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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (72190)	8/11/2003 9:03:36 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 82486

In case anyone is wondering, or assuming, why I'm posting all this stuff from the gay perspective, it's because I'm on page three of my Google of the implications of civil unions and I've yet to find anything from the other side. usmarriagelaws.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (72190)	8/11/2003 9:16:22 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I totally agree with that essay. He should have included lesbians a bit more, but writers are egocentric. I mean even if the following were true: "Others argue that they base their opposition to gay marriage not on mere prejudice but on reality. Gay men, they argue, are simply incapable of the commitment, monogamy, and responsibility of heterosexuals. They should therefore be excluded as a group from an institution that rests on those virtues. They suspect that if gay marriage were legal, homosexuals would create a new standard of adultery, philandery, and infidelity that would lower the standards for the population as a whole. But, again, this is to set a bar for homosexual marriage that doesn't exist for any other group. The law as it now stands makes no judgments about the capacity of those seeking a marriage license to fulfill its obligations. Perhaps if it did the divorce rate would be lower. But it doesn't, and in a free society it shouldn't. The law understands that different people will have different levels of achievement in marriage. Many will experience divorce; some marriages may not last a week, while others may last a lifetime; still other couples might construct all sorts of personal arrangements to keep their marriages going. But the right to marry does not take any of this into account, and failing marriages and successful marriages are identical in the eyes of the law. Why should this sensible and humane approach work for everyone but homosexuals? Or look at it this way. Even if you concede that gay men — being men — are, in the aggregate, less likely to live up to the standards of monogamy and commitment that marriage demands, this still suggests a further question: Are they less likely than, say, an insane person? A straight man with multiple divorces behind him? A murderer on death row? A president of the United States? The truth is, these judgments simply cannot be fairly made against a whole group of people. We do not look at, say, the higher divorce and illegitimacy rates among African Americans and conclude that they should have the right to marry taken away from them. In fact, we conclude the opposite: It's precisely because of the high divorce and illegitimacy rates that the institution of marriage is so critical for black America. So why is that argument not applied to homosexuals?" ........... It has no application to lesbian women. Even if men are horndogs, that's no reason gay women shouldn't be able to get married. But aside from that little fault with the essay, I think it's very good indeed.