Prop 8?

Yes. A fear of the systematic destruction of language which is the vehicle of our thoughts.

Already we have lost two most important words. "Gay" and "Choice". Both positive words commandeered to replace "homosexual" and "abortion". The very fact that the latter two words were felt to need this linguistic makeover signifies a degree of non-acceptance of them by those eager to use them and, by identification, the activities they represent viewed scientifically. Now it is "marriage".

In officialdom "spouse", "wife" and "husband" have been subsumed under "partner" which is traditionally associated with a business relationship.

We have "rendition" to mean hiring barbaric torturers and "quantitative easing" to mean printing money.

We will end up junking the literature of the past and not knowing what we are talking about.

One might justifiably fear that.

From Huffington Post and his own website:

Mike Alavar
Host of HBO's The Sex Inspectors and author of Men Are Pigs But We Love Bacon.


Iowa Gay Marriage Ruling: How it Strengthens Heterosexual Marriage

As outrageous as it may sound, heterosexual families will become stronger and stronger as more states follow Iowa’s gay marriage ruling. Gay marriage will reduce the number of divorces caused by fraudulent marriages, ensure that more orphaned children grow up in stable homes, raise the standard of living for children with gay parents, make neighborhoods safer for families, and boost the economies of struggling communities.

It’s not the license to marry that will create these benefits; it’s the massive shift in attitude that will result from it. The more gays are accepted as equal citizens the more stable heterosexual marriage will become. Why? Because there are an untold number of “traditional” marriages that break up because one of the spouses comes out.

Homophobia drives fearful gay men and women into fraudulent marriages. The pressure to conform, the weight of discrimination, the potential loss of cherished dreams (serving in the military, worshipping in church, getting job promotions, raising kids) propels many into marriages they otherwise wouldn’t commit to. Like my friend Cooper.

Cooper is 64 and recently divorced. He was married for 38 years before he came out. He left behind him a woman whose life was shattered by a truth that tunneled its way out of the mounds of shame, hostility and hatred that society heaped on it. The woman is 62. What is she supposed to with her life now the he’s found his?

Homophobia has a way of wounding gay and straight alike. It creates two classes of victims: People who are forced to lie and the people they lie to. As homophobia decreases, so will the pressure for gays and lesbians to enter into fig leaf marriages. Which in turn, prevents children from being hurt by divorce and helps heterosexuals, like Cooper’s wife, create authentic, stable marriages.

Homophobia punishes heterosexuals, too. For every gay man and woman that gets punished by the legal system there are straight mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters who suffer with them.

According to my calculations (see box below), 57.6 million people are either directly or indirectly affected by homophobia. Since demographers believe there are only about 6.4 million self-identified gay people, that means 89% of the people affected by discrimination against gays are heterosexual.

No matter how they feel about homosexuality, no parent wants to see their children hurt, no brother wants to see his sister in danger, no uncle wants to see his nephew suffer. One of the intangible costs of homophobia is the excruciating emotional pain felt by everyone related to the gay family member. Lessen homophobia, as gay marriage will, and you lessen the strain on millions of families.

Estimated Numbers:
6.4 million gays and lesbians
6.4 million siblings of gays and lesbians (assuming each gay person has one sibling)
12.8 million parents of gays and lesbians (assuming each parent is alive)
25.6 million grandparents (assuming two sets of living grandparents)
6.4 million uncles and aunts (assuming one per gay person)

Total: 57.6 million

How Gay Marriage Helps Your Neighborhood
Ferndale, Michigan’s downtown was once lined with abandoned buildings. After years of courting gays to live and start businesses, it had a vacancy rate of less than 3 percent (before the recession hit.

Ferndale followed the theories in the bestselling book, “The Rise of the Creative Class.” Civic leaders across the country pay over $10,000 to hear the author, urban planner Richard Florida, talk about the best way to revitalize their communities. His thesis: If cities want to jump-start their economies they must attract the dominant economic group in America"people who think for a living (doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and computer programmers). Dubbing them the “Creative Class,” Florida points out they’re the most dominant economic group, making up nearly 30% of the workforce.

Florida produced a number of indexes measuring characteristics of successful cities. There’s a High-Tech Index (ranking cities by the size of their software, electronics and engineering sectors) and an Innovation Index (ranking cities by the number of patents per capita).

But one of Florida’s most talked-about ranking is the Gay Index. He told
Salon.com: “Gays are the canaries of the creative economy. Where gays are will be a community that has the underlying preconditions that attract the creative class of people. Gays tend to gravitate toward the types of places that will be attractive to many members of the creative class.”

Florida, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, boils it down to this: If you want economic growth one of the things you must do is attract gays. Not because there are disproportionate numbers of gays in “Thinking Jobs” but because their presence signals the values the creative class are attracted to: Diversity, open-mindedness, variety, eccentricity.

Examples of Florida’s theories: Minneapolis’s Lorin Park, Boston’s Jamaica Plain, Chicago’s Boystown, Atlanta’s Midtown, Washington’s Dupont Circle and Adams-Morgan. Though each have the reputation of being “gay meccas,” any demographer will tell you that the vast majority of residents are heterosexual.

Disposing the Problem of Disposable Children
There are too many kids in foster care and not enough parents to adopt them. There are plenty of gay and lesbian families willing to adopt some of the 568,000 kids languishing in institutions, but statutory bans and local judiciaries refusing to grant gay adoption petitions impede them. According to the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute’s latest national survey, only 40% of public and private adoption agencies have placed children with gay adoptive parents. The same survey showed that a majority of childless gay men and women would like to become parents.

Would children in foster care be better off living in loving gay homes or institutions that warehouse and shuffle them from one home to another until they turn eighteen and “age out” of the system? Ask The American Academy of Pediatrics, The Child Welfare League of America, the North American Council on Adoptable Children, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers. Their conclusion: Gay and lesbian homes.

What’s the best way of making that happen? Giving gay couples automatic adoption rights. And the most effective way to do that? Allow them to marry.

Gay marriage wouldn’t just improve the lives of orphans; it would also improve the lives of children who have parents that happen to be gay.

Let’s say two women with average incomes have a child together named Billy. Because the women aren’t allowed to marry, Billy doesn’t get the financial and emotional safety nets other kids get.

For example, if Billy has a serious accident while his biological mother is away, the hospital can deny him the right to see his second parent, effectively torturing the child at the time of his greatest need.

If Billy comes home to recuperate, the boss isn’t legally obligated to provide sick leave to Billy’s second parent, effectively preventing a child from being soothed by his nurturing parent.

If Billy’s biological mother dies, the surviving parent has no legal rights to Billy, effectively allowing the state to rip him from the arms of a loving mother and throw him into the foster care system.

If Billy’s parents separate, the departing parent is under no legal obligation to provide alimony or child support, effectively plunging Billy into poverty.

From his parents’ inability to get joint health, home and auto insurance policies to his own inability to access his second parent’s Social Security survival benefits, Billy suffers. Allowing same sex marriage would eliminate the unfair penalties children have to bear. Ultimately, the greatest benefactors to gay marriage are children. Over half a million of them.

Half a million? Yes, and that’s an undercount. Face-to-face surveys show that 1 percent of people identify themselves as gay. But random telephone surveys, which give more anonymity, produce numbers around 3 or 4 percent of the population. And online surveys, which give the most anonymity, consistently show the number to be around 6%. If the range is somewhere between 1-6% of the population let’s split the difference and call it 3%. But remember, that figure represents only the people brave enough to publicly identify themselves.

Still, three percent of the total U.S. population of adults 18+ (215,474,215) means there are 6,464,226 men and women who self-identify as gay.

Apply that figure to a Kaiser Family Foundation study finding that 8% of self-identified gays and lesbians are parents or legal guardians of a live-in child under 18 and you come up with 517,138 gay and lesbian households with children.

Meaning, there are over half a million children growing up with same sex parents. It also means half a million children growing up with serious disadvantages caused by the prohibition of same sex marriage.

Marriage, as everyone knows, is a stabilizing influence on relationships and a platform for greater prosperity. The benefits of marriage would encourage gays and lesbians to take even more risks in distressed neighborhoods, turning them into places that attract the mostly heterosexual “Creative Class.” The payoff to cities is clear: Encouraging stability and prosperity among gay and lesbian couples results in a bigger tax base which can then be used to improve schools, streets, and parks for its mostly-heterosexual citizens.

The Iowa gay marriage opinion and its consequences won’t just benefit same sex couples; it will benefit everyone. It will reduce divorces by preventing sham marriages, provide homes to the orphaned, protect the children of gay parents and revitalize distressed communities. It’s one of those queer ironies: Gay marriage will strengthen heterosexual families.

Where does gay marriage rank in the top ten reasons why heterosexuals divorce?


For an explosively emotional site that helps conservative parents come to terms with their gay children (familyacceptance.com)

Iowa, I’m not sold on your gay marriage ruling

The military also needs to change their policy to accept openly gay and lesbian troops. There are also many benefits for openness that outweighs what is happening today.

Some advocates think the Iowa Supreme Court decision may have helped to garner the five extra votes necessary to override the governor's veto.

Vermont becomes 4th state to allow gay marriage



http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE53648V20090407

Hearts and minds.

T
K
O

Same-sex marriage rights a step closer in District of Columbia

By Ed Hornick
CNN


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- On the same day that Vermont's House and Senate voted to override GOP Gov. Jim Douglas' veto of a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the state, the Washington City Council voted 12-0 Tuesday in favor of allowing same-sex marriages performed in other states to be recognized in the nation's capital.
Congress may vote on whether Washington will allow same-sex marriages to be accepted in the nation's capital.

But nothing is set in stone yet.

The Washington council is expected to hold a final vote on May 5. The bill would then go to Mayor Adrian Fenty, a Democrat who supports gay marriage but told WTOP.com Tuesday that he has yet to review the legislation.

If approved, the measure would then encounter its biggest potential hurdle: It would be sent to Congress for a legislative review and vote, setting up what would amount to a straight up-or-down vote on same-sex marriage.

Because Washington is not a state, its legislation must pass congressional muster. Some measures approved by overwhelmingly Democratic Washington voters, including a restrictive gun law and a proposal decriminalizing medical marijuana use, have been vetoed by Congress in recent years.

"This is a right that should be enjoyed by all of our citizens," Council Member Jack Evans, a Democrat, said in an interview with WTOP. "Today is another major step toward the ultimate goal of all of us living in a city and a country where everyone is treated equally."

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, urged federal lawmakers not to intervene.

"We look forward to the final Council votes, and urge Mayor Fenty to sign this common-sense legislation," Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said. "We also hope that Congress will respect the Council's votes and will respect the District of Columbia's choice to provide equal recognition for couples who have legally entered into relationships in other jurisdictions."

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Tuesday condemned the votes in Vermont and Washington.

"Same-sex 'marriage' is a movement driven by wealthy homosexual activists and a liberal elite determined to destroy not only the institution of marriage, but democracy as well. Time and again, we see when citizens have the opportunity to vote at the ballot box, they consistently opt to support traditional marriage," Perkins said.

"The radical left wants to destroy the traditional union of one man and one woman across the country and they will not rest until they do so. The marriage amendment movement has been many times more successful than the same-sex 'marriage' movement," Perkins added.

Washington law currently provides domestic partnerships for lesbian, gay and heterosexual couples. The partnerships give access to the rights and responsibilities of marriage.

Four states recognize marriage for gay and lesbian couples: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa and Vermont. Iowa's recognition of same-sex marriages is slated to begin later this month; Vermont's would begin in September.

Conservative blogger Rod Dreher, writing on BeliefNet.com, a Web site that covers spirituality and religion, said the same-sex marriage rulings show the Democratic process at work.

While Dreher is opposed to same-sex marriage, he said if states are going to have it, "Vermont just got it the right way: democratically, through legislative action."

"A social experiment as radical as same-sex marriage should not be attempted without democratic consensus," he wrote.

Dreher said he believes the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately have to rule on same-sex marriages and most likely find them constitutional.

"And that being the case, it might be better for my side if it gets done sooner rather than later. If done sooner, there might still be enough backlash left in the American people to get a constitutional amendment passed erecting a high barrier or protection around religious institutions," he said.

For openly gay conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, the Washington ruling, while preliminary, is "enough reason to celebrate."

"I have a chance to be legally married in the place I live for eight months of the year. Now, just think for a minute how many heterosexuals have ever asked themselves this question -- even immigrating to foreign countries, let alone moving from one state to another," Sullivan wrote on his blog, featured on The Atlantic's Web site.

"This is enough for me right now. It has been such a long journey, but we can see the mountaintop now," he said.

End of article

The irony of Tony Perkin's statement is that he's the namesake of a gay film actor. I think the heterosexuals have done a fine job of destroying the institution of marriage -- it's meaning is now moot signatures and ceremonies as half of them will get a divorce. Frankly, they've made the word marriage fair game to be ridiculed by those heterosexuals who prefer not to marry, sometimes even preferring to live with their sexual partners without the legal entanglement. This is not a reason not to grant the right to same sex unions, it's a reason it shouldn't matter to any reasonable person.

All the arguments proffered by those against gay marriage has made themselves into a laughing stock; marriage is no more sacred or blessed than anything else humans engage in. As you have said, some 50% end up in divorce, even after a couple has children. What's so sacred about that? Who and what are they trying to protect? Doesn't make any common sense, but then I repeat myself.

The argument is that marriage is a shadow of what it once was, as it has been tremendously weakened. Furthermore it is argued that letting gays claim to be married is more of the same undermining of the institution of marriage, and a force for weakening the family structure as well. CI as usual has trouble following along with those who disagree with him.

It is arguable that individual rights should trump the collectives need to maintain strong families, but so is the opposition argument valid, that not every person can have what they want if it can be shown that what they would do would hurt all of us. Back of the hand dismissal of either argument is not intellectually honest, it is bad citizenship. Unfortunately we have a lot of bad citizens at a2k.

hawkeye, How does other's marriage or non-marriage undermine your marriage? Please be specific so that I can understand - your fears. When another couple you don't even know gets a divorce, does that undermine your marriage? Why? If the father of a daughter rapes her, does it affect you the same way? If the parents harm their children in any way, how does it harm your children? How does a homosexual marriage in Denmark harm you?

Yes hawkeye, we are very familiar with the argument. The same old failed and well tested argument.


You're individual versus the collective rhetoric is contrived crap. If anything, the collective is currently fractured due to the inequity that the LBGT community experiences from majoritarian oppression. This is not as you paint it. You can't defend your view, so you are trying to posture as if you are a victim in any fashion or that by the discrimination of gays you are in fact honoring some shared principle. That's total crap.

I don't think gays deserve equal rights because they WANT it. This is not about me complying to their simple desire. I believe they are my equal, and I believe their relationships deserve the same recognition as mine by the state.

It's been a pretty bad month for the oppressors. Hell, it's been a bad week for you guys. Liberty and equality won, in spite of you.

T
K
O

The feelings of roughly one half of the population deserves more respect from you. You need to live among those who don't share your beliefs, you will find life more rewarding if you make SOME effort to play well with others. But then you are still a punk ass know it all kid aren't you....

Go get mature.

"Feelings of one-half the population" doesn't make your argument justifiable or defensible. You claim "they" will harm the institution of marriage, but how? Please be specific on how it will affect you and all those heterosexuals who are married - of which about half will divorce.

Please tell us how homosexual marriage will destroy or harm your marriage?

From my vantage point, the only people who can do harm to my marriage is me or my wife; nobody else.

Most divorce for happens for reasons other than what happens outside their marriage; it's usually about "unreconcilable differences" between the partners or "finances." If it's outside the marriage, it's because of family conflicts or something to do with their children.

Name me one divorce that was the result of a gay marriage of total strangers.

ideas/beliefs/feelings earn my respect when they are based on rational, logical and ethical thought. The faceless, and nameless rough half you describe aren't here, and they aren't making their case. Let them come and present one and if they can give me something rational, logical, and ethical it might actually mean something.


Dude, I live in DC now, but I grew up in the Ozarks (Southwest Missouri). I lived there for 25 years. I know very intimately the opposing view on this. I've heard it all. I have spent all of my life submerged in the hot seat of conservative thought. You can see the buckle of the bible belt from my elementary playground. I play very well with others, always have.

I know a punk ass kid like doesn't know everything, but knows just enough to recognize you aren't on the level.

I'm too brilliant for that.

T
K
O

Could it be the same roughly 1/2 who are divorced? Or the roughly 1/2 who stay married? Are the 1/2 who are divorced against gay marriage because they are pissed their union didn't work out and the 1/2 who are still married are convinced it will save their marriage? That 1/2 who don't divorce -- what percentage are truly happily married? How many have children? How many where the children have moved out? How many who have ended up as criminals including white collar? How many, getting right down to it, are good parents and how many are bad parents? Heterosexuals have a lot of introspective inspection required before they pass judgment on another class of person. It's all so confusing to Hawkeye who can't actually come up with any real reason to block gay marriage and so grasps at straws plucked out of straw men arguments. Are feelings a reason or cockeyed ideology messed up with a psychological neurosis?

Diest TKO, I would imagine, gets past the part where you play. Maybe foreplay is what is in Hawkeye's distant past and he's reminiscing. The part after that may be something he's incapable of completing, pissing him off even more. After all, fundamentalism of any kind, not just religious, brings to mind the most famous definition by Mencken that it is a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun. Gay long-time companionship has been around for centuries, not so long ago hidden most to fundamentalist who couldn't bear the thought.

As much as Hawkeye shows his immaturity in these discussions, I don't think he should be throwing stones. A mentally mature, educated person shouldn't be anti-gay marriage. They are nearly always mature enough to have gay friends who they totally understand and accept. It's going past just tolerance -- the tolerance part is directed at those who are ingrained homophobic bigots because that's what could be all that is expected.

All married couples with children aren't exactly good parents or happily married. As you said, many young kids leave their homes from abuse as runaways, and sell their bodies to make money.

What are those people trying to prevent equal rights for gays and lesbians trying to protect? The sanctity of marriage?

I left my parents when I started college but it was because they constantly argued that they were getting a divorce and my Dad was an A personality who was way too favorable to communism. He didn't live to see the fall of the USSR but more than once we argued about communism's moral and ethical shortcomings and it's survival, and that Russia had a bloodier past going back through the Tsars than he was aware. He was also a racist which later in life he completely turned around and denounced.

The Catholic church still dictates what the sanctity of marriage should be but, in real life, is not.

So should we give up on an ideal because we can't match it? Should we remove the ideal? What's left then? Breeding hutches?

It's precisely an ideal, because it's almost impossible to achieve.

Who dictates this ideal? The Pope? We know who would like to believe they have their finger on the ideal enough to dictate it here. That's why the ideology is false -- if the heterosexuals believe they know the ideal, they certainly aren't showing it. Government shouldn't be dictating the ideal, either. The judicial in Iowa have stated that denying gay marriage is not the ideal of the Constitution. The legislature in Vermont have stated the same thing, despite the governor trying to veto it. Not that many laws get past a veto.

You might say that.



That's the ideal. That's what marriage means. And hundreds, maybe thousands, of millions believe it and live it. It is not pie in the sky. It's a way of life.

Ring Them Bells.

See Dylan sing that in Okinawa on You Tube.

What vows are used in a homosexual union?