http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081220/ap_on_re_us/gay_marriage_lawsuits
I suspect this will be much easier said than done. Try taking away the marriage rights from 18K couples, they’re not going to (and shouldn’t ever) give up without a fight.
Everyone has the right to wed. I don’t care what your book says or my book says, we as people have the right to love, and the right to profess our love through the means of marriage, if we so choose. To deny that is to deny a fundamental human right, and isn’t this country all about equal rights for all?
So much for that theory…
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December 20, 2008 at 2:31 pm
AS
I never thought of marriage as a human right. What makes something a human right? Are all human rights inalienable?
For example, we imprison those who commit crimes for the protection of society. In point of fact, we are taking away their right to freedom of movement. And yet I think we all agree that justice cannot be served without a form of punishment and that justice is a fundamental prerequisite of any society.
Is a person less of a person because they don’t have access to all their rights? Clearly that would be ludicrous. A human being is not just a collection of human rights. A human being is something far more precious and intangible and permanent than that.
But I’m beginning to ramble, so I’ll stop there.
December 20, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Cali
I don’t believe that a couple’s love needs to be recognized by the government to be validated in any way, ie. marriage. By denying gay couples the right to marriage, no one is denying them the right to love, but protecting an institution that has been a certain way for milennia.
And plus, Prop 8 passed because of a majority vote. If we’re going to live in a democracy, we have to live with the voice of the majority.
December 21, 2008 at 8:33 pm
ed
Cali,
I agree that the government needn’t get involved. But it is too late. We have a legal institution called “marriage” that implies fundamental societal and legal rights and privileges. If you don’t want marriage extended to gays, then the best way to deal with it is to abolish any governmentally recognized marriage and to require that all church “married” couples also register as domestic partners with the government in order to have the marriage legally valid. No special rights or privileges should come from being “married” by a minister, priest or rabbi and any two people (possibly including siblings or parents-children) should be allowed to form a domestic partnership if they so desire. How do you like what that would do for the sanctity of “marriage”
?
The california proposition system, as one who lived through it, is an abomination of the democratic process. If you can fool enough people to get an issue on the ballot (generally people have the view that it’s OK to sign any petition for a ballot issue since it is better to allow further discussion than not) then all you have to do is spend enough money on a misinformation campaign and you can make the electorate vote for almost anything (as long as it don’t cost ‘em nothing). I’ve witnessed ballots with over 50 issues on them, some of which explicitly would invalidate other ballot initiatives in the exact same round of voting!
The reason we have a representative democracy rather than a issue based democracy (like the ancient Greeks) is because we have neither the time nor the training to give adequate thoughtful consideration to all sides of all possible issues in a complex modern government. We elect someone who we believe will best represent our interests instead to decide and vote on issues for us.
December 23, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Emily
Well, Ed covered it.