Californa Marriage Ammendment
Barack Obama and John McCain are at odds over a California ballot initiative that would amend the state’s Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Barack Obama’s position,
I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states
Please Mr. Obama, tell me how this is discriminatory. Is it discrimination to explicitly ban something that was never intended by nature in the first place?
My first argument to you Mr. Barack Obama is this? Is it right for the courts to undo what the people of California voted for? The majority of people in California have already expressed their view that Gay Marriage should not be allowed. This alone means that for the people of California to have their voice heard, and not overridden by activist judges they need a constitutional ban on Gay Marriage.
My second argument is that marriage itself was created by God, not man. As a God fearing people, We should protect the institution of marriage and keep it as God intended, between a man and woman. Who is man to think they can change what God himself created.
McCain on the other hand has announced his support for the initiative. Thank you Mr. McCain!
Californa Marriage Ammendment Obama Lies » Barack Obama Archive…
Protect Marriage. Obama doesn’t want to….
If you believe in the separation of church and state, which this country was founded upon, then you should also understand that marriage should not be controlled by the government in the first place. Your religious views are completely valid, but are still only your views. The trouble here is that marriage is an institution completely based upon and founded by religion, and should have never had any ties whatsoever to government in the first place. For example, the Catholic church has every right to ban gay marriage, and another church has every right to allow it. It is not the government’s place to dictate which religious views are valid and which ones aren’t. (Just so you know, I am opposed to gay marriage, but I believe too strongly in the principles that this country was founded upon to support a constitutional amendment that bans certain religious views.)
“s it discrimination to explicitly ban something that was never intended by nature in the first place?”
Yes. It may be arguably -justified- discrimination. We discriminate between things all the time.
“Is it right for the courts to undo what the people of California voted for?”
That would seem to be the point of having a constitutional system — that there is a constitution which overrides lesser laws. There may be a question as to whether the state constitution was appropriately applied, of course, but the concept of a court overturning a law based on questions of constitutionality is a reasonable one.
“This alone means that for the people of California to have their voice heard, and not overridden by activist judges they need a constitutional ban on Gay Marriage.”
Except that in the many years since Prop 22, the voting majority may well have changed their minds (and there are many eligible voters in California who were either not eligible or did not vote in the election 8 years ago.) It’s quite reasonable for someone to make an argument against what Prop 8 will support, rather than argue that everyone should vote for it just because a different set of people voted for a similar proposition that didn’t effect the constitution and didn’t split up existing marriages at some time in the past.
Steiner385, I can see where you’re coming with the “church and state” argument. I think though that gay marriage, goes deeper than any particular religion and is a human social issue. As a people living together in a society, we make rules to govern what is acceptable and not acceptable for its people.
We make rules to protect the lives of the people, to protect the properties, of the people, and to ensure all people can be treated fairly. Some common themes which gay rights advocates use as an argument for gay marriage. Which I believe they try to exploit incorrectly.
My argument is that homosexuality is not normal. Is not good for our society. And efforts by the left to portray it as acceptable, and natural, should be blocked and prevented. The family consisting of a mother, father, and children is the only way society will continue to grow and exist. Any other way, I think will lead to the eventual demise of our society.
Nat, your right, It is a numbers game. And it is up to the people of California to decide. The vast majority now, may support it. The vast majority may not support it. Right now its just a bunch of people going at it, trying to sway the minds of the voters one way or another.
I think it is incorrect to assert that the vast majority of people in California support gay marriage. To me that seems more like a ploy to sway the hearts of undecided voters, those that will end up voting however their friends vote.
Why does it hurt you if a gay couple wants to be married. The U.S. already has the highest divorce rate in the world. Who the f*** cares? This website also has a ridiculous religious bias.
Thanks Jeff. Does it affect me if a gay couple wants to be married? I’d answer your question with another question, Do the private acts of the citizens in our country really affect the country?
My answer to that would be yes. Our private actions have a profound affect on the society that we are. What will become of us, when we have all lost the natural affections of our human hearts, nothing more than greedy animals with no love one for another?
Does it matter if we lie? does it matter if we steal? Does it matter if we cheat?
These are all things that without God, or a religious bias as you put it really don’t matter.
You have a good point admin. I can definitely see that allowing gay marriage could have some adverse effects on our society in the long run. Part of my point, however, is that if we want to discourage gay marriage, then we should not be using the word God in our arguments at all. Once you bring the idea of God or religion into this debate, then my previous argument takes over and a constitutional ban would be unjust and unconstitutional. There has to be a way for the conservative right to discourage gay marriage without using terms like God or religion, or cliche puns like “Adam and Steve”.
“These are all things that without God, or a religious bias as you put it really don’t matter.”
That’s an assumption that doesn’t match with the many atheists I have known. Not all of them are pure honest chaps — but nor are all religious folks. One need not have God in one’s life to be concerned with transgressing against others.
You are likely to have more swaying effect on folks if you show them how same-sex marriage will hurt society rather than depict it as a trangression against God, as then you have to convince them of your view of God (ever a difficult thing.) However, the argument that traditional marriage is a good becomes an uphill fight, because traditional marriage is not being banned, and gay marriage is not being made mandatory (I think you’d have little trouble preventing that!) And even trying to position it that giving folks the option for same-sex marriage is discouraging traditional marriage is difficult and hard to follow up; if Adam is marrying Brenda only because he’s not allowed to marry Steve, does it sound to you like Adam and Brenda are going to have a healthy and robust relationship?
There’s also the question of whether you want to discourage gay marriage, or ban it. After all, the center of freedom is allowing people to do things we think are a bad idea (just as we are free to point out that they are bad ideas.) This is a differentiation you should watch in your argumentation (when you say things like “And efforts by the left to portray it as acceptable, and natural, should be blocked and prevented”, it makes it sound like you don’t want others to be free to speak - which you may not, I don’t know.)
Similarly, when you say things like “The family consisting of a mother, father, and children is the only way society will continue to grow and exist. Any other way, I think will lead to the eventual demise of our society.” it makes it sound like either you perceive that such families will be prevented (a hard argument to make) or that other families are not acceptable - when the realities of history have meant that families have often missed some of those members (particularly when life expectancy was much lower) and included other members (grandparents, parental siblings, and such.)
It is a sticky situation when you start bickering to one side or another on this Gay Marriage issue. Each of us is entitled to our own opinion, our own beliefs, and our own choices when it comes to how we live our lives.
“Traditional marriage is not being banned, and gay marriage is not being made mandatory”, correct. But the institution of marriage itself, as it has existed for thousands of years is being opened up to include same sex relations. A broadening of the definition, when there are a large number of people that do not want to see the definition of “marriage’ broadened.
As a society, marriage has been a contract between a man and a women to remain faithful to each other, to not have sexual relations with others. Parents because of the legal contract are under obligation to remain faithful to each other, and support and care for any children born into the relationship.
Now not all “marriages” are perfect, and not all families fit the perfect 1950s model of a family. I’m purposefully avoiding discussion of other social issues such as children born out of wedlock, infidelity, that also affect our society negatively. Regardless of its imperfections, that doesn’t mean “marriage” needs to be opened up, and broadened to accept contracts between man man, or woman woman as “marriage”.
Now how is it being broadened? Without a law defining what it is, the courts will decide. In California, they’ve decided it can include same sex relations. As a resident of California, how do you then disagree with the courts? The only solution appears to be amendment to the constitution, which the courts must follow. By doing nothing, it is allowed and the institution of marriage itself is expanded, and changed from what society has accepted for thousands of years.
Are we so smart that we know how to do things better than the billions of people that have lived on this earth before us?
“Are we so smart that we know how to do things better than the billions of people that have lived on this earth before us?”
If we never believed that, then this country would be a monarchy, following basically every government that preceded it. (Nor would we be exchanging messages digitally, for that matter!)
Besides, marriage has changed greatly over the centuries. It was not always assumed to be a contract of fidelity (at least on the part of the man). It was, at heart, a contract of property, often arranged by the parents, for which love was irrelevant. The woman became property of the man, and in exchange, the man was responsible for providing for her.
If what you want marriage to be a contract of fidelity, then you have other legal changes that would seem to be more important. California has been a no-fault divorce state since 1970. That means that infidelity itself is not a basis for a divorce. It can certainly been grist for the “irreconcilable differences” mill (one of two bases for divorce, the other being “incurable insanity”), but adultery is not itself a contract-breaker in this state.
The California courts have broadened the legal definition of marriage before, when the struck down antimiscegnation laws. That went against public sentiment at the time (if the numbers I’ve seen are correct, even moreso than this movie.) But let’s remember that it’s the legal term “marriage” that is being adjusted; that need not be the same as the definition that any religious institution works under. Witness the Roman Catholics, who refuse to accept “marriages” among Catholics where one member has a surviving ex-spouse from a legal divorce that was not accompanied by a religious annulment. It need not be what you teach your children as being good and right.
You also may consider what damage changing the law might do to marriage. The younger folk are increasingly accepting of homosexuals, and this trend shows no sign of abating. I already know of couples who have been reluctant to get married -because- the legal institution is closed to same-sex couples; to them, it would be akin to joining a whites-only club. Were that trend to grow, it could do real damage to the prevalence of legal marriage, and society would lose the advantages that arrive from having much of its population in relationships of mutual legal responsibility.
Steiner’s argument that the government should not be involved in marriage is one that can have traction; much of the dilemma in this situation is that the same word, “marriage”, is used for both a civil contractual state and a state of religious recognition. The court ruling didn’t actually require gay marriage; it said merely that there cannot be separate institutions, and there’s a case to be made for the governmental version to be “civil unions” and leave the “marriage” term to the churches. Or in other words: if marriage is a sacrement (as many claim), what business does a secular state have in doling out sacrements?