A Conversation on Marriage

I think the main problem in the discussion really is the point that marriage in this country is tied very closely to churches - they indeed perform a ceremony that has impact on the status you have in the eyes of the government.  That gives the conservative church leaders much more opportunity to influence our lives than if the act of marrying someone would be a civil ceremony.  I guess this is an argument pro domestic partnership with rights equal to marriage.

I have to disagree about the role of the Federal Government in ending discrimination against gays and gay marriage, if not for federal intervention we would still have slavery and whites only drinking fountains here in the south… 

States rights were the argument used by the Confederacy to keep slavery alive in this country and were their justification to secede from the Union. Everything being said today about gay rights was said in the 1850's about slavery.

to keep blacks subservient.

Imagine if straight people had to worry if their marriage or divorce in California was not

honored if they moved to Massachusetts.

Remember when people used to fly to Nevada for a "quicky divorce"?

Imagine the chaos if your divorce was only valid in that state ?

When I lived in Utah I was too young to marry - so I took a bus over the border and married

in Idaho, then went back to Utah with a perfectly valid marriage.

People go to Mexico to marry or divoce, for christ sakes, and those marriages and

divorces are honored - even if someone might be underage or unqualified in the

state they move too.

It is called "full faith and credit" and there are only two times I know of where a 

state has not been REQUIRED by our constitution NOT to give full faith and credit

to a marriage performed in another state.

The first was when southern states live Virginia refused to honor interracial marriages

performed in Massachusetts - until the Supreme court told them that they have to.

And today when southern states like Virginia refuse to honor gay marriages 

performed in Massachusetts.

Partners of deceased Members of Congress are entitled to their pensions with two exceptions:

If you're a convicted traitor 

If you're gay

Look at what that says about being gay: it's as bad as betraying national secrets. 

Hmmm...who'd have though Bob Novak and gay people would have anything in common? 

The dumbest states,( who are lets face it....dead weight), might leave the Union.

I could be perfectly happy without Kansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. It's time to clean House....and the Senate.

btw ...CT you are on the fence whether we keep you or not, so next time Joe Lieberman comes up for re-election Just Say NO!

"States rights" has only one purpose and that's to use as a bludgeon to keep people from exercising their civil rights.  It's a shibboleth that was abolished with the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

It's sad but not surprising that Libertarians have picked up on that mantra, but it is surprising that gays, who really ought to know better, parrot the same stupid "states rights" lie.  Libertarianism is pure poison, ultimately, in varying degrees nothing more than anarchy and water.

As far as I know, no state has ever advanced a states rights argument to do anything whatsoever except take away the rights of people in their state. 

If you don't think such an amendment would at the present time pass in the immediate aftermath of a Supreme Court decision ordering all states to permit same sex marriages, you're collectively smoking some serious stuff.

It won't stay this way, but that is the way it is now.

In the 1940's Loving v. Virginia would have lost.  There was a 15-20 year span between when California legalized interracial marriage and Loving v. Virginia legalized it in the few remaining states that still banned it in 1967.  That gap in time during which the state laws were inconsistent did matter.

Such things still matter, even though they're highly inconvenient and unjust.

it is inevitable that it will reach the SC eventually - couples married in MA can't remain holed up in that state forever - eventually a couple will move and demand their rights, or their federal rights.

 At the moment all of the effort is to delay that moment until we can shitcan Bush and appoint better justices, because we all know what the 5 Catholics will do.

At some point it is a civil rights issue that tu US will have to face - there will be too amny married gay

couples and we can't remain an island of bigotry foreever - although our COnfederate history indicates

we can do it fo 100 years.

Personally I don't think that a nationwide amendment could be passed any more - I

think the time of the bigots is passing with the Bush administration. 

I'm all for state by state recognition (or denial of) queer marriage. It's how numerous positive changes in civil rights legislation have evolved in this country, from voting rights to anti-miscegenation laws--and really, do you think that queer marriage is going to be recognized on the federal level any time soon? Given the current composition of our legislature and our judiciary, it's far more likly that queer marriage for everyone everywhere would be struck down entirely and irrevocably.

And really, how much bullshit hair splitting do I want to hear from Obama about how his position on queer civil rights is better than Clinton's when he, the son of an interracial marriage that wasn't fully legal in this country until 1973, still thinks it's OK to give me a separate water fountain when it comes to my right to marry? He can take his separate-but-equal rhetoric and shove it.

voting rights, miscegination, basically ALL civil rights have progressed when the federal government has FORCED the southern states to recognize the rights of individuls - sometimes it has required sending armed National Guardsmen and appointing Federal judges to oversee state school boards.

Waiting for the church obsessed southern states to honor equality by way of majority vote

is where one should not hold their breath - if that were true, blacks would still have their own water fountains in the South.

When you are dealing with human rights, your only recourse in the USA is to the federal government,

and the idea that it is a matter of "states rights" is historically and legally bullcrap which

is used solely to discriminate by the southern states. 

I think you're one smart dude(tte), and I'm still laughing about what you said about Obama the other day, but really: do you want to hold your breath waiting for this particular iteration of our federal government to recognize queer marriage?

 And I disagree with your reading of history: in case after case, individual states have moved to ensure equal rights long before anyone on the federal level caught on.

at the moment, no - and historically the federal government was far behing the

federal courts.

I'm simply pointing out that your history is completely wrong - I know this for

a fact - I was there.

There was no way that the southern states were about to honor civil rights as

long as it depended upon a vote of the white majorities of southerners.

It took US Supreme court rulings and federal intervention - including national

guardsmen - to overrule 'states rights'.

Are we state citizens under the state constitution or federal citizens under the U.S. constitution?

In our democracy, we are equal citizens under the law, and that means federal. 

We deserve every right as other citizens automatically receive, and that includes marriage to the person we love.