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California voters approve gay-marriage ban


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Seriously If Prop 8 failed. Ask yourself honestly. You don't think that any gays would put churches in the gun sites and take aim. Because if you don't believe that that's what it will eventually come to, your not giving humans enough credit. Gay and most churches are quite opposite when it come to (fill in the blanks).

Think about it.

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There's no claim to refute. You mentioned people suing bishops to make them marry gay couples, then admitted it hasn't happened. And you are a fearmonger. You're using the fear of gay people being married by churches to try to sway opinions. That's exactly what fearmongering is. I have no problem calling you names when you so clearly represent them.
Truth is not fearmongering, can you please stop calling me names. You just refuse to see the truth. You just like playing the part of the oppressed. You think it give you the right to ignore truth and dismiss it by qualifying it as racist, homophobic, fearmongering etc, etc, etc,. How sad.
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Seriously If Prop 8 failed. Ask yourself honestly. You don't think that any gays would put churches in the gun sites and take aim. Because if you don't believe that that's what it will eventually come to, your not giving humans enough credit. Gay and most churches are quite opposite when it come to (fill in the blanks).

Think about it.

 

 

no they wont, because they can't. Certainly they can try, but there is absolutely no legal ground to stand on. The constitution is very clear on this, church cant interfere with the state and the state can't interfere with the church. Anyone can choose to sue anyone, however with no legal constitutional ground to stand on the cases would be dismissed. Do you understand how our legal system works?

 

the constitution is very clear on this.

 

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

 

The state can not legally dictate how the church exercises its religion.

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I must say - the notion of the law telling religious people what to do is fine by me anyway. If those religiously motivated behaviours are unreasonable and promote discrimination and hate. "you can't come in here you're black" - "you can't come in here you're homosexual" - "we won't provide you with a service because you're black and gay". I don't follow it, and I don't know why it's tolerated. You wouldn't be allowed to do that elsewhere, like in a job interview "we have special codes of conduct and if you're gay, get out of our building". It's clearly ridiculous, and I don't see why you can't have laws which tell people not to discriminate. There are plenty of other things in the bible and in other holy books that people ignore because they're obviously false or just a bit silly IE cutting people's hands off, stoning, people living to 500 years old and so on. It's a bit odd to cling onto something like this specifically when people are happy to ignore the other things, I dunno, that's my perspective.

 

I'm trying to be as polite as I can in the way I am phrasing things, I know this is a subject that can easily explode - but I don't think this point has been raised yet. People are arguing about something trivial in the first place, that's my point. The issue is not how to appease religious people and allow them to continue to discriminate and spread the notion that it's wrong to be gay. The issue is about treating everyone fairly. In the event that you get some people to abandon some ancient illogical beliefs along the way so that they are forced by law to be nicer and treat people equally - even better!

 

But, many people seem to be saying that this isn't what is going on anyway, and that homosexuals who want to marry would do so outside religion. So... I don't get it, there's not even anything to say about it

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I don't think it's as much bigotry and a type of racist issue as all you name callers pretend it to be. It's about freedom.

 

Yeah, it's about the freedom of people who are attracted to members of their own sex to marry the people they love just as straight people can. It's about equal rights. But I gather that that's not what you meant. What did you mean? Does giving all people the same marriage rights (the right to marry their romantic partner, as opposed to the "right" to marry someone they don't love that homosexuals have now) somehow infringe on the freedom of heterosexual people?

 

And I don't think most people are as homophobic as many people would have you believe. (once again name callers) I thnk it's more that people don't want other peoples lifestlye crammed down their throat. i.e. The Bishop of your church will marry us or we'll take you to court and sue you. That's not tolerance. Yet tolerance is something the gay community is always screaming about. Doing it your way and forcing everyone else to do it your way, is not freedom, it's tyranny.

 

How does simply giving the same legal marriage rights to gays and lesbians that straight people have cram their lifestyle down anyone's throat? We're talking about marriage as a legal institution here. Whether or not some gay and lesbian people want to lobby the Catholic church to marry gay couples--which they can do regardless of the legal status of marriage--is irrelevant to that. Churches and the state are completely separate institutions. So pointing out that this could happen is not only not a compelling argument concerning state-sanctioned marriage, it's not even an argument concerning that at all.

 

If anyone is cramming their lifestyle down anyone's throat, it is straight people insisting that gay people shouldn't be able to marry (in the legal, not the church ceremony sense) their partners.

 

And of course churches are still free to have or not have marriage ceremonies for gay couples regardless of whether gay couples can get legally married. And if your church for whatever reason decides to start having weddings for homosexuals, you or anyone else in your church who doesn't like it is free to join another church. All of these things are true regardless of whether or not the state gives out marriage licenses to gay couples.

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The only smart thing to do here is to just ignore Vegan Joe from now on. Honestly, he is not intrested in having a serious discussion and arguing with him won't help anyone. He just wants to be featured in Guiness book of world records for using the word "bigot" most times.

If we stop responding to his statements and stop reading his posts he will "dissapear". Ignorance is bliss

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Seriously If Prop 8 failed. Ask yourself honestly. You don't think that any gays would put churches in the gun sites and take aim. Because if you don't believe that that's what it will eventually come to, your not giving humans enough credit. Gay and most churches are quite opposite when it come to (fill in the blanks).

Think about it.

 

You've already conceded that this was unlikely, but so what if it were likely? (Note that you've not given any argument as to why the legal status of gay marriage would affect its likelihood anyway.) How is this an argument against giving gay people the right to legally marry their partners?

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...

 

I can't help it if you can't understand the legal wrangling that will go on between gays and religious institutions, when marraige is defined as between two people, irrigardless of gender. And these institutions who do much good in the world with all their charities, will be forced to spend these moneys on legal representation.

Who is vindictive and who is tolerant.

Edited by Vegan Joe
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. It's about freedom... It's about equal rights. .

No it's not. They have the same freedoms, they have the same rights. (They can hate a well as the next guy).

It all about a word.

 

Nope that's not true at all. Heteros who can marry have many more actual legal rights, benefits, and privileges than people who can't have their marriages recognized by the government. This is not only true on the state level for those states that do not recognize homosexual unions, but even for gay couples marries in places where it's legal (Massachusetts, they can not access the same actual lawful rights that married heteros can access on the federal level.

 

The General Accounting Office (the investigative arm of Congress) was asked to look at this issue. Here's their report:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf

 

This issue is not just about a mere word.

It is not about some people whining over nothing.

This is about an entire class of US citizens being denied access to basic rights that other citizens have.

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Nope that's not true at all. Heteros who can marry have many more actual legal rights, benefits, and privileges than people who can't have their marriages recognized by the government. This is not only true on the state level for those states that do not recognize homosexual unions, but even for gay couples marries in places where it's legal (Massachusetts, they can not access the same actual lawful rights that married heteros can access on the federal level.

 

The General Accounting Office (the investigative arm of Congress) was asked to look at this issue. Here's their report:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf

 

This issue is not just about a mere word.

It is not about some people whining over nothing.

This is about an entire class of US citizens being denied access to basic rights that other citizens have.

That's what I'm hearing: The only way to really fix it is to add it to the US Constitution.

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http://blog.boxcarpoetry.com/?p=375

^^^ Full Article^^^

 

 

 

Where the problems seem to lie in the current Prop 8 debate

 

“Marriage” has legal, social, and religious significance for different people and to varying degrees. For religious people “marriage” is seen as a sacred rite and generally seen as a divinely appointed ordinance/covenant for binding together a man and woman with God (some denominations perform same sex unions, but these still represent a minority position) . Religious people are typically afraid for two different reasons, but not all religious people ascribe to both. First, some are simply anti-homosexual, believing that since homosexuality is against their beliefs, they are exercising their free speech and democratic right to vote according to their beliefs. Second, others are afraid that changing the definition of “marriage” will create a legal opening through which churches’ right to restrict marriage to being between a man and a woman will be challenged, and by extension, their rights to restrict access to married student housing on private religious schools and universities, and their rights to worship and teach their concept of marriage without government intervention. Most Mormons who voted Yes that I know (and not every Mormon I know voted Yes), fall in the second camp. They may not have known the true level of threat actually involved in such a change, but they voted based on the level of knowledge that they were able to obtain and their level of concern with regards to defending what they honestly perceived as a serious challenge to the temple marriage. If the No on 8 people had spent more time addressing these concerns, ensuring that the legal questions were wholly addressed (and not just dismissed as thinly-veiled bigotry), and presenting strong assurances that there wasn’t some secret agenda or conspiracy at play, they most likely would have drawn a considerably larger portion of the second camp over to the No side. The key here (as is the case with anything that revolves around fear and the threat of the unknown) is providing ample information in an unbiased (or at least, respectful) fashion. When the approach turns to the language of belittlement, misinformation, slander, and ad-hominem attack, the other side closes down, discussion ends, and the sides become more polarized. Both sides were guilty of overplaying the fear card.

In contemporary secular society, the religious aspect of “marriage” has faded or morphed, becoming instead a legal term to describe a particular type of civil union which has historically been preferred because it was seen as have a positive stabilizing effect on society as a whole (it created family units and an identifiable set of obligations and duties between parents and children which encouraged people to stay put, earn more, and care about education and community-building). Why did Yes on 8 succeed with this group? Because the campaign focused on the existing commonalities between civil unions and marriages, presented images of happy traditional families, structured their message on a narrative of community building and not on entitlement (I’m not saying that the GLBT community is not entitled to these rights, just pointing out that fixation on the entitlement language finger points to the larger society and says - “you guys are wrong and guilty of discrimination” — while often true, it’s the wrong tone for establishing common ground and persuading others who are not in that minority community that there is something they need to be concerned about too). Another miss on the GLBT side — while Prop 8 might be offensive for a variety of reasons, the real problems with regard to denied rights and protections actually lie in the Federal and State DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) which explicitly exclude same sex couples from those rights. Like Obama, I’m all for repealing this legislation — those rights and protections should be available for all, as long as they do not interfere with the churches’ rights to freedom of religion.

Within the gay-rights community (and as this election has demonstrated, in a growing portion of the rest of the California population) the term “marriage” has become a civil right which has been used to identify those who have state sanctioned and legally protectable unions with attendant federal rights and protections, from those who do not. As has been noted in other blogs and articles, the No on 8 community made a fatal assumption that everyone else agreed with them that sexual orientation was innate and a protectable civil right (let’s leave out the reality that the State laws already make it a civil right, and just deal with common perceptions in the larger community). But a considerable number of Californians (not just the religiously active), as it turns out, still consider orientation a chosen behavior or lifestyle and not protected attribute. Furthermore, in the responses and articles I’ve read, it’s clear that some blacks and Asian Americans resented what was viewed as an appropriation of their own civil rights narrative for the sake of a minority which has often been represented in the media as white, agnostic, wealthy, and privileged (blame Hollywood and cable TV for that - I know that’s not really the case). Where the Yes campaign reached out to the black, Asian American, and Latino communities, and built multi-faith coalitions which coordinated efforts, encouraged a broad grassroots support system (the success of which we saw in Obama’s campaign), and utilized multi-lingual phonebanks (English, Spanish, Korean, etc) — the No campaign does not seem to have coordinated to the same degree, and perhaps relied too much on larger organizations and celebrities, and thus in the end failed to create a narrative that felt compelling and common to the other communities and traditional families. Because not enough effort was made to bridge cultural and religious differences, the No on 8 campaign missed a chance to do more. In the late and post-Prop 8 environment, the protests and vitriol, especially the backlash against Prop 8 supporters through recent ads and property damage, has been so heated and vengeful, that instead of mending relations with those communities, has further divided the gay community from those who may have sat on the fence this time.

We are having this debate because “marriage” is a ubiquitous term in and federal and state legislation. If we eliminated all mention of marriage and replaced it with “domestic partnership” as Canada has done, we would leave individual churches and religions to decide how “marriage” is defined and ensure that every couple’s rights regardless of orientation were protected under law. Everyone would apply for the same civil union process (no preferred marriage status) and everyone would be dealt with exactly the same. As for lingering concerns about children’s education — just ensure that different types of “families” are discussed (if at all) and that the definition of “marriage” is left at home. In all things we should work toward compassion and equality for basic human rights. This includes the right to dress differently, speak differently, and yes, heaven forbid, believe differently from one another.

 

What I see needs to happen

 

We need to stop resorting to rioting, violence, and namecalling. Protesting is fine, but keep things civil and respectable. It pains me to hear that people have graffitied the walls of LDS temple in Santa Monica and LDS churches in various places in California. That people are tracking down the names and addresses of Mormon donors to the Yes on 8 campaign (what do they intend to do with that information?). That others will boycott businesses, bands, singers, and other celebrities simply because they are LDS, regardless of how they may have personally stood on this issue. Does this sound familiar? It does to me and scares me. It also pains me to hear when members or former members of my faith have given into anger or fear and retaliated with violence in word or action. This is unacceptable and if unchecked will lead to an escalation in hate crimes. Let’s stop this now.

We need to stop using the ballot to determine civil rights applicability. This is a deep legislative issue with potentially far-reaching consequences. Why did we let this become a referandum on the current level of public acceptance/understanding of a term?

We need to stop shouting and start listening. Really. It helps. No more assumptions. No more generalizations. No more ads. Both sides have not done their homework as well as they should have.

We need to realize that no one organization or group was responsible for the passing of Prop 8. The very populations which came out to support Obama were the source of many of those Yes votes. Mormons make up 2% of California’s population. The LDS Church didn’t donate any money of its own, but merely encouraged its members to donate the time and money they could and to the degree they felt comfortable with (at least, that was the way it was framed in my area). Each member made their own decision as to how and if they would support Prop 8. Not everyone did. Those that did, often didn’t do much other than vote. Some donated a great deal of time and money — they felt that this was a difficult trial of their faith, but that it was a necessary part of their spiritual growth — as painful and heartbreaking as it may have been for them and for their families, they chose to do so. Others felt that they could not in good conscience support Prop 8 and didn’t. There was no condemnation from the pulpit. No threat of excommunication, one way or the other. When the letter was read, many of us in my congregation felt extremely torn, having very dear co-workers, neighbors, friends, and family members who are gay, but also wanting to protect a sacred rite central to our faith. There were no easy answers. Most of us did what we have always been encouraged to do, we went home, studied it out for ourselves, prayed about it and asked for inspiration on what to do next. There was no easy answer and many people I’ve talked to about it expressed deep empathy and anguish about having to choose. I believe this was likely the case for many many others in other congregations, in other faiths, in other communities. Even if someone voted Yes on 8, there wasn’t a 100% Yes — it was 90% or 75%, or 51% or even 35% Yes, 31% No, and 34% Can’t Decide. Churches didn’t vote Yes. Individual members did. To assume that every Yes on 8 was a hate-filled vote or the reflection of institutionalized discrimination is a very sad and depressing misrepresentation of the actual situation. Even if there are problems, individuals always have the right to dissent and vote on their own conscience in that voting both. Attacking the institutions won’t address the misunderstanding and lack of information which got us here.

We need to compromise. As mentioned before, I think the best thing is to repeal or dramatically alter the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) and remove the language which explicitly removes rights from GLBT couples. Again, I like Canada’s solution and am all in favor for removing “marriage” altogether from legislation and just using “domestic partnership.” Many Mormons I know would be fine with such a move, once it was made clear to them what rights were being withheld (it’s hard to tell someone it’s time to repeal an act called the Defense of Marriage). Equality and compassion. Likewise, GLBT activist lobbies need to be willing to give some space to religious organizations and universities. This should not be a competition between civil liberties and the freedom of religion. We can and need to agree to get out of each other’s business.

Ok, so in the end, I still don’t have a good answer. I feel empathetic to both sides, but recognize that both right now are holding on tenaciously to the word “marriage” because it represents something much larger. Because no one wants to acknowledge that there may simply be too many fundamental differences between how each group wants to use the word, we can’t move past it.

Let’s move forward not backward. Let’s find common ground, research our issues and concerns, and find ways of addressing them. Let’s not engage in war — we’re moving out of the Bush era now. Let’s find appropriate solutions which remove fear from the equation and replace it with compassion and education. We voted for change, didn’t we? We can do it.

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You didn't answer my question. How is it an argument one way or another about whether it's appropriate to grant the legal right to marry their partner to gay individuals to say that gay people might be more likely to challenge some churches' refusal to perform a religious marriage ceremony for gay couples?

 

Either people (at least adults) should have the same rights or not. If you believe that gay people shouldn't have the right to marry their partners but straight people should, you believe in discrimination. It's as simple as that.

 

...

 

I can't help it if you can't understand the legal wrangling that will go on between gays and religious institutions, when marraige is defined as between two people, irrigardless of gender. And these institutions who do much good in the world with all their charities, will be forced to spend these moneys on legal representation.

Who is vindictive and who is tolerant.

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You didn't answer my question. How is it an argument one way or another about whether it's appropriate to grant the legal right to marry their partner to gay individuals to say that gay people might be more likely to challenge some churches' refusal to perform a religious marriage ceremony for gay couples?

 

Either people (at least adults) should have the same rights or not. If you believe that gay people shouldn't have the right to marry their partners but straight people should, you believe in discrimination. It's as simple as that.

Did you read any of that last article? Maybe you really don't want to understand. Maybe you're like some of those people that the article talks about.

Or maybe you're just jumping on a bandwagon for the sake of rattling your saber.

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This issue is not just about a mere word.

It is not about some people whining over nothing.

This is about an entire class of US citizens being denied access to basic rights that other citizens have.

That's what I'm hearing: The only way to really fix it is to add it to the US Constitution.

Things need to be fixed at the federal level, sure, but that's no reason to stop pushing at the state level as well. And it doesn't necessarily need to be added to the Constitution. A SCOTUS dismantling of DOMA would do the trick.

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Seriously If Prop 8 failed. Ask yourself honestly. You don't think that any gays would put churches in the gun sites and take aim. Because if you don't believe that that's what it will eventually come to, your not giving humans enough credit. Gay and most churches are quite opposite when it come to (fill in the blanks).

Think about it.

I think I've answered this already, but I'll say it again. No, I don't think it's likely that gays would go after churches. And even if any rogue individuals took it upon themselves to challenge the churches, they wouldn't get anywhere.

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Truth is not fearmongering, can you please stop calling me names. You just refuse to see the truth. You just like playing the part of the oppressed. You think it give you the right to ignore truth and dismiss it by qualifying it as racist, homophobic, fearmongering etc, etc, etc,. How sad.

Truth and fearmongering are not mutually exclusive. But in this case, yes, I think you're exaggerating or being disingenuous to make the point. I'm not going to make a habit of calling you names, but I'm also not going to hide what I think. I still haven't called you racist or homophobic yet, though.

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I think I've answered this already, but I'll say it again. No, I don't think it's likely that gays would go after churches. And even if any rogue individuals took it upon themselves to challenge the churches, they wouldn't get anywhere.

Alls you have to do is read the front page of your local newspaper to see the likelyhood of such an attack.

People who talk about the 1st Amendment and the "division of church and state" aught to study up on what they thing they know about it.

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I think I've answered this already, but I'll say it again. No, I don't think it's likely that gays would go after churches. And even if any rogue individuals took it upon themselves to challenge the churches, they wouldn't get anywhere.

Alls you have to do is read the front page of your local newspaper to see the likelyhood of such an attack.

People who talk about the 1st Amendment and the "division of church and state" aught to study up on what they thing they know about it.

This is just silly now. I don't think we're far apart on this particular issue. We both think that churches have the right to refuse to marry gays, and I think we both agree that the Constitution protects that right. Our argument is about how likely it is to happen.

 

I don't think it's very likely, since I don't think the gay rights movement is that stupid, and because there's no indication of such on "the front page of [my] local newspaper." (The Washington Post, fyi, since it's the only one in town.) You do think it's likely, and while I don't understand why, I don't think I'm going to change your mind.

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This is just silly now. I don't think we're far apart on this particular issue. We both think that churches have the right to refuse to marry gays, and I think we both agree that the Constitution protects that right. Our argument is about how likely it is to happen.

 

I don't think it's very likely, since I don't think the gay rights movement is that stupid, and because there's no indication of such on "the front page of [my] local newspaper." (The Washington Post, fyi, since it's the only one in town.) You do think it's likely, and while I don't understand why, I don't think I'm going to change your mind.

 

You should study what the 1st Amendment really says.

 

Gay people are as stupid as anyone else.

http://www.connexion.org/rssitem.cfm?id=56280

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This is just silly now. I don't think we're far apart on this particular issue. We both think that churches have the right to refuse to marry gays, and I think we both agree that the Constitution protects that right. Our argument is about how likely it is to happen.

 

I don't think it's very likely, since I don't think the gay rights movement is that stupid, and because there's no indication of such on "the front page of [my] local newspaper." (The Washington Post, fyi, since it's the only one in town.) You do think it's likely, and while I don't understand why, I don't think I'm going to change your mind.

 

You should study what the 1st Amendment really says.

 

Gay people are as stupid as anyone else.

http://www.connexion.org/rssitem.cfm?id=56280

Honestly, I'm not even sure what you're getting at here. You need to provide context. Please let me know whether you agree or disagree that the Constitution protects the right of churches not to marry gays. If you disagree, please explain why. I'm at least going to the effort of explaining myself and trying to find common ground. I don't understand why you can't show the same courtesy instead of just tossing off links and single sentences.

 

If you want to use the 1st to defend your position, please explain how it applies.

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http://wifeandmomoftwo.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/methodists-sue-new-jersey-over-attempt-to-force-gay-%e2%80%9cmarriage%e2%80%9d-at-church-owned-camp/

 

Type in "seperation of church and state' in your search engine and see if you can tell me just how the courts can interpret this Amendment. I don't think people really understand the flimsyness of the verbage presented in this Amendment.

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