Cassandra, at Villainous Company, opposes marriage equality for homosexuals, but has been kind enough to visit here from time-to-time and quote me a couple of times recently. She quoted me from my post on the National Equality March a couple of days ago — the quote follows her comment that she is “not sure how much more transformative hope and change America can take” — whereupon, war broke out in her comment section. I want to point out that the war does not address the point I make in the quote about what really motivates Obama’s legislative agenda and what I now think is the real reason Obama will do little or nothing for homosexual equality ever.
Instead, the war at VC is about marriage equality for homosexuals. Since I’ve put a fair amount of time into crafting my comments there, I am posting them here and linking to Cassandra:
My first comment:
Cassie,
Did you mean to link A Conservative Lesbian in this post? The link isn’t working. [She graciously fixed it.]
I do appreciate your quoting my work and considering my point of view.
One of the things that struck me at the National Equality March was how often love of America and love of our Constitution and the equal protection clause were invoked.
The rationale for making us second-class citizens is that same-sex couples cannot directly produce children? It doesn’t strike me as a sufficient for such comprehensive destructiveness to the lives of homosexuals.
Posted by: Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian at October 13, 2009 06:27 PM
My second comment (by this time I’ve decided that she prefers “Cassandra,” although dear Little Miss Attila calls her “Cassie”):
Cassandra,
If your commenters would just consult Wikipedia or read up a bit on marriage for even half an hour they will find that marriage is in a constant state of re-definition. And if you look at marriage in the Old Testament, it is defined as polygamy with the option of having both wives and concubines. In addition, modern Islam permits polygamy.
Frankly, if you want to watch the re-definition of marriage over the last 50 years, just watch Nick at Night from “I Love Lucy” to “The Bill Cosby Show.”
Since marriage in truth is constantly being re-defined, I don’t see why same-sex couples can’t be defined into it now.
And Cassie, conservatives in truth are great innovators and entrepreneurs — that’s why we treasure the liberty and individualism. It is liberals/Leftists/progressives who impose totalitarianism and policies that create social and economic stagnation.
I believe that religious organizations stigmatize every single behavior that doesn’t lead to producing babies because more babies translate into more followers, more money and more power for the religion. They dress up their human greed and lust for power as God’s will. But whether or not it is God’s will, religions should not be appropriating the apparatus of the state to enforce their tenets on everyone.
I also perceive that religious leaders know that if they addressed the members of their congregations directly about their own sins — fornication, adultery, and so on — that they would make their members angry and they would leave the church. But they still want to talk about sexual sins and denounce them. So they scapegoat homosexuals.
BTW, we don’t need to force various religions to marry us. Besides the fact of the separation of church and state, so it’s not legally possible, homosexuals are self-reliant and resourceful. One of the first orders of business when the gay rights movement started was the founding of the Metropolitan Community Church by Rev. Troy Perry. If we need any more churches, we’ll make them ourselves.
I should add that I believe in God and I am spiritual. My common ground with religious people is a love of God and the desire to do right.
There are two reasons that a separate-but-equal system of civil unions is not acceptable. The first is that having different terminology is a deliberate put-down — marriage will always be a superior state to a civil union.
The second is that separate types of unions/marriage require separate laws and regulations. However, most of our state legislatures meet only in the spring for a few months; some only meet a few months every other year. With that schedule, and ambitious politicians wanting to make their bones cheaply by keeping legislation providing parity for civil unions bottled up in committee, it is logistically impossible to create a situation that is “separate but equal.”
Letting the states decide the issue of homosexual marriage equality is not really an option, either, since there are over 1,000 federal rights associated with marriage. Plus, if your marriage is legally recognized in one state, but not another, how do you handle that? Marry but also make contracts and powers-of-attorney under state law that you hope will be recognized in another state, if your marriage isn’t? You have no guarantee that documents such as a durable medical power-of-attorney will be recognized by another state. Plus, there’s the expense and hassle of trying to figure out what legal documents you will need if your civil union isn’t recognized. If you are traveling and one spouse has a medical emergency, you won’t get to ride in the ambulance, you might not be admitted to be with your spouse in the emergency room, and if your spouse dies, you will not be legally entitled to make funeral arrangements.
Meanwhile, the benefits to society of more people entering marriage so they have the legal tools to care for one another and their children have to be enormous — 20 percent of homosexuals have children and those chilren benefit from both spouses having a life-time legal commitment to them.
Posted by: Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian at October 13, 2009 11:17 PM
My third comment:
Cassandra, regarding the following from your comment above:
“You might try reading this:
“http://www.volokh.com/posts/1133375615.shtml
“A supporter of gay marriage does what I’ve asked: actually entertains the notion that the other side might have a point without for one moment surrendering her own ardent support for gay marriage.”
The only way homosexuals truly want to “re-define” marriage is to be included in the current system as same-sex couples. The ONLY thing we really want to change is choice of spouse. That’s it.
It is the coalition of religions fighting to exclude homosexuals from traditional marriage that have brought destruction to marriage in the Netherlands and France. They didn’t want same-sex couples included in marriage, so the compromise of civil partnerships was introduced. Then it seemed unjust to make civil unions, which were deliberately defined to be a lesser state than marriage, only available to same-sex couples so heterosexuals were allowed the option and to the horror of the religious coalition — and, I suspect, the surprise of homosexuals — heterosexuals flocked to civil unions
So religious activists opposed to homosexual equality are the ones who re-defined marriage, damaged the institution and they now are getting away with blaming homosexuals for this! It is an outrage to blame homosexuals for this self-inflicted wound!
Posted by: Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian at October 15, 2009 05:32 PM
Cynthia:
I don’t expect any “sea change” of views over at VC, but the discussion has continued and I hope I’ve been polite and respectful enough there to communicate my message that this issue affects real lives that matter and that assumptions and generalizations about “worst cases” do a disservice to everyone involved in the debate on this subject.
Dwight Call
Dwight/I Call BS,
Thank you.
Actually, when I responded to Cassandra’s quote from the Volokh Conspiracy, which cited some statistics that, as I recall, showed fewer heterosexual couples marrying after Holland passed its civil union law, that was the first time that I realized homosexuals and heterosexuals may be talking about completely different concepts when we talk about “re-defining marriage.”
The ONLY re-definition of marriage that homosexuals want is to be allowed to chose a same-sex spouse. We WANT to have the same everything else: vows, responsibilities and duties as well as the rights and privileges. We want marriage because it provides the tools a couple uses to build a life together.
ALL other mischievous re-definitions of marriage come from trying to compromise with religionists who want to appropriate the apparatus of the state to impose their religious definition of marriage on everyone. The ONLY reasons homosexuals agree to civil unions are that something is better than nothing and we hope that heterosexuals will get used to the idea of same-sex couples and eventually we’ll get marriage equality. So the destructive re-definition of marriage originates with the religionists. I didn’t realize that before.
Cynthia