fucking prop 8

[SR4]

I read the rest of that article that PBN posted, and I gotta say, big LOL. The author goes on and on about the kinship system, and all the obligations that it poses on a married couple and how wedding rings and ceremonies will never match the penalties and duties the kinship system imposes. Then he comes up with this beauty:

 

Few men would ever bother to enter into a romantic heterosexual marriage--much less three, as I have done--were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom.

 

So the kinship system worked so well that he married three times. LOL

 

Also hilarious because they argue for the "sanctity of marriage." Christianity became the official religion of England because the king wanted a divorce.

 

 

Christianity had existed in England for centuries before they adopted the Anglican church, please fact check yourself.

[takeshi]

This is the sort of thing that first comes to mind when I hear any politician talking a lot about "states rights".

 

which gay marriage?

 

Not specifically gay marriage but the way, I think, issues like it will pop up more often if the balance between state and federal rights become skewed. And I think some politicians have goals in mind like Prop. 8 but they know it isn't politically expedient to completely telegraph their position and they hide behind being for "states rights".

[marf]

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[Braintree]

I read the rest of that article that PBN posted, and I gotta say, big LOL. The author goes on and on about the kinship system, and all the obligations that it poses on a married couple and how wedding rings and ceremonies will never match the penalties and duties the kinship system imposes. Then he comes up with this beauty:

 

Few men would ever bother to enter into a romantic heterosexual marriage--much less three, as I have done--were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom.

 

So the kinship system worked so well that he married three times. LOL

 

Also hilarious because they argue for the "sanctity of marriage." Christianity became the official religion of England because the king wanted a divorce.

 

 

Christianity had existed in England for centuries before they adopted the Anglican church, please fact check yourself.

 

Henry VIII. I'm talking about the tie broken between the Church of England and Catholic Rome.

[SR4]

I read the rest of that article that PBN posted, and I gotta say, big LOL. The author goes on and on about the kinship system, and all the obligations that it poses on a married couple and how wedding rings and ceremonies will never match the penalties and duties the kinship system imposes. Then he comes up with this beauty:

 

Few men would ever bother to enter into a romantic heterosexual marriage--much less three, as I have done--were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom.

 

So the kinship system worked so well that he married three times. LOL

 

Also hilarious because they argue for the "sanctity of marriage." Christianity became the official religion of England because the king wanted a divorce.

 

 

Christianity had existed in England for centuries before they adopted the Anglican church, please fact check yourself.

 

Henry VIII. I'm talking about the tie broken between the Church of England and Catholic Rome.

 

I know what you are talking about, but you said "Christianity became the official religion" under his reign, which is incorrect.

 

[Guest Adjective]

was my first question really that dumb?

[Braintree]

I read the rest of that article that PBN posted, and I gotta say, big LOL. The author goes on and on about the kinship system, and all the obligations that it poses on a married couple and how wedding rings and ceremonies will never match the penalties and duties the kinship system imposes. Then he comes up with this beauty:

 

Few men would ever bother to enter into a romantic heterosexual marriage--much less three, as I have done--were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom.

 

So the kinship system worked so well that he married three times. LOL

 

Also hilarious because they argue for the "sanctity of marriage." Christianity became the official religion of England because the king wanted a divorce.

 

 

Christianity had existed in England for centuries before they adopted the Anglican church, please fact check yourself.

 

Henry VIII. I'm talking about the tie broken between the Church of England and Catholic Rome.

 

I know what you are talking about, but you said "Christianity became the official religion" under his reign, which is incorrect.

 

It's technically not wrong, though because up until that point they were Catholic. So, although there was no literal "conversion," they definitely weren't part of the Roman church anymore.

[Guest vodor]

i agree with Awepittance.

 

the founders of the American government recognized that the public is too ignorant/irresponsible/malicious/delusional/etc to be trusted with law-making votes, and they knew that this sort of law-making would allow the majority to strip the rights from the minority. this is why America is a republic and not a true democracy.

 

California's constitutional amendment process is shit.

 

so what would it take to amend the amendment process? :P whatever it is, someone needs to get on it.

 

in the meantime, why is California allowed to have a shit amendment process that allows the majority to oppress the minority? shouldn't the federal government have something to say about that?

[Guest catsonearth]

i don't really understand why the voters got to decide on this in the first place. why not ask them if we should sacrafice jews? to ask them and they say 'no'. to then turn around and say actually thats illegal seems bizarre (obv that didnt happen though)

 

exactly. it shouldn't have even been allowed to go to a vote. anyone with half a brain can see the implications and see straight away that it's unconstitutional. you can't single out groups and deny them access to certain rights because you don't like something innate about them. it's as simple as that.

 

wait a minute. if the voters don't get to decide then who does? just because you don't like or agree with the conclusion they came to doesn't mean democracy itself is the problem. if the voters don't get a voice then its a dictatorship.

 

yes, but we've already firmly established that it's against the constitution to strip any individual of their rights, so even proposing an amendment like this is by nature illegal according to the laws of this country. you can't take somebody to court because they ripped you off in a coke buy...why? not because this place is dictatorship, but because it's not legal to sell cocaine in the first place, so the government isn't going to reward your illegal behavior by even giving you the time of day. if something's not legal to begin with, it shouldn't be given legitimacy by being allowed into the legal system. that's a perversion of what this country is supposed to be about.

[SR4]

I read the rest of that article that PBN posted, and I gotta say, big LOL. The author goes on and on about the kinship system, and all the obligations that it poses on a married couple and how wedding rings and ceremonies will never match the penalties and duties the kinship system imposes. Then he comes up with this beauty:

 

Few men would ever bother to enter into a romantic heterosexual marriage--much less three, as I have done--were it not for the iron grip of necessity that falls upon us when we are unwise enough to fall in love with a woman other than our mom.

 

So the kinship system worked so well that he married three times. LOL

 

Also hilarious because they argue for the "sanctity of marriage." Christianity became the official religion of England because the king wanted a divorce.

 

 

Christianity had existed in England for centuries before they adopted the Anglican church, please fact check yourself.

 

Henry VIII. I'm talking about the tie broken between the Church of England and Catholic Rome.

 

I know what you are talking about, but you said "Christianity became the official religion" under his reign, which is incorrect.

 

It's technically not wrong, though because up until that point they were Catholic. So, although there was no literal "conversion," they definitely weren't part of the Roman church anymore.

 

It technically is wrong, because Henry was Roman Catholic BEFORE the Anglican church, so contrary to your original statement, Christianity was already the official religion before Anglican Christianity.

 

It seems like nitpicking, but if you are going to criticize how stupid an idea is, don't half ass opinionated statements and pass them off as fact. Simple as that.

 

Edit: Sorry for sounding assholish, but Ive been dealing with this a lot lately and it's starting to irk me.

[encey]

http://lesbianlife.about.com/cs/wedding/a/unionvmarriage.htm

 

here is one of the big ones though:

 

Benefits:

 

The General Accounting Office in 1997 released a list of 1,049 benefits and protections available to heterosexual married couples. These benefits range from federal benefits, such as survivor benefits through Social Security, sick leave to care for ailing partner, tax breaks, veterans benefits and insurance breaks. They also include things like family discounts, obtaining family insurance through your employer, visiting your spouse in the hospital and making medical decisions if your partner is unable to. Civil Unions protect some of these rights, but not all of them.

Thanks, this is helpful.

 

What this makes me think about the ruling is that the issue is far from settled, and that this whole round was just about the technical terms 'revision' and 'amendment,' which is not very interesting, and is frustrating to have to deal with in the first place.

[Guest fox]

i don't really understand why the voters got to decide on this in the first place. why not ask them if we should sacrafice jews? to ask them and they say 'no'. to then turn around and say actually thats illegal seems bizarre (obv that didnt happen though)

 

exactly. it shouldn't have even been allowed to go to a vote. anyone with half a brain can see the implications and see straight away that it's unconstitutional. you can't single out groups and deny them access to certain rights because you don't like something innate about them. it's as simple as that.

 

wait a minute. if the voters don't get to decide then who does? just because you don't like or agree with the conclusion they came to doesn't mean democracy itself is the problem. if the voters don't get a voice then its a dictatorship.

 

yes, but we've already firmly established that it's against the constitution to strip any individual of their rights, so even proposing an amendment like this is by nature illegal according to the laws of this country.

 

a) the constitution can strip people of their rights, and has been used to do so - but only when it is legally amended to do so.

 

b) for rights to be stripped from someone, they have to have that right in the first place. so where did the right to gay marriage come from? who invested those individuals with that right, or did they assert it themselves? a constitution defines what rights are reserved to individuals, and what rights individuals give up to their government. if the people of the state of california say that they are not willing to invest homosexuals with the right to marry, that's their decision.

 

you say you are for more freedom (and i'm not trying to imply otherwise, really) but remember that the people of california have the right and the freedom to disagree with you, even if they are wrong by your moral standards.

[playbynumbers]

i don't give a flying fuck about this either way, but actually thought this article was pretty convincing:

 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...16/533narty.asp

 

really? I would have expected more from you.

 

look at this sentence and see if you agree:

The embrace of homosexuality in Western culture has come about with unbelievable speed--far more rapidly than the feminist revolution or racial equality.

 

 

what exactly is mistaken about this sentence? it's quite true, whether or not you see this as a good thing or a bad thing; all three of these things have been rapidly accepted, homosexuality more quickly than the others. and what about, like, everything else he said?

 

 

 

 

is playbynumbers letting Rook use his account?

 

i wish you guys would get this straight; i've been posting on such things since 2004. if anything, though it's retarded to think of this way, you should be asking rook if he's 'using MY account'

 

 

 

 

 

but seriously folks if you know a single gay person it's pretty hard not to fall on the pro marriage side of this, unless you staunchly believe government should stay out of marriage entirely.

 

i was raised by two gay men (my father came out when i was 7, and won custody after a divorce), in a perfectly normal and happy household. i knew more gay people than straight people growing up, and i can honestly say that, despite rampant drug use and promiscuity in certain sectors of gay culture, there's absolutely nothing 'weird' or wrong with de facto gay marriages, in my experience. it worked just like a normal 'marriage,' though of course no one was calling it that.

 

and as i mentioned, i don't really give a flying fuck about this either way; what civil society decides to call marriage really isn't very important to me. i just thought that the article --- and please let's not use the ad hominem that it's from the weekly standard, as if that invalidates the guy's arguments --- was very interesting, and mostly true. it would be nice if someone could actually, you know, address the article

[Guest maus]

b) for rights to be stripped from someone, they have to have that right in the first place. so where did the right to gay marriage come from? who invested those individuals with that right, or did they assert it themselves? a constitution defines what rights are reserved to individuals, and what rights individuals give up to their government. if the people of the state of california say that they are not willing to invest homosexuals with the right to marry, that's their decision.

 

they did have that right in the first place, conceptually speaking. there's never been language in any law about marriage that says "except gay people". california is amending the existing law specifically to exclude gay marriage. hence it being a proposition.

 

this whole issue is similar to suddenly saying "chinese people can't have library cards". there would be huge public backlash saying you can't strip rights of a given segment of the population... the argument wouldn't be about whether or not to GIVE them those rights.

[awepittance]

i just thought that the article --- and please let's not use the ad hominem that it's from the weekly standard, as if that invalidates the guy's arguments --- was very interesting, and mostly true. it would be nice if someone could actually, you know, address the article

 

i think a bunch of people did earlier in the thread, and i disagreed with the article on similar merits as other posters so i didn't want to be redundant, instead showing where the article came from. sorry i thought it needed to be done

 

what exactly is mistaken about this sentence? it's quite true, whether or not you see this as a good thing or a bad thing; all three of these things have been rapidly accepted, homosexuality more quickly than the others. and what about, like, everything else he said?

 

you assert this strongly as if it's fact, but i'm sorry to say it's just your opinion. you are quite welcome to have this opinion just don't go around wielding it as if it's infallible .

 

you say you are for more freedom (and i'm not trying to imply otherwise, really) but remember that the people of california have the right and the freedom to disagree with you, even if they are wrong by your moral standards.

 

sure everybody has the right to disagree and somehow be threatened by gays existing but you act as if its ok for those same people to strip an entire segment of the population of their right to get married based on a hypocritical christian moral. see the loop this is going in?

 

 

[playbynumbers]

what exactly is mistaken about this sentence? it's quite true, whether or not you see this as a good thing or a bad thing; all three of these things have been rapidly accepted, homosexuality more quickly than the others. and what about, like, everything else he said?

 

you assert this strongly as if it's fact, but i'm sorry to say it's just your opinion. you are quite welcome to have this opinion just don't go around wielding it as if it's infallible .

 

 

how are these three things not MUCH more widely accepted than they were in, say, 1930? it was illegal for blacks to marry whites as recently as 1967; homosexual acts were a crime in the 1950s; and women were obviously treated as non-fully-rational second-class citizens until the 1960s.

[awepittance]

what exactly is mistaken about this sentence? it's quite true, whether or not you see this as a good thing or a bad thing; all three of these things have been rapidly accepted, homosexuality more quickly than the others. and what about, like, everything else he said?

 

you assert this strongly as if it's fact, but i'm sorry to say it's just your opinion. you are quite welcome to have this opinion just don't go around wielding it as if it's infallible .

 

 

how are these three things not MUCH more widely accepted than they were in, say, 1930? it was illegal for blacks to marry whites as recently as 1967; homosexual acts were a crime in the 1950s; and women were obviously treated as non-fully-rational second-class citizens until the 1960s.

i was disagreeing with the idea that homosexuality has been accepted more rapidly than the others. As far as i can tell homosexuality and it's acceptance in western society has gone in waves going back very far into our history.

 

b) for rights to be stripped from someone, they have to have that right in the first place. so where did the right to gay marriage come from? who invested those individuals with that right, or did they assert it themselves? a constitution defines what rights are reserved to individuals, and what rights individuals give up to their government. if the people of the state of california say that they are not willing to invest homosexuals with the right to marry, that's their decision.

 

they did have that right in the first place, conceptually speaking. there's never been language in any law about marriage that says "except gay people". california is amending the existing law specifically to exclude gay marriage. hence it being a proposition.

 

truth

[encey]

its

[chenGOD]

i don't give a flying fuck about this either way, but actually thought this article was pretty convincing:

 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...16/533narty.asp

 

really? I would have expected more from you.

 

look at this sentence and see if you agree:

The embrace of homosexuality in Western culture has come about with unbelievable speed--far more rapidly than the feminist revolution or racial equality.

 

 

what exactly is mistaken about this sentence? it's quite true, whether or not you see this as a good thing or a bad thing; all three of these things have been rapidly accepted, homosexuality more quickly than the others. and what about, like, everything else he said?

Homosexuality has been embraced in western culture since the Greeks.

Ask the number of black guys in jail for weed offences if they agree that there's racial equality in America.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but seriously folks if you know a single gay person it's pretty hard not to fall on the pro marriage side of this, unless you staunchly believe government should stay out of marriage entirely.

 

i was raised by two gay men ....there's absolutely nothing 'weird' or wrong with de facto gay marriages, in my experience. it worked just like a normal 'marriage,' though of course no one was calling it that.

 

 

So you think that the gay marriages worked just fine, yet you agree with this article which states that gay marriages won't work?

 

 

The guy goes on and on about how gay marriages won't work because of the kinship system, but then never explains why they won't work.

[playbynumbers]

he author goes on and on about the kinship system, and all the obligations that it poses on a married couple and how wedding rings and ceremonies will never

 

yet you're not mentioning WHY he's going on about the kinship system.

 

 

 

The entire conclusion is amazing:

 

"Every day thousands of ordinary heterosexual men surrender the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires. Instead, heroically, resignedly, we march up the aisle with our new brides, starting out upon what that cad poet Shelley called the longest journey, attired in the chains of the kinship system--a system from which you have been spared. If gay men and women could see the price that humanity--particularly the women and children among us--will pay, simply in order that a gay person can say of someone she already loves with perfect competence, "Hey, meet the missus!"--no doubt they will think again. If not, we're about to see how well humanity will do without something as basic to our existence as gravity."

 

amazing because he has a point? that a small and vocal minority of gay people insist on having their mutual sexual arrangement called "marriage", and that this has consequences?

 

 

 

 

i was disagreeing with the idea that homosexuality has been accepted more rapidly than the others. As far as i can tell homosexuality and it's acceptance in western society has gone in waves going back very far into our history.

truth

 

well ... i mean, not exactly. there was homosexuality among the cultural elite in athenian greece, for example, but actually this was frowned upon in polite society, and was something of a weird subculture. in most tribal societies, homosexuality was strictly taboo. though certainly, in brief periods of spartan or roman or renaissance culture, in cities, among elites (and/or bohemians), there has been some marginal acceptance of homosexual behavior. but the point of the article, and i think it's a true point, is that the idea of mainstreaming homosexuality to the point where there's a tv channel for gay people, various magazines for gay people, etc., etc., is a very new development (and again, not necessarily a bad one).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

also, guys, let me risk being patronizing here for a minute, and warn all of you that there's a completely ridiculous groupthink among 99% of people under 35, like all of my high school and college friends for example, that the highest and only virtue is 'tolerance' --- i.e. relativism, nihilism --- whether expressed as a reflexive support for absolutely anything that can be possibly construed as supporting a 'minority' or 'oppressed' group, or as instinctive empathy for the truth claims of 'formerly colonialized people' (i.e., anyone who isn't a white european male automatically gains some sort of magical insight into truth --- hence the contemporary obsession with, among other things, the gnostic gospels or native american spirituality). there actually are values other than 'tolerance', in the liberalistic sense of 'everyone can decide their own truth and their own vision of reality, no one is more right than anyone else.'

 

all of the people on watmm, and just young people generally, really do seem to hold this in an extremely dogmatic and unreflective way. i'd just like to point out that maybe there are things like truth, nature, etc.; that some cultures that are 'better' or higher than other cultures, etc. the idea that 'everyone is free to create their own truth' is PRECISELY as culturally biased and arbitrary and weirdly dogmatic as any other view.

 

 

[chenGOD]

Oh yes that's right, we're all just a bunch of deluded moral relativists. Now define "better". ad hominem indeed.

 

 

I have no idea why the fuck he's going on about the kinship system, because as far as I can tell the kinship system will work just as well in a gay marriage.

People who are openly gay enough to be married surely have the support of their family (and there are plenty of heterosexual marriages that don't have the blessings of either set of parents). There are many people with whom gays can't marry (ie. other men and women who aren't gay). And while I'm not looking at the article and can't recall all of the statements the author made about the kinship system; most, if not all of them, would hold true if it were a gay or heterosexual marriage.

 

You still haven't answered this question,

You grew up in a gay community and you thought (and saw?) that gay marriages worked as well as heterosexual marriage, yet you agree with the author of the article that gay marriages won't work. Why?

[hayhook]

Guess I will be spending my vacation dollars in either new England or Iowa (instead of CA)

 

Easy way to boycott a state that is already hurting financially, maybe make a statement.

 

The gays in CA should walk out from work today. The state would fucking shut down.

 

 

[awepittance]

You grew up in a gay community and you thought (and saw?) that gay marriages worked as well as heterosexual marriage, yet you agree with the author of the article that gay marriages won't work. Why?

 

I too am still waiting for PBN's own personal explanation for his stance of 'not giving a shit either way'

the article didn't really help me find that out. You say you were raised by 2 gay men and i am very much interested to hear your own opinion on why you don't give a shit.

PBN you accuse people who say being pro gay marriage = tolerance of having some sort of group think trendy moral relativism (you're really on a kick with using a broad brush of painting people as relativists lately)

but then you refuse to really back up your own statements and continually point to a singular article written by someone else.

 

[Guest catsonearth]

i don't really understand why the voters got to decide on this in the first place. why not ask them if we should sacrafice jews? to ask them and they say 'no'. to then turn around and say actually thats illegal seems bizarre (obv that didnt happen though)

 

exactly. it shouldn't have even been allowed to go to a vote. anyone with half a brain can see the implications and see straight away that it's unconstitutional. you can't single out groups and deny them access to certain rights because you don't like something innate about them. it's as simple as that.

 

wait a minute. if the voters don't get to decide then who does? just because you don't like or agree with the conclusion they came to doesn't mean democracy itself is the problem. if the voters don't get a voice then its a dictatorship.

 

yes, but we've already firmly established that it's against the constitution to strip any individual of their rights, so even proposing an amendment like this is by nature illegal according to the laws of this country.

 

a) the constitution can strip people of their rights, and has been used to do so - but only when it is legally amended to do so.

 

b) for rights to be stripped from someone, they have to have that right in the first place. so where did the right to gay marriage come from? who invested those individuals with that right, or did they assert it themselves? a constitution defines what rights are reserved to individuals, and what rights individuals give up to their government. if the people of the state of california say that they are not willing to invest homosexuals with the right to marry, that's their decision.

 

you say you are for more freedom (and i'm not trying to imply otherwise, really) but remember that the people of california have the right and the freedom to disagree with you, even if they are wrong by your moral standards.

 

people have the right to think whatever the hell they want to think, even if i don't agree with it, but there's a big difference between thinking and acting. people don't have the right to do whatever they think. there are laws that were created to protect you and i from being oppressed or discriminated against based on what other people think. that is one thing about our country that should never be changed because it's a fundamental cornerstone of the american ideal, without it everything else falls apart. it says right in our declaration of independence that "all men are created equal" and should thus be given equal protection under the law.

 

this is not a religious issue of what marriage means, in fact it has nothing to do with religion at all. decades ago our country's government decided to offer incentives to couples to get married because they believed it would stimulate the economy and help stabilize the country. by getting married a couple would then likely buy a house, have kids, buy crap for those kids and become a productive member of society instead of a louse just looking after themselves. so now we have governmental perks rewarded to couples that decide to go down that route. now what they are really saying is "if you decide to make the choice to contract with each other as a couple to cohabitate and take part in all these things that potentially benefit us as a country, we'll cut you a break and offer you this, this and this and we'll also give you this status and this status".

 

there's nothing in the legal terms or conditions of these perks stating that you must be male and female or that you must have children or even that you must have sex with your partner and it certainly doesn't say you need approval from a religious group ahead of time. there are implications that you should "settle down" and do the kid and house thing and additional benefits for those things, but there are plenty of straight couples that don't go that route and plenty of gay couples that end up adopting or raising kids from a previous marriage or a plethora of different situations. but the ability to reproduce naturally is not a requirement for this or else thousands of infertile straight couples would be barred from marriage as well. so if a gay couple decides that they want to take the plunge, get married and settle down together they are not in essence doing anything that wouldn't qualify them to receive those benefits. yet they're being denied them because they don't fall into the strict definitions of what it means to be a couple dictated by a completely removed religious ideal that has no say in the making of government contracts.

 

in no way is there an opening in this for a religious institution or a group of like-minded religious people to dictate what the government can and can't do in terms of rewarding citizens for their overall contribution to maintaining stability in society. if religious groups have a problem with the "sanctity of marriage" being ruined by the government's actions they have a few options - they can propose the government quit offering perks for marriage altogether because marriage is a strictly religious tradition that has no place in government or they can simply have a churchwide ordinance saying "we're not going to allow any gays to have their ceremonies in our churches", but what they can't do is attempt to rewrite fundamental cornerstones of our culture to allow discrimination against people based on an innate trait within them that they don't approve of.

 

it has nothing to do with denying people their right to vote on issues because it's not legal to even vote on something like this. just because someone hates black people and can recruit a substantial group of ignorant bastards to agree with them doesn't mean they have the right to then write discrimination against black people into our state constitution. it's just not the way things are supposed to work here.

[awepittance]

Homosexuality has been embraced in western culture since the Greeks.

Ask the number of black guys in jail for weed offences if they agree that there's racial equality in America.

 

homosexuality as a concept i would agree with you, but openly practiced homosexuality is still imo far from accepted in the united states an in most western cultures. If 2 guys kissed eachother in a shopping mall in my home town they might get their asses beat.

 

I also disagree that just because a corporation has found gay culture bankable (getting their own channel, magazines etc) it has a direct correlation with society as a whole being more accepting of gays.

 

i don't really understand why the voters got to decide on this in the first place. why not ask them if we should sacrafice jews? to ask them and they say 'no'. to then turn around and say actually thats illegal seems bizarre (obv that didnt happen though)

 

exactly. it shouldn't have even been allowed to go to a vote. anyone with half a brain can see the implications and see straight away that it's unconstitutional. you can't single out groups and deny them access to certain rights because you don't like something innate about them. it's as simple as that.

 

wait a minute. if the voters don't get to decide then who does? just because you don't like or agree with the conclusion they came to doesn't mean democracy itself is the problem. if the voters don't get a voice then its a dictatorship.

 

yes, but we've already firmly established that it's against the constitution to strip any individual of their rights, so even proposing an amendment like this is by nature illegal according to the laws of this country.

 

a) the constitution can strip people of their rights, and has been used to do so - but only when it is legally amended to do so.

 

b) for rights to be stripped from someone, they have to have that right in the first place. so where did the right to gay marriage come from? who invested those individuals with that right, or did they assert it themselves? a constitution defines what rights are reserved to individuals, and what rights individuals give up to their government. if the people of the state of california say that they are not willing to invest homosexuals with the right to marry, that's their decision.

 

you say you are for more freedom (and i'm not trying to imply otherwise, really) but remember that the people of california have the right and the freedom to disagree with you, even if they are wrong by your moral standards.

 

people have the right to think whatever the hell they want to think, even if i don't agree with it, but there's a big difference between thinking and acting. people don't have the right to do whatever they think. there are laws that were created to protect you and i from being oppressed or discriminated against based on what other people think. that is one thing about our country that should never be changed because it's a fundamental cornerstone of the american ideal, without it everything else falls apart. it says right in our declaration of independence that "all men are created equal" and should thus be given equal protection under the law.

 

this is not a religious issue of what marriage means, in fact it has nothing to do with religion at all. decades ago our country's government decided to offer incentives to couples to get married because they believed it would stimulate the economy and help stabilize the country. by getting married a couple would then likely buy a house, have kids, buy crap for those kids and become a productive member of society instead of a louse just looking after themselves. so now we have governmental perks rewarded to couples that decide to go down that route. now what they are really saying is "if you decide to make the choice to contract with each other as a couple to cohabitate and take part in all these things that potentially benefit us as a country, we'll cut you a break and offer you this, this and this and we'll also give you this status and this status".

 

there's nothing in the legal terms or conditions of these perks stating that you must be male and female or that you must have children or even that you must have sex with your partner and it certainly doesn't say you need approval from a religious group ahead of time. there are implications that you should "settle down" and do the kid and house thing and additional benefits for those things, but there are plenty of straight couples that don't go that route and plenty of gay couples that end up adopting or raising kids from a previous marriage or a plethora of different situations. but the ability to reproduce naturally is not a requirement for this or else thousands of infertile straight couples would be barred from marriage as well. so if a gay couple decides that they want to take the plunge, get married and settle down together they are not in essence doing anything that wouldn't qualify them to receive those benefits. yet they're being denied them because they don't fall into the strict definitions of what it means to be a couple dictated by a completely removed religious ideal that has no say in the making of government contracts.

 

in no way is there an opening in this for a religious institution or a group of like-minded religious people to dictate what the government can and can't do in terms of rewarding citizens for their overall contribution to maintaining stability in society. if religious groups have a problem with the "sanctity of marriage" being ruined by the government's actions they have a few options - they can propose the government quit offering perks for marriage altogether because marriage is a strictly religious tradition that has no place in government or they can simply have a churchwide ordinance saying "we're not going to allow any gays to have their ceremonies in our churches", but what they can't do is attempt to rewrite fundamental cornerstones of our culture to allow discrimination against people based on an innate trait within them that they don't approve of.

 

it has nothing to do with denying people their right to vote on issues because it's not legal to even vote on something like this. just because someone hates black people and can recruit a substantial group of ignorant bastards to agree with them doesn't mean they have the right to then write discrimination against black people into our state constitution. it's just not the way things are supposed to work here.

 

groupthink relativist !