Who thought Alabama would be next in line to address gay marriage? Bored housewives can't even legally buy vibrators in this state......we aren't evolved enough to wrangle with the tough questions like gay marriage.
Apparently the surviving spouse of a gay man killed in a traffic accident in Montgomery is suing the state to overturn our ban on the recognition of gay marriage on the "equal protection" grounds of the Constitution. They were married in Mass. and he's named sole beneficiary in the will.....as a spouse, but Al. doesn't recognize gay marriage so he can't claim the estate.
I'm sorry but this state is backwards nine ways from Sunday.
-We always self-righteously vote down gaming, but we spend $200Million each year in neighboring states' lotteries and casinos and B'ham is the illegal sports gambling capital of the world....you can't swing a dead cat in B'ham and not hit a doctor, lawyer, or bookie, but the sky will evidently fall if we have an education lottery.
-We stand on our conservative soapbox and demand that government get out of our wallets, businesses, and schools, but maintain an idiotic sex-toy law that puts government in the middle of our bedrooms.
-And we make a show of standing on preserving the Constitution when it comes to elections while ignoring the inconvenient part of the 14th amendment that guarantees all, ALL citizens be treated equally under the law.
I don't care if same sex couples want to marry. How can that possibly affect me? I don't have to like something in order to recognize it as constitutional. That's the whole point of our Constitution as it defines our supposedly civilized society.
This guy should be able to claim what was left to him the same as anybody else.
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Same-sex marriage is a difficult public policy issue for me. On one hand I believe everyone has the right to do anything they want as long as it does not aggress against someone else.
On the other hand, I believe that having sex in another man's feces is a vile, deplorable act and one that society ought not to condone. The fate of Sodom and Gomorra suggest that God views buggery the same way.
Nevertheless, there is nothing in Scripture telling people of faith to force "sinners" to abandon their sins.
Subject to change, my position at the moment is that what you do in your own bedroom is your own business but marriage should be reserved for people of opposite sexes.
Two different issues Isaac.
Obviously the government has no business in anybody's bedroom and consenting adults can do anything they like together short of harming one another.
The issue at hand is whether in a constitutional republic, should the government be in the business of discriminating against individuals engaging in otherwise lawful activities, on the basis of one particular religious principle. In other words, does religion have a public policy role in a constitutional republic whose Constitution contains an "equal protection" clause?
It matters not whether you or anybody else finds it distasteful.
How does two gay people being "married" impede your pursuit of happiness in any way? If you cannot come up with a valid point, then based on your second sentence, you must allow for gay people to be married, no?
”…does religion have a public policy role in a constitutional republic…”
Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that because religion speaks to a question it is solely a religious issue.
The Bible proscribes murder but murder is both a religious and a secular issue. So it is with homosexual marriage.
Marriage is a contract. The state routinely decides what kinds of contracts it will allow and what kinds it will not allow.
The state will not enforce a contract with a minor or a mentally deficient person. The state will not enforce a contract with a farmer to have sex with his farm animals.
More to the point, the state does not allow a marriage contract between a brother and a sister.
Similarly, homosexual marriage contracts should not have the state’s seal of approval either … for public health reasons, because homosexual sex is as unnatural as intercourse with animals, and for a number of other good and sufficient reasons.
Moreover, not allowing homosexual marriages does not violate equal protection considerations.
Homosexuals are free to marry, just not to someone of the same sex. If they don’t want to marry someone of the opposite sex, that is understandable but it does not obligate the state to accommodate and bless their perversion any more than the state is obligated to accommodate and bless bestiality.
Isaac, there are too many points I'd like to address in your last comment and I haven't the time right now, as I have some mouse-brain tissue that needs to be processed in my lab....but I'll be getting back. Stay tuned.
The only interest the imperial state has in the sanctioning of marriage is to have a means to enforce the contract drawn between the parties, to establish inheritance and estate legalities, and to enforce the support of dependencies(children) that result from these contracts.
In my opinion, not one of these reasons is justification for exclusion of gay couples from the same secular contract....unless you are prepared to argue that gay couples are incapable of raising children, to which I would counter that nobody could possibly do worse than we breeders have. Besides, gay couples tend to have means and that goes a long way toward a nice childhood.
Your comparison of gay sex to bestiality is outrageous. Once again, you are injecting your personal religious beliefs onto a strictly secular legal question in which religion plays no role.
I think all cohabitive unions should be secular civil unions sanctioned by the state and available to any two people. If couples still want to make it a religious bond, they may choose a church that performs them. We should divorce the religious aspect of marriage from the governmental aspect.
Your belief that gays are bad people who've simply made bad choices doesn't make them go away or any less under the purview of the Constitution.
"Your comparison of gay sex to bestiality is outrageous. Once again, you are injecting your personal religious beliefs onto a strictly secular legal question in which religion plays no role."
To which I will make two responses. First, I purposely stripped my post of any religious content. The tangential reference to bestiality had nothing to do with religion.
And second, you are right. It is inappropriate to equate buggery with bestiality. Bestiality, although perverse, is LESS perverse than buggery. An animal's vagina is designed to receive a penis. A man's anus is not.
Isaac, what two people do in the privacy of their bedroom is none of your business to comment on one way or the other.
There you go changing the subject again, Ed. You do that frequently.
This thread is not about what two people do in the privacy of their bedroom. It is about whether or not the state ought to give the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to what those people do in the bedroom by sanctioning same-sex marriage.
I argue that the state ought not sanction deviant sexual behavior by granting a license to do it. You disagree, I understand.
You know that [homo or hetero] butt-fucking, sucking feces-covered dicks, fisting, shitting on and pissing on each other is deviant sexual behavior but you want the state to give it the GHSoA anyway.
We will just have to leave it there because there is no argument that would persuade me that it is a legitimate function of the state to sanctify, certify, champion and promote sexual deviancy.
my point Isaac, is that it isn't a proper function of government to legislate, based on it's perception of morality. The State should't be sanctioning anything religious, period.....hetero or gay. Therefor it is my opinion that orientation should not be a qualifier for state-sanctioned marriage.
I didn't change the subject, you just failed to follow me.
Oh, just stop, Ed.
The state won't sanction the marriage of a brother and a sister. You don't object to that.
The state won't sanction the marriage of an adult and a minor. You don't object to that.
The state won't sanction the marriage of a threesome. You don't object to that.
It seems that your objector just works in fits and starts.
Buggery et al is not deviant because religion says so, it is deviant because human biology says so. I haven't made arguments from religion; I have made arguments from anatomy.
As a scientist, your pretense not to understand must be just that ... a pretense.
If I may weigh in, I think Isaac has the proper point in his last post. Where do you draw the line? The multiple marriage crowd is already out of the gate with a recent court victory in Utah.
Western nations seem to think by jettisoning our culture as quickly as possible, we will benefit. Doesn't seem to be working out so well.
It's simple Bill, you draw the line at two people. Why is that so hard?
There are laws against each of Isaac's examples for reasons that have nothing to do with conservatives' dislike of gay marriage.
I'd like to know how two gay people being married and leaving their possessions to each other in a will would have a negative effect on your personal pursuit of happiness? What do you, Isaac and Bill, care one way or the other how two people pursue happiness?
The other fatal flaw in Isaac's argument is that each of his examples above are choices....being gay isn't.
If you think that all the tens of millions of gay people around the world have subjected themselves to all the trouble that comes with "coming out" on purpose by simply choosing to be that way, then we are at an impasse and this argument cannot be won.
You say "draw the line at two people." Who or what gives you the right? We've already abandoned millennia of culture and tradition that always - without exception - defined marriage as one man and one woman. Now comes before the court a bigot who says a man can't love and marry two wives or his sister or cat. It's merely a choice, he claims.
People who hold beliefs that were nearly universal ten years ago are now called bigots. Supreme Court justices write that there can be "no rational" justification for traditional belief, and only bigotry can explain state constitutional amendments passed with 2/1 votes. "Shut up!" is explained to anyone who objects.
No thanks.
I would counter with, what gives you the right to deny, on cultural grounds, equal protection rights to such a large, permanent part of the otherwise law-abiding population?
In another generation, gay marriage will be legal in every state, as will recreational marijuana. Both are fine with me.
If you think that all the tens of millions of gay people around the world have subjected themselves to all the trouble that comes with "coming out" on purpose by simply choosing to be that way....
What bearing does it have whether buggerers choose to be buggerers or not?
Psychopaths are cold, heartless, cruel and devoid of empathy for the pain and suffering they cause others. Should the state sanction their bad behavior because they did not choose to be psychopaths?
Should the state sanction the bad behavior of schizophrenics because they did not choose to be schizophrenics?
Many pedophiles claim they can’t help themselves; they were born that way. Should the state sanction pedophilia because child molesters did not choose to be child molesters?
I don’t care if buggerers were born that way or not. Buggery is sexual deviancy, that is to say it deviates from the way human anatomy is designed to work.
I don’t care if buggerers find pleasure in their deviancy or not. That is beside the point. Pedophiles find pleasure in molesting little children. So what?
Isaac, you're equating two women who love each other with the criminally deranged. It's at this point that I think you've officially lost the argument.
You're equating loving with fucking, Ed. They are two different things.
I don't care who someone loves. The issue here is who ... and how ... they fuck.
You don't need a license to love someone. You do need a license to marry. And the state should not give the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to deviant fucking (deviant in a BIOLOGICAL/ANATOMICAL sense).
Ok, what if two women or men are in love but don't have sex. Why shouldn't the State approve their marriage.....I mean if as you say, loving is not fucking?
And therefor to bring my point full-circle, if the State can approve or disapprove of a marriage based on whether a couple fucks or not, then don't we have a problem as a nation?
Here's where you (ig)noble-sounding theories lead, Ed.
"My 11 year old son reported that his father's gay lover was massaging him in bed with his underwear on, and that he no longer wanted to visit his father's house while this man was there as he gave him the creeps and hated him.
I tried to speak to father, but he said he wanted his son to get used to another man touching him, that it was natural.
My attorney brought this to judge's attention and was immediately shutdown."
"The judge told me he was a dictator and didn't have to follow any of the laws of the USA and that my son needed to get used to a homosexual lifestyle, and he then ordered no contact between me and my son."
(excerpted from: http://savethemales.ca/#sthash.bIP5zB04.dpuf)
So now you're saying that all homosexuals are, or have the potential to be, pedophiles? Are you freakin' serious?
Everybody has the potential to be a pedophile, Isaac. Even you.
Pedophilia is far more about the age, accessibility, and vulnerability of the child, not about his or her gender.
STRAW MAN ARGUMENT
"A false argument similar to reductio ad absurdum often seen in polemical debate is the straw man logical fallacy. A straw man argument attempts to refute a given proposition by showing that a slightly different or INACCURATE form of the proposition (the "straw man") has an absurd, unpleasant, or ridiculous consequence, relying on the audience not to notice that the argument DOES NOT ACCUALLY APPLY to the original proposition."
Ed, did my example show that ALL homosexuals molest children or did it show that SOME homosexuals molest children? The latter, of course. Thus, your reply was a logical fallacy. Again.
Your argument is presumably, at least as far as I can discern, that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry because among other reasons, they might adopt a child for the purpose of molestation.
There are plenty of heterosexual child molesters, yet they can marry at will. Your argument doesn't hold water.
I mean isn't child molestation a different question altogether? Not all heteros molest children, but some do. And not all homo's molest children, but some do. Both are a crime regardless of marital status. What's your point?
We don't agree on much, Ed, but I've always considered you an intelligent person.
I'm glad you don't prove me wrong here.
(and no, I'm not gay.)
I appreciate that capt. Where've you been?
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