[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Wrong. You mis-stated it. A straight person has the right to marry a person of the opposite sex of their choice. The same as a gay person. Whether or not you "like" reality doesn't make the principle unreal.

Wrong. You mis-represented it. Rights are inherent. Laws are not made to create or allow rights, they are made to restrict them. Usually this is done for protection. You want to do it for moral reasons, and this is wrong.

Frankly, I really don't give a damn one way or the other on the issue.

Then why the hostility, and the insistence? It looks like you care about it a great deal.

That being said, this judge was out-of-line. I guess that most people have an inability to reconcile what they WANT to be true with what reality dictates is true.

How was he out of line? A case was brought before his bench and he ruled on it, and created a very detailed explanation of why he ruled what he did.

You now need to explain why, if you don't care about the issue, you feel the need to attempt to dismiss it with an intentional insult to everybody who disagrees with you. How exactly does reality dictate that what you believe is true? It may be true on the face of it, but so were laws that advocated racial discrimination.

Because it's true does that necessarily mean it's right? If a law is wrong should it not be resisted because it exists? And does not your statement also apply to yourself? Are you not also unable to reconcile yourself with what is versus what you want to be true?

If it were up to me, gays would have the same rights to unions as heterosexual couples, but it would be termed differently, and I think it is small and trite of gay activists to repudiate such a gesture repeatedly simply because they want a term traditionally applied to straights.

Tradition is not always right either. Is there a possibility that you are so upset over this because you find homosexuality offensive and hate to see any concession in that direction.

Well guess what? I find the act itself not only offensive but revolting, and I hate seeing men holding hands (and fondling each other) in public. But I also realize that my morality and sensibilities might just be skewed by what I've been taught over the years.

To badly paraphrase Thomas Jefferson: "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to love another man. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."

Bad paraphrasing, I admit, but also true.