Bill, you seem to want to restrict the rights of gays, or take away their rights. What's wrong with you?

There is only one explanation that anyone would have in denying gays the right to marry, and that explanation is bigotry. Yep, Bill, you ARE a bigot. As a father of a gay son and a brother of a lesbian, I can assure you that our gay friends DO NOT have the same rights as you and me. Without those rights, we've essentially made those folks second-class citizens. That's appalling in the 21st century. Shame on you, Bill. You are perpetuating a terrible cycle of fear and hatrid. I can only hope your children don't turn out to be gay. I'm sure you'd disown them, eh? Give it a rest.

Oh, a final thought or two: just because something has been done for years doesn't make it right. Consider our great country...women didn't have the right to vote for over one hundred years. Was that right just because it was done? No, it was NOT right. And just because the majority is against something doesn't make it right...interracial marriage was opposed by 90% of the population in the '50s. Was the majority right on that? No.

Again, the only explanation that's valid is bigotry. So, if you want to say gay marriage shouldn't be allowed because you hate the idea, at least you'd have some credibility on the issue. Otherwise you come across as the hate-monger you are.

I guess I'm an anti-gay bigot for agreeing with Bill here, huh.

How does that square with me being gay, I wonder?

Maybe because marriage is a privilege, not a right. We can argue about what constitutes the criteria for that privilege at our leisure... but claiming that gay marriage is a "civil right" or that anyone wishing to not have to explain to their kids why those two guys are standing at the altar together is a hate-filled bigot does nothing to make people like Bill feel that their objections are being heard or understood.

I am so sick of seeing the concept of "civil rights" abused this way.

Brian,

If our government is going to provide a benefit for one, it must provide a benefit for all. Anything less is prejudicial and discriminatory. Call it a privledge if you want, but the fact remains that discrimination based on sexual identity is not acceptable. That's what these "activist" judges are saying and they are correct.

Since you're gay, let me ask you this: do you feel you made the choice to be gay? My feeling, based on personal history (my family tree has gay relatives on every branch) and agreed upon by my gay relatives, is that they had no choice in their sexual identity. I never made the choice to be straight; I just am. With all the discovery of genetic code (just a few weeks ago, an "alcohol" gene was found) I'm convinced homosexuality is genetic-based. If that theory is proven to be correct, would that change your mind about your rights/nonrights? If homosexuality is genetic, will people who oppose it be willing to finally accept gays as first-class citizens?

What's wrong with the concept of a civil union (or some arrangement that goes by another name than marriage)? Couldn't it confer all of the rights and privileges? If all of the turmoil is over a matter of semantics, then perhaps some distinct term signifying a gay union might be the best way to go, identifying a unique type of relationship while leaving the term marriage to the traditionally accepted arrangement.

Marriage as we know it is legally defined by the state and not by the church. If someone asked me to prove that I am married (to a woman, by the way), I would have to produce a license granted by the state of Tennessee. On the other hand, if I insisted that we didn't need the license, but believed that God has blesed our union, then most people would consider us to be living in an immoral condition.

Gay unions being called marriage? Not going to happen in America--at least not for a very long time. I'd suggest a less divisive and more feasibly attainable approach.

Peter,

I have no idea whether it was a "choice" or some inborn trait. I strongly suspect it was elements of both. I imagine that's true of most gays, and to some degree in most people who consider themselves "straight". It's just a matter of how strongly those mental impulses make themselves felt, which varies from person to person.

I'm not prepared to say it's not something I "chose", because I know I consciously "chose" to go down a certain path once I realized it was an option before me. I know that's a terribly un-PC thing to say, and will probably get me excommunicated from the Church of Gay, but it's "my truth" (as that New Jersey governor dude so vapidly put it).

As such, I'm fully prepared to accept that there are things for which the government is *not* obligated to rejigger society so as to make *me* feel more comfortable, just as there are plenty of other things the government is not obligated to accommodate in people with certain other inborn or acquired traits. There are certain crosses that certain people have to bear: the blind, the short, the religious minority. I'm okay with the idea that my life won't be as perfect as if I didn't have this aspect of it to deal with. Once upon a time such things were thought to build character.

And one more thing about the politicized "nature vs. nurture" argument: if it's genetic, then the Nazi State will just weed out gays through eugenics, right? So that's no good. But if it's a choice, then homosexuality is subject to no more "rights" than a religious choice, right? And we can't have that. Neither one of these selections is politically viable for the activist gay community, so nobody really wants to talk about it anymore-- both ways lie madness.

Brian,

Thanks for your comments; they were insightful.

If my belief that sexuality is predetermined through genetics comes to pass, then I agree, we'll see a "weeding" out of homosexuality, perhaps even to the point (in the very long-term) where homosexuality becomes extinct (in the human form that is; I don't think we can impose that upon the rest of the animal kingdom and since homosexual behaviour has been observed in every mammalian species on the planet we must, as a society, come to realize it is a natural occurance, albeit one practiced by a minority of the populace).

We'll also probably see a huge shift in the abortion issue; the extreme right giving its approval for abortion in the case of homosexual fetuses and gays will probably become more pro-life.

It's an interesting discussion and you've raised some good points, however, I'm still of the camp that if our government is in the business of handing out marriage licenses (and all the benefits that come with marriage), then they should not discriminate based on sexual orientation. I don't feel my marriage of 31 years is any more or less of a relationship than the one my lesbian sister has with her partner of 35 years.

SemiPundit has a good point, too, and I think the natural first step will be to confer the various rights upon "civil unions" or some other term. Unfortunately, most of the amendments that states are passing (Missouri, Louisiana) go further than just marriage and incorporate civil unions into that legislation. I'm not at all comfortable keeping my gay relatives at a second-class citizen level, which this essentially is.

On another point: if GWB is re-elected, do you think he'll push for a recriminalization of gay sex?

Since mariage for thousands of years has been defined as two people of the opposite sex, to be consistant those who think the word opposite is now an anachronism should also favor changing the requirement for two people. Why not three, four, a hundred. If the concept of a man and women is artifical then so is the concept of two. I think that would be a disaster.

Nonsense. You are not a libertarian if you think people should not be able to have legal recognition of their marriages. Period. I am a man married to a man. Married in the eyes of God and my church and my entire family. We raise children. We pay TAXES. We are exactly like any hetero couples. We deserve equal recognition of our marriage. Period. PERIOD.

Anything else is inequity.

Fact is, my husband and I deserve marriage rights FAR more than 90% of the hetero couples I have met! To base legal recognition of a marriage upon sexual orientation makes no sense and does not serve society well at all.

The line about "marriage for thousands of years has been defined as one man and one woman" is utter nonsense, too. Even the Catholic church had gay marriage ceremonies at one time, and many societies had gay people marrying just a few hundred years ago, before Christianity turned homophobic and started teaching other societies to be homophobic. Almost every pre-Christian society had a completely different (and positive) view of gays. Some isolated societies in Africa, South America, Central America, Asia, and the South Pacific even TODAY treat gays as equal to straights and they VALUE their gay folks, frequently giving them special privileges because they see the positive impact of having some gays in their villages. Gays are usually the medicine men & women. The resolvers of conflicts. Often regarded as having special powers. There's plenty of information on this and these gay-friendly societies untouched by homophobic Christianity. The European settlers freaked out when they arrived in the Americas and found Indian tribe after Indian tribe with highly-regarded gay folks in them. The Europeans considered this justification for destruction of Indian societies. They often killed the gay Indians by having dogs eat them alive, and they terrorized the Indians into fearing that unless they adopted the hate-mongering Christians' anti-gay ways they would be fed to the dogs, too. So don't give me that unsubstantiated junk about marriage supposedly always being between a man and a woman. You just think that because you haven't read the journals of the early explorers. Go to your library.