Oh snap
This amused me:
On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage,” reads the letter from John Medeiros. “We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry.”
December 23rd, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Up on #46
s/“common law”/”common law marriage”/g
I know they phased out common law marriage in PA, for example. Otherwise, it’s a way to get married without a permission slip from the state.
December 23rd, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Society has a vested interest in encouraging the sort of relationships that (1) do not threaten public health, and (2) are likely to provide future soldiers, workers, and taxpayers. That means monogamous heterosexual relationships. As people fail to achieve these, society has no interest in supporting their failure. These people may find themselves more happy or fulfilled, but society should encourage what is in its interest, not what is not. That’s what it comes down to. Gays want to get married? Fine, but don’t expect the same benefits; you don’t deserve them because you don’t offer anything in return. Gawd.
December 23rd, 2011 at 8:47 pm
For those asserting marriage is only valid between adults, it’s worth noting that “adult” used to mean “post puberty”. In England, in 1275, twelve-year-olds could legally marry. Sir Edward Coke (England, 17th century) made it clear that “the marriage of girls under 12 was normal, and the age at which a girl who was a wife was eligible for a dower from her husband’s estate was 9 even though her husband be only four years old.” These rules came along with our ancestors to the Colonies.
It’s clear that the definitions of “marriage” and “adult” have changed somewhat from those of the 17th century. So let’s have a bit less of the self-righteous “this is how it always has been”, eh?
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:30 pm
“We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage”
Never understood what love has got to do with it, but I am reminded of such old saws as,
“A rose by any other name…”
“You can’t make a silk purse from…”
But while legislatures and judges are redefining things, can they do us all a favor and redefine gravity as something more like 9.0 m/sec^2, make the coefficient of friction between steel objects == zero, make the energy content of gasoline ten-fold, redefine veggies as “meat”, and drums as “machine guns”.
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:37 pm
I don’t know, have you seen the way those Mormon splinter sects that are practicing polygamy can pump out the babies? Of course, to sustain this you need to do something with the excess male population. Well there’s your soldiers, workers, and taxpayers right there. Just add cannon fodder to the list.
Remember, your “average” marriage nowadays splits 50% of the time and your average US female pumps out something south of 2 kids each. That’s not even replacement let alone growth.
December 23rd, 2011 at 11:07 pm
All snark aside, having skimmed the comments above, it is a bit surprising that no comment addressed the most base aspect of this ‘marriage’ – presumption of paternity.
December 24th, 2011 at 1:44 am
I’m mostly gonna stay out of this, but one thing surprises me… I know alot, if not most, of the commentners on here are some form of atheist and believe in evolution. Evolutionarily speaking, why doesn’t one of you defend homosexuality? You can’t. It does nothing to benefit the species, as no offspring can come from it. From an evolutionary stand-point, homosexuality is a flaw within a species.
December 24th, 2011 at 10:46 am
of course, they could procreate by arranging to do an in-vitro swap of gentic material (or just take one for the gipper), but then, that would still contitute reproduction by heteroseual means…… X-X and Y-Y still don’t work yet. Obviously need more evolution.
December 24th, 2011 at 10:48 am
OK….
genetic
heterosexual
December 24th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
I’m marrying my cyborg goat lover. Its an international waters Christmas!
December 24th, 2011 at 1:03 pm
Why is the government involved in marriage? Where in the constitution is the government granted the power to define marriage? Seems like this is an issue that is left to the states or to the people.
December 24th, 2011 at 3:06 pm
It always disappoints me when people who ostensibly support individual rights (such as the right to keep and bear arms) instantly turn into rude, abusive neanderthals when confronted with a method of exercising those rights that they find “icky”.
December 24th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
As a note for the “bugger children” crowd…
Tennessee has a minimum age of consent of 13, even if there are stipulates and age restrictions.
December 24th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
“Some things about marriage may or may not have changed over the millenia but the fundamental of man plus woman equals marriage has not.”
Yes it has. It’s now man+woman+state. Nowadays when you get married you are marrying ALL of the politicians and the welfare recipients and the war makers and the rest of the sick bunch. It’s a big group marriage. Each marriage-cell, i.e. a man and a woman, is carefully engineered to serve the interests of the state, but each marriage-cell is married to the rest of the collective too. It’s like some sort of weird insect hive.
December 24th, 2011 at 10:30 pm
ummm…Cspradlin….that 13 yr old is *not* legally allowed to have consensual sex with an *adult* in TN.
Nice try.
December 25th, 2011 at 9:42 am
StanInTexas,
Anybody so obsessed with the topic of gay marriage as to come up with numbered checklists probably has a pretty wide stance in highway rest stops. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
December 25th, 2011 at 11:37 am
Tam,
You could have just said “he has a gun to compensate for the size of his penis.”
It disappoints me that you would resort to that.
December 25th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
HL,
I suppose I could have, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as appropos a retort to his tortured attempts at logic.
December 25th, 2011 at 4:30 pm
Look, let’s take his little checklist:
…and destroy it with one substitution:
Pretty ghey, huh? Yet that was the legal truth across a big swathe of this country an historical eyeblink ago, and it isn’t any more fucking defensible.
December 25th, 2011 at 11:25 pm
“Pretty ghey, huh? Yet that was the legal truth across a big swathe of this country an historical eyeblink ago, and it isn’t any more fucking defensible.”
How does any of that justify sinking to the level of your “wide stance” comment? If you’re against gay marriage, it means your gay…if your against child porn, it means your a pedophile. I think we should stengthen the borders. OMG, I must be an illegal immigrant! Or am I a racist?
Its sloppy and its dangerous, and its just not the card I expected you to play.