Bush Calls for Gay Marriage Ban

My reasoning was because the Constitution does not enumerate a specific right to marry, it can be reasonably construed that the right to marry is retained by the people. That a right to marry is one of the "others retained by the people". But I'm certainly no lawyer, so that may be pure bunk.

 

Surprise surprise, the amendment just failed in the Senate. 49-48, not even close - as expected. John Boehner says he plans to bring it up again next month to continue the conservative vote drive.

Like I said before - if this is the best the Republicans can do to get out the vote, they deserve to lose congress. Pathetic.

 

I'm surprised they are going to bring it up again. Seeing as how you need a 2/3 majority for a Constitutional Amendment, they are way short. They need either 18 or 19 additional votes. (It said it "lost" 49-48, but I don't know if it lost with 49, as 60 votes would have been required to bring it to the floor for a vote. It could have "lost" even if there was one more vote in favor than against.)

 

News report

Seems pretty simple on the face but I would like to hear what our lawyers say.

Personally, I am against the admentment because I think there is a possibility that it could lead to infringement of religious rights. IMO it is a step in the wrong direction from a religious point-of-view.

However if it's main purpose is scare tactics it will probably influence people both for and against.

 

If America is going to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, then there needs to be something exactly like it (that isn't called marriage) for homosexual couples. They need the same rights. If they get the same rights, call it whatever you want.

He should, because apparently they are.

 

I've just got to throw my two cents in here, and this may shock a lot of you that have debated with me in the past. I'm against this amendment.

My reasoning is not because I support gay marriage, I don't. It isn't because I believe the government doesn't have the right to do so, they do. It isn't even because I believe it would violate the spirit of the freedoms this nation represents, that excuse had been used far too many times to support evil things.

The reason I don't like this amendment is because its the wrong way to go about it. If you look in history, I can only think of two times the government has ever tried to change society's mind about a heated topic like this with laws and amendments.

The first was slavery. We fought a bloody war, the bloodiest in American history, and it still didn't truely end it. Afterwards there was this thing called reconstrution. It was fought tooth and nail by the southern whites, and eventually they drove it off. It wasn't for nearly another century that the lingering remnants of slavery, segregation, linch mobs, police beatings for nothing, etc. were largely put to an end.

The second was prohibition, and that one spawned organized crime in the US, not to mention that it didn't work.

No, a constitutional amendment isn't the way to go about this. We need to change society before we change the law. If this is ever going to be passed, it needs the vast majority of public support. Years ago a wise man said that America was great because America was good, and that if America ever stopped being good, it would stop being great. That is starting to come true these days. If we want to fix it, we can't rely on the greatness of America or its government, because that is spawned from the thing we are trying to fix.

 

The American Civil War was started by the South, in 1861, at Charleston, SC. The Emancipation document was drafted in 1862, after the Battle of Antietam Creek. So, the slaves were actually not freed until over a year after the South had started the Civil War.

[ June 08, 2006, 05:16: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

I'm curious, Nog, what particular means you're referring to when you say "fix" it. How exactly, in your opinion, does society need to "change" in order for the conditions to be set to achieve a resolution on this issue?

 

NOG: I am confused on this one. I thought the Constitution was the document that defines a nation. An ammendment to clarify this would be the way to deal with it...

 

The Constitution is a blueprint for the working of government, and it attempts to clearly define the balance of power between the different branches of the federal government and the powers of the individual states. The Bill of Rights, which was added after the original document was framed, defines the protections and the rights of the people in regards to the government. So yes, that could be one way in which it could be used, but as has been pointed out, this is a political exercise by just a minority in government, as today's vote proved.

 

Well, the vote was 49-48, so I wouldn't call it a minority, but it certainly isn't strong enough in its support to be anything other than a political stunt - I agree. And even then that split is a sign that this isn't an appropriate constitutional issue due to its divisive nature.

 

Not to nitpick, as this is , but technically, not a single slave was freed until after the Civil War was over. When Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation, it effected all of the states in the U.S. However, the Confederacy had broken away from the Union, and as a result, they did not consider themselves under the authority of Lincoln's Proclamation. Therefore, they disregarded it.

I'm kind of with DR on this one, although my question is a bit different. If we cannot rely on America (which I interperet as being the people of the U.S.), and we cannot rely on governement, from where are you expecting this change to come from? Some outside nation? Divine intervention? Space aliens? If we rule out all and any part of America to be relied upon, then I don't see where we can look for a resolution.

 

I am confused... Bush was talking a lot about how the people need to choose, and how the matter is in the people's hands, and yet, he didn't do a nationwide poll (as in, not just 100, but 250 million people), or anything like that... if this is such a huge matter, shouldn't the people have a say? Not an indirect, 'our-corrupt-elected-officials-think-this-so-we-have-to' say, but an actual say?

 

Saber: it's a representative democracy -> which means that 'the people' get to decide every four years who oppresses them. So basically, not much to do with democracy...

 

Well, I have to admit that Bush is extremely hypocritical on this issue. He says that everyone has a voice and everyone deserves to be heard. What he means is, you will be heard so long as you aren't someone who supports gay marriage.

As far as polling, no Bush has not personally conducted a poll. He has relied on the polling of outside agencies. As it turns out, those results indicate that 59% of the U.S. population are opposed to gay marriage. Strangely enough, 59% of the population are also opposed to amending the Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Given these rather contrary statements, my gut feeling on this is that a lot of people are opposed to the idea of calling it a marriage. If the entire concept of two people of the same gender sharing their lives together repulsed them, then they would also support the Constitutional amendement to prohibit it. So I think many of the 59% who do not support gay marriage may be open to the concept of civil unions.

 

I've seen a recent study that proves your statement correct, I just don't have an exact figure. If memory serves, more people support civil unions or other alternatives than do the 59% who oppose gay marriage. Also - the poll that claims 59% opposition, I believe, is an outlier that Bush and the other DoMA supporters tout as evidence of a referrendum that isn't necessarily there. The average, I believe, of polls taken on this issue is really closer to 50/50 nationwide. Which isn't surprising - I'm sure most people haven't given this issue much thought until now, and thus I suspect are less likely to form strong, informed opinions about it. Hence, the division.

The bottom line for me is, Americans as a whole are becoming historically MORE tolerant and accepting of gays, not less so. Significantly fewer people today cling to deprecated notions about gays (that it's a chosen perversion and not part of the human condition, that they spread AIDS, etc.) today than did a decade ago, and certainly a decade before that. Gay marriage is an inevitability, IMO, and will continue to pick up steam until public support for it is a clear majority.

 

I have one case in point that supports this supposition. My morning train buddy and I had a long convo about this yeasterday. She came in favoring the amendment, but admitting that she didn't know much about the issue and had never given the matter any thought. By the time we went our separate ways downtown, she was no longer committed to either position but said she had a lot to learn and think about. She raised all sorts of considerations and was equally perplexed as I by the complete lack of any real facts coming out of the "Ban it!" camp.

 

Just from an interest point of view

From the IAT test...

 

@DR:
Ok, I don't want to sound like a hate-monger, because I'm not, but you have to understand that I believe homosexuality is a sin and a choice. That doesn't mean we should hate the people, or imprison them, or anything like that, but it does mean that the act is wrong.

On the mitigating side, sex is addictive and falls into easily re-inforced trends. This means that punishment isn't the answer. Instead, programs trying to fix the problem treat it like an addiction or habbit. The first thing to do, on a personal level, is convince the person the act is wrong. That's the hardest part for homosexuality because so many like their lifestyles and identify themselves with it, not to mention that it is only a religious position that says it is wrong. The next part is to try and remove the homosexual habbits and preferences and replace them with heterosexual ones.

On a grand social level, the first step would be to convince the society that the act is wrong, but still show that the people are ordinary people with productive lives who shouldn't be hated or pitied. The next step would be the person-by-person program detailed above. Again, the hardest part is to convince people it is wrong.

If you don't agree with me, feel free to say so, feel free to attack my plan on legal, moral, or logical grounds, but please don't attack me or my plan simply because you find the idea of 'fixing' homosexuality offensive.

Aldeth:
I said we couldn't rely on the greatness of America, meaning we can't simpy sit back and hope the problem solves itself or that we come through unscathed. The American people are exactly the ones that need to do something here.

Saber:
A 250 million person poll would be called voting. Outside of the voting system, a poll of that scale would be WAY too expensive.

Carcoth:
If I'm reading this correctly, that means that most people haven't actually changed their minds, but just feel more pressure from society to do so, so they sequester their feelings, right?