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Should The State Legally Sanction Gay Marriage? An Argument.

 
 
Reply Sat 3 Jun, 2006 11:42 pm
I know this issue has been argued almost to the point of eye glazing but I just found this piece in The Daily Standard (of the Weekly Standard). I was not so much for the institution of Gay Marriage as I was agnostic, but Rivers' and Johnson's (R&J) clear and well argued piece has swayed me against it. Its power stems from their pointing out the liberal left's hijacking of the concept of "civil rights" in order to cloak the movement's attempt to garner constitutional legitimacy. Since I am somewhat the conservative, I am not very pleased with the religious right's attempt at a Constitutional amendment to prevent Gay marriage (Beware of Constitutional amendments that remove freedom and options from citizens). So it was pleasing to find R&J's argument that separates the constitutional wheat from the progressive chaff. Given your interest, please take the time to read it and let me know what you think.

JM

Quote:
Same-Sex Marriage:
Hijacking the Civil Rights Legacy
The indiscriminate promotion of various social groups' desires and preferences as "rights" has drained the moral authority from the civil rights industry.
by Eugene F. Rivers & Kenneth D. Johnson
06/01/2006 12:00:00 AM

THE MOVEMENT TO REDEFINE MARRIAGE to include same-sex unions has packaged its demands in the rhetoric and images of the civil rights movement. This strategy, though cynical, has enormous strategic utility. For what reasonable, fair-minded American could object to a movement that conjures up images of Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellows campaigners for racial justice facing down dogs and fire hoses? Who is prepared to risk being labeled a bigot for opposing same-sex marriage?
As an exercise in marketing and merchandising, this strategy is the most brilliant playing of the race card in recent memory. Not since the "poverty pimps" of 35 years ago, who leveraged the guilt and sense of fair play of the American public to hustle affirmative action set-asides, have we witnessed so brazen a misuse of African-American history for partisan purposes.
But the partisans of homosexual marriage have a problem. There is no evidence in the history and literature of the civil rights movement, or in its genesis in the struggle against slavery, to support the claim that the "gay rights" movement is in the tradition of the African-American struggle for civil rights. As the eminent historian Eugene D. Genovese observed more than 30 years ago, the black American experience as a function of slavery is unique and without analogue in the history of the United States. While other ethnic and social groups have experienced discrimination and hardship, none of their experiences compare with the physical and cultural brutality of slavery. It was in the crucible of


the unique experience of slavery that the civil rights movement was born.
The extraordinary history of the United States as a slaveholding republic included the kidnapping and brutal transport of blacks from African shores, and the stripping of their language, identity, and culture in order to subjugate and exploit them. It also included the constitutional enshrining of these evils in the form of a Supreme Court decision--Dred Scott v. Sandford--denying to blacks any rights that whites must respect, and the establishment of Jim Crow and de jure racial discrimination after Dred Scott was overturned by a civil war and three historic constitutional amendments.
It is these basic facts that embarrass efforts to exploit the rhetoric of civil rights to advance the goals of generally privileged groups, however much they wish to depict themselves as victims. Whatever wrongs individuals have suffered because some Americans fail in the basic moral obligation to love the sinner, even while hating the sin, there has never been an effort to create a subordinate class subject to exploitation based on "sexual orientation."
It is precisely the indiscriminate promotion of various social groups' desires and preferences as "rights" that has drained the moral authority from the civil rights industry. Let us consider the question of rights. What makes a gay activist's aspiration to overturn thousands of years of universally recognized morality and practice a "right"? Why should an institution designed for the reproduction of civil society and the rearing of children in a moral environment in which their interests are given pride of place be refashioned to accommodate relationships integrated around intrinsically non-marital sexual conduct?


One must, in the current discussion, address directly the assertion of discrimination. The claim that the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman constitutes discrimination is based on a false analogy with statutory prohibitions on interracial marriages in many states through much of the 20th century. This alleged analogy collapses when one considers that skin pigmentation is utterly irrelevant to the procreative and unitive functions of marriage. Racial differences do not interfere with the ability of sexually complementary spouses to become "one-flesh," as the Book of Genesis puts it, by sexual intercourse that fulfills the behavioral conditions of procreation. As the law of marital consummation makes clear, and always has made clear, it is this bodily union that serves as the foundation of the profound sharing of life at every level--biological, emotional, dispositional, rational, and spiritual--that marriage is. This explains not only why marriage can only be between a man and a woman, but also why marriages cannot be between more than two people--despite the desire of "polyamorists" to have their sexual preferences and practices legally recognized and blessed.
Moreover, the analogy of same-sex marriage to interracial marriage disregards the whole point of those prohibitions, which was to maintain and advance a system of racial subordination and exploitation. It was to maintain a caste system in which one race was relegated to conditions of social and economic inferiority. The definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman does not establish a sexual caste system


or relegate one sex to conditions of social and economic inferiority. It does, to be sure, deny the recognition as lawful "marriages" to some forms of sexual combining--including polygyny, polyandry, polyamory, and same-sex relationships. But there is nothing invidious or discriminatory about laws that decline to treat all sexual wants or proclivities as equal.
People are equal in worth and dignity, but sexual choices and lifestyles are not. That is why the law's refusal to license polygamous, polyamorous, and homosexual unions is entirely right and proper. In recognizing, favoring, and promoting traditional, monogamous marriage, the law does not violate the "rights" of people whose "lifestyle preferences" are denied the stamp of legal approval. Rather, it furthers and fosters the common good of civil society, and makes proper provision for the physical and moral protection and nurturing of children.
Well-intentioned liberals shudder upon hearing the word "discrimination." Its simple enunciation instills guilt and dulls their critical faculties. But once malcontented members of any group--however privileged--can simply invoke the term and launch their own personalized civil rights industry, the word has been emptied of its normative and historical content.
Defending the civil rights legacy should prove cold comfort to its historic advocates, because the loss of its distinctive nature is our own fault. It was our failure, philosophically and politically, to develop a compelling historiography of the movement that contributed to its decline and decay. From the teaching in schools, to the use of the phrase in political discourse, the notion of civil rights has been diluted, ahistoricized, and nearly emptied of content in relation to the lived historical experience of black Americans.
It is especially sad and disturbing that many self-proclaimed civil rights leaders have failed to resist corruption and co-optation by the homosexual movement. People who should be vitally concerned with promoting marriage and rebuilding the institution of marriage in African-American communities are either silent or complicit in a campaign which, if successful, will trivialize marriage.
In light of the prospect of judicially mandated homosexual marriage, we believe that black leaders--and especially black clergy--need to speak forcefully in favor of President George W. Bush's proposal for a Federal Marriage Amendment. If their support for true marriage alienates them from their white liberal friends, so be it. No community has suffered more than has ours from the weakening of the institution of marriage at the hands of purveyors of the doctrines of the sexual revolution. It is our sons and our daughters who have paid the costs imposed by a cultural elite that seeks to overthrow cultural and Biblical principles of sexual restraint and responsibility. Leaders of our community should therefore be in the vanguard of the movement to prevent further moral erosion and begin reversing historical declines.

Eugene F. Rivers is Founder and President of the Seymour Institute for Advanced Christian Studies (www.siacs.org) and is a pastor of the Church of God in Christ, the nation's largest historically Black Pentecostal denomination.
Kenneth D. Johnson is Senior Fellow for Social Policy and Civil Society at the Seymour Institute for Advanced Christian Studies.
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Type: Discussion • Score: 1 • Views: 4,239 • Replies: 37
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Miller
 
  1  
Reply Sat 3 Jun, 2006 11:47 pm
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=75934&highlight=
0 Replies
 
Shapeless
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Jun, 2006 04:45 am
Re: Should The State Legally Sanction Gay Marriage? An Argum
Quote:
Let us consider the question of rights. What makes a gay activist's aspiration to overturn thousands of years of universally recognized morality and practice a "right"?


It is an interesting angle from which to attack the issue, but even if we grant that the gay rights movement is relying too much on the rhetoric of "rights" and that their use of the term debases the Civil Rights Movement, is that funadmentally different from this article's reliance on the rhetoric of "tradition"? (It is reassuring but telling that many religious people who do not oppose gay marriage have similarly expressed their dismay over the hijacking of "tradition" in the name of the extreme right.) One side says we owe it to the memory of civil rights to allow same-sex marriages; the other side says we owe it the memory of tradition to ban them. In both cases, the argument is founded on an ill-defined obligation to uphold the sanctity of an abstract concept. This kind of semantic maneuvering only distracts us from more tangible problems:

Quote:
It is these basic facts that embarrass efforts to exploit the rhetoric of civil rights to advance the goals of generally privileged groups, however much they wish to depict themselves as victims...


Certainly, not every homosexual has been victimized, but the implication here is that resemblance to the Civil Rights Movement is the only standard of victimization. This kind of tactic (epitomized here in the transparently evasive use of the word "generally") is an excuse to ignore the reality that there are some rights and privileges accorded to one portion of the population that are not accorded to the other.
0 Replies
 
Joe Nation
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Jun, 2006 05:01 am
Quote:
It's an excuse to ignore the reality that there are some rights and privileges accorded to one portion of the population that are not accorded to the other.


That would be contrary to the 14th Amendment.


Joe(gotta love the 14th)Nation
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sun 4 Jun, 2006 05:37 am
What just struck me is that this is an odd way to phrase the question:

Quote:
Should The State Legally Sanction Gay Marriage?


It's not like there is such a thing as marriage without state sanction..

The phrasing of the question makes it seem as if what is at stake is merely a sort of additional option, one of the state "sanctioning" something that would otherwise just take place without it. Thats not the case. It's not like with the church's sanction, which one can obtain by marrying in church, but which one can also marry without.

Without the state "legally sanctioning" it, there is no marriage, period. And without marriage, there is also no possibility to gain the rights extended to spouses in one's state, whether that be the right to obtain information about one's partner's health when he falls ill, the right not to to be evicted from one's rented house when the partner dies, the right to ... whatever is all involved. Plus, of course, the right to marry one's partner, in itself.

Without the state's "legal sanction" of gay people marrying, those are rights barred to gay couples that heterosexual couples do enjoy.
0 Replies
 
RaceDriver205
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 07:23 am
Gay marriage is nonsense rubbish. Dunno what you yanks are up to, but here is Australia our Prime-Minister just basically said gay marriage will never happen in his country. All chance of it has been obliterated. Good on him.
He said something along the lines of "in this country we respect that marriage is between a man and a woman". Damn straight it is. What next, allowing marriage between a man and a cow?
I think gay people should receive treatment and not marriage. That is not derogatory to gays, no more than it is derogatory to say a diabetic should receive treatment.
0 Replies
 
joefromchicago
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 08:11 am
Re: Should The State Legally Sanction Gay Marriage? An Argum
Eugene F. Rivers & Kenneth D. Johnson wrote:
But the partisans of homosexual marriage have a problem. There is no evidence in the history and literature of the civil rights movement, or in its genesis in the struggle against slavery, to support the claim that the "gay rights" movement is in the tradition of the African-American struggle for civil rights.

Of all the dumb things that have been written in connection with the gay marriage debate, this is quite possibly the dumbest. Not only is it setting up a transparent strawman argument (who are these people who are saying that the gay rights movement is in the tradition of the black civil rights movement?), but it suggests that the comparison between the two movements is actually substantive rather than merely rhetorical.

Eugene F. Rivers & Kenneth D. Johnson wrote:
Whatever wrongs individuals have suffered because some Americans fail in the basic moral obligation to love the sinner, even while hating the sin, there has never been an effort to create a subordinate class subject to exploitation based on "sexual orientation."

These guys must be living in some kind of dream world. Are they really stating that there is no anti-homosexual discrimination in American society?

Eugene F. Rivers & Kenneth D. Johnson wrote:
Let us consider the question of rights. What makes a gay activist's aspiration to overturn thousands of years of universally recognized morality and practice a "right"?

When the state grants rights and benefits based upon marital status.

Eugene F. Rivers & Kenneth D. Johnson wrote:
Why should an institution designed for the reproduction of civil society and the rearing of children in a moral environment in which their interests are given pride of place be refashioned to accommodate relationships integrated around intrinsically non-marital sexual conduct?

Why should the state grant rights and benefits that are unconnected to reproduction and child-rearing to married couples?

Eugene F. Rivers & Kenneth D. Johnson wrote:
One must, in the current discussion, address directly the assertion of discrimination. The claim that the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman constitutes discrimination is based on a false analogy with statutory prohibitions on interracial marriages in many states through much of the 20th century. This alleged analogy collapses when one considers that skin pigmentation is utterly irrelevant to the procreative and unitive functions of marriage.

So is procreation and "unitivity." There is no requirement that heterosexual married couples produce children, and the ease of divorce in this country belies the notion that marriage serves any kind of strong "unitive function."

Eugene F. Rivers & Kenneth D. Johnson wrote:
Racial differences do not interfere with the ability of sexually complementary spouses to become "one-flesh," as the Book of Genesis puts it, by sexual intercourse that fulfills the behavioral conditions of procreation.

And sexual differences do not interfere with the ability of sexually analogous spouses to file a joint tax return.

Eugene F. Rivers & Kenneth D. Johnson wrote:
The definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman does not establish a sexual caste system or relegate one sex to conditions of social and economic inferiority.

Sez you.

JamesMorrison wrote:
I was not so much for the institution of Gay Marriage as I was agnostic, but Rivers' and Johnson's (R&J) clear and well argued piece has swayed me against it.

If this feeble, laughably weak argument swayed you, James, then I can only wonder how truly "agnostic" you were before reading it.
0 Replies
 
Wolf ODonnell
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 08:48 am
RaceDriver205 wrote:
I think gay people should receive treatment and not marriage. That is not derogatory to gays, no more than it is derogatory to say a diabetic should receive treatment.


It is derogatory in the sense that you're saying that the homosexual is diseased.

In the case of the diabetic, he is suffering from a disease that is preventing him from living life properly.

In the case of the homosexual, anything that prevents him from living a full life is down to bigotry from other people, but of course, we can discuss this more fully in the other topic about whether homosexuality is a bad thing.
0 Replies
 
Shapeless
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 10:08 am
RaceDriver205 wrote:
Gay marriage is nonsense rubbish.


I suppose this argument against gay marriage at least has the merit of being upfront about the kind of "reasoning" it is built on, which is to say not much at all save dogmatic assertion.
0 Replies
 
Bella Dea
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 10:25 am
RaceDriver205 wrote:

He said something along the lines of "in this country we respect that marriage is between a man and a woman". Damn straight it is. What next, allowing marriage between a man and a cow?
I think gay people should receive treatment and not marriage. That is not derogatory to gays, no more than it is derogatory to say a diabetic should receive treatment.


Why do you bigots insist on comparing gay couples to animals?

Should YOU receive treatment for being a bigot?
0 Replies
 
boomerang
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 10:31 am
joefromchicago did such a beautiful job of knocking this article to smithereens that I can hardly think of anything else to say.

Therefore I will ask just two little questions re:

Quote:
As the law of marital consummation makes clear, and always has made clear, it is this bodily union that serves as the foundation of the profound sharing of life at every level--biological, emotional, dispositional, rational, and spiritual--that marriage is.


What the heck is the "law of marital consummation"?

And whose definition of marriage is this?
0 Replies
 
Phoenix32890
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 10:35 am
I have said this before, and I will say it again. Marriage should not be in the purview of government. In order for a union, either gay or straight, to be privy to the legal advantages of unionhood, the government should have an entity called a "Civil Union", which is basically a contract between two people, who agree to adhering to its responsibilities, and are then entitled to its legal benefits.

If the parties involved then want their union blessed by some house of worship, they could then get "married" by the clergy of their choice.

KEEP MARRIAGE OUT OF THE GOVERNMENT. IT IS NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS!
0 Replies
 
Bella Dea
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 12:16 pm
Just an interesting gallup poll from CNN.....

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/interactive/allpolitics/0606/poll.samesex.marriage/images/frame.1.gif

Quote:
Question: Would you favor or oppose a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as being between a man and a woman, thus barring marriages between gay or lesbian couples?


Source

_______________________

Senate rejects ban. Very Happy

Source
0 Replies
 
Noddy24
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 01:50 pm
Bella--

Thanks for the update from Capital Hill. That nonsense has been a low-key worry for me all day.

Civilization squeaks through--though strait the gate.
0 Replies
 
Miller
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 01:54 pm
Noddy24 wrote:
Bella--

Thanks for the update from Capital Hill. That nonsense has been a low-key worry for me all day.

Civilization squeaks through--though strait the gate.


I'm puzzled! How does the above action reflect "CIVILIZATION"?
0 Replies
 
Wolf ODonnell
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 03:01 pm
Phoenix32890 wrote:
I have said this before, and I will say it again. Marriage should not be in the purview of government. In order for a union, either gay or straight, to be privy to the legal advantages of unionhood, the government should have an entity called a "Civil Union", which is basically a contract between two people, who agree to adhering to its responsibilities, and are then entitled to its legal benefits.

If the parties involved then want their union blessed by some house of worship, they could then get "married" by the clergy of their choice.

KEEP MARRIAGE OUT OF THE GOVERNMENT. IT IS NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS!


This might solve our nation's current crisis of heterosexuals couples that choose not to marry getting less benefits than married couples. Honestly, I can't believe the heterosexual couples don't have the same right as homosexual ones right about now.

Oh and guess who in our country is against heterosexual, non-married couples getting equal benefits?

That's right. It's the same people who were against homosexual couples getting married/civil unions.

There is of course another problem. I can't find the news article relating to this issue, so I may have remembered it wrong or have been completely wrong about this.
0 Replies
 
RaceDriver205
 
  1  
Reply Wed 7 Jun, 2006 07:11 pm
This site facinates me, it really does. It has about 95% pro-gay opinioned eople. I have never seen IRL this level of gay acceptance. Just because of your numbers in this forum, don't assume you are a majority IRL. People aren't equal. If you can't procreate without wierd medical/scientific sh!t then you aren't equal.
As usual, a few pure-emotion-based arguments :
Why do you bigots insist on comparing gay couples to animals?
Should YOU receive treatment for being a bigot?

I'll receive treatment for being a bigot (in this context, by the way) if it adversely affects my life, or my personal function. So far it has shaped me into the kind of person I appreciate being. I'd sooner be strong minded about cr@p like this, and say I won't stand or tolerate it, than be a weak pushover and say things like "can't we all just get along" and "if it makes them happy".

I saw those people involved in those gay celebrations. The men who wanted to marry those other men, the sight of them, their wierd faces and wierd way of walking. People aren't ever going to side with those people, sorry. Theres only two people ive ever talked to can accept those people as equal, and one of them is arguably gay.

Maybe you should have gone to school, Bella Dea:
What next, allowing marriage between a man and a cow?
Does not equal (a gay man = a cow). It refers to the act of marriage being inappropriately applied. Write that down.

Quote:
KEEP MARRIAGE OUT OF THE GOVERNMENT. IT IS NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS!

Interestingly, thats one of the principles of communism.

Quote:
Honestly, I can't believe the heterosexual couples don't have the same right as homosexual ones right about now.

Hahahaa. Get over it, wolf, it won't happen. Of course, you are welcome to fight that fight. Don't expect society to cave in. OH! I forgot, you now live in my homeland, the UK. Given that its going to sh~t, perhaps you will get your way. Unless they replace that retard blair with a strong right-wing leader. Like that'll happen though.
0 Replies
 
Shapeless
 
  1  
Reply Thu 8 Jun, 2006 02:33 am
RaceDriver205 wrote:
As usual, a few pure-emotion-based arguments:
Why do you bigots insist on comparing gay couples to animals?
Should YOU receive treatment for being a bigot?


Don't forget these equally "pure-emotion-based" arguments:

Quote:
I saw those people involved in those gay celebrations. The men who wanted to marry those other men, the sight of them, their wierd faces and wierd way of walking.


Wierd [sic] faces and wierd [sic] way of walking. Is that the best you can come up with? I'm afraid it is.
0 Replies
 
RaceDriver205
 
  1  
Reply Thu 8 Jun, 2006 04:06 am
OUT OF CONTEXT, Shapeless.
Quote:
People aren't ever going to side with those people, sorry. Theres only two people ive ever talked to can accept those people as equal, and one of them is arguably gay.

was the argument.
Quote:
I saw those people involved in those gay celebrations. The men who wanted to marry those other men, the sight of them, their wierd faces and wierd way of walking.

was the premise for that argument.
Quote:
Is that the best you can come up with? I'm afraid it is.

was your annoying, misguided snipe, implying a simple intellect and peeved-ness from realising you walk wierd. Laughing
0 Replies
 
Wolf ODonnell
 
  1  
Reply Thu 8 Jun, 2006 04:15 am
RaceDriver205 wrote:
I saw those people involved in those gay celebrations. The men who wanted to marry those other men, the sight of them, their wierd faces and wierd way of walking. People aren't ever going to side with those people, sorry. Theres only two people ive ever talked to can accept those people as equal, and one of them is arguably gay.


Yeah, typical.

Always, talking about homosexuality focuses exclusively on males. Never on females, coz, Hey, no one gives a damn about those dykes, right? Rolling Eyes

The way they walk. Those weird faces. That's not representative of the gay community.

Quote:
Quote:
KEEP MARRIAGE OUT OF THE GOVERNMENT. IT IS NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS!

Interestingly, thats one of the principles of communism.


Shows you what the Hell you know.

It's actually the principle of Libertarianism and should actually be the principle of the US Republican Party. It's actually got nothing to do with Communism, because Communism requires a lot of state interference.

Keeping marriage out of the Government, means preventing the state from interfering.

So, no, it's not.

Oh and RaceDriver, this ain't your home land anymore. You're not welcome here, because you are essentially not British. You accuse us of nothing but emotive arguments, yet you do the exact same thing.
0 Replies
 
 

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