Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 1:09:18 PM
Their editorial board goes all-out to shill for marriage neutering in a formal endorsement.
It's the same sentence
as in 2000: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or
recognized in California." Yet the issue that will be put before voters
Nov. 4 is radically different.
Yeah, this time we’ve already had
four judges work to overturn our will as voters and thousands of years
of human understanding and practice.
This time, the wording would be used to rescind an existing constitutional right to marry.
Where is this “right” found in the constitution?
We fervently hope that
voters, whatever their personal or religious convictions, will shudder
at such a step and vote no on Proposition 8.
Well that’s been painfully obvious for a long time now.
The state of
[neutering] marriage shifted in May, when the California Supreme Court
overturned Proposition 22, the [affirmation of] marriage that voters
approved eight years ago, and ruled that marriage was a fundamental
right under the state Constitution.
Even if that were true, everyone had access to that “right” before the court ruling.
Proposition 8 seeks to embed wording in the Constitution that would eliminate the fundamental right to…marriage.
Actually, Proposition 8 seeks to restore common sense and self-government.
It's a rare and drastic step, invoking the constitutional-amendment process to strip people of rights.
Oh yes, rare and drastic… you mean
like publicly flouting the laws to “wed” a brideless or groomless
couple in a deliberate attempt to manipulate the courts to subvert the
will of the people?
All the more reason for voters to weigh carefully what would be wrought by this measure.
Proposition 8 won’t hurt anyone, actually. Any same-sex couple can register as domestic partners and get all of the trappings that California applies to marriage.
In a meeting with The
Times' editorial board, supporters argued at length that children are
best off when raised by their own biological, married mothers and
fathers. Even if that were true -- and there is much room for dispute -- this measure in no way moves society closer to such a traditional picture.
Sure it does. Without Proposition
8, it will be the official policy and teachings of the state (which
runs schools) that there is no difference to the state between a couple
with only one of the sexes or a couple with both of the sexes.
Clearly, there is a difference. One is how we all got here. One is
the only kind of couple that naturally produces new citizens. One has
been the foundation for ordering society through all of history. The
same can’t be said for the other. Without Proposition 8, the state’s default position is that marriage can’t be about children.
But notice that the people in control of the content at the Los Angeles Times
can’t even grasp the painfully obvious – that all other things being
equal, a child is best off with a mother and a father who are married
to each other.
Gay and lesbian couples already are raising their own children and will continue to do so, as will single parents and adoptive and blended families.
Wrong. Gay and lesbian couples are raising children that they did not bring into this world as a couple.
Either one of them made that child with a prior partner of the opposite
sex, or they used at least one third party and medical technology to
intentionally bring that child into a situation where there is either a
father or a mother missing.
Using the supporters' own reasoning, it would be better for same-sex parents to marry.
Actually, it would be better if
people didn’t make babies outside of a stable marriage to a capable,
devoted person of the opposite sex in the first place.
Still, there are
differences. Some are statutory -- domestic partners must share a
residence, while married couples can live separately
Okay, so do you want to extend the
legal trappings of marriage to people who never live together? I bet
you aren’t in favor of extending marriage licenses to platonic
roommates. So the conclusion here is that you want the state to
issue marriage licenses because two people are engaging in sodomy,
which contributes nothing to society, unlike coitus.
-- and others are
pragmatic -- studies have found that domestic partners do not receive
the same treatment or recognition from hospital staff, employers and
the public as spouses do.
Sorry, but neutering marriage
licenses for this reason is like burning down a house because there was
some termite damage found. What happens when people still tilt their
head when a man claim’s to be another man’s husband? Will we have to
step up school and workplace “sensitively training” laws?
The fact is, California treats domestic partners as spouses.
If there is a problem with someone in a workplace or hospital, it is a
problem with that person or the training at that facility.
But it was Ronald M.
George, chief justice of the California Supreme Court, who cut through
to the essence of the issue in the May 15 opinion he wrote:
"[A]ffording same-sex couples only a separate and differently named
family relationship will, as a realistic matter, impose appreciable
harm on same-sex couples and their children, because denying such
couples access to the familiar and highly favored designation of
marriage is likely to cast doubt on whether the official family
relationship of same-sex couples enjoys dignity equal to that of
opposite-sex couples."
You can’t force dignity into a
situation. Marriage carries with it things that existed long before
the State of California, and no judge can force those things to
magically appear between two men or two women. It’s like saying that
“The sun now rises in the west.” Well, okay… you can pretend it does. It does not make it so.
In other words, the
very act of denying gay and lesbian couples the right to marry --
traditionally the highest legal and societal recognition of a loving commitment -- by definition relegates them and their relationships to second-class status, separate and not all that equal.
Actually, in most places, through
most of history, marriage has not been about “love” – at least not as
the paper is using the word. And there is still no “love test” when
you go to get a marriage license. There never was. Their arguments
continue to be so much slight of hand and shifting definitions and
demanding mutually exclusive rights, such as the right to privacy at
the same time as a right to public affirmation.
The relationships are not
equal - by their very nature. One contains both sexes and is therefore
a microcosm of society. The other one excludes one of the sexes. It
isn’t the place of the government to slap approval or recognition on
“love” between two adults. The law deals with facts, like whether
someone is male or female.
Whites in the South
vehemently rejected the 1954 Supreme Court decision to desegregate
schools. For that matter, Californians have accused the state Supreme
Court of obstructing the people's will on marriage before -- in 1948,
when it struck down a ban on interracial marriages.
Again with the false comparison.
Marriage has always, in every religion, in every state, in every
country, all through history – been recognized as uniting the sexes –
until very recently in a few places. “Interracial” marriages were
banned in a few – not all- states. There is hardly a comparison.
Fundamental rights are exactly that.
And this is not a fundamental right.
Notice that nobody had to cooperate or give you your fundamental right
to free speech when you woke up this morning. In contrast, with
state-licensed marriage, you have to find an eligible, consenting
person to agree to marry you, and then you have to go ask the people of
California for a license.
Now, marriage licensing has been
changed for EVERYONE. It wasn’t that same-sex couples were given
access to marriage licensing – it was that marriage licensing was
neutered for everyone so that neither brides or grooms are recognized
or honored. Glad I got a real marriage license.
Then they go on to comment about how homosexuality advocacy is causing problems for Anglicans.
Still, tensions were
evident between liberal bishops from North America and conservative
ones from the "Global South." The archbishop of Sudan demanded the
resignation of Gene Robinson, the openly gay New Hampshire bishop whose
ordination in 2003 was the casus belli of the crisis. A female bishop
from the United States suggested that "many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife."
You see, wanting your CHRISTIAN
church to adhere to clear teachings of the CHRISTIAN Bible is akin to
approval of wife-beating, apparently.
The dispute among
Anglicans may seem a strictly religious argument, turning on whether
biblical prohibitions of homosexuality should be interpreted literally
or softened, as scriptural condemnations of divorce have been without
much protest from conservatives.
Churches should definitely enforce
standards about divorce. But there is little the church can do other
than 1) refusing to perform a marriage when one person should reconcile
with their former spouse, or 2) kick out the offending divorcee. But
divorce is a different issue. The Bible teaches that sex is for
marriage, and that marriage unites a man and a woman. A Christian
church should no more “soften” a stance against homosexual behavior
than it should on unmarried fornication or adultery.
Then we get this doozy:
In the culture wars, there is no separation of church and state.
Hmmm. Interesting. Have they tipped
their hand? My guess is that they will use such thinking to insist
that churches should not be able to refuse to perform state-licensed
marriages.
Well, there’s another example, like with the UMC, of
where homosexuality advocates are trying to get the church to pick and
choose which Biblical teachings to follow. Everyone else is supposed
to sacrifice their faith, their intuition, their needs, their
traditions on the altar of homosexually-induced orgasms and esteeming
the sinner.