“First of all: what Eric said. All of it.”

Well, there’s a profound argument. Looks like the serious intellectuals are joining the fray.

“Eric has been a regular on this site a lot longer than you”

What is this, a union shop? Do long time posters get bonus points, regardless of how poorly thought out their positions?

“where do you get off calling people trolls ”

Work on your reading skills. I have not called anyone a troll. Although I might make an exception for you.

“And your example of the poor persecuted Manhattan Republican doesn’t begin to compare with the suffering of people who .” yada yada yada

I suggest you have another look at the quote I provided, from eric’s own web site. I’ll post it again.

“And, these enlightened urban hipster types in their ignorant hatred of Republicans/conservatives couldn’t possibly have anything in common with these violent anti-Semites in San Francisco and Wellington could they? Naaaaaa.

One of the comments at Karol’s site was:

Closet-Republican myself. Went to a concert the other day where the performer took some not-very-subtle jabs at the evil, un-elected President. The audience roared with approval. I felt like a black guy hiding under a white hood at a Klan rally. Hiding your Republican-ness and smiling at anti-Bush jokes is almost a reflexive survival instinct when rolling in some “enlightened,” “tolerant” circles.

I don’t think it’s time for us to hide though. History has shown that people with that special “tolerant” mind-set eventually come after all the people they hate, no matter what.”

That Eric, what kind of wuss is he, making statements like this? Can’t he suck it up, like you suggest?

(If I was really cruel, I could have so much fun with that …..)

“So you want to return to these thrilling days of yesteryear?”

Try to follow the plot here. I did not call for a return to the “thrilling days of yesteryear”. I am attempting to point out, to the rather brainless libertarians, that their stated goals of very limited government are not compatable with their desire to have gay marriage. We may end up with gay marriage in America. If so it will not be due to a triumph of the libertarian cause, but due to the corecive power of government.

That is the point I made. If you disagree with it, explain how and why.

One it is accepted as true, we can perhaps move on to a discussion of what the proper role of the state is.

So you want to return to these thrilling days of yesteryear?

Big Government also stepped in against blacks and women being discriminated against. (I don’t mean affirmative action, I mean blatantly refusing blacks and women for certain jobs they would otherwise be qualified for.)

second, flenser, who the hell are you? Eric has been a regular on this site a lot longer than you – where do you get off calling people trolls and carrying on airs?

And your example of the poor persecuted Manhattan Republican doesn’t begin to compare with the suffering of people who are prevented from being legally recognized as family: not being able to see their loved one in the hospital or being allowed at his funeral, being forced out of their mutual home after his death. Gays can be faithful partners for 30 years, but the minute there is an issue of sickness or death they are not treated as equal before the law.

I am a Bush supporter in Manhattan, and yeah, it’s no fun right now. Big deal. Suck it up. Enjoy the Convention.

New story on McGreevey:

…In the e-mail, Johnson, who began working for McGreevey in 2001, addressed questions about long-standing rumors that McGreevey was gay.

“Jim, when with a small group of us, would make extremely heterosexual jokes and allude to the various characteristics of hot women,” Johnson wrote….

Yup, I farkelled the context. My bad.

Recalibration in progress.

Hmmm. Since George Pataki, Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain, and Arnold Schwarzennegar have all been outed as dreaded “RINOs” at one time or another and all have had or are starting extremely successful political careers, I’m not quite sure I see how “RINOs” are such an albatross around the neck of the Republican party. Should they be trying instead to emulate the success of non-RINO politicans like Alan Keyes, and virtually all the California Republicans before Schwarzy?

(Yes, I know. “RINO” McCain lost to Bush, and Reagan beat to far more “RINO” senior Bush, so this cuts both ways.)

Who’s speaking during prime-time at the RNC again?

Yaaaay RINOs! I’d be a RINO too, if I hadn’t stopped calling myself a Republican after the introduction of that spectacularly successfull non-RINO measure, the FMA.

I would like to make a brief comment on just two of the points you mades:

#1: “I’m sufficiently convinced that same-sex will be the death knell of marriage as we know it.

This is the crux of the debate. I can’t figure out (even after reading your entire post a couple times) how you come tot his conclusion. It just seems self-evident to me that allowing more committed couples “into” the institution would strengthen it, not weaken it.

#2 It ain’t purely the legal protections. Those can be had through normal legal mechanisms and we can probably fix any issues or breakdowns.

This statement is not true, at least as things currently are constructed legally in America. Lawyers and wills can provide a small proportion of the rights that legally married couples enjoy, but most of the rights married people have are statutory, not contractual, and cannot be simulated via contracts because they are specifically tied to governmental regulation (think immigration, social security, taxation, etc.)

I guess I would have more respect for many anti-gay marriage folks if they were more open to fixing some of these problems, even without legalizing same-sex marriage. Intstead, it seems the contrary is true and anti-gay activists actively construct and write their ballot initiatives and laws in such a way that any alternate way of solving these issues, such as contract law domestic partnerships are also made illegal. Read the actualy text of most of the anti-gay ballot initiatives and proposed amendments, and you can see they go much further then simply requiring the government not to recognize same sex marriage.

To your credit, you seem to realize this and do not want this, but most other people who are opposed to same-sex marriage do not feel as you do.

We already have:

1. The DOMA

2. The mini-DOMAs in 38 states.

3. Arguments by many people on both sides of the issue that the “Full Faith and Credit clause” doesn’t apply to marriages.

Yet, despite these three levels of protection, we still hear that the fact that courts in one state decided to allow gay civil marriage will somehow mean that it will be “imposed” nationally. And the “imposed” phrasing is overwrought and disingenuous to begin with. The day the courts force you to get married to a member of the same sex, then “imposed” might make sense.

And M. Simon is right about the enumerated powers clause. Or at least I hope he’s right or America is a lot more statist country than I thought. We don’t have to petition the legislature to pretty please bestow on us a right unless something in the US or state constitution specifically reserves that right to the state or to the federal government. I can’t believe that this is now the “conservative” position.

I pondered doing what I’m about to do several times over. It is likely I’ll get, deservedly, hammered with “getcherownfreakin’ blog!” or consuming Roger’s Bandwidth. But I’ve decided to forge ahead anyway.

The following is something I put together for myself over a couple weeks. Most of it was from an extended econversation with a buddy who is an SSM proponent, but all of it was done trying to get a handle on where I stood on the issue. I’ve decided not to alter it. Nothing I’ve seen in this thread or elsewhere so far changes where I stand. Eric and Mike have, apparently, heard everything there is to hear on this topic from those of us opposed and dismissed it as “weak”. Well, so be it.

Here’s is how Yet Another Knucklehead pondered out his thoughts on SSM:

This is an exercise in getting things out on the table more for myself than anyone else. Writing, as poorly as I may do it, helps me get there. I’ve been trying to do some due diligence and figure out some reasonable, sensical position regarding “same sex marriage” and I’ve wavered. I started out “against” because it just seemed somehow “wrong” to me. But some vague sense that something is “wrong” isn’t a good enough reason to be against it. I demand something with a little more substance than that.

As a “non-believer”, and also an avid fan of the first ammendment, I reject out of hand any religious argument either way.

“God says so” is not a valid argument against same-sex marriage any more than it is a valid argument to allow, for example,

polygamy. Just because some People of Faith are against same-sex marriage doesn’t mean that those of us who are are simply “non-believers” but hold no animosity toward religion or the Anti-religionists (the angy-secularists; there’s no other type of secularist that I can find) should automagically line up on the other side of the question.

I also reject out of hand any argument in the “it ain’t natural” category. Its 2004 and getting later all the time. I’m not an eighteen year old living in a barracks anymore. Homosexuality isn’t a disease and even if it is it isn’t contagious. In the same way that I don’t understand religious faith but don’t see how other people’s faith “picks my pocket or breaks my leg” (I take my cue from Jefferson on this) I don’t see how other people’s sexuality does me any harm. Obviously my “whatever floats your boat” quasi-tolerance of different sexuality doesn’t extend to those who wish to take advantage of children or animals or get their rocks off doing sick stuff. But as far as I am aware there is no correlation between homosexuality and pederasty or pedophilia or any other “sick stuff”. No doubt there are sick homos just like there are sick heteros, but that’s a different issue.

The flip side of this coin, however, is that the rights of “consenting adults” are not an absolute. There aren’t any absolute rights of any sort. All rights are inherently restricted. We don’t allow consenting adults to engage in any and all behavior. I won’t even bother conjuring up examples (does “yelling fire in a crowded theater” ring any bells?). Suffice to say that We the People, on several ocassions, have found it fully consistent with our collective “welfare” to deny a subset of the population all rights up to and including the foundational “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (google up Wars and Drafts if you doubt this).

So, after knocking off the most immediate “no-brainers” I thought about it a while and arrived somewhere near where it seems many people are:

* its no skin off my back

* this is the USofA and we may struggle with it but we do generally find ways to let people live their lives as they see fit

* if loving, committed people want to get married who am I to tell them they can’t have what I consider a prime focus of my own life

* if more people, regardless of hetero or homo, are supportive of marriage how can that not be a good thing for marriage in general and society as a whole

* once upon a time we didn’t let back people drink from certain water fountains – that wasn’t a good idea and denying homos the license to marry probably isn’t a good idea either

Just for the heck of it, I ran through that list to see which matter and which don’t.

“No skin off my back” isn’t an argument for or against much of anything, to be honest. There are no end of restrictions We the People place on various segments of society. Just to pick an example out of the air, polygamy is “no skin off my back”. And there are things which are “skin off my back” which I have to accept whether I like it or not because its the law of the land. Affirmative action leaps to mind – a legalized preference based upon sex or skin color, or whatever, can and has affected my life and those of “people like me”. Regardless of whether one supports the concept or not, its been imposed upon us for the general good of the society. It can be argued back and forth till Doomsday, but the arguing doesn’t alter the negative impact it sometimes has on some indivuals within the society. Yet we’ve arrived at the conclusion that the it has benefit to the general welfare that outweighs its negative impact upon individuals or some segment of the population.

The “basic human rights” argument is somewhat overblown in this debate. Without the very long held traditional and cultural meaning of marriage, it isn’t really a “basic human right”. Its a legal “thingie” that arose from cultural origins for a host of good reasons. We the People do wierd little legal thingies all the time (just ask any member of the armed forces if they have the full panoply of “rights” that the general citizenry enjoys and how the Uniform Code of Military Justice stacks up against the legal rights of ordinary citizens). More on this later, but suffice to say that I hold the whole “second class citizen” argument to be little more than bumper-sticker sloganeering. We are all second class citizens – its the nature of citizenship that we give up some degree of rights as an inherent duty of citizenship. My First Ammendment right to free speech and religious freedom doesn’t give me the right to climb up on my roof with a bullhorn at 2:00 AM and loudly advocate for the immediate repentance of all sinners.

I don’t see a legitimate case that same-sex marriage is something that has been denied to a category of citizen. There is just no legitmate way to claim that marriage hasn’t always been defined, if only implicitly, as between one man and one woman. If marriage is a right, then granting it to same-sex couples is an extension of the “right” to some category of citizen that didn’t have it before. But it isn’t life and death. Whatever “pursuit of happiness” aspect it has doesn’t mean anything outside of the same traditional, cultural context that defined it as opposite-sex in the first place.

The comparison with slavery or “Jim Crow” and the denial of basic human rights just flat out strikes me as weak upon further consideration. Its got merit and doesn’t deserved to be dismissed, but at the “good of society” level, we’re not talking about Mississippi Burning here. No doubt individual gays who desperately want to be married disagree with that, but I don’t believe that personal level of investment matters to the argument as a whole. In fact, it may make some people unable to look at the “big picture”.

“Loving and committed” couples is a STRONG argument. Its the foundation of what I consider true marriage. Without that marriage is just another license for just another human activity. And the “more real supporters the better” argument folds right into this like nice newlyweds falling asleep in one another’s arms. These are STRONG arguments and almost make the case for me. But not quite.

Then there’s the standard, “didn’t give the whole thing much thought”, non-religious arguments against:

* why can’t they just let us “normal” people have something we can count on and call our own; why do “they” have to attack everything “traditional”

* this isn’t a case of taking away a right gays ever had (there are subtle but important distinctions between this and the whole “blacks in the back of the bus” thing).

* this is a WAY stickier wicket than it seems on the surface and maybe – probably – we really need to have a serious look at implications (marriage is a very Odd Duck and its odd-duckiness does have real implications). BTW, for what its worth this argument was prominent in the dissents in the MA case – the “civil rights” issues are real and may not justify digging in heels over, but by the same token they aren’t so hugely overwhelming that we can’t let this thing have the time it needs to figure itself out through the legislative process. Which is – I certainly believe this – where it belongs. I can live with getting voted down by a legitimate majority but I’m fed up with having the judiciary tell us what we should believe.

* the slippery slope to eliminating “marriage” as a legal, cultural, and social concept.

The first of those just doesn’t hold up. “Normal” ain’t what it used to be and it has never been all its cracked up to be.

The second I believe I’ve addressed. It isn’t slavery and it isn’t segregation in any real way. The legal/civil benefits can be gotten at in other ways and where there are weaknesses civil law could be modified to address those.

The next two are intertwined, but… If “Slippery Slope” doesn’t hold any water then “Sticky Wicket” is less dangerous. If the slope isn’t all that dangerously slippery then there’s time to make good faith attempts to properly manage even the nastier Unexpected Consequences regardless of whether we hammered them out up front or not.

Some commenters have made the case that the “anti” forces are lined up against it for economic reasons. I don’t think that holds up under scrutiny or is a powerful force either way. Big Corporate America surrendered this issue ages ago. They’d just as soon have all their employees married with kids and they’d pay whatever they couldn’t push off to the employee for benefits. Call me vile names for saying it (and one can’t say this sort of thing in polite company or the PC Police will haul one’s ass to the re-education camp) but Corp America knows damn well the most reliable and long-term productive employees are the Married with Children and Mortgages types. Straight or Gay is not an issue to them – married or in a “committed relationship” gets them closer to what they prefer wrt employees.

Uncle Sam may very well be against it purely due to the prospect of losing tax revenue or having to pay out more benefits. I just don’t see it though. That’s way too cynical even for me and when all is said and done, its probably a tax revenue wash ’cause, after all, Uncle Sam giveth and Uncle Sam taketh away.

I just don’t see any good evidence that this is really just an economic cat fight.

My next phase was to try (this is a habit that I’ve tried to build) to ask “what is it they want and why do they want it?”

The simplistic answer is that gays want “marriage” because it has “value”. (The bit about wondering why marriage has value to those who’ve never had access to it before is where I started to understand what a freakin’ legal Odd Duck marriage is.) Clearly it has value on an individual level or neither of us would have stuck with it (sorry, couldn’t resist the “woe is us” schtick). And I imagine we agree that there is overall social value – the best chance kids have of becoming decent adults and citizens is when they are raised in a stable marriage with both male and female influence. I spent some time pondering the value bit. I don’t know that I came to any particular conclusions, but here are some observations.

The value of any individual marriage to the participants (and I consider this both the couple and the children, if any) can’t be diminished (or strengthened) by any other marriage, same sex or otherwise. No strong marriage is injured by weak marriages and there surely aren’t many weak ones somehow magically made stronger by some nearby strong marriage. But weak marriages do “injure” society as a whole. You and I and our wives have raised and coached and mentored enough kids and been around the block enough times to know that broken homes are more likely to produce problem kids and single moms or dads have a real tough row to hoe.

The value of my marriage cannot be diminished if two men or two women decide to marry. I’m the one who determines what value it has to me personally and the value it holds for the other “stakeholders” is theirs to measure.

There’s more of a case to be made, but not a strong one, that a same-sex marriage doesn’t provide the same value to society. By this I mean that gay marriages are unlikely, when considered as a whole, to be as strong as male-female marriages. We got rid of any bans against interracial marriage quite some time ago but interracial marriages still seem to have a harder go of it than same-race marriages. I don’t have any stats but I do have friends and aquaintences who have interracial marriages and they and their children encounter some difficulties you and I just would never experience: faint or even open hostility, expectations that difficulties will break them rather than strengthen them, that sort of thing. Call it residual bigotry or whatever, but its real and this sort of thing takes generations to fade away. Its just Human Nature. My niece and nephew over in “Can’t be more freakin’ Liberal” Sweden experience more than their fair share of prejudice because they are “brown” and short rather than tall, blonde, and blue-eyed.. Even Swedes can’t always get beyond the bigotries they insist they don’t have.

There’s no good reason to assume this wouldn’t be the same for same-sex marriages. I understand there’s an arument that what doesn’t kill makes stronger, and what level of difficulty people are willing to accept is their own business and not a reason to forbid them from doing something, but given an entire population I don’t think its unreasonable to suggest that more problems correlates to more failures. And there obviously can’t be the same male and female influences on children to help them gain some balance and understanding of the opposite sex. (I suppose there might be some sort of approximation of this but what do I know.)

Some folks like to bring the matter of the “devaluing” of marriage or the high rates of divorce as some sort of attack against hetero marriage. I think those are lame arguments. Just because some people run back and forth to Las Vegas and think marriage is unimportant doesn’t mean those people are correct. Those sorts of marriages never provide any inherent value to society so the damage they inflict when they fall apart is probably minimal. And divorce has no context outside of marriage. It can be used as some commentary on the overall strength of marriage in our society, or its declining respect, but if there’s no marriage there’s no divorce. Just because there are people who don’t take it seriously or others who are such bad judges of character that they frequently marry and divorce people they don’t really like is no good reason to attack marriage either hetero or homo.

So what makes marriage valuable to us and to the gays pushing for it? Yeah, I know!:

* the wild and crazy and never-ending “safe sex”

* never having to say you’re sorry (what idiot ever thought there was a shred of truth in that?)

* those incredibly exciting college tuition bills

* the sheer enjoyment of fighting the Battle of Curfew Pass like your own personal “Ground Hog Day”.

I suppose there’s always the sheer aggravaton and consternation from the feeling of being “denied” something but that seems awfully petty to me. Surely gays understand this is way more important than putting some finishing touches on their sense of “arrival” or acceptance. It isn’t going to resolve those issues – at least not for another generation or three.

It must be something more than the monogamous sex partner aspect. That’s available w/o marriage if one wants it and marriage certainly doesn’t guarantee it. Granted, however, it places some additional level of social or cultural pressure toward that end.

It ain’t purely the life partner/companion thing. That’s also available w/o marriage. And sometimes its the one thing that doesn’t quite manage to survive “getting the kids raised decently”.

It ain’t purely the legal protections. Those can be had through normal legal mechanisms and we can probably fix any issues or breakdowns. But its when I started wondering about the legal aspects that I got most nervous. I don’t want to go down that whole path with you again but there are nightmares waiting there. The lawyers will have a field day with a whole new segment to the Grievance Industry. And we’ll all have to go back and take PC refresher courses to make sure we don’t say anything that might suggest marriage is an opposite sex thing or display any “hidden” preference. Relatively petty complaints but I’m growing weary of all the tip-toeing BS in my advancing years. Why do we each have to worry about every hypersensitive knucklehead we might encounter? I’ve even seen a new name for My Bad Behavior – “micro-aggression”. Geezus Looeezus. (Sorry, off topic).

It ain’t purely the idea of having a “family” since those “bennies” seem to be coming for gays for some time now. Interestingly enough (I mentioned this ages ago but there’s no way you remember) from what I overhear of the kids and their buddies discussions of gay marriage they think its OK with them but they find gay adoption a little “skeevey”. (I suppose the repulsiveness of the thought of one’s parents having sex goes through the roof when its carried over to thinking about one’s same-sex parents having sex.) I have an easier time with gay adoption than gay marriage. Odd. The way I see it, having two “moms” or two “dads” (whether they are “married” or in a “civil union”) might not be ideal, but its gotta beat being an orphan by a wide margin. Sorry, I digress yet again.

If gays want marriage for the tax implications they really are stupid – the tax benefits aren’t worth the trouble, effort, sacrifice and pain that go into making a marriage work and raising a family.

So I’m left with the idea that, for those gays who sincerely want access to the thing we call “marriage” with all its scope and depth, its all those little bits of “value” they can’t quite get to via “civil unions”. Those are, I suppose, mostly in the “spiritual” and “social” aspects. That’s fine. That’s legit. I can live with that. People who feel that way are “on my side” in my estimation.

There are clearly some legal matters that are simplified and more accepted for married couples. That’s legit also but way overblown by the supporters. Any sensible hetero married couple with children is going to visit a lawyer and put in place whatever legal documents are necessary to avoid leaving the fates of one another and their children to the whims of the courts and “default law”. One just don’t leave that stuff to the courts if one cares about it. I just don’t think the big push for same-sex marriage – Now, This Week, Today! – is the legal advantages or protections. It isn’t a factor that I consider for deciding where I’m going to stand on this. I’m pretty well convinced that this thing has been stoked up by the lunatic-fringe left (you and your buddies!).

Not being particularly spiritual or religious, that context for marriage holds little personal interest to me. But I have this strong nagging suspicion that part of the whole “what do they want” question is that they want to beat religions over the head with this until they either force them to accept gays and gay marriage or drive them right out of the marriage business. No proof of course, just a nagging suspicion that there’s some “subversive undercurrent” even among the “sincere about marriage” gays. I’m probably missing key emotional elements here but I just don’t understand why “religion” drives so many non-believers bonkers the way it does. If one doesn’t believe then one doesn’t believe. I’m not religious but I believe freedom of religion is a big, foundational right and the fanatic secularists are idiots for trying so hard to kill religion. We aren’t guaranteed freedom from religion, we’re guaranteed freedom of religion. I don’t choose to exercise that right, but I’ll be damned if I won’t man the ramparts against those who want religion gone from our society. Yet another digression, but the anti-religion nuts are so freakin’ Religious about it that they drive me bonkers.

So that leaves me pretty much at the point of trying to figure out if “slippery slope” is legit and, if yes, whether it is important. The knee-jerk screamers alway denigrate “slippery slope” but the pure fact of the matter is that “slippery slope” is a very real thing. One little generation ago, when your mom and dad had kids – you – in HS, the country was fighting over the legalization of abortion. The “slippery slopers” were saying that it would open the way to abortion on demand, abortion as afterthought birth control, sexual promiscuity, taxpayer demands, and even infanticide. They were shouted down as superstitious, freakazoid alarmists and reactionary neanderthals. The right to legal, safe abortions, the pro-case went, was nothing more than to bring abortion out of the “filthy backrooms and coathangers” world, allow women first trimester privacy over their medical decisions, and bring us all to a better world where No Child is an Unwanted Child and child abuse is all but gone. I was just a knucklehead in HS back then but I still can’t believe anyone bought the No Unwanted Kids and No More Child Abuse nonsense. Those issues are way more complex than whether or not abortion is legal. I’ll just point out:

* there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of unwanted or abused children

* abortion is a commonly used method of “afterthought” birth control

* what’s a freakin’ “first trimester” anyway

* parental notification is all but dead

* portions of the populace can’t see any problems with puncturing fetal skulls and sucking out brains of even 7 and 8 month fetuses, and

* “ethicists” in major universities are openly making the case for infanticide (why do they hate children so much that they must have an ever expanding list of acceptable ways to kill them?).

Call me a neanderthal reactionary, but I’m not convinced these developments are good things (OK, I don’t like them much at all) or that, even if they are, we’ve had enough time to argue or adjust. And regardless of whether one likes them or not, they sure do show that the “slippery slopers” were far more correct that the “legal and rare” crowd.

But abortion is a different animal (I can just hear you now!). Yeah, it is. If we ever change our minds about it or decide there’s some limit we want to impose, we can pick a date on the calendar and announce it far and wide. Everyone can run and get her abortion, or whatever particularly nasty version of it we are putting a stop to, before that date or they’re out of luck. Yesterday’s abortions don’t guarantee tomorrow’s abortions.

The marriage thing seems more Humpty-Dumpty to me. If we break this we aren’t getting it back together again. Once we head down this yellow brick road its Oz or Bust, Bubba.

Just a year or so ago we had the TX sodomy case go through the SCOTUS. I don’t care about no stinking sodomy laws. They sure seem so freakin’ YESTERDAY. The point, however, is that one short year or so ago Justice Scalia (or one of those scum-sucking, lying Conservatives ;>) made the dissenting case that the decision to strike down the TX sodomy laws would open the floodgates to legal challenges against hetero marriage. A senator (Santorum?) picked that up and said it sounded legit to him. They were vilified as right wing religious fanatics, neanderthal reactionaries, etc, etc. and the Enlightened (aka scum-sucking lying Liberals ;>) insisted (if I recall the decision correctly it even said as much) the TX sodomy case had NOTHING to do with marriage and nobody would EVER use it it to attack marriage as we know it. Well, it ain’t been all that long and the court cases are filed and working their way through the system and the SCOTUS TX sodomy decision IS being used as one of the legal arguments for attacking hetero marriage. I can’t cite the cases – I’m taking the claims of Pundits at face value here – but the Scalia dissent said it would happen and now it seems to be happening.

It doesn’t matter which side of the sodomy stuff you stand on, the point is that slippery slope is a valid argument. It may or may not be the right argument, but its valid. And things seem so damned accelerated these days. Slippery slope meant a generation not long ago. Now it means a few short years.

OK, enough. So Slippery Slope is demonstrably valid. That doesn’t mean that its valid in this case. Well, like I said, I’ve been trying to do my due diligence on this and I’ll leave it to you to verify or not as you see fit, but I’m tellin’ ya, Bubba, regardless of the sincerity of the folks who are fighting for same-sex, there are some folks out there who want to kill all marriage – homo, hetero, or otherwise. And they are already developing the legal cases and training up the judges. There are professors of law in some of our most prestigious and influential law schools who hold positions like heads of the Family Law dept who think “marriage” as we know it needs to be torn down and replaced. And they are developing Tomorrow’s Enlightened Judges.

There are organizations of “Polys” (polygamists and polyamorists) and every other sort of idea and group and they have conferences and strategy papers. They have identified same-sex as the straw that will break the marriage camel’s back and they’ll be dancing that “Thank You Very Much!” number from that Scrooge movie before you or I can say, “What the flock just happened?” There are people who want the social institution of marriage dead and buried and they’re hiding in the bushes with thier battering rams and stun grenades just waiting for Sincere Gays to get this door opened one little crack.

Maybe I’m just completely out of it and trying to cling to something (marriage) that has long outlived its usefulness. But Slippery Slope, in this case, is not only potentially legit but there are folks training fire hoses on the slope and preparing drums of grease to slather on it. The “progressive”, Get-rid-of marriage crowd basically believes that the whole two-people, hetero, procreation, paternalistic, oppressive “heritage” of marriage is way out of date and it needs to be replaced by legal concepts like its some Limited Liability Corporation rather than “family”. They might be right, I’m not smart enough to predict. It sure makes me nervous and jerky though. I really think that we (and here I include the gays who just sincerely want access to marriage) are being sold a bill of goods and not being given a chance to argue our points or defend something worthwhile.

And that brings me to where I am today. I’m sufficiently convinced that same-sex will be the death knell of marriage as we know it. Not only is slippery slope valid – its inevitable once we accept same-sex. Now, just because slippery slope is valid doesn’t necessarily mean that sliding down the slope will injure us or leave us in some bad place. Maybe we wind up mud wrestling ourselves into a better place. I’m no Nostradamus but I’m conservative when it comes to long-lived traditional social mechanisms like marriage – as Odd-Ducky as it may be. I don’t see why we want to throw ourselves head first down the slippery slope without first arguing it out publicly and maybe flushing out the subversives with a larger agenda they don’t want us to see.

I doubt you’re still reading, but thanks anyway I needed it. I know now where I stand. This isn’t something that should be decided by our courts. We the People need to have this argument openly and as loudly as necessary and we need to decide it legislatively rather than judicially. I seriously doubt a constitutional ammendment has a snowball’s chance to pass, but I want the cat fight to take place. At least then we will have accepted or rejected it rather than having it foisted on us by a bunch of legal elitists or fringe “futurists”.

Now, about the “amendment” thing… the idea that we should never even discuss amending the constitution is just hogwash as far as I’m concerned. Judges “amend” it all time. Its a simple document and allows for modification via a rather onerous process. I have no problem with attempting to invoke that process. I’d rather examine the details of what’s being considered.

Proposed FMA:

FEDERAL MARRIAGE AMENDMENT (H.J.Res. 56)

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

This has gotten some heated attacks from all sides of the issue. It seems to satisfy only the “religious right” (although there are, no doubt, some on the “religious left” who probably agree with it – is there a “religious center”?). I won’t bother trying to analyse or parse this since I don’t have sufficient expertise to do that. I don’t care for it much simply because it doesn’t seem to me that it carefully enumerates a power of the federal government or guarantees a right to an individual. It seems to be a “prohibitive” wording that takes away rather than protecting. There’s huge room for argument there, but as much as I want the catfight to happen and believe that a majority of voters agree with me, this doesn’t allow a majority to disagree with me. I just don’t see how this wording is consistent with the “spirit and intent”. If it came to voting on this wording I’d vote against. And then there’s the whole “structural vs. semantic” argument and this one seems semantic to me rather than structural. Always go for the structural solution if possible.

So what about an alternative wording?

Senator Hatch (or someone else) proposes this:

Civil marriage shall be defined in each state by the legislature or the citizens thereof. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require that marriage or its benefits be extended to any union other than that of a man and a woman.

There are far more expert arguments than I can make, but this seems MUCH closer to something I could support. This seems to me to cover what I find most important and provides the minimum I ask for in this whole catfight. If we’re not going to support marriage as we’ve understood it for freakin’ ever, then I want a good solid argument about any changes and any decision to make changes belongs with the legislatures rather than courts. I can live with state legislatures vs. the federal legislature. In fact, I prefer the idea of 50 catfights rather than one big one. This wording seems to tell the state legislatures that its time for them to go through the trouble of defining “marriage” and also takes the act of defining marriage away from the courts.

Nothing in the wording says that individual states can’t define marriage to be anything they want it to be (and they’ll have to answer to their voters for whatever they decide). And the second sentence says “whatever individual states decide, nobody can use the US Consitution to pound other states into accepting anything different. If a state decides marriage precisely what we fully understand marriage to be today, then so be it. It specifically says that states get to define marriage for themselves via their legislatures and that if one or more states decide something other states reject, the courts can’t force the “rejecting” states to accept.

And it seems “structural” to me rather than “semantic”. It doesn’t give any right to the feds other than for them to demand that states define marriage and tell the courts to keep their freakin elitist noses out of it. And it says don’t abuse the constitution to twist and turn against the will of the majority. This wording addresses my Big Concerns (taking this decision out of the courts and putting it with legislatures where it belongs), doesn’t prevent any state from doing what they think best or make any decision completely permanent, prevents forcing one state’s views down every other state’s throat, and allows for “Me the Person” to be over-ruled by “We the People. I’ve gone and looked at some of the early complaints against this wording and I don’t find them particularly convincing. I suspect it might even do us some good to have some differentiation among states. Some of these various catfights might not be so darned uncivil if they weren’t such “national winner takes all” affairs. We really aren’t dealing with the giant issues of human existence anymore – maybe we should leave some of these smaller issues to states and let states suffer or prosper based upon what the people who live there believe important. Or at least it might give us the opportunity to investigate cause and effect. If IL decides they want same-sex marriage and 60 years from now there’s no such legal thing as marriage anymore and the children of IL are doing just fine and dandy, then IL will be able to hold that up and brag about it. And if NJ has screwed the pooch by wiping marriage out at least people will be able to escape to somewhere that hasn’t screwed the pooch.

I’ll leave it to better legal minds than mine to suggest the potential pitfalls with this wording and what tweaks it might need, but if given a vote I’d vote for this as an amendment.

As a sort of PS – I’ve been following some of the increasingly heated rhetoric around this – charges of “bigotry” and “spitting in the faces” of gays and the like.

Well, I’m personally fed up with the narrow minded who are so intolerant of anyone who dares disagree with them that they reflexively label those who disagree with them as intolerant, closed-minded bigots. Such people are in some serious need of some major introspection. I’ve put a great deal of effort into reviewing my “beliefs”, including prejudices, and making sure that my actions in this world reflect my beliefs. My credentials in this regard are in good working order and extend well beyond “beliefs”. I will not tolerate the “bigot” charge from some knucklehead who can’t fathom how anyone can disagree with him – especially when it comes from people who are not called upon to put their beliefs into practice other than what they “think” and write or who they have dinner parties or watch the Super Bowl with.

There’s enough figurative “spitting in faces” going on here that it’s a wonder we haven’t all drowned in spittle. As an example, I think MA Supreme Court Justice CJ Marshall “spit in the faces” of the six million people of MA by reaching out to a decision of the Court of Appeal of Toronto. The question at hand was not one of Canadian laws or the Canadian constitution. And they spit in the faces of the people of MA yet again when they issued their instructions to the legislature that it was free to legislate any way it saw fit as long as it gave full marriage rights to gays. I believe usurpist judges spit in the faces of all Americans when they ignore legislatures and the will of voters.

I stand with the dissenting judges in the MA case. This decision belongs with legislatures, not courts. And there is nothing about the “right” that is so compelling, or the damage done by denying it to gays so onerous, that this question cannot wait for We the People to decide via our legislatures.

I’ve also noticed the Eureka! moments several prominent advocates have had recently when they “discovered” that college students, or at least the ones who attended their talks on this topic, agree with them. Well, gee, Sherlocks, college kids have a tendency to be more tolerant than their parents. What a freakin’ revelation – whooda thunk it?

I will point out that I make a habit of listening in on the discussions and views of Our Bright Young Minds and have pretty good access to them. It might surprise these modern Archimedes to know that, in my experience, bright young people seem quite comfortable with the notion of gay marriage yet remarkably uncomfortable with the idea of gay-adoption. Young people are full of suprises. I have less trouble with the idea of gay people rasing children than I do with gay marriage. Having an actual mom and dad, male and female, may be the preferred situation but I’d rather see two moms or two dads rather than none, or one overworked partent, raising kids.

And notfuhnuttin’, but who do the Sherlocks think busted their humps and bankrupted themselves raising these wonderfully tolerant young people? It was We of the Stable Marriages who produced them. If they think they can throw them in our faces they’d better reconsider that tactic – we know more about them and they will “return” (in relatively short order) to something closer to us than the Sherlocks might like. Related to this, My Bride, a Scandinavian Social Liberal of the First Order, suddenly sounds like a flaming right-winger. A couple short weeks ago I was hearing the “why not let gays marry” argument from her and that has suddenly changed to “who do these mayors think they are just ignoring laws!” And my enlightened daughters who have argued quite intelligently in favor of gay marriage have done some “heebie-jeebie” shuddering while watching some of the TV spectacles we’ve seen lately on the news.

What college and HS aged young people think about issues is a good sign of where things are heading. But its no guarantee of where we’ll get to. First off, they have short attention spans and are itching to get on with their lives. They aren’t going to necessarily remain engaged or “on your side” of an issue. One of the key attributes of such young people is they learn a lot real fast and they don’t have long experience to keep their positions anchored. They can get passionate about things but they also carry keychains with slogans like, “Blah, blah, blah… who gives a shit?” By and large they think we older people make too much of too many things and they don’t buy in to all of Our Sacred Cows. But someday they will buy in to a Sacred Cow or two they would never buy in to today. Some of the most “politically incorrect” stuff I hear (if it weren’t funny it would be insulting) comes from Our Young, Tolerant Minds.

The RINOS and social libs are what is killing the Republican party at present. As long as these people are around, the GOP is almost indistinguishable from the Democrats. It ends up taking the wrong side on so many issues simply to placate these so-called “social liberals”.

Conservatives; against large scale immigration. RINO’s; for it.

Conservatives; against large scale government spending. RINO’s; for it.

Conservatives; against affirmative action. RINO’s; for it.

Conservatives; against gay marriage. RINO’s; for it.

Conservatives; against gun control. RINO’s; for it.

The Republican party at present is taking stances on a range of issues that are unpopular, not only with it’s base, but with the American people as a whole. Losing the RINO’s will be the best thing that can happen, and will cement the GOP status as majority party.

————————————————–

“Since our rights are not enumerated they are esentially limitless.”

This is illiterate. Saying our rights are not enumerated means that they are not enumerated, nothing more. Even the enumerated rights are not limitless, I point I already made and which you ignored.

Which “non-enumerated” rights are limitless? They cannot ALL be limitless, since many of them are in contradiction to one another. Our right to govern ourselves and pass the laws we deem appropriate cannot be limitless, if it is to be overridden by the courts in pursuit of our rights to do as we please, a move that you seem to desire.

You seem perfectly ready to jettison the rights of free association, of contract, and of self governance. You dismiss the rights of people to live in the society that they deem best. You reject the right of the people to impose the type of structure and order they desire on society. You endorse the notion that, since some structure and order must exist, it should be imposed on us by unelected, unaccountable judges. And while doing all this, you pose as some sort of champion of individual freedom.

Somebody is going to “mind other peoples business”, as you put it. The only question is who. When the state steps in and makes laws saying that a certain percentage of certain people must be hired, or that people cannot be fired because of their age or sex or sexual preference, the state is “minding other peoples business”.

Roger and others here have noticed that the self-styled liberals can be accurately labeled reactionaries, a useful insight to be sure. But it seems to be taking people a long time to wake up to the fact that the “libertarians” and others who claim to be champions of individual liberties are in fact the strongest proponents of taking real decision making power away from actual individual people.

In the “socially liberal” utopia, we will all have the freedom to have sex with whoever or whatever we want, whenever we want. We will have the freedom to wear whatever we want, or nothing all. We will have the freedom to do whatever drugs we wish. We will have to freedom to watch whatever we like on TV and the internet. Anyone who tries to thwart us will have the full power of the state brought to bear against them. And in return for this, all we have to do is surrender all our other freedoms.

It’s a utopia that only an adolescent could love, but adolescents are what America produces.