California Voters Approve Gay-Marriage Ban

You mean like the false designation that marriage is sacrosanct and only between a man and a woman?

spendi, In your position that gays cannot have children, where did you learn such foolishness? Gays adopt or have their own children. Many heterosexual couples live out their married lives without any children; they don't adopt either. Many single mothers and fathers care for their children. What's this argument about a child needing both a father and a mother? You ever hear of a parent mistreating their children? How about incest? How about women who are raped and get pregnant?

You need to expand your world beyond the local pub you frequent regularly; you live a myopic existence.

You are confusing laws passed by the legislature with laws ruled on by the courts. It isn't settled law in 45 states. It may be state law but it can still be challenged under Federal law or even under the state constitutions if it wasn't put into that state's constitution.

The state has a compelling interest to limit marriage to 2 people because the state gives benefits to married people. However, the state has no compelling interest to discriminate based on the gender of those 2 people.

Good question - so if both parties can prove or otherwise guarantee no children will be born of their marriage, fathers can marry daughters and brothers can marry sisters? On the off chance children are indeed born of such a union and turn out to be hopelessly handicapped or mentally retarded who'll pay for their lifelong care? Not judge Walker, surely? Besides, whatever happened to "we the people", not "we the judges"?

HS, You're missing the "point" of my argument to those who are claiming a marriage must be limited to a man and a woman, because they're the only ones who can a) have children, and b) provide both parents for their children.

Spendius you don't think heterosexuals have hurt marriage by their renting male and female strippers for their bachelor and bachelorette parties?

Perhaps gays will bring a bit of class back into the marriage ceremony, that is a possibility. I certainly would not hire strippers the night before I married the same sex person I love. That would be like a slap in the face to my partner... The thought would not even cross my mind... We gays have waited so long for marriage equality we (speaking for myself) are not about to trash it up with such ridiculous folly... It is about time marriage was taken seriously again...

For me marriage is sacrosanct between a man and a woman and only the once. It is indissoluable whatever the legal situation is. Private Eye always referred to a certain duchess as "Old Tom Trowbridge's wife."

If it loses sanctity it becomes a charade.

And most "marriages" end up as a charade. You still believe it's "sacrosanct?"
These are the same people trying to judge gay and lesbian marriages. What a laugh!

And that is a false designation on your part. The version of marriage under the law allows dissolution.

You can't argue the sanctity of marriage is on your side when the law already doesn't sanctify it.

In no place where same sex marriage has been made legal, has any harm been shown to happen to heterosexual couples. Straight couples are no less married because gay couples can be married.

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i refuse to believe that you are so slow as to think that we would see any change already. Changing the legal definition of marriage takes a long time to change the institution, because the change come only after the change in identity sets in. The is a soulful process, it happens in soul time, which means we are talking in terms of at least years but probably decades or generations before we see the effect. The effect can be pretty well guessed at, whether this is a negative or not depends upon what the individual cares most about. Those who care about marriage as a link back to our ancestors and as the fulfillment of the masculine feminine dance will find that marriage has been greatly weakened. Those who care about marriage as being about the demonstration of commitment to their significant other will see this as a slight positive change unless they happen to be gay, in which case it is a big change. For those who care about family it is a wash, and we pretty much destroyed that marriage benefit when we made marriage easy to end, and with no reason needing to be supplied.

On this whole for most people allowing gay marriage will further degrade and already severely weakened institution. At this point the question of the day runs more towards "can marriage be saved and again be made meaningful, or if not what should replace it?" My thinking is that most likely it can not be saved, and that we are going to take its replacement out of the hands of the state, which has failed to protect marriage and thus has no credibility. I am thinking the new institution will be tribal, and will be outside of any church or any laws.

Bullshit. This is nothing more than mealy-mouthed crap - you can't define what your actual objections are without sounding like a homophobe, so you spout off junk like this.

In what way will they find marriage has been weakened? Specifically.

Cycloptichorn

So basically, you won't accept that there is no harm until some unidentifiable amount of time has passed. At the time when you do feel able to evaluate it, you will inevitably continue to condemn gay marriage as a harm to marriage no matter what other cultural changes have taken place in said unidentifiable amount of time.

Gay marriage is relatively new in the USA, but it's almost been a decade old in the Netherlands. In 2004, the crude divorce rate in NED was 1.9%, while the USA was 3.6%. That's almost twice as good as the USA.

Your theory sucks.

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Not only that, but the states which allow gay marriage in the US have a much lower divorce rate than those that don't....

Cycloptichorn

hawks post is analogous to the tv has caused the dumbing down of america argument, last i heard you could turn off your tv and educate yourself, same with a marriage, you can take your vows seriously, and make it work, no matter what is happening around you

Sanctity and the law are immiscible liquids. I can't see anyway without the sanctity of stopping short of Huxley's serial monogamy/polygamy etc on a nightly rosta. It's a line in the sand. Start shifting it and anything goes. Then you need a new sort of womanhood.

So I know who the real misogynists are. That's why the tit surgery started in Cal. The creation of the pneumatic female.

You are attacking the Goddess.

I agree with hawk. All the way. Except that I think economic factors will save the day for heterosexual marriage.

There is the possibility that apart from California running a publicity stunt to offload shaky property to the world's best qualified homosexuals there is also an argument that evolution has decided that humans are a dead loss and intelligence itself will vote for extinction.

Whoever gets adopted can be sure their parents were heterosexuals unless the sperm banks provide homosexual magazines for arousal in the sampling areas. Which I gather they don't.

Mailer asked what homosexuals did after they reached 40.

My take is that the sacred institution of marriage is a myth. Each single marriage is sacred between a couple. No other commitment or failure of commitment on someone else's part cheapens my marriage or makes it more meaningful. If Bill O'Reilly wamts to marry a duck, that does not cheapen my marriage. There are only two people who are charged with keeping my marriage sacred and only two who can cheapen it.

What if it caught on and everybody except you married a duck? Mr O'Reilly is quite influential and matrimonial disputes which ended in roast duck are an attractive proposition compared to what we have now. By some distance.