The Gayminator
Posted on:: September 8th, 2005
Gov. Arnold, is vetoing the California gay marriage law. Here’s a place where you can let him know that you disagree with him.
PS: It seems to be working out pretty well here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. [Technorati tags: GayMarriage california schwartzenegger]
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Actually, I don’t disagree with him. I support family values and find that gay marriage is an attack on those values.
I agree with the governator. The people of California voted on this already. They said no. Arnold is upholding the will of the people.
I am not up-to-speed on this at all, but if as Sean writes, the people of California have already voted gay marriage down, shouldn’t the Governor elected by those same people honor their vote?
I recently read that once a ballot initiative is passed in California, it can’t be amended by the legislature, only by another ballot initiative. I believe California is the only state in the union with that particular law.
From what I understood, the recent gay marriage bill (not law – it was never signed) was based on a deliberate misinterpretation of the California Defense of Marriage Act, one that restricted that ballot initiative’s scope to out-of-state same-sex marriages. I suspect this misinterpretation wouldn’t have held up in court, signed by the governor or not.
The only ironclad way to legalize same-sex marriage in California is to reverse the California Defense of Marriage Act with another ballot initiative.
OK, now I am confused. I thought the people voted FOR gay marriage?
“I support family values”
As opposed to those who hate family values, puppies and employment, right?
The legislature voted for so-called homosexual marriage. But the people voted in a referendum some time ago to not recognize homosexual marriages that might be legalized in other states. I also believe the referendum included language that stated the definition of marriage is one man and one woman, but I’m not sure of that last point. At any rate, on the basis of that, the governor is vetoing the legislatures approval of homosexual marriage on the basis of the referendum that the people have already voted. If the people want to approve of homosexual marriage then they will have to do it by referendum, reversing their earlier one.
Two points:
First, civil rights advances are generally opposed by the majority until after they are imposed. Sorry about forcing people to act humanely, but that’s life. If we’d waited till the majority of voters in the state of Mississippi decided to vote for full civil rights for black people, well, the state of Mississippi wouldn’t have any black voters.
Second, let’s look at a current example of “so-called homosexual marriage” which you wish not to recognize:
Anyone care to suggest that DJ should be sent back to his heterosexual mother? Or that Dan Savage and his partner are not good parents, and deserving of the sort of government-protected rights that some wish to withhold from certain people? Can you make your case without bigotry? I don’t think so.
Sean, I am not sure about the values of the referendum and the legislature in CA, but it would seem to me that if the governator is basing his decisions on guesses, he may not be doing his work properly. It would seem that the people in CA need to enter a dialogue with each other over this one. (Presumably, the legislature was elected; IOW, they already represent the will of the people.)
If its bigotry not to want to change the definition of every institution of society just to suit someone’s sexual habits, then fine… I’m a bigot under that definition. Homosexuals have the same marriage rights as I do. I, as a male, can marry a woman. A homosexual man, as a male, can also marry a woman. A homosexual woman can marry a man. We’re equal. If a homosexual man doesn’t want to marry a woman… well, that’s his issue. Marriage is what it is. If we start to pretend that we’re changing the real definition by changing the law, we’ll eventually change it so much that its meaningless. We’ll eventually cross a line that even the advocates of homosexual marriage wil say “no” to.
But ultimately, if society goes down that road, it will be a sad day in the continuing decline of our society. But it won’t change my life. To me, a marriage is a sacrament involving a man, a woman, and God. The legal thing called “marriage” is a legal convenience created by the state and is not the actual marriage, at all. And it is of much less importance to me than the real marriage, the sacrament. And we’ll go on celebrating the real sacrament of marriage and not paying any attention to the state’s legal convenience, whether homosexuals participate in it or not.
And as far as I’m concerned, Adam’s link about adoption is irrelevant to the issue of homosexual marriage. But since he mentions it, I’ll add that I think a child is best served raised by a married couple… a man and a woman. Only as a last resort would I place a child with a homosexual couple. Perhaps the article linked to by Adam represents such a last resort… I wouldn’t begin to say I knew just from a NYT article. Especially from a NYT article.
Sean,
When you say:
you miss the point.
You can marry the love of your life. A gay man or a lesbian can’t. Would you be satisfied marrying just any woman? Can I pick for you, or restrict your choices to Welsh women but not Scots?
You are welcome to worship whatever god you wish to worship, and I appreciate your frank statement that it’s religion that underlies what I guess I would have to call your bigotry.
But when you say this:
you’re being inconsistent. If the “legal thing called ‘marriage’…is not the actual marriage,” then why do you care? I would not dream of telling your church it had to give a sacrament to someone it thought should not have it, and I’d fight the person (outside your church–inside is your business) who did try. If I could defend the Nazis marching through Skokie, I can defend you.
Why, then, should you impose your religous beliefs, via law, on the rest of us? If it’s not marriage, then let it go. Let the rest of us try and find out.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe gay marriage really will be bad for society. Maybe it’s better for kids to grow up shuttled from foster home to foster home rather than be in a gay household.
I think you’re wrong.
Until we’ve established a bigotry-free governmental apparatus (I grew up in the South, and hope but don’t expect to wipe out bigotry), we won’t have a fair trial.
Let’s experiment and find out.
P.S. I put up the Times article partly because I’d seen it that morning, but partly because Dan Savage is not one of the coat-and-tie gay people who try to blend in. He’s open about liking sex and approving of gay sex which is not the sort that resembles standard vanilla hetero sex. I chose him to make a stronger claim than just “some gay people are okay”.
i completely disagree with gays. Look, a governer is doing the right thing, and then guess what happens, people are at his throat. PEOPLE, WAKE UP! THIS IS WRONG! this innocent governer is merely upholding the will of the people.
Ceow