Gay Marriage

Sprague won't seek re-election


Wednesday, February 18, 2004

On the day she took the microphone on floor of the Massachusetts House to voice her support for gay marriage Sen. Jo Ann Sprague, R-Walpole, announced she won't seek re-election in November.

In a press release issued last week, Sprague wrote she had said from the beginning that, after three terms in office, she would move on.

"Every two years since 1992, I have asked to be returned to office based on my record as a fiscal conservative and social progressive," Sprague said. "Also, from the beginning, term limits has been a part of my platform. I have given my word that after three terms in office, I would move on and give other qualified candidates the opportunity....

Look at what a republican is saying. Can you believe it? There must be a few left floating around after all...

We're back to the rights of each individual church are being infringed on also -- they should make the decision whether to perform a ceremony or not. The civil union is exactly what heterosexuals do when they are married before a judge. This is a case of swolen semantics.

Ya want to also change Mirriam Webster?

No entries found that match homosexual.

I'm deeply behind in my reading here...but that won't stop me from talking.

I'm in accord with Scrat regarding the proper function and content of a dictionary. I don't believe that language creates mental states (briefly, use of 'nigger' doesn't create racism, it reflects or evidences it).

But if Scrat is arguing that 'marriage' is being redefined as a matter of political correctness, then I'm certainly not in accord.

Those states that found interracial marriages offensive to their public policies were not required to recognize such marriages performed elsewhere, though sometimes they did, but as a matter of choice rather than constitutional compulsion. That experience is instructive, legal scholars say, about what is likely to happen when Massachusetts starts performing gay marriages in May...
There is a second reason same-sex marriages in Massachusetts are likely to have a more limited effect than the president suggested. An obscure 1913 law in that state makes void all marriages performed there where the couple is not eligible to be married in their home state. That law, too, was born in part from an effort to prohibit interracial marriages.

Tenn. County Wants to Charge Homosexuals

Associated Press

DAYTON, Tenn. - The county that was the site of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" over the teaching of evolution is asking lawmakers to amend state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.

The Rhea County commissioners approved the request 8-0 Tuesday.

Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the measure, also asked the county attorney to find a way to enact an ordinance banning homosexuals from living in the county.

"We need to keep them out of here," Fugate said.

The vote was denounced by Matt Nevels, president of the Chattanooga chapter of Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

"That is the most farfetched idea put forth by any kind of public official," Nevels said. "I'm outraged."

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas' sodomy laws as a violation of adults' privacy.

Rhea County is one of the most conservative counties in Tennessee. It holds an annual festival commemorating the 1925 trial at which John T. Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution. The verdict was thrown out on a technicality. The trial became the subject of the play and movie "Inherit the Wind."

In 2002, a federal judge ruled unconstitutional the teaching of a Bible class in the public schools.

... the traditional definition of marriage is discriminatory and unjustified...

Coitus

n : Sexual union between a male and a female involving insertion of the penis into the vagina.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Coitus