Gay Marriage, Again.

[tongodeon]

This morning matrushkaka and I were talking about my post about Prop 8. She mentioned that a conservative friend of hers from Georgia whose brother came out a while back, and the family dealt with it OK. "He's still our brother and we still love him." Then, recently, he announced that he wanted to get married to his boyfriend of 12 years and the family had

Comments

[ikkyu2]

It's hard to defend idiocy, but the people you're arguing against believe that gay marriage produces secular harm to society.

They're idiots, though, so you have to keep that in mind. They won't be able to read something as long as this post, because of the amount of words in it.

[flwyd]

While many people who oppose gay marriage have little education, it's not true that most gay marriage opponents are stupid. Leaders of the anti-gay marriage movement are at least smart enough to get it preemptively banned in a lot of places generally noted for opposition to government regulation of private behavior. In 2004, many states had ballot measures to ban gay marriage. As I recall, all or most of these measures received more votes than George W. Bush.

There are plenty of people who are possessed of reasonable mental faculties but get weirded out by the concept of same-sex relationships (perhaps similar to the way tongodeon gets weirded out by furries). Maybe they don't know any homosexuals (or realize they do), so they don't have a point of reference to counter stereotypes and fear mongering. Some of them probably have correctable misconceptions about exactly what gay marriage entails.

41 years ago, the Supreme Court affirmed that people of mixed race are allowed to marry. Now we're on the verge of electing the child of a mixed

[bsdcat]

On the opposite side of the coin from godless heterosexual marriage, there's gay marriage under God in some religions. Although it's often against the stated doctrine of the church, officiants are doing it whether it's legal marriage or not.

For the most part, the religious organizations these people are representing have refused to actually discipline them for performing gay marriages. Then you've got some more fringe religions that largely or completely support gay marriage, and are happy to endorse marriages regardless of gender.

This is the part of the gay marriage discussion that interests me most: the lack of legal support for gay marriage on religious grounds marginalizes and restricts my religious expression, in addition to the expression of no religion by folks like you.

[rwx]

Is "Things that religious people are allowed to do but are against secular law but the law requires a complainant" a useful distinction here?

[tensegritydan]

And if churches and other religious institutions refuse to do gay marriages, or marriages between jews and none jews ect, that should be there right.I agree with that in theory. The Catholic church is pretty strict about who can get married there. In that case, I think it is okay for them to refuse gay marriage just as they can refuse divorcees. They are acting as a private religious institution

[matrygg]

This is a good point. I had always been under the impression that the marriage license is what actually legally marries a couple, and the church ceremony was window dressing, until my sister got married and they had to have the minister sign the license to make it official. I'm not sure, when silversunshadow and I get married, where it would be, but they don't really have Deist churches so it won't be at my local church.

[tongodeon]

You need an officiant to sign the license, and that can be a lot of people (not just a priest).

[matrushkaka]

Sorry, minor nitpick:

She mentioned that a conservative friend of hers from Georgia had a friend whose brother came out a while back

It wasn't the brother of his friend - it was his brother. That should read "She mentioned that a conservative friend of hers from Georgia has a brother who came out a while back."

No?

[matrushkaka]

"a conservative friend of hers from Georgia had a friend whose brother..."

It's the friend of a friend.