President Barack Obama insisted Monday he still wants to scrap what he calls a discriminatory federal marriage law, even as his administration angered gay rights activists by defending it in court.As I've pointed out before, all laws are discriminatory. Even those bigots in Massachusetts don’t allow trios, singles, or brothers to get marriage licenses. Yet.
[Much more after the jump.]
Justice Department lawyers filed new papers Monday seeking to throw out a lawsuit brought by a gay couple challenging the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. Gay rights groups say that by doing so, the administration is failing to follow through on campaign promises made by Obama last year to work to repeal the law.Either these "rights groups" don't understand our legal and governmental system, or they are deliberately being untruthful in order to publicly pressure Obama. Obama can work to have DOMA repealed through legislation while at the same time his administration is enforcing and defending in court existing law.
Obama said he plans to work with Congress to repeal the law, and said his administration "will continue to examine and implement measures that will help extend rights and benefits" to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender couples under existing law.Bisexual couples? Can I claim that my wife and I are a "bisexual couple"? You can’t prove we're not, simply because she married me, a man, and I married her, a woman. Or what if just one of us is bisexual – are we not a "bisexual couple" then? I think I’d make a really ugly woman, but if I dressed like one while my wife continued to act normally, would that make us a "transgender couple"? What about people who have their perfectly healthy arms chopped off? Do they deserve any less protection, recognition, attention, and celebration than a "transgendered" person?
The mixed message got a mixed review from Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.Uh, that’s called law and order, Solmonese. You don't want to play by the rules in some areas of life – fine. But most of us still respect law and order."It is not enough to disavow this discriminatory law, and then wait for Congress or the courts to act," Solmonese said in a statement.
"While they contend that it is the DOJ's duty to defend an act of Congress, we contend that it is the administration's duty to defend every citizen from discrimination."So, you are saying there shouldn't be any discrimination against those who have financially backed things like the California Marriage Amendment – the government should work to defend CMA supporters from discrimination?
Assistant Attorney General Tony West provided this noteworthy argument:
"DOMA reflects a cautiously limited response to society's still-evolving understanding of the institution of marriage," according to the filing by Assistant Attorney General Tony West.Still evolving? This is an example of why some of us say marriage neutering takes us down a slippery slope. Does the "evolving" suddenly stop with neutering marriage licensing? Why should it?
"The United States does not believe that DOMA is rationally related to any legitimate government interests in procreation and child-rearing and is therefore not relying upon any such interests to defend DOMA's constitutionality," lawyers argued in the filing.
In other words, marriage is not about children. And that's exactly what every guy, henceforth, should say when someone tells him he should marry the woman carrying his child.
It's sad that someone could delude themselves into thinking that the institution of marriage isn't, at its core, about children. Yes, there are other things involved, but it is, and always has been, about children. When it is official government policy that marriage is not about children, there will be detrimental consequences that follow.
Monday's court filing was in response to a lawsuit by Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer, who are challenging the federal law, which prevents couples in states that recognize same-sex unions from securing Social Security spousal benefits, filing joint taxes and benefiting from other federal rights connected to marriage.
See, it is all about taxes and Social Security. Go figure. There's no other way of dealing with this issues than by essentially abolishing marriage as a legal concept? Where's the creativity? It is things like this that indicate it really isn't about benefits... it is about forced social engineering.
Here is Carol J. Williams' article in today's Los Angeles Times.
Bisexual couples? Can I claim that my wife and I are a "bisexual couple"?
ReplyDeleteThis lumping of lesbians and gays with bisexuals and transgenders begs another question:
If it is "against their nature" for gays and lesbians to marry the opposite sex, is it also "against their nature" for bisexuals to marry only a man or only a woman? If not, why not? Can it not thus be argued that for a bisexual to be truly "fulfilled", they should be married to both a man and a woman?
Advocates for neutered marriage insist that there is no slippery slope to polygamy. But in fact the very same kind of logic used to justify neutering marriage can be very easily used to argue for polygamy. Unless, of course, homosexuals are just more "equal" than bisexuals are, in the Orwellian sense.
When you say:
ReplyDelete"Even those bigots in Massachusetts..."
Being that the definition of bigot is
"a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"
Who does "bigots" describe in this article and why do you feel your usage is warranted?
I was using the word to describe people who favor discrimination in state marriage licensing, such as discriminating against siblings who want a marriage license together, or trios, or singles, or as R.K. points out, bisexuals who want to marry two people.
ReplyDeleteThis is the same way the word has been applied to those who favor discrimination in favor of preserving (or restoring) marriage licensing for bride+groom couples only.
Do you disagree with this usage of the term?
"But in fact the very same kind of logic used to justify neutering marriage can be very easily used to argue for polygamy."
ReplyDeleteR.K., I don't think so. Really, the only kind of polygamy worth talking about is a man wanting to marry multiple women. It's the heterosexual man's dream. But because it is anti-woman, against one sex and for the other, it must not be allowed (see the movie "Raise the Red Lantern").
I've never known a bisexual, or known of one, who wants to marry two people, one of each sex. Those who are really bisexual go for men because they see it as an uncomplicated arrangement. They seek a woman to marry and and have man-sex on the side. They are not going to want to marry also a man and complicate their lives even more.
A man who went with women but one day falls in love with a man was gay to begin with, not bisexual. He doesn't go back to women.
I would call a man marrying multiple women the ultimate anti-neuter marriage arrangement. A man affirms his maleness by keeping more women and making more babies.
ReplyDeleteI've never known a bisexual, or known of one, who wants to marry two people, one of each sex.
ReplyDeleteOf course, you're talking pre-SSM, or even if not, at least "pre-SSM-being-entrenched-enough-that-it's-seen-as-safe-to-talk-about-what-comes-next-without-hurting-the-SSM-movement".
Also, you're talking before the meaning of marriage has been radically altered in the public mind, which as I've said before will take about a generation to be complete.
I remember when none of the gays I knew wanted to get "married" either, or at least they said they didn't.
Also, Arturo, it really doesn't take a huge movement, it only takes one couple, er, threesome, to go to court when they feel the time is right.
A man who went with women but one day falls in love with a man was gay to begin with, not bisexual. He doesn't go back to women.
ReplyDeleteActually, I know of one who did just that, but why should you believe me, since I'm not going to give you his name.
"I remember when none of the gays I knew wanted to get "married" either, or at least they said they didn't."
ReplyDeleteI know many GLBT community members that find it dangerous to share their true opinions with outsiders (heterosexuals) for fear of violence against them. Let's not forget that gay bashing is real. Whether we agree on marriage or any other political viewpoint we should be able to agree on basic facts like this.
I remember being one of the many that just didn't care about it when marriage rights for same sex couples first came about in Massachusetts. It was the misrepresentations aimed at all GLBT people, a stereotype, that sat poorly with me and made me want to be involved in the solution.
It could be that your friends just didn't care at the time as was my situation, or maybe they didn't think you'd react well to what they thought. Did you ever just ask them why they changed their minds? I'd like to know too.
A man who went with women but one day falls in love with a man was gay to begin with, not bisexual. He doesn't go back to women.
"Actually, I know of one who did just that, but why should you believe me, since I'm not going to give you his name."
Many current members of Exodus International claim to have ride themselves of same sex attraction, but more of them report simply keeping it under control. Former members are all over YouTube.com claiming that they are told to lie about their feelings and live secret lives.
I never thought that was fair to the family you create through that lie. Living an openly gay life is working out fine for me, but it took me a while to get here, and the level of honesty about my true feelings has not always been sterling.
I would expect that your friend who went back to women did so out of a feeling of responsibility and not a change in his orientation.
JHG your unverifiable stories are not facts. Further, it is demonstratably false to claim that the typical SSMer is shy about discussing SSM; and false to claim that there is a threat of physical violence hanging over such discussions.
ReplyDeleteThe very low rates of participation in SSM (under whatever guise) supports what RK has said.
The notion of purity of sexual orientation is analogous with the anti-miscegenation system's emphasis on purity of racial subdivisions of humankind. Neither is the basis for eligibility and ineligibility to marry.
The man-woman criterion has a sexual basis that is extrinsic to the one-sexed arrangement (homosexual, bisexual, sexualized or not).
Bisexuals are central to the polyamorist movement; and they point to their sexual proclivities as the basis from which SSM argumentation favors treating multi-person arrangements the same as marriage.
But what is the sexual basis for SSM at law? None.
The larger point is that SSM argumentation equates nonmarriage with marriage.
ReplyDeleteBased on SSM argumentation alone, why would society continue to treat marriage as a sexual type of relationship when the SSM merger is based on removing the sexual basis from government regard, at law, and from societal regard, in terms of the marriage culture?
Sexualized or not, the multi-person arrangement is distinguishable from SSM only by a single criterion: the binary. Bisexual or homosexual or heterosexual, if the individuals in a threesome (or a moresome) seek a license for their private arrangement, what is the public sexual basis for denying it?
Surely it is not that homosexuality is more pure than bisexuality. Surely it is not that homosexuality is a legal requirement in SSM law. It cannot be that the binary of man-woman is directly applicable to a one-sexed arrangement. Sex segregative arrangements that are equated with sex integrative arrangements sure are not distinguished from multi-person arrangements, via SSM argumentation.
No, when marriage is stripped of its core meaning it means less and less. And that is how social institution are destroyed. The demand that government do this work for SSMers, in the name of gay identity politics, does not provide a sustainable basis for denying multi-person arrangements from being treated as the equivalent.
SSMers need to find some societal significance to SSM that goes beyond identity politics and beyond the limitations of the sexual basis upon which they seekt to impose the SSM-merger (but without a legal requirement based on such a one-sexed sexual basis).