Gay marriage ban passes in NC

[NeonSamurai]

FYI I have been monitoring this thread since the beginning. I haven't seen anything yet that crosses the line into warning/infraction level (though, that post by steve_the_slim does come close). Just the usual GT level of insults, faulty logic, unreferenced claims, etc found in every other hot topic here. The general policy of GT (and subsim in general) is to let people have their say, even if some of us find it really offensive, as long as it does not degenerate into nothing but insults, flaming, trolling, etc. or break the other rules.

As for the pro/anti accusations relating to subsim staff, anything posted is that individual's own personal opinion on the subject. I try my best to stay neutral as a moderator, and permit debate and criticism, even if it is of a person's cherished beliefs (If you do not want your beliefs to be criticized then don't post them), as I think absolutely nothing should be free from questioning (personally I question everything, even what I may hold to be true).

Honestly, though I think this forum is pretty evenly divided amongst the different camps. But we all like to think that our side is the underdog.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

While that may be the case - there I would say that there should have been action some time ago.










Anyone who has disagreed with gay marraige has been called a bigot innumerable times - accused of marrying their cousin and told to "grow up". Not to mention, stupid and [redacted].... which in and of itself violates the rules here. Statements looking forward to the death of people probably are not within the guidelines either....

I mean come on - this thing STARTED with name calling.....
But it seems that its ok as long as your bashing people who are anti-gay marriage.

I haven't brought it up until now - but the above quotes were only in the first 4 pages - and there are more. Discussions are hard enough as it is in this medium - allowing blanket statements that say anyone who is anti-gay marraige is somehow a stupid bigot who marries their cousin..... well lets just say that those kinds of allowed comments don't make discourse any easier.

None of that is any less offensive that the reciprocal slurs made against those on the left in numerous threads on this very forum. No action is taken against those individuals either. People only tend to get worked up when it is their 'side' that is on the business end of those type of remarks. To that effect, it is not the business of the moderator to police one's politics. Members are encouraged to ignore those who they feel either take cheap shots or argue dishonestly.

This forum sometimes resembles a kindergarten.

'Ow, he hit me!'
'But he was touching me!'
'He stole my crayon!'
'Nuh uh, it was MINE!'

Pretty much sums up the last few pages of 'discussion'. Honestly, it is probably time for some of our more respectable members to walk away from this one. Besides, if it started with insults, why in the hell did you guys let it get to be 16 pages long? Let the refuse sink rather than keeping it bumped to the top.

[Bilge_Rat]

The thread is cooling off, but I saw an interesting tidbit.

The pollster for President Bush's 04 campaign put out a memo for GOP insiders advising them that with rapidly changing attitudes towards Gay rights that they will have to recalibrate their message:

Memorandum

From: Jan R. van Lohuizen

Date: 05/11/12

Re: Same Sex Marriage



Background: in view of this week's news on the same sex marriage issue, here is a summary of recent survey findings on same sex marriage:

1. Support for same sex marriage has been growing and in the last few years support has grown at an accelerated rate with no sign of slowing down. A review of public polling shows that up to 2009 support for gay marriage increased at a rate of 1% a year. Starting in 2010 the change in the level of support accelerated to 5% a year. The most recent public polling shows supporters of gay marriage outnumber opponents by a margin of roughly 10% (for instance: NBC / WSJ poll in February / March: support 49%, oppose 40%).

1. The increase in support is taking place among all partisan groups. While more Democrats support gay marriage than Republicans, support levels among Republicans are increasing over time. The same is true of age: younger people support same sex marriage more often than older people, but the trends show that all age groups are rethinking their position.

1. Polling conducted among Republicans show that majorities of Republicans and Republican leaning voters support extending basic legal protections to gays and lesbians. These include majority Republican support for:
2. Protecting gays and lesbians against being fired for reasons of sexual orientation
3. Protections against bullying and harassment
4. Repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.
5. Right to visit partners in hospitals
6. Protecting partners against loss of home in case of severe medical emergencies or death
7. Legal protection in some form for gay couples whether it be same sex marriage or domestic partnership (only 29% of Republicans oppose legal recognition in any form).

Recommendation: A statement reflecting recent developments on this issue along the following lines:

People who believe in equality under the law as a fundamental principle, as I do, will agree that this principle extends to gay and lesbian couples; gay and lesbian couples should not face discrimination and their relationship should be protected under the law. People who disagree on the fundamental nature of marriage can agree, at the same time, that gays and lesbians should receive essential rights and protections such as hospital visitation, adoption rights, and health and death benefits.

Other thoughts / Q&A:

Follow up to questions about affirmative action: This is not about giving anyone extra protections or privileges, this is about making sure that everyone regardless of sexual orientation is provided the same protections against discrimination that you and I enjoy.

Why public attitudes might be changing: As more people have become aware of friends and family members who are gay, attitudes have begun to shift at an accelerated pace. This is not about a generational shift in attitudes, this is about people changing their thinking as they recognize their friends and family members who are gay or lesbian.

Conservative fundamentals:As people who promote personal responsibility, family values, commitment and stability, and emphasize freedom and limited government we have to recognize that freedom means freedom for everyone. This includes the freedom to decide how you live and to enter into relationships of your choosing, the freedom to live without excessive interference of the regulatory force of government.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-...ge-123235.html

This may partially explain why the GOP has been so muted in its response to President Obama's announcement. It makes more sense to keep hammering away on the economy rather than get sidetracked and wind up on the wrong side of such a potentially explosive issue.

[Betonov]

So all the gay agendas, them trying to kill us straights off by releasing marriage related diseases and completely destroy our cultural heritage trough tasteless dressing and promiscuity. How horrible.

But I have a feeling that there's something more important than medling in lives of homosexuals....
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Maybe, just maybe
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IT'S THE ECONOMY


How about if our glorius idiots we are forced to call leaders start fixing the economy and stop fixing trivial, and most of all private busineses like marriage.
And fer crying out loud, this thread has 16 pages and GDP growth is still a crying mess. Too bad

[mapuc]

Since 1989, Denmark have allowed two person of same sex to get, what we call
civil partnership. They can only get "married" at the local City Hall.

But for them it seems that this isn't enough, they are fighting for the rights to get married in churches

And the right to adobt.

I'm quite alone on my standpoint

I Say yes to civil partnership at the local City hall

I Say no to married in church
I say no to adopt.

Maybe I'm an old in my thoughts, but a child naturally born or adobt shall have a real dad and a real mother, not two fathers, were the one of them play the role of being the childs mom.

Markus

But for them it seems that this isn't enough, they are fighting for the rights to get married in churches

And the right to adobt.

I'm quite alone on my standpoint

I can see why you are alone in your standpoint, you say they are fighting to get a right, that right was granted a couple of years ago.
So you are objecting to them possibly getting something in the future on adoption that they already get.

As for the right to get married in church the main complication comes there because you don't have seperation of church and state.
It also blurs from the fact that most of the senior clergy in the state church approve of church blessings of all civil ceremonies.

[Platapus]

I was talking with The Frau on this issue. She tells me that in Germany, everyone who wants to get married first goes through a secular civil ceremony that established the legal state of marriage. After that, if the couple wishes, they can go through a church ceremony to establish the religious state of marriage. Whether they can get a religious ceremony is up to the specific church.

If that's the way they do it in Germany, that seems like the perfect solution as it clearly separates the legal and religious states of marriage. That is the problem in the US. For so many years, in the context of marriage, the division between the legal and religious states of marriage has been intertwined; when they should be separated.

The government should not control religious marriages, and churches should not control secular legal marriages.

As for gay marriage; no one has ever been able to explain to me how allowing gays to marry will somehow denigrate heterosexual marriage.

Perhaps we should ask Kim Kardashian or Britney Spears about the sanctity of heterosexual marriage?

[mapuc]

That's almost the same here in Denmark

When I mention the church, I was talking about a real marriage
That's is what they want.

Our danish polticians, are working on some law, so that two male of female can get a real marriage in the local church

However I do not know if this legislative has a majority or not among the politician.

Markus

[u crank]

As a relative new comer to this forum I'm somewhat disappointed at the way some of this discussion has gone. There have been good points raised on both sides but also some pretty immature stuff as well. The kindergarten analogy was a good one.

If you want some one to listen to and respect your viewpoint you should afford them the same kindness.

It has been some interesting reading so far and I've learned a few things.

[P_Funk]

In review, is there a single reason to say that legalization of same-sex marriage is a bad idea, religious arguments aside? The only one I could conceive someone making a proper go at is raising of children, which is really an adjoining issue. Of course if someone wants to say having 2 daddies or two mommies is bad then should we create legislation to prevent a single mother or father from getting their best friend of a same sex to participate closely in the upbringing (you know, the informal uncle or aunt)? Should the state begin a mandated obligatory matchmaking department to force all single parents to marry immediately so as to prevent the child from being deprived from the traditional view of a family (Mom, Dad, bitter arguments, infidelity, fighting about money, slowly dying inside as their identity is subsumed by the family)?

Marriage is a legal contract, something created long ago by many cultures to either affirm privately a loving relationship between two consenting parties or more cynically as a means to solidify patriarchal relationships as a means to guarantee the passing down of land rights and other such trappings of power much the same way those of great ambition sought to control and solidify claims to things like thrones or kingdoms.

Taking the religious angle is difficult against agnostic or atheistic thinkers since they're more prone to identify the dishonest nature of that claim to marriage. There are many subsequent topics relating ultimately to the religious argument which often rears its head in the form of "family values" and the idea that if kids aren't raised by the textbook-never-existed ideal couple then they'll somehow become perverted miscreants. In reply to the Family Values pitch I simply say why then are people so frequently apathetic to dealing with poverty and other social considerations that more directly affect the quality of the person who emerges from their broken up bringing?

Aversion to same sex marriage is a phobia brought on by long entrenched value systems that are still being kicked off our boots like so much dry **** long overdue for excision. The process of softening to the idea is effectively inevitable but every now and then some enterprising and desperate political entity picks it up and shakes it like some voodoo doll at its constituents to try and manufacture another wedge issue, a tactic that has long worked well in favor of the Republicans in the US. However it seems that the wedge-issue tactic is shifting in favor of the Dems as more and more of the traditional issues become popularly in favor of the liberalized mindset.

Basically its a step backwards in NC that will eventually be taken forward again. The world is changing and slowly the traditional values are being outed as outdated, small minded, and really a function of control through institutions like the church.

One thing that seems true of history is that values are as malleable of as the people who hold them. We're in a period where values seem as flexible as silly putty. Its good for gays and blacks, not so good for traditionalists. Its a pretty big shift compared to the inevitable changes people have had to come to terms with in other periods, but honestly its nothing new. Jokes about Greeks and their boy love must predate Jesus by a great measure. Another opportunity to crack out the old trite statement of "its all just going in cycles."

PS. My first 2 cents on the Subsim political index in many years. I seem to recall the moderators being heroic at letting it play out, and some of the members being equally heroic at testing the limits of patience. I don't know why I ever left this place.

[soopaman2]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

I have done so repeatedly. Not everyone has morals that come from the Bible. Or even religion for that matter. But lets skip the entire moral arguement.

There are financial considerations. As stated way earlier - marriage does not require monogamy - and homosexuality has massively increased risks to health compared to heterosexuality. People vote with their pocketbooks as well as their morals - the city of Asheville incurred a significant jump in its insurance costs when it started offering same sex partner benefits. That cost was passed on to the other city employees in part - but the majority of it got loaded onto the backs of the taxpayers. Considering the debt the city already has - not everyone agrees that their taxes should go up yet again to fund a higher costs of care for everyone because a few want to engage in extremely risky behavior and make others pay for it.

You asked for one - I gave you one. If you want more - go look at the entire thread.

So we should cut wives off insurance and pension plans, just like they cut off gay life partners.As long as it is the same for everyone.

Health risks, you mean Gay Related Immune deficiency (GRIDS), as they used to call it? What is this 1982? Don't tell me you still blame the gays for AIDS?

Pardon my liberal-ness. I know that is considered a scourge here.

EDIT: (No don't pardon it, I am proud of my open mindedness. I am ashamed of other Americans lack of it)

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by soopaman2

Health risks, you mean Gay Related Immune deficiency (GRIDS), as they used to call it? What is this 1982? Don't tell me you still blame the gays for AIDS?

Its impossible to deny the higher rate of AIDS in the homosexual community. With that said shouldn't affirming their right to marry reduce this seeing as how the quickest road to abstinence is marriage?

However, in reply to Haplo's absurd statements about financial consideration relating to extending human rights, is that how we're going to quantify freedom now? Can we afford it? Sounds an awful lot like the arguments of those who seek to limit freedom for the sake of security "We can't afford it".

The whole idea of freedom is that its inalienable. Cost-benefit analyses applied to such a concept demeans it as a matter of course. Only moments of pure survival can justify that mode of thinking and our view of freedom presupposes it as a function of our values.

Cost-benefit analyses have been used in vulgar circumstances before. The classi Pinto case comes to mind. The one where a car manufacturer did some math and determined that it would be cheaper to pay out settlements for lawsuits relating to wrongful death than to make the $11 minor repair. Basically it was cheaper to let a bunch of people die. Thats what cost benefit analyses do to our so called rational progressive value system.

So what do we learn from this? That religious value systems might lead to bigotry, but freedom from a religious value system can make people apathetic and detached from humanity. So what do we prefer? Bigotry or Callousness?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by u crank

As a relative new comer to this forum I'm somewhat disappointed at the way some of this discussion has gone. There have been good points raised on both sides but also some pretty immature stuff as well. The kindergarten analogy was a good one.

I have to point out that as a relative newcomer you, as they say, ain't seen nothin' yet. In the great scheme of General Topics this has actually been fairly tame.

I didn't address your other points because I agree with them and didn't think they needed comment.

I didn't address your other points because I agree with them and didn't think they needed comment.

You only say that when you agree with people, that's taking sides that is.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by soopaman2

So we should cut wives off insurance and pension plans, just like they cut off gay life partners.As long as it is the same for everyone.

Health risks, you mean Gay Related Immune deficiency (GRIDS), as they used to call it? What is this 1982? Don't tell me you still blame the gays for AIDS?

Pardon my liberal-ness. I know that is considered a scourge here.

EDIT: (No don't pardon it, I am proud of my open mindedness. I am ashamed of other Americans lack of it)

The closeminded the scourge of America! GRIDS? Never heard of it. I was in my teens in the 80's. I remember it as AIDS. Is GRIDS something that was created in your neck of the woods? Just who is 'they'? I also recall a preponderance of AIDS in the gay community as reported and growing more so in the heterosexual community. In the 80's there was very little known concerning AIDS.