I don't draw broad conclusions from last night's off-year election results. It's tough to say whether the GOP governor victories were the start of a good trend for the party, or just part of a backlash against incumbents in a year with a monumentally awful economy. And it's tough to say whether the right's implosion in upstate New York is a sign of things to come, or just one badly mismanaged fight from which they'll learn valuable lessons about the limitations of the "red meat for the base" strategy. So my biggest reaction to the voting results was sadness about the decision of Mainers to deprive thousands of their fellow citizens equal rights under the marriage laws. New England was getting pretty close to being a solid block of equal-rights states (with Rhode Island as the lone outlier), but now Maine has had a backslide.

In the long run, I'm not too worried about the marriage laws. Anti-homosexual bigotry is vastly greater among the older generation than younger people, so it's just a matter of time before discrimination against gays in marriage laws is a thing of the past in this country. Within a few decades, it'll be as hard to find someone willing to admit he fought for anti-gay-marriage laws as it is today to find someone willing to admit he fought for anti-miscegenation (anti-interracial-marriage) laws. Within a generation or two, public opinion will have swung so much that people who fought on the side of the bigots will be embarrassed even to admit they did so. But it's still sad to see the occassional back-sliding. I've got a gay friend who lives in Maine, and I'm upset on her behalf that she'll be deprived the right most of us get to take for granted, of simply getting married to the person we love.

How about the Republican Old Guards misreading of the popular mood?

Or scratch beneath the surface of a DIABLO and you get a Democrat or worse a liberal?

NY-23 proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a “Republican” who supports the “right” of a woman to “choose” to murder her unborn child, the right of Bruno and Rocky to “check” your card during Union certification votes and higher taxes is anything but a “Republican”.

There used to be two parties in this country but as of late it’s been as Mark Steyn has taken to calling it, a one and a half party system. Scozzafava was NOBODYS idea of a conservative and it used to be that affiliation with the Republican Party corresponded VERY closely with being a Conservative. When that correlation began to fail so did the GOP.

But none of that’s why I’m responding.

The dim view you take of the will of the people is unsettling to say the least. Had a majority of the electorate voted to approve “homosexual marriage” (itself an oxymoron) you’d have nothing but praise for the democratic process but should the proles say no to legitimizing the socially engineered concept of “homosexual marriage” they’re bigoted troglodytes.

There is no “right” to marry. The concept of “rights inflation” to include anything believed to be “good” at any particular moment in time renders meaningless real rights.

As to your belief in the “younger” generation accepting “homosexual marriage” I wouldn’t be too sure. Actually getting married tends to change peoples minds about what the institution is really about.

And finally even if the “young” do favor “homosexual marriage” will they support polygamous, polyandrous, polyamorous and pedophile unions? Once the term marriage no longer means one man and one woman it means anything anyone wants it to. If the gender of the parties in a “marriage” carries no special significance how can the number and age of parties seeking the legal sanctification of marriage?

Maine didn’t backslide. It stood up for a thing being what it is and not something else.

furioustote

Back in the mid-70s a friend invited us for dinner in & when we left the restaurant we insisted in corresponding in kind by inviting the large group to after dinner drink.

Downtown Madrid is dotted with bars & we eyed a plush-looking bar named "Otelo’s Pub" with an English pub-style wood paneling. The pub was very dark inside because they were running old Charlie Chaplain silent movies & with the exception of my wife that was hitting me with her elbow, the rest of us were ogling at the movie as we were led to our table.

It finally got to the point that I became upset at my wife admonishing her to stop hitting me because it was hurting me to which she cried out that we were in the wrong place & pointing out to two guys said;

"& those two men with the mustache were kissing"

I then asked our group if they knew where we were in & one of the wives that was a Brit & was married to a big-time Spanish lawyer shouted in a shrill ear-piercing voice that carried across the entire pub;

"SON MARICONES"

Which in those days the Spanish term of "maricón" had all sorts of offensive implications such as a castrated pansy.

The full episode was very disagreeable because they turned on the lights, stopped the movies, the waiter literally threw the drinks at our table while a couple of those guys had to be held back from rushing our group.

In hindsight & 35 years later, if this incident would have happened now, we would have not given it a 2nd thought & would have enjoyed our drinks quietly while enjoying those old movies.

Bummer;

Live & learn. :-(

Best Regards

Lobato1

In what way is (& in your words not mine):

If the gender of the parties in a “marriage” carries no special significance how can the number and age of parties seeking the legal sanctification of marriage?

be so very special that allowing same sex marriage be a mockery or a threat to the "Holiness" of an heterosexual marriage???

Best Regards

Lobato1

Holiness?

When did I mention “holiness” or any religious aspects of marriage?

Plainly I did not.

Additionally I did not say “homosexual marriage” (contradiction in terms that it is) “mocked” anything.

Marriage is about more than religious ceremony and symbology and does not exist to merely sanctify religiously or civilly the emotional bonds between people.

However since I neither used the words you ascribe to me nor asserted the propositions you input to me my original question stands, to wit…

If the gender of the parties in a “marriage” does not matter what significance attaches to the number or age of the parties in a marriage?

Put another way if we allow two men or two women to marry how do we stop two women and one man? Or two men and three women? Or a woman of consenting age and a boy below consenting age? Or a woman and her cat?

If all that is requisite of a “marriage” is consent and commitment, why not a man and his favorite armchair?

Once marriage stops meaning only one thing it means anything anyone wants it to plain and simple. I look forward to the homosexual lobbies attempts to stop polygamy, polyandry, polyamoury and pedophile marriages. Those logical and rhetorical gymnastics will be a hoot to watch.

furioustote

Since I'm a fan of having two viable parties, I hope most people on the right don't agree with you about rejecting fiscally practical, pro-labor, and pro-choice Republicans, since that could transform the GOP into nothing but a regional party... and that's not good for the country. If the GOP becomes a party of dittoheads and absolutist conservatives, it'll lose viability in the mid-Atlantic and along the West Coast as resoundingly as it has lost New England.

>There is no “right” to marry.

No. There's also no right to have a driver's license, but that doesn't change the fact that a law denying drivers' licenses to black people because of their race would be a violation of people's right to equal protection under the law. In the same sense, if you're going to allow straight people access to legal marriage, you need to allow gay people that access, too, or you're depriving them of equal protection under the law. It's taking most courts a while to come around to this view (just as it took a long time for courts to come to the view that depriving marriage rights to interracial couples was an equal protection violation), but we'll get there. We just may need more bigots to die off and be replaced by more enlightened generations, before we reach the tipping point.

>And finally even if the “young” do favor “homosexual marriage” will they support polygamous,
>polyandrous, polyamorous and pedophile unions?

What a bizarre non-sequitor. Do you approve of a person's right to marry someone of another race? Another religion? A different citizenship? If so, should I leap from that permissiveness of yours to asking whether you support polygamous, polyandrous, polyamorous and pedophile unions? Wouldn't I sound like an imbecile to try to push the conversation in such a random direction as that?

I suppose some moron could have said that once marriage no longer meant an unbreakable religious union sanctified by the church of Rome (a definition that lasted in much of Western Civilization for a millenium), it meant anything anyone wanted it to. But that wouldn't have been much of an argument, would it? In the same sense, it's not much of an argument to say that unless marriage means one man and one woman it means anything anyone wants it to.

I fully respect your right to make the definition of marriage as narrow as you like, for your own purposes. For example, maybe you're a Catholic and believe that divorces are void, and thus that second marriages following divorce aren't marriages at all -- they're just tawdry affairs hiding behind a sham ceremony. Maybe you think Nancy Reagan wasn't Ronnie's wife, she was just his slut. That's fine. Nobody is going to force you to get divorced and remarried, and certainly nobody will force your church to perform remarriages, nor can you even be forced to acknowledge a remarriage as a real marriage. Those are all matters of conscience. But that doesn't mean you get to apply your religious definition of marriage against the legal rights of others, by saying that the government can't perform second marriages. The mere fact that Ronnie and Nancy's marriage was a slap in the face to the Catholics in this country doesn't change the fact it was right to leave that decision to Ronnie and Nancy, not to those with different religious scruples.

Likewise, if you're a conservative Jew and believe that Jews may only get married to other Jews, that's fine, but you don't get to outlaw the ability of other Jews to legally marry non-Jews. And if you come from some throwback Hindu sect that sees marriage outside of one's caste as no marriage at all, that's fine, but you don't get to impose that on others, either. Your religious taboos are you own concern. Just because you have the majority in this case doesn't legitimize your attempt to make us all bow to your religious convictions about same-sex marriage, any more than it would be legitimate for Muslims, if they take the majority, to pass a law outlawing any marriage unless it's sanctified in a Mosque by an Imam.

I don't get it. I'm married. I'm married to someone of the same race and the opposite gender. But I recognize that this union isn't weakened one iota by allowing interracial or same-sex couples the same option my wife and I had. Why is it that some people can't see that? Is it that you're attracted to people of your same sex, and so the only thing preserving your opposite-sex marriage is the lack of legal alternative? If so, then I guess I can understand this notion that extending marriage rights to same-sex couples would somehow hurt your marriage: you fear the temptation. But, for most people, it wouldn't hurt their marriage in the least, since most people in opposite-sex marriages are heterosexual.

In the end, it's only fair to judge people in the context of their own time. Attitudes that were once liberal for their own time are barbarically conserative when viewed by the standards of a few generations later. If I lived in 1750 Mississippi, I could be viewed as relatively humane and liberal if my attitude towards my slaves was such that I never worked them too hard, fed them decently, I reserved beatings for only the most unruly of the lot, and I was careful not to break up families when I sold off slaves. By 21st century standards, I was monstrous for even owning slaves, but context is key. In the same sense, I don't fault past generations for homophobia the way I would current people who've had the advantage of a lot of exposure to more enlightened ideas. All you can reasonably expect of people is that they at least be a little ahead of the curve by the standards of their own time.

I would not characterize Hoffman's loss in NY-23 as an implosion. He had been in the race less than a month. In that short time he managed to force out of the race a Liberal who was masquerading as a Republican; and also to get 45% of the vote despite the alleged Repub throwing her support to the Dem.

I lived in Maine when I was in the Navy and I know Mainers to be good, down to earth people. I imagine that most of them do not want to sanction the marriage of rump-rangers and rope-suckers.

Jack

Legal marriage has no reasonable link to gender. It's not about reproduction. Nobody has you sign an affidavit swearing to your intent to reproduce before you can get married. Nobody has proposed that we outlaw marriages involving barren or post-menopausal women or infertile men. Legal marriage is simply an option pairs are given to enter into a certain set of legal rights and obligations, to accomodate a kind of peer relationship where they share a household and a desire to act as a legal unit for a number of purposes (insurability, healthcare proxy, free inheritance, and so on).

There are countless reasons it would be difficult to impossible, and very likely unwise, to try to expand legal marriage to encompass plural marriages or marriages involving minors. For example, just think of the hundreds of thousands or even millions of lines of legal code and precedent that would need to be rewritten to accomodate three-person legal marriages -- pretty much the whole tax code, nearly everything dealing with government benefits, and every major case dealing with spousal rights and obligations (for example, you are in a coma and one of your wives wants a certain treatment for you and the other wants a different treatment -- who prevails?). By comparison, legalizing gay marriage is as simple as legalizing interracial marriage was -- you simply alter a couple lines of text and create a rule that voids anything that discriminates against those marriages.

So, the slippery-slope paranoia notwithstanding, we're not going to be legalizing polygamy simply because we've legalized gay marriage. As shown in places like Massachusetts, legalizing gay marriage is a simple act that merely requires striking some prejudiced language from the law. Legalizing polygamous marriage would require the top to bottom reworking of our entire marriage system in a way that would fundamentally alter the rights of everybody and have untold repercussions throughout the system.

But I suspect the anti-gay-marriage crowd doesn't REALLY think legalizing gay marriage would naturally lead to legalizing polygamy. They just don't have any decent arguments against gay marriage so they want to change the topic to an argument they think they can win.

NY 23 was a case of the arch conservatives only needing a single month of effort to hand a die-hard Republican district to a Democrat. I'm sure there are a bunch of Democrats who'd love to see that repeated again and again.

Many Mainers are good, down-to-earth people. Others are bigots who want to deny equal protection under the law to people whose sexuality differs from their own.

The Republiccan, in that congressional seat, who left to join Obama's administration, is not a Republican. He is a Liberal posing as a Republican. The waterbed who was appointed to take his place is also not a Republican.

For a hard right Conservative to get 45% of the vote in a district accustomed to being represented by Leftists, it is quite an accomplishment.

Jack

Please help me out here. I don't see the connexion.. but I do like women and waterbeds (especially when taken in conjunction).

Jackshep

From Roget’s thesaurus:

Sanctification (noun):

• Blessing
• Benediction
• Consecration
• Hollowed
• Make holy
• Anoint
• Deify
• Etc., etc.

Best Regards

Lobato1

Presumably a variation on the old conservative epithet of "squish."

You are right "Within a few decades, it'll be as hard to find someone willing to admit he fought for anti-gay-marriage laws ............ Within a generation or two, public opinion will have swung so much that people who fought on the side of the bigots will be embarrassed even to admit they did so."

But not for the reasons you list.......it has been predicted over 2000 years ago that this time would come....