Please excuse any bad grammar, I was out last night celebrating with friends.
This is the first time I felt really strongly positive about a politician. I hope that I'm not being overly influenced by a campaign that was tuned specifically to work on my demographic. I hope that there really is something there, and that Obama can manage to follow through on some of the progress his name has become synonymous with.
Unfortunately, it's not all flowers and light. Somehow, at the same time most Americans decided to take a big step forward, it appears a majority of Californians decided that about 5% of the population should be denied the basic human right to marry.
:: sigh ::
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5 comments:
Just FYI, marriage is not a basic human right. What we need are civil unions for those who are not religious so they can enjoy the union advantages without being forced to partake in a religious institution to do so. This is not a gay issue, it's an issue also with straight couples who choose not to be married.
What would be fair would be to have the same civil union or contract with its attendant rights, status, and responsibilities for all committing couples. Religion doesn't nor should it ever enter into the civil process. The ceremonial part, as with all personal beliefs, should remain a matter of personal choice including what you wish to call it. Since we made the mistake long ago of calling the civil process "Marriage" it isn't surprising for a gay couple committed to each other to want to "Marry" just like anybody else. Also, plenty of gay people are religious, FYI.
What would be more fair is to completely remove "the marriage factor" from any consideration in law. If people need a contract to ennoble their relationship then there is a body of contract law for that. Giving people special status for taxes, insurance, and other benefits based on a supposed marriage "tradition" is no longer a workable concept. I think we should remove the special status of marriage out of law completely and let people sign a contract if they want to have special rights and obligations with regard to other competent adults.
The government sanctions unions between heterosexual marriage for a reason.
The government is subsidize operations that produce future tax-payers. While the union of a man and a woman may not necessarily result in children, there is a significantly better chance.
I agree with the last comment posted; society progresses in stages and to say the least, the number of issues associated with 'gay marriage' are multifarious. The central issue, I take it however, is heterosexual procreation; the question of recent advances in technology may moot this in a couple of years to come but that in itself is a minefield of ethical and legal innovations that should be thoroughly combed over. If, indeed 'gay marriage' is a basic human right, I doubt a few years of waiting would cause significant harm to that population; My personal opinion is that it isn't a basic human right, neither for homosexual nor heterosexual couples but a privilege extended to procreaitng couples specifically. Whether that opinion is informed by fact remains to be seen.
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