This thread is entertaining yet frustrating at the same time. Both sides acknowledge the other won't change their view, yet they continue to hash it out with each other.
What's the definition of insanity?
Actually I think the board's position on this has evolved somewhat significantly over the last five years.
We're in the home stretch of a very rapid sea change on this civil rights issue. 5-6 years ago it was so outrageous that the Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage on constitutional grounds that many justices were recalled out of vengeance. Today we're at 16 states and rising and it's hardly notable when the number goes up again. Because of Full Faith and Credit, gay marriage is de facto legal in the United States right now.
Do you think the gay rights people would be satisfied with civil unions that aren't called marriages, but which are otherwise equivalent? I certainly don't think they would be, and I think that's been shown. So this does seem--on both sides!--to be at least in part about the integrity of what the word "marriage" means.
A quibble:
For one side it's about the sanctity of a word. For the other side it's about being against separate but equal as a principle. I think this country's experience very strongly indicates the only reason to keep things separate is to also keep them unequal in some way. If nothing else the attitude expressed by Bean in this thread is the mildest version of this separate and unequal attitude.
As a result, I think many Utah voters fear that if gay marriage continues in Utah then the government may force the church to seal homosexual couples.
This is the overhang of the IRS strongarming the church into accepting black people in the 1970s.
Serious question for homosexuals: politics aside, why don't you just go to a state where it's legal and get married? You could still come home and have a big reception if you wanted. I know a ton if straight and gay (I know, heaven forbid) couples who have done this.
And don't give me that crap about "why should I have to?" If marriage were really important to me and I was told I couldn't marry the person I wanted to because of some stupid law in the state I live, but I could go on a vacation/honeymoon to another state and get married, I would do it in a heartbeat.
The "why should I have to?" is not crap.
I've been married for almost two weeks so it's totally appropriate for me to have an opinion about this sort of thing now.
We got married in Southern California because the Madame's elderly grandparents live there and, to be honest, there was no way that they could attend a wedding in any other location. She really wanted them to be there and my family has a three-generation tradition of eloping so it was no skin off my back. Those are the kinds of decisions you get to make when you can walk into any state in the country and pay the $60 fee for a marriage license the day before the ceremony. As an added bonus, it's so easy to do things the way you want to do them when you're straight that we had the internet certify my best friend as a jedi knight, flew him out, and had him perform the ceremony itself as the priest.
Life is much harder if the person you happen to love is the same sex as you. If the Madame was a Monsieur and his elderly grandparents were in Arkansas we would have been out of luck. Grandpa's just got to die without seeing his grandson get married. That's not "crap." That's the kind of thing people don't forget for their entire lives. And that is total ******** that this happens to people.
If I can fly anyone out that I want to any location I want to perform a ceremony on 24 hours notice and he can write my wedding vows to be all about jaegers and kaijus then there is no reason that two people of the same sex should have to jump through any hoops whatsoever if they want to get married too.
Oh really? How many female homicide-bombers are you friends with? You would have to be swimming in burka chick mobs to counter the overwhelming and obvious evidence that human males are inherently the most dangerous creatures on the planet.
Only the Australians. Everyone knows that everything that constitutes the world's most dangerous anything is from Oceania.
