marriage. (If "love" is the basis for marriage, than most marriages in history were not really marriages, at least not when they started.) If the state said a marriage license gives someone the right to beat their spouse, how would that have an effect on your licensed marriage? Don’t like domestic violence? Don’t marry an abuser! Yet I bet you’d still oppose such a legality. Everyone, not just same-sex couples, who gets a marriage license in California now gets the demeaning “Party A and Party B” instead of “bride” and “groom” license. So it DOES have an effect on all of us.
In addition, the neutering of marriage licensing in California will, in accordance with anti-discrimination laws, make it impossible for government agencies and businesses to operate in a way that recognizes the differences between both-sex legally-married couples and those who are same-sex. This means that adoption agencies, for example, will not be able to give preference in placing children so that they will have both a mother and a father. Now, I know that many of you don’t think fathers are important, or don’t think that mothers are important, but the facts say otherwise – that all other things being equal, having both a mother and a father will benefit a child in ways that can’t be replicated with two men or two women. You yourselves know there is a difference between men and women when it comes to personal relationships, and therefore parenting, because you are attracted to people of the same sex instead or more than people of the opposite sex. What is bad for children, will, as those children become adults, be bad for us all.
Furthermore, this court ruling will hurt the Constitutionally-listed right to religious freedom. It also violated the principles of our democratic republic by overturning the vote of the people without a compelling constitutional justification, as individuals already had equal access to the privilege of state-issued marriage licenses regardless of sexual orientation.
Assert your self-government rights, California! Vote YES on Proposition 8!