This is kinda interesting given the individual.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/how-my-view-on-gay-marriage-changed.html
QuoteIn my 2007 book, "The Future of Marriage," and in my 2010 court testimony concerning Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, I took a stand against gay marriage. But as a marriage advocate, the time has come for me , to accept gay marriage and emphasize the good that it can do. I'd like to explain why.
I opposed gay marriage believing that children have the right, insofar as society makes it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. I didn't just dream up this notion: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into force in 1990, guarantees children this right.
Marriage is how society recognizes and protects this right. Marriage is the planet's only institution whose core purpose is to unite the biological, social and legal components of parenthood into one lasting bond. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its children.
At the level of first principles, gay marriage effaces that gift. No same-sex couple, married or not, can ever under any circumstances combine biological, social and legal parenthood into one bond. For this and other reasons, gay marriage has become a significant contributor to marriage's continuing deinstitutionalization, by which I mean marriage's steady transformation in both law and custom from a structured institution with clear public purposes to the state's licensing of private relationships that are privately defined.
I have written these things in my book and said them in my testimony, and I believe them today. I am not recanting any of it.
But there are more good things under heaven than these beliefs. For me, the most important is the equal dignity of homosexual love. I don't believe that opposite-sex and same-sex relationships are the same, but I do believe, with growing numbers of Americans, that the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over. Whatever one's definition of marriage, legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness.
Another good thing is comity. Surely we must live together with some degree of mutual acceptance, even if doing so involves compromise. Sticking to one's position no matter what can be a virtue. But bending the knee a bit, in the name of comity, is not always the same as weakness. As I look at what our society needs most today, I have no stomach for what we often too glibly call "culture wars." Especially on this issue, I'm more interested in conciliation than in further fighting.
A third good thing is respect for an emerging consensus. The population as a whole remains deeply divided, but most of our national elites, as well as most younger Americans, favor gay marriage. This emerging consensus may be wrong on the merits. But surely it matters.
I had hoped that the gay marriage debate would be mostly about marriage's relationship to parenthood. But it hasn't been. Or perhaps it's fairer to say that I and others have made that argument, and that we have largely failed to persuade. In the mind of today's public, gay marriage is almost entirely about accepting lesbians and gay men as equal citizens. And to my deep regret, much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying anti-gay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing.
I had also hoped that debating gay marriage might help to lead heterosexual America to a broader and more positive recommitment to marriage as an institution. But it hasn't happened. With each passing year, we see higher and higher levels of unwed childbearing, nonmarital cohabitation and family fragmentation among heterosexuals. Perhaps some of this can be attributed to the reconceptualization of marriage as a private ordering that is so central to the idea of gay marriage. But either way, if fighting gay marriage was going to help marriage overall, I think we'd have seen some signs of it by now.
So my intention is to try something new. Instead of fighting gay marriage, I'd like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that getting married before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation? Can we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents?
Will this strategy work? I don't know. But I hope to find out.
David Blankenhorn is the founder of the Institute for American Values.
In Mississippi, gay individuals can adopt a child, but not gay couples.
Does this make sense?
Hell, does adoption law in MS make sense? Answer: No.
Does Mississippi make sense?
That's rhetorical btw.
Quote from: garbon on June 22, 2012, 12:43:20 PM
Does Mississippi make sense?
That's rhetorical btw.
I don't get it.
Quote from: garbon on June 22, 2012, 12:31:53 PM
This is kinda interesting given the individual.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/how-my-view-on-gay-marriage-changed.html
Given that I disagree with his premise of what the sole intent of marriage should be, I'm not going to agree with his reason for changing his mind. I don't agree that it is a basic right of children to know and be raised by their biological parents, and that that should be the goal of society's moral guidelines. That he's changed his mind in order to further that premise annoys me. Go back to fighting gay marriage. You're going to lose anyway, and we don't have to worry about you continuing to distort our society to fit your morals.
I thought this would be a thread about garbon declaring he supports Romney.
Quote from: merithyn on June 22, 2012, 01:26:04 PM
Quote from: garbon on June 22, 2012, 12:31:53 PM
This is kinda interesting given the individual.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/how-my-view-on-gay-marriage-changed.html
Given that I disagree with his premise of what the sole intent of marriage should be, I'm not going to agree with his reason for changing his mind. I don't agree that it is a basic right of children to know and be raised by their biological parents, and that that should be the goal of society's moral guidelines. That he's changed his mind in order to further that premise annoys me. Go back to fighting gay marriage. You're going to lose anyway, and we don't have to worry about you continuing to distort our society to fit your morals.
Thing is that I think his movement (which failed to gain traction as it opposed gay marriage) will continue to fail to gain traction as he supports gay marriage (really doesn't even make sense when you have gay parents raising a kid :D), so I'd rather he take his flock in support of gay marriage than against.
Quote from: Martinus on June 22, 2012, 01:28:42 PM
I thought this would be a thread about garbon declaring he supports Romney.
If I vote, I'll likely vote for Romney but that doesn't mean I support him.
Quote from: merithyn on June 22, 2012, 01:26:04 PM
Quote from: garbon on June 22, 2012, 12:31:53 PM
This is kinda interesting given the individual.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/how-my-view-on-gay-marriage-changed.html
Given that I disagree with his premise of what the sole intent of marriage should be, I'm not going to agree with his reason for changing his mind. I don't agree that it is a basic right of children to know and be raised by their biological parents, and that that should be the goal of society's moral guidelines. That he's changed his mind in order to further that premise annoys me. Go back to fighting gay marriage. You're going to lose anyway, and we don't have to worry about you continuing to distort our society to fit your morals.
Wouldn't it make sense for his support to be rejected by gays (since they are, you know, involved) and not a heterosexual mother?
Quote from: garbon on June 22, 2012, 01:29:02 PM
Thing is that I think his movement (which failed to gain traction as it opposed gay marriage) will continue to fail to gain traction as he supports gay marriage (really doesn't even make sense when you have gay parents raising a kid :D), so I'd rather he take his flock in support of gay marriage than against.
I suppose that's true. But can we still beat him with a stick? :unsure:
This sounds less like someone who supports gay marriage and more like someone who thinks he's lost on the issue and has other fish to fry.
Quote from: Faeelin on June 22, 2012, 01:47:32 PM
This sounds less like someone who supports gay marriage and more like someone who thinks he's lost on the issue and has other fish to fry.
Which is good I think. :)
Quote from: merithyn on June 22, 2012, 01:26:04 PM
Quote from: garbon on June 22, 2012, 12:31:53 PM
This is kinda interesting given the individual.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/how-my-view-on-gay-marriage-changed.html
Given that I disagree with his premise of what the sole intent of marriage should be, I'm not going to agree with his reason for changing his mind. I don't agree that it is a basic right of children to know and be raised by their biological parents, and that that should be the goal of society's moral guidelines. That he's changed his mind in order to further that premise annoys me. Go back to fighting gay marriage. You're going to lose anyway, and we don't have to worry about you continuing to distort our society to fit your morals.
Too late, he's on your side now so he's all yours. Next thing you know he'll be visiting the white house to flip off a portrait of Reagan.
Quote from: derspiess on June 22, 2012, 02:08:45 PM
Too late, he's on your side now so he's all yours. Next thing you know he'll be visiting the white house to flip off a portrait of Reagan.
Damnit. <_<
Quote from: garbon on June 22, 2012, 01:29:29 PM
Quote from: Martinus on June 22, 2012, 01:28:42 PM
I thought this would be a thread about garbon declaring he supports Romney.
If I vote, I'll likely vote for Romney but that doesn't mean I support him.
Logic: not the province of the above-quoted individual.
Quote from: merithyn on June 22, 2012, 01:26:04 PM
Quote from: garbon on June 22, 2012, 12:31:53 PM
This is kinda interesting given the individual.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/how-my-view-on-gay-marriage-changed.html
Given that I disagree with his premise of what the sole intent of marriage should be, I'm not going to agree with his reason for changing his mind. I don't agree that it is a basic right of children to know and be raised by their biological parents, and that that should be the goal of society's moral guidelines. That he's changed his mind in order to further that premise annoys me. Go back to fighting gay marriage. You're going to lose anyway, and we don't have to worry about you continuing to distort our society to fit your morals.
Then what is the purpose of marriage?
Trick question, there is none.
QuoteI opposed gay marriage believing that children have the right, insofar as society makes it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. I didn't just dream up this notion: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into force in 1990, guarantees children this right.
Right. Because the UN
never promotes ivory-tower "values" that are anathema to common sense, such as the notion that developing youth should be sheltered from bigoted or otherwise-socially-incompatible individuals. Such as the author, ironically.
Quotemarriage's steady transformation in both law and custom from a structured institution with clear public purposes to the state's licensing of private relationships that are privately defined.
Funny, because the current patchwork seems more of a "licensing of private relationships that are privately defined" than would be the case if it were as simple as officially sanctioning a partnership to take control of household maintenance. This sounds more like a case of "my definition's right, and every other one is wrong." The even funnier thing is that people like me actually support his definition of marriage as well (well, his right to define a marriage that way, anyway); we just think it's not the right approach for the government to be in the business of
Quotelicensing of private relationships that are privately defined
, such as granting special status for perceived religious sacraments.
Quotemight we also agree that getting married before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace?
...And this was why Henry VIII got into a bitch-fest with the church over not being able to divorce, and look how well that turned out. "Producing heirs" is so 400 years ago. Do we also automatically annul marriages that are childless after X amount of years? It's a slippery slope. Stay away from it. Yeah, that point's weak. Ignore and proceed. :blush:
QuoteCan we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation?
:blink: Married couples typically cohabitate, and cohabitation doesn't automatically lead to children born out of wedlock. I'm not sure what point he's trying to make here, but I am sure it's got nothing to do with gay marriage in any way shape or form. SOAP BOX HIJACKED.
QuoteCan we discuss whether both gays and straight people should think twice before denying children born through artificial reproductive technology the right to know and be known by their biological parents?
Knowing? Sure. Unfortunately, with the current state of human genetics, there are plenty of reasons why it might be
necessary to know one's biological history. I'm not so sure about the "be known by" part, but hey, some of us are willing to listen to other viewpoints. Either way, there is a huge difference between "be known by" and "be raised by," with such a wide variety of social undesirables being biologically able to sire children that I'm absolutely convinced the "right" should be "in a safe environment," instead of "by their biological parents."
TL;DR/LANGUISH ANSWER: Pass the nails and hammer. I'm not just going to refrain from opening this trojan horse, I want to make sure nothing can sneak out while we're sleeping. ;)
Too bad this thread wasn't about garbon getting hitched.
Quote from: Ideologue on June 22, 2012, 09:53:24 PM
Quote from: garbon on June 22, 2012, 01:29:29 PM
Quote from: Martinus on June 22, 2012, 01:28:42 PM
I thought this would be a thread about garbon declaring he supports Romney.
If I vote, I'll likely vote for Romney but that doesn't mean I support him.
Logic: not the province of the above-quoted individual.
Just means that I'm anti-Obama.
Gay marriage would destroy our civilization.
Quote from: Siege on June 23, 2012, 11:37:33 PM
Gay marriage would destroy our civilization.
Thankfully your civilization isn't the same as ours.
American trusted journalist O'RLY informed me that in Sweden marriage was destroyed by gay marriage years before gay marriage was made legal.
Quote from: garbon on June 23, 2012, 10:29:47 PM
Quote from: Ideologue on June 22, 2012, 09:53:24 PM
Quote from: garbon on June 22, 2012, 01:29:29 PM
Quote from: Martinus on June 22, 2012, 01:28:42 PM
I thought this would be a thread about garbon declaring he supports Romney.
If I vote, I'll likely vote for Romney but that doesn't mean I support him.
Logic: not the province of the above-quoted individual.
Just means that I'm anti-Obama.
Fair enough. It's still material support to an enemy of America.
In any event, are you familiar with the phrase, "Cutting off your nose to spite the face?"
Sometimes the face deserves it too.
Quote from: The Brain on June 24, 2012, 02:13:48 AM
American trusted journalist O'RLY informed me that in Sweden marriage was destroyed by gay marriage years before gay marriage was made legal.
Gay marriage is responsible for this?
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2Fd%2Fdc%2FScenes_from_a_Marriage_DVD_cover.jpg&hash=1249d283e52ac6384206936a61bc9c83de29b89a)
:Joos
I wouldn't want to see scenes from Bergman's marriage.