On 7/2/2015 9:19 AM, trader_4 wrote:
On Thursday, July 2, 2015 at 9:56:07 AM UTC-4, Muggles wrote:
On Thu, 2 Jul 2015 06:22:09 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:
The "door is now opened" logic has been applied in
the past to making slaves citizens, Jim Crow laws,
inter-racial marriages, ie similar changes that people
were against at the time.

When we get into the business of changing how people view the world
and try to legislate that such laws are difficult to even get passed,
but not impossible. It takes time and America was set up So the
people could lobby for changes and see them happen.

How people view the world has always been changing and always
will be. If it didn't we'd still have slaves, separate counters
for blacks and whites, women wouldn't be allowed to vote.

When the SC unanimously invalidated the law against interracial
marriage, they wrote that marriage was a basic civil right. That
statement, more than anything, opened the door for the legalization of
gay marriage. The government involved themselves when Bill Clinton
signed DOMA into law, thereby refusing basic civil rights to gay
couples. All this other stuff seems religious based and that has nothing
to do with law.



What kind of society do we want to leave as our children's
inheritance is something many people don't even consider. Should
morals even have anything to do with which laws are enacted, and if
we don't have some sort of gauge that contains a logical line drawn
in the sand what's the point in society even being concerned with
enacting laws? Should those lines in the sand just be random or have
a moral basis?

Obviously 60% of people polled say they are OK with gay marriage.
I don't see how two gay people marrying each other is immoral. How
is that harming you or society? What is more moral, confining gay
people to the shadows or allowing them to enter the same relationships
as heterosexuals? The morality issue seems to be based on what
the bible says and also on fear and ignorance passed down over time.
We've already put aside plenty of what the bible says, for good reason,
as time progresses. And that assumes that you believe it to begin
with. Do you believe the earth is only 6,000 years old and a woman
was created from a rib?

The assumption that gay marriage is immoral is not a widely held belief,
based on what I see. What's wrong with teaching your children that
people are different and that tolerance is the correct way to go? Morals
are usually, by definition, about what's right and wrong, usually as
defined by society. Seems to me that society has decided.


When marriage was defined as being between one man and one woman our
society had a specific line drawn in the sand that we'd accept as a
valid standard for marriage. Redefining that standard for marriage
has removed the line, and it no longer exists. So, how will we now
define how far we'll allow our society to go?


As I said before, similar was said when slavery ended, women were
allowed to vote, segregation was ended, inter-racial marriage was
allowed, etc. Yet none of those resulted in the world coming to
an end and in fact, today almost everyone agrees they were the right
thing to do, though at the time, they were hotly contested too.

Who defined marriage in such a manner, before Bill Clinton decided he
would do that?


In other countries people can marry their farm animals.

I've travelled a lot and never run into that. What country would
that be?

What legal
ground do we have at this point that won't allow Americans to do the
same?

Now you're being ridiculous. Do you really think if that case
made it into federal court that there is any doubt as to what
the decision would be? Good grief.


We've already allowed marriage to be redefined once. There now
a legal precedence to argue in favor of other marriage combinations,
and very little to legally stop it from happening.

--
Maggie

Just the courts. And of course if you're really, really that bothered
about gay marriage, you could amend the constitution. Feel free to do so.
With 60% of the people saying they are OK with it, that doesn't seem too
likely. It's how democracy works. Some times you may not like the results,
but it is what it is.

Seems to me that, outside of religious context, Bill Clinton was the
only person who decided he had the right to define marriage.