you are funny.

It was organised by local republicans to mobilise "Da Base" to vote for conservative candidates. The GOP used the same trick in 04.

You really should pay more attention to what is going on.

Yeah right.

Democratic mantra number 254, "Cast everything as an evil Republican plot". Have you BB'd (Blamed Bush) lately?

Yeah and these people weren't really bigots, they were just defending religion, fighting communism and protecting the natural order:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...on_protest.jpg

If you are for denying equal rights to someone else, then your justification for why you wish to do so is irrelevant as denying equal rights to someone else based upon their race/gender/religion/sexual preference/etc is bigotry.

Only if you try to deny me rights because my name is different from yours.

Because no society could ever have come up with those laws before the bible.

I mean, its not like its counter productive to the growth and welfare of a society to do those things...oh wait
:damn:

Didn't you know? Before his particular brand religion appeared the world was chaos! People just ran around killing everyone! I don't even know how Megas Alexandros conquered his empire without his entire army just falling into chaos as his soldiers went around stabbing each other! [/sarcasm] :rotfl2:

I wanted to comment on Mookie's post, but I am a little confused by the "Race mixing is communism" slogan. :hmmm:

But that's the whole point of Civil Unions. You wouldn't get any more or less rights or benefits by getting married as opposed to obtaining a civil union, you're just calling something different a different name. That is all.

I understand the point, a legal union having all the rights and obligations of a traditional marriage, but with a different name. I personally always thought that would be a good compromise, but for that to be a viable alternative, there would have to be movement very soon. Politically, it may already be too late for that. If Gays are obliged to fight all the way to the Supreme Court to have their rights recognized, they will accept nothing less than full equality.

In Canada, our former liberal government had legalised same- sex marriage after losing a series of court cases, all using the same reasoning as the U.S. cases I mentioned previously. When the Conservatives came in, they toyed with the idea of creating a separate " civil union", but finally gave up since it did not make sense to get into a major political fight over a name.

Isn't marriage between a man and a woman just a way to make co-habitation legal?

You now have the right to lay with your mate with a legal paper and legal status if the marriage doesn't work out they can terimate the marriage dividing property as the state they live in has already agreed to, which is 50% in California.

If this is so and I believe it is ... then all the gays really want is to do is make what they do legal.

Retirement pay and other US government restrictions to gay partners has already been lifted from what I understand. They can kiss each other upon returning from an overseas deployment in front of cameras without fear of pushiment.

Now they have someone from the white house, for the first time, on their side.

Just like North Carolina had someone, Billy Graham, on their side to defeat the gay marriage bill.

It's like black and white to me ... both sides have people in high places on their side.

Ok let's say they do that. Gays can have their civil unions. But here's the kicker - since separate but equal has been found to be inherently unequal, they tell all married people, ok in the interest of equality, you're not married anymore...we now consider you a Civil Union and you still have all the rights and benefits, but you're just not legally "married" anymore. Can you imagine the crapstorm that would stir up?

So you're denying them the right to get married.

It used to be that black people had the right to ride the bus, as long as they sat in the back. They had the right to ride the bus, but for some reason, they had a problem with it. It shouldn't matter, as long as they can still ride the bus, right?

I'm not denying them anything.

You tell me the practical differences between marriage and civil unions and how the latter equals riding in the back of the monogamy bus and maybe you'll have a point, but until then it's just another misapplication of a tired analogy.

There doesn't need to be a practical difference for it to be unequal. If you're tired of everyone saying your "separate but equal" argument is inherently unequal, perhaps you should re-think it instead of stubbornly clinging to it.

To look at it from the other side, the only way I can see that it would possibly not apply is that sexual orientation is not a suspect classification under federal law...it'd be hard to draw a direct parallel from a case regarding race (Brown v. BOE or Loving vs. Virginia) which is a protected class, to sexual orientation, which isn't. As soon as the courts recognize sexual orientation as a protected suspect class, you'll see the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage in short order.

If there is no practical difference then why insist on a different name?