An Apology to All the Gay a2kers

cannister and eva...two lovely posters who have made my day.

I have a friend that I used to work with that was in the closet for years, he even told me one time that he didn't want to be gay but he couldn't help it. I don't see him much now since he came out because he is in his wild stage, I am really afraid that he will end up with HIV. We still talk sometimes but he is so different now. How long does the wild stage last? is this something that most people go through when they come out?

Thank you Panzade.

Hmmmm, wild stage.
I haven't really seen anyone have a 'wild stage'.
They were either wild or not.

My friend's husband went from a committed relationship (marriage) to a little bit of dating and then into a committed relationship. He's been with his partner, hmmm, just about 8 years now. Longer than he was married. He's a domestic kinda guy.

Hmm, Cannister, you have heard about it before, from me - the boyfriend I was talking about was at least somewhat bisexual, since I am a woman.

And I agree with ehbeth about wild and domestic, and there are probably plenty of in-betweens, in the various sexual categories.

Wild? All those straight guys who divorce and pump for red sports cars and gold chains are tame?

Some is, some ain't.

Ha!

Bingo, Noddy.

Bravo.

Probably not much different, just wondered if it was "normal" to go wild and then calm down when coming out?

My sister told me about a website (she sent me a link, but I haven't gotten it yet - hotmail is acting up again). There are statistics which say that, nationally, the divorce rate is lowest in Massachusetts. Actually, of the 10 states with the lowest divorce rate, 9 of them are blue states. And all 10 of the highest divorce rate states are red states.

It was a fact in the "I Hate The South" thread...but I hate that red and blue typecasting.

Panzade - The I hate the south" thread here? That was the thrust of the website my sister was talking about. The info comes from divorcemagazine.com. It's data from 1994.

United States 1,191,000 4.6

1 Massachusetts 14,530 2.4
2 Connecticut 9,095 2.8
3 New Jersey 23,899 3.0
4 Rhode Island 3,231 3.2
5 New York 59,195 3.3
6 Pennsylvania 40,040 3.3
7 Wisconsin 17,478 3.4
8 North Dakota 2,201 3.4
9 Maryland 17,439 3.5
10 Minnesota 16,217 3.6
11 Louisiana *** 3.6
12 Illinois 43,398 3.7
13 District of 2,244 3.9
Columbia
14 Iowa 10,930 3.9
15 Nebraska 6,547 4.0
16 Vermont 2,316 4.0
17 Michigan 38,727 4.1
18 South Dakota 3,022 4.2
19 South Carolina 15,301 4.2
20 Hawaii 4,979 4.2
21 California *** 4.3
22 Maine 5,433 4.4
23 New Hampshire 5,041 4.4
24 Ohio 49,968 4.5
25 Virginia 30,016 4.6
26 Kansas 12,093 4.7
Utah 8,999 4.7
28 Delaware 3,385 4.8
29 Montana 4,153 4.9
30 Missouri 26,324 5.0
31 West Virginia 9,179 5.0
32 North Carolina 36,292 5.1
33 Colorado 18,795 5.1
34 Georgia 37,001 5.2
35 Oregon 16,307 5.3
36 Texas 99,073 5.4
37 Alaska 3,354 5.5
38 Washington 29,976 5.6
39 Mississippi 15,212 5.7
40 Kentucky 22,211 5.8
41 Arizona 23,725 5.8
42 Florida 82,963 5.9
43 New Mexico 9,882 6.0
44 Idaho 7,075 6.2
45 Alabama 26,116 6.2
46 Indiana *** 6.4
47 Wyoming 3,071 6.5
48 Tennessee 34,167 6.6
49 Oklahoma 21,855 6.7
50 Arkansas 17,458 7.1
51 Nevada 13,061 9.0

And some stats on divorce rate by faith, age, race, etc:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm

I'm sorry, this doesn't have any obvious relation to gay marriage, but I can't get over these stats.

According to this website which draws on several studies (I didn't read it that thoroughly), while most of the country has a divorce rate in the 20 - 30% range, the North East has a d-rate of 1%. 1%!! Can that be true?

And, it says that born again christians have a very high (one of the highest) d-rates of all!

How can, then, they be so concerned about gay marriage ruining the sanctity of the institution?

Valid Reasons for Allowing Gays to Marry
Thank you for the thoughts and your poem, Piffka.

I'm not replying to offend you, stuh505, but it seems that many people don't understand what allowing gays to marry entails, nor do they understand some of the history of marriage.

Marriage has not always been about love, nor has it been solely related to spirituality. For example, in ancient Rome a man wasn't considered a citizen until he was married. Even today many people, in countries other than the US, are still under the control of their parents UNTIL they marry. So you can safely assume that some of those people marry to get out of their parents homes and out from under their control. Also, what many people don't know, the Catholic Church had nothing to do with marriage during it's first 1000 years - marriage wasn't yet considered an official Catholic sacrament, and weddings weren't performed in churches.

And more recently, marriage was not allowed to "people of color", nor were people allowed to marry someone of the "wrong" race. Nor during the history of marriage were women given the same rights....there was a time when once a woman married, she was considered her husband's personal property! Many marriages were due to dynastic (promising your daughter to someone because of you or your family's social status) or property arrangements. Any real estate/property that a woman owned automatically became her husband's; and women lost their rights to sign contracts or to sue anyone.

Marriage isn't the same as it always has been throughout history, as many people mistakenly assume. It's changed considerably!

Now onto what allowing gays to marry is all about. For some it IS about having their love recognized publicly. But, also for others, it entails MANY privileges, benefits, and responsibilities that heterosexuals probably don't think twice about receiving AUTOMATICALLY upon marrying. Here are just a few of them:

Death - One partner dies, the other is not entitled to bereavement leave, wrongful death claims, Social Security, or inheiriting a shared home, any assets or personal items of their deceased partner.
Family Leave - Laws and polices do not usually cover unmarried couples that may need to leave work to care for a sick partner or their children.
Health - Unmarried partners are not considered next of kin, therefore hospital visitations are not allowed. This, for the one person whom loves you the most! Partners aren't even allowed to make emergency medical decisions. Plus, most health plans don't cover unmarried partners or their children, and if there are ways to cover partners and their children, there are huge taxes on that coverage. They're also not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid.
Housing - Unmarried couples can easily be denied if in need of public housing.
Immigration - Partners can be deported if marriage isn't possible.
Inheritance - Partners can't automatically inherit property if their loved one dies without a will. And they don't get legal protection for inheritance rights.
Insurance - Unmarried couples can't always sign up for joint insurance (home, auto, health - you name it) A majority of employers don't cover domestic partners or their children.
Parenting - Joint parenting, adoption, foster care or visitation is denied to unmarried couples.
Court - Unmarried couples may be forced to testify against each other in court. (Can you imagine...?)
Real Estate - They can't buy property together under the special rules that married couples can, plus they aren't entitled to all the privileges of owning that property together AS a married couple, including things that can happen should one partner die.
Retirement - Social Security and Medicare are denied to gay partners. IRAs and other retirement account withdrawals and protective tax treatments are denied to partners.
Taxes - Unmarried couples can't file joint tax returns and do not receive any special tax benefits given to married couples. Therefore they are forced to file under a higher single-person rate. Plus they're denied the right to transfer property to each other and other special arrangements without severe tax consequences.

These are just to name a few. Gay couples cannot visit a lawyer and receive all/any these rights without paying extremely large amounts of money. Even then, the rights automatically given with marriage of heterosexuals cannot be replicated for homosexual couples by paying a lawyer.

And again to speak to your comment on the spirituality of marriage...here are a few more thoughts for you...

The founding fathers of this country knew that mixing the church and state was not that right thing to do. That is why the vehemenently opposed it...they knew that it caused many problems back in Europe.

The right to marry in this country is first and foremost a legal one. It never matters if you marry in a church, but it DOES matter if you don't sign the marriage license. You're not married if that's not taken care of, whether you were married in a church by a pastor or priest.

The Catholic Church has never condoned divorce, and it believes that marriage is a "union for life", however when was the last time you heard a Catholic leader screaming at the government NOT to issue marriage licenses to divorced people...?

Also, what's there to be said about the Mormon settlers who moved in the early 1900's to Mexico to avoid the polygamy laws of the US? (I'm assuming it's safe to bet that polygamy isn't covered in your idea of marriage.)

There are so many different religions in the US alone. It would never be fair to impose one or two upon the entire country. I note again....our founding fathers knew what the heck they were doing!

There are so many denominations who have spoken out FOR marriage equality. I could go on forever about this, but I will stop here. If you'd like to discuss this more, please let me know.

And please understand I'm not trying to upset you, I only wish to educate people who don't understand what allowing gays to marry REALLY means...

Thanks.
G

I apologize for the extremely long post before.
And I didn't realize there were already 16 pages on the subject...I'd replied to one of the first posts on this topic. Still fit the bill though.

Here's an interesting link.

HRC.org
Go to Marriage
Click on Answers to Questions About Marriage Equality

Download (or just "Open") the pdf document here.
It will answer a lot of questions for people.

I like the openess of this thread. Thanks everyone.

G

No need to apologize, GraphixGrrl! Thanks for the interesting post and link. The more I hear about the state elections on this issue, the sadder and angrier I feel. It seems so deliberately mean.

Interesting stats, Littlek -- I know some born-agains who "had to" get rid of their spousal unit because he/ she was not religious enough. A bad situation and hard (for me) to understand.

I posted a link some where with similar divorce stats by the CDC. I can't find it know, but if I do, I'll add the stats.

The CDC states .."States with proportions of births to unmarried mothers higher than the national value can be found throughout the United States. However, some parts of the country, most notably the Southeast, stand out with most of the States in the region having relatively high proportions of births occurring to unmarried mothers." A chart of the US also reflects Mass as having the lowest percentage of unmarried births by State. Along with similar results of teenage pregnancies.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr52/nvsr52_19acc.pdf

I'd like to know...?
I'd like to know when raising a child became a necessity to being married?

I'm not sterile. I made the choice not to have a kid. Does that mean that my husband and I shouldn't have marraige rights, because we don't procreate?

Having a kid, or the ability or choice of having them or not, should have nothing to do with the marraige in general.

Next thing you know, I won't be legally married if someone says I like back-door sex, because its that thing that gay people do *gasp*!

I was thinking about posting but this seems like the best explination I could find, without reading all 16 pages. I don't think the government should define what "marriage" is. You still can't stop people from saying it's marriage. Definitions change.

Commies, niggahs, messikans, kanuks, queers... Is it OK to be a commo yet in the US of A?

If God gave both Adam and Eve the ability to enjoy orgasms totally independently of the oestrus cycle and of a "sperm recipient" - how can you argue that God did not intend us to enjoy His sexuality?

It's a fact: we humans are very sexy animals, and suppression of our libido does strange things to our brains.