NJ Opts For Schmarriage
Posted by: Brutal HuggerNew Jersey has just become the latest state to move toward civil unions. The NJ Supreme Court just handed down an opinion saying
the Legislature must either amend the marriage statutes to include same-sex couples or create a parallel statutory structure, which will provide for, on equal terms, the rights and benefits enjoyed and burdens and obligations borne by married couples. We will not presume that a separate statutory scheme, which uses a title other than marriage, contravenes equal protection principles…. The name to be given to the statutory scheme… is a matter left to the democratic process.
All the rights and none of the dignity is not an acceptable result. I would like to see the legislature do the right thing and end civil marriage discrimination. I doubt they’ll do it, but that is the hope.
October 25th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Respect the institution I am part of, and I will respect the one you are part of, whether I agree with its appropriateness or not. If you insist on hijacking the name marriage, please explain why. How does it harm dignity to have a civil union? I see nothing degrading in the term.
Is it just because some people want to say “Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, ha, ha, I got what you got and I don’t play the same rules. Ha ha ha.”
This isn’t about dignity and you know it. As for equal treatment under the law, I am all for it. This is about economic advantage using the law to ensure it.
October 25th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
Baby steps, I think. It’s not dissimilar to ’separate but equal.’ Just saying.
October 25th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Uncle (et all),
Perhaps you have covered this subject in the past; if so I have missed it and apologize.
Why do you consider it ok for the government to have control over the definition of the word marriage and the final say-so on who can marry whom? Is that a proper function of a government?
When you married your wife, did you have to ask permission from the state? (Marriage license)
Were you outraged? Why or why not?
Why is marriage any business of the state’s at all? It is between myself, my partner (or partners, for all I care), and any (G)god(s) I choose to involve in it.
Why isn’t the Christian right, who is *outraged* by homosexual marriage, not outraged that they have to gain permission and submit a stipend to the state for the
privilegeright to marry in the eyes of their God?I do not understand.
As far as I can tell, the debate over gay marriage is being argued over the faulty premise that the state grants our right to marry our spouse.
Please clarify your position.
October 25th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Except for the fact that no one is being separated from anyone else. Oh yeah, and except for the fact that no one ever even bothered to adopt a constitutional amendment saying that gay and traditional marriage are even supposed to be equal. Other than that, the issues are not at all dissimilar.
October 25th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Yes, Mammoth, I have discussed it and largely agree with your assessment. marriage is, as far as I’m concerned, a contract between two people.
October 25th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Government doesn’t have control over the definition of all marriage, just civil marriage. If your church wants to go on sanctioning bigotry, it is free to do so. But the government hands out a bunch of licenses and calls them marriage licenses. For the purposes of civil marriage, it should hand those licenses out in a nondiscriminatory manner.
My preferred solution to all this would be to get the gov out of the marriage business entirely, but as that’s not going to happen, I’d be satisfied if the gov stopped discriminating. If all the priests and clerics want to keep on with the discrimination, well, I find their behavior morally reprehensible but don’t think that’s a legal problem.
And, finally, one of the reasons I think marriage is stupid is that it’s completely undignified to go ask the gov to sanction your union.
October 25th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Xlrq, I’m not sure what “no one is being separated from anyone else” has to do with anything. “Separate” here refers to the separate provision of supposedly equal services. It’s not about the physical separation.
And I’m not sure why you say nobody ever bothered to adopt a constitutional amendment. NJ’s constitution has an equal rights clause. The NJ supreme court has repeatedly held that the NJ constitution prohibits government discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Marriage discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is therefore prohibited. It’s not that hard, and I don’t see why you’re so bitter.
October 25th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
Xrlq,
Err separate in name
Equal in benefits/obligations ascribed to it.
October 25th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Not to open a can of worms, but only two people? (kidding)
Thanks for the clarification.
Try to find a preist who will perform a ceremony without a marriage license. I have tried, and it ain’t easy. They have de facto control over the word.
It certainly won’t happen if it is argued with the assumption that they have control over the definition of the word and sanction of the union.
October 25th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Wooly,
I’m not sure why you think the gov owns the word marriage. They certainly own the power to grant and deny benefits to people based on these licenses (and they can call it marriage if they want), but my objection to this discriminatory granting of benefits is not actually an objection to the label “marriage”.
And if priests won’t perform ceremonies without the state license, that’s the priests ceding control to the gov. And the blame there rests squarely on the church. If the church wants to let the state circumscribe their religious rituals, well that’s just more evidence that the church is morally bankrupt.
October 25th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
Heh. Actually, it is irrelvant to me. If some mormon wants to have multiple wives, go for it. And good luck to that guy.
October 25th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
I agree with Uncle. I have no problem with multiple wives, as long as everybody consents. And yeah… good luck to that guy.
October 25th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
I just realized that it wasn’t Says Uncle who posted the original piece. Oops.
BH - To clarify for myself: are you arguing that *if* they are going to grant these benefits they should do so in a non-discriminatory fashion, and apply the same label universally? If so I can agree with that, even if I don’t agree that they should be granting these benefits to anyone.
They don’t own my definition of marriage, but that hardly matters to the rest of the world. The fact that it was illegal to marry my wife without being granted permission is pretty solid evidence that they assume they own the word. Maybe I misunderstand the question.
I won’t disagree with this. I wish more people were willing to take a stand against them in this area and many, many others.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Wooly, yes I believe that if the gov is going to grant these benefits, it should do so without discriminating against gays and should apply the label universally. We are in agreement here.
And while I don’t think the gov owns the word ‘marriage’, I do have a major problem with the government permission aspect of the whole endeavor. It’s one of the reasons I’m not married, and when people ask me about my decision it’s one of the first things I mention. So I’m taking a stand, even if that stand largely consists of sitting out.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
BH:
Tell that to the living victims of the real separate but equal doctrine. Do you really think that Brown v. Board of Education was brought because black and white children were receiving identical educations in the same exact schools, only the blacks had to call their schools something other than “schools?”
BWM:
That’s basically right. Contrary to looneytarian rhetoric, marriage is not a contract between one man and one woman, one man and one man, or any other number of individuals. It’s a three-way deal between you, your wife and the state. Don’t want the state to be part of your marriage? Then don’t get married. We have purely voluntary contracts without involving the state; it’s called shacking up.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
Xrlq,
When Thurgood Marshall wrote “Separate but equal is inherently unequal”, he meant just that. It is true that the difference between white and black schools amounted to more than nomenclature, but that is not to say the word “colored” on the back door didn’t also imply “inferior”.
Moreover, one of the biggest problems with separate but equal is that keeping separate things equal requires constant vigilance. Every time you change one, you need to make a corresponding change to the other. And if it doesn’t happen (whether because of malice or inattention) that means another lawsuit, waiting a few years for it to get decided, and then hoping the court doesn’t compromise on the relief. Equal is equal. Separate is not equal. It’s something else entirely.
And to turn it around, if the label is so unimportant, why are you so ardently against it’s equal application?
October 25th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Cut the Overloads some slack, make “marriage” a politically incorrect term, “reclaim” civil union as the PC term for hetro unions too, and give it a rest for a few years.
Then your next step ought not to be getting “marriage” for teh gays, it should be to ban marriage (meaning, only civil unions) for everyone (outside of the faith of their choice, of which you can not touch).
And if the new New Jersey “Civil Union” thingys and the New Jersey drivers license are valid in all 50 states, please explain again the standard legalese mischief that keeps Virgina carry permits from being honored in all 50 states too? I mean, let’s be a little consistent here.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Or find a priest (or whoever) and a gal (or guy! whatever) who is willing to get married without getting permission! Admittedly not a simple task…
I have a hard time responding to that. There’s a fundamental disagreement in the role of the state and rights in general that makes argument on this partcular aspect impossible.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
I’m still waiting to be told why a same sex marriage is “wrong”. We can argue the facts of the matter all fucking day but it all boils down to mixing religion and government.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:40 pm
Big Wooly Mammoth Says:
If you are hardc0re against getting that permission slip to get married by the state, you could opt for “common law marriage” (It’s nothing like the myth of living together for x number of years) See this:
http://www.unmarried.org/common.html
The gist is that two people declare themselves married and carry on as such. How liberating! It’s just common sense in this case to document the marriage somehow (notary public, etc.) It’s also legaly untested whether this applies to non-residents that visit the state.
(Aside: Reason #372 why I love RAH; Richard Ames & Gwen Novak marry themselves via common law marriage in the novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls)
Unfortunately, you can not create a common law marriage in the state of New Jersey. (Time for another lawsuit? The problem is that the ones who most strongly voice support for Gay marriage are usually “state worshipers”)
October 25th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Standard Mischief Says:
Meaning, it’s legally untested in regards to out-of-state residents who travel to a state where common law marriage is legal, do not establish residency, yet try to establish a common law marriage.
October 26th, 2006 at 7:22 am
So what? Thurgood Marshall was one of the worst Supreme Court Justices in history, and at the time of Brown, he wasn’t a Justice at all. Do you judge every court case by the rhetoric contained in the winning party’s brief rather than the decision of the court?
More importantly, there is nothing “separate,” at least not in a “separate but equal” sense, about creating a separate legal institution to accomodate people who don’t qualify for an existing one. No one is asking gays to live on the other side of town, send their children (?) to different schools, or do anything else remotely analogous to what happened to blacks during Jim Crow. Whining about the “separateness” of an abstract legal principle that exists on paper only is just as silly as whining about the “separate but equal” status of corporations vs. LLCs. Dumbest of all, it’s premised on the wacky notion that gays have a constitutional right to “equal” gay marriage or civil union in the first place. Except in 3 of the 4 states whose Supreme Courts have amended them by judicial fiat, they don’t. So even if the “separate but equal” canard meant anything useful, this would be akin to decrying “separate but equal” schools prior to the Civil War, when there was no Fourteenth Amendment requiring anything to be equal in the first place.
Last and least, you seem like an odd person to have a strong opinion of this. By your own admission, you don’t care much for marriage as a legal institution anyway. How about butting out of this debate, and leaving it to those of us who do? Conversely, if civil unions are ever created in my state (yeah, right) I promise not to involve myself in the debate over what the rules for a civil union should be. Deal?
October 26th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Are you afraid of catching gay cooties XRLQ? You seem awfully pissed off over something that will do you no harm in any way shape or form. Just come out and admit you are a homophobe right wing fundy. How about telling me why gay marriage is wrong without falling back on legal rulings?
October 26th, 2006 at 9:10 am
Let’s be more “legalistic” here just for a bit, and see where it leads us.
This isn’t about “gay” marriage. It’s about OPEN marriage i.e. anyone who wants to sign the paper can sign. “Marriage” ceases to become something of a state recognized family and more of a civil contract between people.
Basically, if the benefits are in our favor, it’s a good idea for college roommates to marry. Actually, as funny as this sounds, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for siblings to marry if they’re both single and one of them has better benefits. Afterall, if you make marriage OPEN, who cares about incest. This is a contract.
Of course, if you open marriage up to anyone, you must open it up to anyONES i.e. why limit marriage to only 2 people?
Really, whether you agree with open marriage or not, IF marriage is opened up for anyone and everyone, it ceases to lose any legal meaning and becomes completely unmanageable.
Basically, the argument shouldn’t be to allow open marriage or not. It should be whether or not to abolish legally recognized marriage or not. Logically and practically, that’s the only two available options.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:36 am
Really, whether you agree with open marriage or not, IF marriage is opened up for anyone and everyone, it ceases to lose any legal meaning and becomes completely unmanageable.
Basically, the argument shouldn’t be to allow open marriage or not. It should be whether or not to abolish legally recognized marriage or not. Logically and practically, that’s the only two available options.
Bullshit. You could open marriage up to same sex or opposite sex and define it between two people. Quit throwing out the incest/plural marriage card. Nice try homophobe. Come on people…just come out of the closet and say you dont like fags/Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve…you know you want to.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:37 am
No, moron, I’m afraid of living in an oligarchy where an unelected court sets itself up as the Supreme Soviet and does what it wants with impunity. Maybe that doesn’t bother you since in this particular instance, the Supreme Soviet issued an edict you happen to agree with, but some of us see the bigger picture.
That’s because anything that threatens the rule of law does me plenty of harm in every way, shape and form. So too does weakening the institution of marriage - something BH doesn’t give a rip about when it comes to his/her own life, but suddenly becomes excited about whenever the topic shifts to buggering it up for everyone else. But I’ll leave that issue to the democratic process, along with almost every other policy decision I may agree or disagree with. If some state wants to adopt gay marriage the same way they change the minimum age for marriage, the fee for a license, or any of the other rules relating to marriage, that’s fine. That’s why I oppose the federal marriage amendment, at least for now, and also plan to vote against the marriage amendment on my state’s ballot in November. I don’t support gay marriage myself, but also don’t support tying the hands of future generations in the event they see the matter differently.
That’s a good idea, but here’s a better one: how about you just come out and admit you are a myopic idiot who can’t see past his nose or get any point that isn’t attached to his head?
Well gee whiz, Mrs. Lincoln, how about telling us how you liked the play, without falling back on that one incident that wasn’t even in the script?
October 26th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Xlrq,
I don’t care for civil marriage much, it’s true. But if the gov is going to go around handing out rights and classifying relationships, it matters to me that it gets done without bigotry.
It’s easy to categorize all the ways civil unions are NOT separate, and it’s useful to think about, but that doesn’t change all the ways civil unions ARE separate. It’s even more instructive to note one huge difference in how the the separation produces inequality: married couples get a slew of federal benefits (including tax benefits) that couples in civil unions do not.
It’s not the separateness that burns. It’s the inequality.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Ed,
The reason college roommates won’t get married is the same reason mixed-sex roommates don’t get married– it’s socially untenable, legally hard to get in and out, and nobody actually wants to marry their roommate. If your weird apocalypse of marriage scenario were even mildly plausible, there would be lots of people already doing it. After all, there’s tons of eligible mixed-sex roommates out there.
And I don’t have a problem with multiple partner families. Nor do I have much of a problem with consenting adult incest– I find it icky, but I try not to hold people’s legal rights and freedoms hostage to my sense of ickiness.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:46 am
JustinB:
Why the hell should he? It’s a legitimate argument. If the state can’t discriminate against one group that seeks to redefine marriage to suit them, how on earth can it discriminate against others? Plural marriage should be a no-brainer, as it has a lot more historical precedent than either gay or incestuous marriage does. Why shouldn’t married people have the same right to marry that unmarried people do? Owning one house or holding one job doesn’t prevent me from getting another, so why should marriage be any different, you polyphobic bigot?
As to incest, if first cousins want to marry, which they can do in some states but not others, who are you to tell them they can’t? Brothers marrying sisters could be a problem for the offspring, but by shoving gay marriage down everyone’s throats, you’ve decided marriage isn’t about offspring, either. The idea may be revolting to some, but guess what, so is gayness. What, you afraid of catching incest-cooties or something? Why don’t you just come out and admit you are a family-hating bigot?
October 26th, 2006 at 9:47 am
Well, for starters, JustinB, there are a few minor but noteworthy societal costs: lower tax revenue and the basic increased risk factor of societally accepted male-male couplings (gay men are more likely to commit suicide and statistically favor riskier activites; male-male intercourse is statistically more likely to spread HIV, et all). I’d also argue that the backlash and loss of political capital to this cause is a significant negative, as well. Finally, it’s usually worthwhile to be cautious around a source you’re unaware of the motivations thereof.
Gay marriage won’t prevent the prototypical threats of individuals disallowed from visiting each other in a hospital, or family-in-law from disputing a living will - bad people will remain bad, and gay marriage itself does nothing to prevent discrimination on other ends. Meanwhile, simply preventing such acts would require much less political capital to achieve, but seems to be outside of the mainstream gay agenda.
That leaves a few alternative reasons, and each reason that I can produce has a fairly significant negative effect.
One possible, and dangerous, reason is simply to redefine the arguement. Marriage is a male-female thing right now, and has been for several thousand years (certainly longer in a less-formal method). Even in societies where male-male and female-female couplings were considered acceptable or even normal, they weren’t covered under civil marriages.
Redefining the language is a powerful tool, as it turns “weapons of war” into “people defending themselves”. But it’s also a very dangerous one : Marx’s use of this technique to redefine “profit” into “exploitation” lead to some rather nasty results.
For example, it’s very simple to allow a church to not recognize a homosexual couple’s ‘civil union’. On the other hand, it’s very hard to not require a church to recognize a married couple’s vows. I think I’m virtually required to note that “between two consenting adults” isn’t far from “between consenting adults” or “between two consenting individuals” - and many, many idiots have already presed those memes already.
Most of the other reasons, even if many suporters are well-intentioned, likewise have the potential for serious abuse not far down the line.
Perhaps this act is to sate the id - to fufill the psychological demand for ‘normality’. In that case, it’s certain to fail : gay marriage will remain decidely gay, and gay people will do the same. The motion has made a habit of defining themselves as something that they can be nothing other than. Meanwhile, the societal backlash of twenty straight couples, more than 60% of which didn’t want the courts telling them what their laws should become, will cause the reverse of the intended purpose.
Or maybe it’s just an attempt by the leadership of some gay groups to motivate the masses to donate time and money, in which case a victory would be disasterous - like the gun control movement constantly attempting to ban “street-sweeping machine guns”, sooner or later people will catch on.
State and federal recognition of your actions is not a right, no more than anything else the government gives you can be. No reasonable understanding of the phrase will lead to the opposite statement. We allow straight marriages and the regulation thereof because of the extreme societal benefit that result from them : without them we’d either go extinct or suffer from generation after generation born out of wedlock (which can be reliably shown to have vast negative results on the children). There is no societal benefit from gay marriage, there is no essential requirement of equality here (as it is endlessly pointed out, Alphecca can marry the same selection of people as anyone else of his gender could). A male-male or female-female pair can even have a wedding, it just won’t be recognized by the state.
It’s far from a libertarian arguement that we should require the state to recognize an act.
You’ll have to excuse my dislike of the subject, but crys of homophobia and inequality in both face sheer defiance of the facts and the strong opposition felt by a majority homosexuals to bisexual individuals, that just pisses me off.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:06 am
Brutal, with pre-nups and no-fault divorces, I expect that marriages of convience would be… well, easy.
As to ‘inequality’, perhaps we should then allow men to use the woman’s restroom, and reverse? Oh, that’s right, we accept that structural differences exist.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:11 am
When it comes down to is, it’s all about the tax breaks.
That’s why the state requires licensing.
That’s why gays want it.
Any other right they claim to want is easliy handled by legal documentation.
I’m not going to make the slippery slope argument again, even though it’s a valid one. I just don’t like having my tax dollars wasted on this issue.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:14 am
OK, then, how about you start calling tradition “tradition” and stop calling it “bigotry.” Problem solved. And since you don’t care much for the institution anyway, you might want to find a better cause than fighting for the rights of gays to cut off their noses to spite their faces - or worse, their all-important semantic right to call their noses and faces “noses” and “faces,” respectively.
Equality for equality’s sake is a stupid objective, and one libertarians usually have the good sense to eschew. How about looking out for yourself, “equality” be damned. Don’t like the rules applicable to civil unions? Then lobby your legislator to change them. Like them the way they are? Then tell him/her to leave them as they are. Making them more similar to the rules of traditional marriage should not be an objective; at most, it should be a side-effect of doing the right thing. And in some cases, it’s probably not even desirable, e.g., I can think of a number of reasons why no-fault divorce is a bad idea for traditional marriage, but may be appropriate for civil unions. Hell, I’m not even sure men and women are similar enough that it makes sense to have all the rules be the same for male-male civil unions as for female-female ones. Maybe the rules should indeed be the same, but that’s an empirical question. It’s hardly a given - at least, for anyone living in the real world rather than in Analogy-Land.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:19 am
Gatt
Marriages of convenience are easy. Saw many of them while in the Army.
It was a great way for people get a little extra money, out of the barracks and away from the “hey you” tasks that always manage to pop up after normal duty hours.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:29 am
Gatt, if marriages of convenience were so easy that same-sex roommates would jump in and out of them, why isn’t there a rash of opposite-sex roommates jumping in and out of them?
And to the extent opposite-sex roommates ARE jumping in and out of them, why hasn’t that destroyed the institution of marriage?
Either it’s not a risk or the institution can withstand it. Either way, it’s an injustice to pretend the risk and the damage is uniquely a factor of ending marriage discrimination.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Xrlq,
I call it bigortry because that’s what it is. If you prefer, we can call it a tradition of bigotry.
And it’s not equality for equality’s sake. It’s equality for justice’s sake. The inequality has real world consequences of handing out a bunch of benefits to one group but not to another. You can dress that pig any way you want, but it still stinks.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Zoiks! Getting hot in here.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:54 am
You are a homophobe fundy but you wont come out and admit it. You throw out 3 page diatribes and dance around the subject using libertarian/incest/roomates blah blah blah. Just come out and admit that you dont want “those gays” to marry because its “icky and “not right”.
October 26th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Marriages of convience are common among opposite-sex situations. However, unlike two straight individuals of the same gender marrying, there are actual risks of a bond forming. These are also less possible to distinguish from reproductive marriages, particularly within what levels of privacy we accept to be necessary. By comparision, I think we can agree that allowing ten-year-olds access to explosives precursors is a bad idea, but we have to temper that by exactly how useful iron and aluminum, the primary components of thermite, can be.
I’m still not seeing how this is discrimination.
October 26th, 2006 at 11:37 am
To you, but not to the overwhelming majority, which thinks it smells just fine. I still fail to see why you think your vote ought to count more than anyone else’s.
October 26th, 2006 at 11:44 am
Xrlq,
I’m not sure what overwhelming majority you’re referring to. In a lot of places, sentiment is fairly even. And bigotry in this area is to some degree an artifact of age. Fact is, population effects are going to deliver marriage equality in my lifetime, just because younger people today are less threatened by homosexuality. The grandchildren of today’s antigay demagogues will be ashamed of their family history. I wonder how often Bull Conner’s grandkids brag about him.
October 26th, 2006 at 11:47 am
gattsuru,
If opposite-sex marriages of convenience are so common, how come the institution of marriage hasn’t toppled? I guess they’re not such a threat after all.
And really, oppostie-sex college roommates getting married for convenience is common? Spare me. Even the people who raise the boogeyman of college roommates marrying don’t believe it.
October 26th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
I’m referring to the United States of America, where initiatives or constitutional amendments protecting traditional marriage - that little civil nuisance you pooh-pooh as “bigotry” - have passed handily in every state where they have been put to a vote, and where not a single state has enacted a contrary law through the normal democratic process. If public sentiment were close to an even split, you’d think that by now at least one state would have taken the plunge on its own, without some puffed up judges telling them they had to.
Sez you. The fact is that no one knows. History is chock full of activists who have convinced themselves that their respective causes are 100% just, and that future generations will smile on their prescience and write off their opponents as big weenies (or worse). A few of these individuals (e.g., real civil rights activists, who dealt with physically separated schools rather than the harmless “separate” legal abstractions you seem so exercised about), turned out to be right. A few others (e.g., communists, prohibitionists or the KKK) turned out to be so horribly wrong that we remember them for being such colossal idiots. The rest - and, I suspect, the vast majority - are basically forgotten because their pet cause turned out to be the Next Best Thing that wasn’t. Based on what is known and knowable about gay marriage today, none of those three possibilities can be completely ruled out. History will tell, but trying to tell WHAT history will tell is a fool’s errand.
Obviously, you’re convinced that gay marriage is one of those few righteous causes that will eventually be accepted universally, or at least nearly so. If you’re right, you ought to be madder about yesterday’s decision than I am. Not because it subverts the rule of law, which doesn’t seem to bother you that much anyway, but because its long term impact will be to set back the cause of gay marriage, not to advance it. Two days ago, I would have said there is at least a chance - an outside chance, mind you, but a chance nevertheless - that Virginia’s downright goofy marriage amendment might fail. Not anymore. I hope you’re happy with that result. Then again, if your principal beef is not with marriage-lik benefits but “separate but equal” civil unions, perhaps you are. Virginia’s nutty amendment will prohibit those, too.
October 26th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Xlrq,
Every poll I’ve ever seen correlates anti-gay animus (and anti-marriage equality sentiment) with age. And the polls done today show lower overall anti-gay sentiment than 10 years ago. America is moving on this issue. Where it stops nobody knows, but the grand arc of American history is clear. We’re winning, albeit slowly.
And to be clear, my beef is with inequality. I’m against discriminating against some marriages by calling them civil unions and treating them differently from all the other marriages. Civil unions do not provide the same legal benefits as marriages (i.e. tax benefits). Even if they did, the two structures would drift and gays would have to fight the constant battle to maintain equal benefits.
If marriage and civil unions are to be legally identical in all but name, then the only reason to deny the name is bigotry.
October 26th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
So what? Contrary to the hallucinations of the 60+ crowd who once trusted no one over 30, young people get older just like the rest of us. Belief in Superman and the Easter Bunny correlates with age, too; that doesn’t mean the Superman and Easter Bunny factions are winning (though they probably think they are). I supported gay marriage myself when I was in my mid-20s, unmarried, and just plain didn’t know any better. I don’t anymore. I don’t think I’m the only person who falls into that category.
October 26th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Xlrq,
Perhaps you should have read the next sentence with the bit you quoted. Not only are young people less bigoted than their elders, but today’s elders are less bigoted than yesterday’s. It’s a clear trend. Even though people get more conservative as they age, the population as a whole is moving in the right direction.
This is a good thing. It means that today’s controversies are likely to be less controversial in a generation or two.
October 26th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Brutal, where did I get even remotely close to mentioning “institution” of marriage, which I assume falls somewhere with other such bull-hockey as “tradition” or anything else with minimal intrinsic value. The only time I’ve mentioned how things are currently done is in relation the mere definition of the word, which isn’t at much risk from anything but official recognition.
The point is that in exchange for a massive societal cost, we’re getting nothing but the “equality” of having a capability other people didn’t have, and spending a lot more political capital than necessary to butt heads with discriminatory laws or individuals.
Consider it… pragmatic.
October 26th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Rustmeister Says:
Actually, there’s a niche in marketing that goes after Gay couples and their “double income no kids” dollars. At least some people tend to think DINKs of any gender have lots of disposable income and are also “early adopters”.
Marriage as DINKs, usually means paying a hefty marriage penalty, including frequently the thingy known as the “alternative minimum tax“
October 26th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Standard,
Are you seriously arguing that married people are at a tax disadvantage? Married people have the of filing either singly or jointly. The majority of them file together. They are CHOOSING to do so. For you to claim that huge numbers of married people are choosing unfavorable tax status boggles my mind.
Gay couples want the same options as straight couples when it comes to taxes. Simple as that.
And: the AMT doesn’t only affect married people.
PS: The reason DINKs have a lot of money isn’t because they have a better tax situation. It’s because kids are expensive. And there’s lots of striaght DINK couples too. I’m in one.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
BH, as usual you are wrong. Married people do indeed have the option of filing separately, but that has no impact on how much they owe. If a married couple earn roughly equal salaries, they will pay the marriage penalty. The only way around that is to get a divorce - and even that won’t work if the IRS figures out that you’re playing games.
October 26th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
Hi. Im Xrlq and I’m a homophobe but I wont come out and admit it.
I’m still waiting an answer to my previous question. Tell me on a personal level why you are against gay marriage please? I don’t want your fucking diatribes citing case law from old Abe back in 1862. I want to know why you have 10 prior posts against gay cooties but haven’t bothered to explain why you think its wrong on a personal level.
I supported gay marriage myself when I was in my mid-20s, unmarried, and just plain didn’t know any better. I don’t anymore. I don’t think I’m the only person who falls into that category.
Thats a real convincing fucking argument after posting 10 posts against gay people for wanting to marry each other eh? You are not man enough to come out and admit that you don’t like gay people and find their lifestyle abhornt to your beliefs will you? You hide behind other peoples arguments without coming out and saying why you are so against this topic. Be a man and admit it.
October 27th, 2006 at 12:02 am
Brutal Hugger Says:
Well, I’m not married, so I don’t have first-hand experience. Google; however, is your friend.
(That’s the first three results)
BH:
Which is why I said:
October 27th, 2006 at 12:10 am
Okay, JustinB, listen carefully and allow me to blow your mind.
You don’t need to be homophobic to be against this method of installing gay marriage. You don’t even need to be disgusted by the actual sex act, nevermind just two guys being legally recognized. I’m bi (leaning heterosexual), and despite being turned on by the physical attributes, I can still oppose the legal ones and the methodology thereof.
Now, go pull your balls out of whatever jar you stuck them in, be a man, and actually deal with the argument on its merits rather than simply assume that everyone opposing your viewpoint has a mental condition.
October 27th, 2006 at 7:17 am
Xlrq, I won’t pretend to be a tax expert, especially a marriage tax expert. If you married folks are paying a tax penalty, you’d know it better than me.
Besides, tax benefits are only one of many benefits that married couples get. Just google marriage benefits to see. And a lot of those benefits will not automatically go to people in civil unions. It’s going to be a constant battle to maintain the equality of civil unions. For example, will a NJ civil union be recognized in Utah?
October 27th, 2006 at 9:06 am
JustinB: please stop posting comments on any topic. Every time you open your mouth the collective IQ of the blogsphere drops by 3-5 points. Just for the record, I don’t hate you for being gay. I hate you for being an idiot. Your gayness is, if anything, a plus factor, as it ensures you will not reproduce yourself, no matter how many renegade courts may rule you have a right to. Now crawl back into your cave.
BH: Actually, I don’t pay the marriage penalty because my wife doesn’t work. In fact, I pay less taxes than I would if we were unmarried, so I actually enjoy a marriage bonus instead. The reason for both is simple: by adding two people’s tax brackets together, you allow them to effectively allocate their income such that both individuals’ lower tax brackets get maxed out before either’s upper (more severely taxed) brackets get hit. That is the marriage bonus. The only problem is, the shared bracket of a married couple is smaller than double the bracket of a single couple, meaning a higher tax rate for couples whose incomes were in the same bracket anyway. That is the marriage penalty. There are only ways to avoid this conundrum: (1) adopt a flat tax so that brackets don’t matter, or (2) abolish joint income tax liability. The first option is a political non-starter; I like it, Steve Forbes, and just about no one else does. The second option is worse, as it would royally screw single- or primary-income families. Fairness to married/single people, fairness to single-income families, or progressive income tax. Pick two.
Returning to the original issue, I’m not sure why any particular benefits should flow to gay couples automatically. Not one of them ever flowed to straight couples that way. Each and every benefit (or, the case of income taxes, non-benefit) resulted from a deliberative process. I don’t see why it should be any different for a brand-new institution that may not even work in the long run, and which we certainly don’t know anything about - i.e., you know how it is supposed to work in the long run, but no one really knows how it will. Certain benefits, such as inheritance or visitation rights for spouses, should be a no-brainer. Others, maybe not. For any given issue that really does just boil down to fairness, it shouldn’t be that hard to pass it on its own.
As to interstate recognition, it’s not going to happen overnight. AFAIK Utah does not recognize civil unions, so it stands to reason that an New Jersey civil union shoudl not be recognized there. However, I see no reason why a New Jersey or Vermont civil union, or even a Massachusetts gay marriage, should not be recognized as a domestic partnership in California. That’s not the case now, but I have little doubt that the civil union states will work that issue out over time, just as the right to carry states are gradually doing now, and just about every state has done in the past for traditional marriage. As to a New Jersey civil union being recognized in Virginia, I can accept that result under/over any one of the following events:
1. Virginians miraculously voting down the marriage amendment this fall, and later, even more miraculously voting to adopt civil unions.
2. My dead body.
3. My Virginia concealed carry permit being equally valid and equally recognized in New Jersey.
October 27th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Hey dumbass..im married and straight as an arrow…I just cant stand homophobes like yourself. Thought you had me pegged as one of them “faggots” eh?
October 27th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
xrlq=compassionate conservative
Xrlq Says:
Link to this comment
JustinB: please stop posting comments on any topic. Every time you open your mouth the collective IQ of the blogsphere drops by 3-5 points. Just for the record, I don’t hate you for being gay. I hate you for being an idiot. Your gayness is, if anything, a plus factor, as it ensures you will not reproduce yourself, no matter how many renegade courts may rule you have a right to. Now crawl back into your cave.
You really know how to win an argument dont you?
October 27th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
Bummer. Given your rabid obsession with the topic I thought you might actually have some stake in it. Guess I was a bit too optimistic about that. You’re still a moron, though.
October 27th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Xrlq:
I’m afraid of living in an oligarchy where an unelected court sets itself up as the Supreme Soviet and does what it wants with impunity.
Like, for example, saying “Fuck due process in the state of Florida, let’s just pick the guy we like?” Nah…
JustinB:
For all his flaws (and they are many), I don’t think Xrlq is a “homophobe.” Sure, he’s a complete dickhead on this particular issue (yep, I just engaged in name-calling, it’s true), but I don’t think it has anything to do with any particular animosity towards, or fear of, homosexuals. If I had to make a guess at what it is, then, I’d say it’s a blind loyalty to the letter of the law, with absolutely no regard to what’s right or fair or just. If today were the 1950’s, I could just as easily see him arguing against court-mandated desegregation, not because of any racial prejudice, but simply because the letter of the law doesn’t require desegregation.
October 27th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
Bummer. Given your rabid obsession with the topic I thought you might actually have some stake in it. Guess I was a bit too optimistic about that. You’re still a moron, though.
I have several close friends that are gay and it pisses me off when someone opposes something that will not do anyone any harm. Try reading the WSJ editorial page Friday
10-27-2006 Darren Spedale/William Eskridge “The Hitch”…so much for the sky falling by letting “those people” marry.
I could just as easily see him arguing against court-mandated desegregation, not because of any racial prejudice, but simply because the letter of the law doesn’t require desegregation.
I agree to a point…although I think he and his supporters try to hide their prejudices beneath their blind loyalty to the letter of the law.