By picking this fight, the marriage neutering advocates have unwittingly demonstrated their claim of overwhelming public support to be false. The public supports freedom for homosexual people, as we do with all people. The public may even support civil unions or domestic partnerships. But most of us do not support the neutering of state marriage licenses, because most of us know it is important and right to distinguish bride+groom unions from other kinds of associations. This is not hateful. This was demonstrated when California, while voting for Obama, also adopted a constitutional amendment via Proposition 8, and it is being demonstrated in how much of a struggle the marriage neutering advocates have had in New York, which is perhaps a more liberal state.
New Yorkers are being manipulated with the usual heavy-handed tactics, appeals to emotion, and logical fallacies.
After the jump, I look at some media coverage, which is mostly biased towards neutering marriage.
The New York Post ran an editorial defending the bride+groom requirement.
Marriage as an institution has fallen on hard times in recent years. But that's no excuse for weakening it further.
Since the dawn of human history, marriage has been defined as the union between one man and one woman, the point being procreation -- that is, raising children in a stable, nurturing environment.
But, as Professor Robert P. George of Princeton has written, same-sex-marriage adherents "do not propose leaving intact the historic definition of marriage and simply expanding the pool of people eligible to marry. Their goal is to abandon the conjugal conception of marriage in our law and replace it."
That is, discarding its role as society's principal means of fruitful renewal -- and that alone is a sufficiently compelling reason to reject same-sex marriage.
As I ask, why does the state issue marriage licenses? It isn't to celebrate anyone's professed love. It is about uniting the two basic elements that comprise all of society for the sake of perpetuating society.
As it is, there are many legal restrictions on who can marry: Half the states ban marriages between first cousins and all ban them between closer relatives. Each state imposes age restrictions, and many bar mentally ill people from marrying. All states ban polygamy.
In short, it has always been accepted that government has a right to regulate and restrict marriage under certain circumstances; that is, there is no civil right mandating that any two people in love must be given official sanction to wed.
Laws are allowed to treat different kinds of associations differently. Clearly, the pairing of two men or two women is different from the pairing of a man and a woman. If this wasn't true, most, if not all homosexual people would pair up with someone of the opposite sex (or, at least the term "homosexual" would be meaningless).
I found a June 15 Reuters article by Dan Wiessner.
The Democrat-dominated Assembly voted 80 to 63 in favor of the marriage equality bill introduced by Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat in his first year in office.
Marriage equality?
"Only second-class states have second-class citizens," said Assemblyman Charles Lavine, a Democrat who voted in favor of legalizing gay marriage.
"Gay marriage" is not illegal in the first place.
Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage, and several other states allow civil unions.
"Allow"? Nobody is stopping anyone from having their ceremonies and sharing their lives and even agreeing to contracts. But notice where most of these states are.
On Tuesday "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon and New York Ranger ice hockey player Sean Avery lobbied lawmakers in Albany to [neuter] marriage.
I'm sure they are experts in public policy.
Here's an Associated Press article by Michael Gormley.
"It creates a lot of anxiety while you're waiting to find out if you'll be granted the right that your family, friends and even your own parents took for granted," [marriage neutering advocate Ron] Zacchi said.
The only time and place anyone in my family had the "right" to get a state marriage license without a bride or without a groom was when anyone else could, under the same conditions as anyone else.
Libby Post, a veteran activist in Albany, choked up while talking about the Assembly passage of the bill Wednesday night. She said she and her partner of 16 years, who have a grown son, hope to get married in New York by the end of this year in their synagogue if the state [neuters] marriage.
Where is the father of that boy?
Another Dan Wiessner article for Reuters.
"Republicans need to understand, no one wants to force the Catholic church to marry gay couples. There are plenty of existing protections," said Richard Socarides, the head of national gay-rights group Equality Matters, referring to parts of the state Constitution that protect religious groups.
Promises, promises. Get it in legally binding writing. History says otherwise. Oh, and make glittering clergy, at least during a service, a trespassing offense at least, if not assault.
Here's a Reuters article by Chris Michaud.
New York's Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, reiterated his and the Catholic Church's opposition to [neutering] marriage on Sunday, vowing to oppose "any radical bill to redefine the very essence of marriage."
"One has to wonder why the proponents of this radical redefinition, who claim overwhelming popular support, would not consider" a referendum "on such a drastic departure from traditional values?" he wrote on his blog.
Good question.
Oh, and despite how the biased media always writes these stories, the existing bride+groom requirements, are NOT a "ban on same-sex marriage." I can correct them as often as they make that "mistake".
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