Today's posts have obviously spawned a lot of commentary, though I think Maggie wins in sheer volume. Many of the commentators are responding effectively to each other, and some of the questions raised (especially related to various slippery slopes, and possible harms to marriage) will be addressed in coming days, so I won't add much now.
First, as one commentator reminded me, and as I wrote in an essay on National Review Online last week (available at http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/carpenter200510250830.asp), I think gay-marriage advocates have the burden of proof in this debate. But I think the burden can be met.
Second, I have been struck by how quickly the debate among commentators has centered on gay male promiscuity. I'll address the promiscuity question tomorrow, as I think it goes mostly to the magnitude of the benefits I'm outlining, and again when I get to the prominent arguments against gay marriage. But for now, I'll just note that it shows the debate about gay marriage is often conducted as if it's only really a debate about guy marriage.
Third, one commentator asked why anything at all must be done about gay families. Why not just do nothing? That has been the default position of most traditionalist conservatives for some time now, while familial tectonic plates are shifting under their feet. It's what I'd call malign neglect. If there's one thing the past 40 years or so should have shown us, it's that we ignore the health of families and family structure at our peril. I hope I've shown so far that doing nothing, pretending that the welfare of millions of people in gay families is of no concern to public policy, is not an attractive option for a traditionalist who cares about families and marriage.
Finally, I want to thank Anna for noting one benefit to gay marriage that I hadn't thought about directly: when couples get married it improves the lives of the people who love them by reassuring them that their loved one is being cared for, and are less likely to live, as Anna put it, "lonely and depressed" lives.
My mother, who is 61, recently married a man who is 77 and with whom she'd lived for 18 years. Their sex will not make babies, yet everyone in both families was thick with happiness for them. Why did she marry? Did it change anything in a relationship that was already a marriage in just about every way except the name and the license? When I asked her this, she responded, "Now we're more one." I don't fully understand the magic of that moment, but I didn't have to understand it in order to know that I was more at peace about her future.
All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:
- The Traditionalist Case – Last Thoughts:
- The Traditionalist Case – Getting From Here to There:
- The Traditionalist Case – What Would Burke Do?:...
- The Traditionalist Case -- Individualistic Benefits to Children:
- Response to Commentators -- Day 1:
- The Traditionalist Case -- Individualistic Benefits to Gay Couples and Individuals:...
- The Traditionalist Case -- The Numbers:
- The Traditionalist Case for Gay Marriage -- The Week Ahead:
- Dale Carpenter on Same-Sex Marriage:
In your attempt to make the case for gay marriage, you have essentially robbed marriage of its meaning. Is marriage just a relationship between two (or more) people? Is that really what we want to make it?
Recognizing love between two people hardly robs marriage of any meaning. Gay people are NOT saying that any two people can get married -- but that' what the state currently says.
Yes, it does. The only requirement any state makes beyond the age requirement is that two people enter into an consensual agreement to marry. So even today, two people who are in "just a relationship" may get married. So if you are afraid that gay marriage will somehow transform marriage to mean just any two people can get married, well, you are a little too late. They already can. But I don't see anyone recommending that we change our laws to tighten up the restrictions on getting married. Do you want to?
Challenge: you're very close to not only defeating your own argument, but driving the wedge between what you want and what you might get wider.
Recognizing the often-severe financial disadvantages of marriage - especially late in life - California reserves its advantageous domestic partnership status only for gay couples of any age and straight couples with one over 62 years old.
If empirical evidence showed that children raised in certain types of polyamorous households fared better than children in married households (in literacy, education, citizenship/non-criminality, IQ, etc.), would you support poly marriage? Or at least government sanctioned poly unions, with financial benefits?
Because if you're not willing to make that concession, if given the data, I have no clue how you intellectually justify your position that, somehow, gay marriage can't happen, because children will be negatively affected (or that gay marriage must happen "for the children").
Incidentally, I know of no such studies, pro or con, but I strongly suspect that my hypothesis would be borne out, if we defined a certain class of committed polyamorous relationships. Polyamorous relationships allow for greater parenting flexibility (ex: 1 of 4 parents stay home with children, instead of 1 of 2; more career freedom for parents) and the advantage of pooled economic reasources (one house for more people; less need for mommy to work 2 jobs; more time to spend with child).
The reason *I'm* for gay marriage is that it's a major step in recognizing other valid, interpersonal arrangements that, for some people, yield happier, healthier results then marriage. I'm for state neutrality in determining how people organize their intimate social arrangements, but I guess that view is too taboo to actually be voiced. I'll go back in the corner and stop shining a flashlight inside our trojan horse.
I realize that Mr. Carpenter plans on addressing more of the facets of the debate in future posts, and I look forward to that.
Also, I don't wish to belittle the troubles of gay families. Like any other non-traditional family they face many problems and probably could benefit from some state support of the kind marriage provides. But I do think if we make this about the benefits, and about helping families whatever their structure and form, then we will end up destroying what "marriage" has meant.
Discrimination!!!! :)
You're for state neutrality but you want to see MORE governmental influence/meddling in social arrangements?
The second argument against gay marriage is that kids need mothers and male gays cannot provide motherhood. To the extent that gay marriage will encourage male gay couples to adopt children and raise them from a young age, and teaches that this type of arrangement is indifferent from traditional child-rearing; to that extent it is bad. The marriage-procreation link is now vigorously denied as a myth, an illusion by the gay marriage crowd. Obviously, this complete denial is an overstatement.
This is all very un-PC and I hope the thought police won't arrest me.
For a thought crime to occur, evidence of thought must be demonstrated.
I was going to respond to Anonymous22, but I think you've just saved me the time.
If we did adopt something like that scheme, then civil marriage might do something like create automatic co-parent status when the married couple was raising a child. And thus the argument would be that gay couples, like straight couples, should be allowed to marry because automatic co-parent status would be good for the children being raised by gay couples.
None of that sounds absurd to me, nor does it undermine any traditional conception of marriage--meaning that something like automatic co-parent status has always been an aspect of marriage.
Proof? I would have thought the opposite is true. From what you say, male female-couples are more likely to monogomous, so they wouldn't need the "encouragement" of marriage. How do lesbian couples fit into this argument? But by your logic, if women are more likely to be monogomous, does that support their right to marry?
"sex between gay couples gets boring much more quickly"
Proof? Do you have any experience here? I don't, but I don't see what the difference would be.
"To the extent that gay marriage . . . teaches that this type of arrangement is indifferent from traditional child-rearing . . . it is bad"
How so? Why is it bad? What if one of the partners is a real flamer, and the other is super butch? Compare that to a couple where both the mother and father have very high testosterone levels, go to WWF fights, and throw back Budweisers at NASCAR?
It seems that all your arguments that rely on unsupported statements.
Oh, it does to me... and yes, it does. How? By separating the proposed legal status of state-recognized parenthood from the legal status of state-recognized marriage. It's already an abomination that the state owns our children and can do with them what it pleases. Don't encourage them to define a separate parenthood status that they can grant to or take away from a given married couple as an indifferent matter of red tape.
Thus, a significant part of this debate is whether we want to encourage lesbianism and institutionalize it--and put the state's imprimatur on it as an equal way to raise children to traditional marriage. Lesbians can obviously have their own kids, whereas gay men cannot on their own.
Personally, I think that fathers are an essential part of raising both boys and girls. Males and females are quite different. Both boys and girls can be overmothered. I had a boy in my cabin while a camp counselor once who was the son of a lesbian couple, and the kid was so p-whipped and shy that it was just a mess, and certainly no fun for me to have to deal with. You could see why when his mothers came, as they just pampered and mothered him the whole time.
Girls can also be overmothered, because girls without father figures often grow up a little afraid of other males, given that they have not looked up to and loved their own father. It creates problems with dating as well as general relationships with boys/men.
My other criticism of gay marriage is that it sends a powerful signal to adolescents who may be confused by their sexuality that homosexuality is just as good and normal as heterosexuality. Whether homosexuality is as normal and healthy as heterosexuality is probably beyond the scope of this debate, but while I don't think it's a sin or anything, I do think that it creates a whole lot of problems all over the spectrum, demographically speaking. Given that there is usually a major environmental and/or choice factor involved in homosexual/bisexual practices, as born out by every study I've ever seen, this is a major part of the opposition to gay marriage.
I'm not. They compare us to incestuous brother sister pairings, people who have sex with animals, pedophiles, and tell us we're ravening sex feinds who're bent on destroying marriage.
All this goes on, but the important thing is that this is a civil debate, and they're not bigots.
Plus unfounded 'common knowledge' assumptions about how we raise children. Never mind the large body of studies that show that there's no real negative impact.
If anything, we're distinguishing "you" from people who have sex with animals. Twenty years ago, the two categories would have both been dismissed out of hand. A slippery slope argument implies that future consequences will be WORSE if we accept gay marriage now. If people really equated homosexuality with beastiality, we wouldn't be having a discussion in the first place.
You drag the entire post down when you try to make every argument personal and then attack your opponents as bigots.
Same to you, Anon22: That post almost looked calculated to re-ignite the bigotry charges. Gay sex "Gets boring?" I almost wish I knew how you came up with that one out of sheer amusement...
Parenthood is already a separate legal status from marriage, and that actually protects parenthood from interference by the state (because you do not lose your parental rights simply because you are not married). And the presumption of parenthood that arises in marriage also strengthens parental rights precisely because it then triggers the constitutional protection of parental rights laid out in a series of Supreme Court cases.
In that sense, it is wrong to conclude that such a presumption would make it easier for the state to take away parental rights. And that is precisely because parental rights, once established, are provided with constitutional protection.
In addition, there is great wisdom that usually comes from common knowledge. It's not infallible, but it's also correct more often than not.
So, it seems to me that asking whether gay couples would be ideal parents from a gender diversity perspective is the wrong question. The right question is whether gay couples would be presumptively unfit parents. In other words, even if their lack of gender diversity is not ideal, that does not mean they are not part of the broad range of parents who fall between ideal and unfit.
Of COURSE children do better with a mother and a father around. But if that's a case against gay marriage, then it's a case against single parenthood too, not to mention all kinds of other arrangements where a mother and a father aren't present.
Two guys or two gals raising children probably isn't the 'ideal.' But in a country where only 25% of kids are raised in 'traditional' households anymore, we passed using that logic decades ago.
I think the comments were in part driven by the content of your first two posts, which solely discussed the potential benefits to same-sex couples.
Most would agree, I included, that those same-sex couples already seeking a faithful and committed relationship would benefit from and respect the institution of marriage.
One question left unanswered is whether that subset of homosexuals is representative of the entire population, or whether they are on the margin. Lots of people tossed anecdotal information around saying things like “all of their gay friends do this or that.” Heartfelt, but hardly an sturdy enough limb for many opponents of extending marriage to same-sex couples to walk out on.
While the question of promiscuity was a poorly worded one, I think the intention was designed to address that question of the costs to society versus the benefits to the minority group. Something mentioned in your earlier post as being important in any such discussion.
He's assuming (and I think this is a correct assumption) that gay sex by itself is not immoral, or at minimim not "so" immoral compared to other sins based on family arrangements (fornication, out of wedlock childbirth, etc.)
So if you can't "buy" that assumption, you and Mr. Carpenter are likely to talk past each other. If you CAN buy the assumption, you're not on the right "slippery slope". A man and a woman who have no sexual interest in each other can ALSO marry for the benefits (this was the straw argument I had to defeat to convince my stepfather in the wisdom of same sex marriage). If you, as a conservative, can't see that, think Bill and Hillary. So it isn't "gay marriage" that opens up your Pandora's Box, it's marriage without the government having a videocamera in your bedroom. The box is open, and nothing seems to have come out, Challenge. Let it go.
That can't be the "only" question. You also have to answer the question that I'm sure Mr. Carpenter will discuss today, which is WHAT EFFECT WILL GAY MARRIAGE HAVE ON GAY SEX?
I think there are strong arguments that have to be considered, one's that seem quite correct, that the inability to enter into stable, legally committed relationships has signficantly encouraged gay promiscuity in MANY ways,* and that gay marriage is an important step in combatting gay marriage.
*I'll let Mr. Carpenter make his arguments, but off the top of my head, it ranges from putting external values into monogamy, legitimizing gay romantic love, and bringing gay sexuality into the mainstream where it's approval, now existing, is dependant on moral limits.
HOw is this relevant? Because if you are gay, you are gay, and nothing is going to change that. Proof? Check the websites to the American Psychiatric Association, the AMerican Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, in addition to the various associaions for theraphy and counseling. Opposite proof? Those people who say orientation can be changed cite research that is deeply flawed and never been peer reviewed. in addition, those organizations who promote change refuse to give any information on the success of their activities, and even they concede that change is unlikely for most people.
So what has this to do with gay marriage? Simple. We are gay, and we are unlikely to change that, no matter how hard we pray or whatever. So allow us ot get married.
Your concern was that this will "normalize" homosexual behavior. Yes and no. It will normalize it for those who are gay, but not for those who are not gay. Just ask any person -- including yourself -- what would it take for you to have sex with another man (assuming you are a man). How many gay marriages would it take? How many tv shows? If I put you in a locked room and forced you to listen to showtunes, how many hours before you cave and beg to have sex with a man?
Right. I don't think it will happen. Because the desire is not there. So bottom line: You have nothing to worry about.
Justin,
The point is that homosexual marriage will encourage more gay activity and relationships, which also will foster an environment where lesbian women find it appropriate to have more kids in a gay context. Not extending gay marriage does not end lesbians having kids, but it prevents that from becoming common. It has been repeatedly demonstrated, for ex., that things like welfare benefits for kids out of wedlock, general nanny state programs, and the like foster and encourage out of wedlock births. The same incentives and cultural acceptance issues predominate here, as well.
But you raise a good point. There were many women who were lesbian in college (the Sister Colleges especially!). And guess what, they were doing that well before gay marriage ever came to the table! And yet, somehow, civilization survived. So again, what is the worry?
As for prison, sure, gay sex thrives there because there is no alternative. Guess what? Men are pigs! But they aren't pigs because they are gay, they are pigs because they are men. (Sorry for the analogy -- but people here seem to like talking about animals).
Your point on Roman and Greek armies is a good one, but doesn't go far enough. It wasn't just the armies. At least in the ancient Greek society, it was far more common to have gay sex, and even have gay male relationships. Even today, in many middle eastern countries, from Greece to Egypt to Pakistan, you will find it common for an older and younger man to be in a relationship that is sexual, emotional, physical and intellectual. (I won't even mention the pre-Meiji Japanese Shoguns, who were almost all gay, and Tokyo at one point had the largest gay population in the world)
My point? First, with all this gay sex going on, civilization STILL survived! In fact, it often thrived.
I wasn't going to go into this topic, since it's sorta off topic from marriage, but what people in both the gay and striaght communities often forget is that sexuality is indeed fluid. Few people are 100% gay or straight -- most fall somewhere in between. And that "in between" point may wander from one side to another as one ages. Suppressing this sexuality is the source of a great deal of pain in our society, and it needs more study. We really know very little about human sexuality.
But we do know that some people are indeed gay, and that's not going to change. How we as a society deal with us in an issue that simply won't go away, and we will demand our rights until we get them.
What I sense from the people who oppose marriage, from Maggie Gallagher on down, is a real fear that changing the definition of marriage will really be a problem. The reasons they cite often come down to a worry about more gays, worries about gay promiscuity, worries about what will happen to procreation, worries about the children who don't have both a mother and father, and so on.
But whenever I talk to young people -- people in their 20s and younger, I don't see any of these worries. I can go up to a totally straight male in his 20s and say I'm gay, and more often than not, his attitude is neutral. I can talk about gay issues with him, and he is totally comfortable about it, and maybe even informed on the various issues. I think the difference arises because young people grow up with gay people in their midst. Schools are filled with gay teenagers, and they are often accepted.
Just last week in Baltimore, there was an anti-gay incident at a local school. The next week, there was a large protest against this anti-gay incident, and the majority of people there were striaghts! Mostly women, but some men too.
So the younger generation simply doesn't have the fear of gays that middle aged and older people have. They don't worry about a slippery slope, or thinking taht they will somehow "turn gay." By accepting gay people, they are implicitly coming to terms with their own masculinity or femininity. Hence, they don't need to beat up gays to prove how manly their are. (When I was growing up, that was the attitude, believe me).
Normalizing gay relationships? hey, the kids say go for it! Whatever floats your boat -- doesn't matter to me. Traditionalists, right-wingers and such will freak out that this is the growing attitude, but I rejoice in it.
The point is that homosexual marriage will encourage more gay activity and relationships, which also will foster an environment where lesbian women find it appropriate to (1) have more kids in a gay context. Not extending gay marriage does not end lesbians having kids, but it (2) prevents that from becoming common. It has been repeatedly demonstrated, for ex., that things like (3) welfare benefits for kids out of wedlock, (4) general nanny state programs, and the like (5) foster and encourage out of wedlock births. The (6) same incentives and cultural acceptance issues predominate here, as well.
Okay, a couple of things here. I've numbered the appropriate points.
(1) This requires you to accept my third possible premise, that these children would be better off not being born at all. If that's your opinion, then that's okay, but I'm going to respectfully disagree and insist that we leave it at that before going too off topic.
(2) Id.
(3)(4)(5) All of these things will encourage out of wedlock childrearing, sure. But that gay MARRIAGE will encourage OUT OF WEDLOCK childrearing does not follow from your argument. Everything else goes back to (1).
(6) Your prejudices aside, that's a pretty wild accusation. Different incentives may create for different results, but surely in aggregate gays, who are better off, aren't avoiding having children simply because of FINANCIAL incentives. Nor does any theory of gay marriage apply to out of wedlock births.
Look, these children you seem to be so worried about WILL NOT EXIST outside of gay marraige. You are *not* substituting straight-raised kids for gay-raised kids. You are simply substituting gay-couple-raised kids for gay-single-parent raised kids. And even if we can disagree about the morality of homosexuality, I can't believe that's something you'd oppose.
"25 here, and while I don't fear "gays," I think their relationships should be normalized. If you think opposition to gay marriage is based on fear, you're mistaken... probably willfully."
Dan, uhhh, why isn't this an argument IN FAVOR of gay marriage? The "probably willfully" addition shows a soft bigotry of your own, btw. Actually, forget soft. It's bigotry.
1) "morally" disproving an identity question and then circually defending that identity points by refusing to test your presumptions, in order to put a negative moral value on having a particular identity, which is, by definition, bigotry.
2) devalue-ing certain quantities of benefit for gays that you wouldn't disvalue in others in order to determine tradeoffs. That is, you wouldn't disvalue certain heterosexual benefits because of real or supposed adverse effects on the institute of marriage that they are causing, but are clearly willing to do more harm to homosexual values where such harm is less damaging to the institute. (this is actually where maggie galleger is not particularly bigoted).
3) Making certain presumptions about gay society that require one to believe there is something innately different about gays where such inferences are not the only reasonable explanation for certain phenomena, or in many cases, not even reasonable explanations for certain phenomena.
Over the course of the two weeks, you've done each of these three forms of bigotry, and you've decided that to be called on it is something only bigots would do...but since being "bigoted" against opposing political viewpoints has NOTHING to do with bigotry, what you are really doing is a fourth form of bigotry, which is making certain presumptions about the other side, in terms of morality, that allow you to avoid rigorously challenging your own moral disapproval of an identity group.
So I'm bigoted for thinking that same sex marriage advocates have an interest in assuming that all of their opponents are making arguments based solely on fear? That's bigotry against whom exactly? Same-sex marriage advocates? Spare me.
I certainly indulged in a few anecdotes, but I clearly pointed out that my personal experiences cannot possibly reflect the diversity of millions of other gay or lesbian folks. (Yes, I have a hang up about using statistics truthfully; I was probably potty trained too early or something ;-).)
I did have a point, even if it was too elliptical for most readers to appreciate. Just one example was in repeatedly pointing to my (middle) age. Were I to characterize my friends’ willingness to “settle down” 20+ years ago, I would have described it quite differently. In my salad days, getting married and making home wasn’t near the top of the list for most of my friends. It mattered little whether they were gay or straight, male or female, etc.
The same could be said of my vague references to the “circles in which I travel,” meaning a sort of socio-economic-cultural what-have-you. People with different cultural experiences/identities tend to regard marriage (and related social constructs) in different ways. It’s not a necessarily (or even predominantly) gay-vs.-straight thing.
All of which leads me to wonder why so many people are eager to begin an inquiry into the Great Marriage Debate assuming that gay folks are so fundamentally different from our parents, our communities, and our society? Are there important differences among the gay/straight/whatever experience? Of course. But, are they so pronounced as to completely upend everything else we know (or assume) about human beings?
So, I’ll just throw in one more anecdote before throwing in the towel. I have far more in common with the straight people I grew up among than with gay people who grew up in very different American communities.
I’ll never forget the first time I met a dyed-in-the-wool gay racist. It made no sense to me. How can you be gay and racist? Haven’t you learned anything? Of course she had. She learned it from her environs.
Is anyone here foolish enough to hazard a guess as to what my life (or “lifestyle”) is like based solely on the fact that I’m gay man? Would you succeed any better than I would in describing what a straight woman's life is like based the fact that she's romantically attracted to men too?
"Normal" or otherwise, I can't conceive of myself or anyone else as that unidimensional--to say nothing of throwing X million people into that narrow bucket.
(P.S. If you try to shoehorn into my words that I’m calling you a bigot, then you’ve flunked the rhetorical quiz.)
A percentage of the human population will always be homosexual. Sexual orientation in and of itself is only one part of an individual's make up. Turning a "blind eye" to the issue does not make it go away. We should acknowledge homosexuality/lesbianism as one aspect of the human sexual condition and get over it.
Actually, the underlying thrust of what Randy described has some merit, at least if you have any faith in common polling practices.
Generally, younger Americans are supportive or at most ambivalent about same-sex couples getting married. The converse is true of older Americans. You may not be in the majority for your age group, but you’re hardly alone.
What remains to be seen is what happens as your generation ages.
It ain't broke. Why fix it?
Yet, for that, I'm deemed a bigot.
What gives???
As far as aging: The truism is that as you get older, you get more conservative.
As it stands, if that holds true, we might only be arguing this for a couple of years; Either it'll happen soon, or it won't happen, as the current youth generation (I forget what they call us...) ages.
According to the GSS data collected over a 20 year period the median number of lifetime sexual partners for purely heterosexual men is 5 and for homosexual men is.... 6.
Yes when you look at the stats you see that at about the 75% mark the number of lifetime sexual partners for both gay and straight men starts rising rapidly. So what does that mean - 25% of men are randy bastards regardless of their sexual orientation.
Yes horribly horny gay men will be more successful at finding partners but who really thinks that marriage is a primary concern for men of either sexual orientation in that 25%?
When I was in the army my sister asked me if I had a boyfriend, and I said 'no' and she asked why. I said "What's safer: me being in a long term relationship that will be impossible to hide and get me kicked out of the military or a one night stand with someone who thinks my name is John?"
Persecution and marginalization encourages the separation of sex from affection, it fosters promiscuity. Here in Seattle most of the gay people are marrying because no one here cares if they do get married! We live in any neighborhood, hold any job, and low and behold the majority seem to also want to marry someone and share their lives with the person, hopefully for the rest of their lives.
Always makes me shake my head when the people who engage in the persecution that encourages promiscuity then point at it to justify their stereotyping and continued persecution - how more vicious of a cycle could there be?
Actually there is mountains of studies that show that boys are better off with with single fathers or heterogendered parents as opposed to single mothers! There is a actually a dreth of information that compares boys raised by 2 female parents with those raised by heterogendered parents. The studes that even tangentially touch on this show that the most important thing for good childhood development is two living parents providing a stable environment not the genders of those parents.
The fact is, many people are disgusted by the thought of sex acts between men. Many of these same people are turned on, or at least not disgusted by, the thought of sex acts between women.
Given that, it isn't a surprise that opponents of gay marriage focus on gay males having sex with each other.
The fact is, I don't think we can have this debate without discussing the motives of opponents of gay marriage. The truth is, the arguments against gay marriage are basically make-weights, and what lies behind them are powerful religious and psychological forces that oppose male homosexuality (and, really, ONLY male homosexuality). Get rid of those prejudices, and nobody would accept the make-weight arguments.
And today we face this question again, with the aid of technology: should same-sex couples be allowed to procreate together or not? You can't deny that we face this question right now. We will have to answer it one way or the other (and choosing not to answer it answers it in favor of allowing it, since it is not currently banned). What is so different about gay marriage that we approach the question in some other way besides procreation rights? It is ludicrous. It is the same questin it always has been - should we allow someone to procreate with someone of their same sex???
Should we?
I am a tax paying citizen of the US. I deserve the due process required in the 14th Amendment to the constitution.
....nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
As an adult citizen of this country, why am I being denied due process. Why does the state treat me as a 2nd class citizen? Being gay, which I am by the way, is not a crime in any of the 50 states. This is the central question those of us who support the right for gay people to marry should be discussing. Not how many fucks a gay male has. This is fruitless (no pun intented) argument. It's past time to move on.
At every opportunity, I try to move this issue
And it would be very supportable to say that you cannot procreate with someone of your same sex.
The fact remains that according to every poll I've seen, the younger the generation, the more inclined they are to gay marriage. For the people in their 20s and younger, the figure is about 80% in favor. Each ten-year stratum declines along a pretty much straight line until you get to the 70+ people, who are around 10% in favor.
What that means is that it's only a matter of time before this issues becomes moot. A majority of people will support gay marriage within another generation -- that's about 25 years. Once people see that in Canada and Massachusetts marriage is still thriving even with gay marriage, it may happen sooner.
This is why the conservatives are pushing for an amendment to the constitution. They are hard to pass, and ever harder to revoke, so they are hoping to arrest it now before people get comfortable with it.
Funny, isn't it? In all those states that passed state constitutions to ban gay marriage -- their divorce hasn't dipped at all. Bankruptsies are actually increasing. Gas prices have risen. The war in Iraq is going worse. In other words, people's lives as just as badly off, or worse, than they were. They may be out of job because it was shipped to China, but by golly they at least can get the comfort of knowing they stopped those homos from getting married.
Hallalujah.
Today, no one polls that because it is such a non-issue, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who wants to ban interracial marriage. The numbers would likely be in the single digits.
When did this great change occur? Certainly by 1990, we can assume no one opposed interracial marriage. So that took, what a little over 20 years for americans fo fully accept interracial marriage.
Today, the polls are all over the place on gay marriage, but overall they tend to be somewhere between 30-40% in favor, and those numbers are quite a bit higher than they were ten years ago. So already we are starting off better than than 1968. I predict within 10 years, we will have a solid majority in favor of gay marriage, something over 50%. Of course, it will depend on region and age of respondent. Old people in red states will likely be against it, while young people in blue states will likely be in favor. But still, that's not too bad. And no doubt more states will have allowed gay marriage (Connecticut is the most likely candidate) And when that happens, the debate will really fall upon those who oppose it to show the harm.