gay marriage law rejected in Maine!
- Thread starter libby
- Start date
It's the level of offensiveness and community standards. We've all pretty much agreed that public nudity is against the law - and it *is* against the law. If you want to run around naked, go to a nudist camp and have at it.
You can look at someone and tell if they're naked or not.
You cannot look at someone and tell if they're married, or even gay.
This is a silly argument. Come up with a better one.
Anyone making out in a store would probably be asked to leave, I would guess.
Let's forget about stores because that's a private place of business. What about a public park? Should you be able to run around naked at a public park? Show up in court naked? Walk naked down the highway?
Is private behavior the same as public behavior, and should be regulated by the government?
Cowgirl
Well-Known Member
BCP wants to be offended when he sees same sex couples showing PDA. Hetero couples do that all the time, and it can be offensive. Haven't you ever seen someone do something and you just want them to get a room?
libertytyranny
Dream Stealer
not my argument, just an argument... kissin doesn't bother me...unless its full on tongue swishing makeing out..and I dont like that out of heteros or anyone. yuck.
I wouldn't want to restrict gay people from showing love or holding hands in public..simply not to piss off people who are against it...so if things were truely equal..they would be able to stroll the mall arm and arm like I do with my SO...and in that case....people may figure it out.
Plus..ever been to woodburns? not a straight male in sight when I go in there. I have seen a couple or two holding hands and everything. In other places in the US it is normal to see gay couples out and about..it may be places like here..that think that is a rare occurance. So your rebuttal only really works if gays are restricted from showing affection..and here in st marys.
for the record..I could care less if someone is walking around nekkid. Maybe because I have worked in the hospital so long that I have seen more dicks and hairy asses than paris Hilton.
bcp
In My Opinion
simply holding hands or a quick kiss is not offensive, sucking face and looking like you are going to make babies any moment is.
however, it would be offensive to me to have to watch two guys kissing,
so the argument that it is not ok because it is offensive concerning me running around in the buff should equally cover it being offensive to witness PDAs involving homosexuals.
bcp
In My Opinion
bcp
In My Opinion
Then pass the law to let gays marry.
see how easy it was when we really just get down to it.
Pushrod
Patriot
I have no problem with marraige being open to gay people. I just don't think it is any of the governments, on any level, business. It should be between the couple and their church. Anything outside of a church is a civil union (going before a magestrate, etc...). Both should be recognized as legal and open to all (although churches can make their own policies on who they marry).
Nope. If a couple is married at the court house, it's a marraige, not a civil union. Having a wedding at a church is not a requirement for entering into marraige.
Too bad the United States Supreme Court didn't leave this to the states nearly 40 years ago with Roe v. Wade.
It doesn't matter what you think about abortion or gay marriage. If it is imposed by a judge, it will ALWAYS been a sore spot. If it is left to the people, to the states, to candidates the people can directly address, the, the issue has been put to a vote.
Hmmm. Gosh, maybe we should have left the right for women and black people: to vote, own property, drink out of universal water fountains, serve in the military, eat in restaurants of your own choosing, drive cars, and be politicians - to the voters! Wonder what our culture would be like today?! Think back to 100 years, or in some cases, just a few decades. Maybe we should leave voting on cultural issues up to non-religious women and minorities (including gays). And Larry, until you or any other man can carry a child and can guarantee that women will not be raped by family members or other deranged, possessive males, or whose lives are not medically threatened, or if you can guarantee that men will shoulder their responsibilities financially or as a parent - then, and only then, do you have a potential opportunity to be involved with a woman's choice. Abortion will always take place, whether legalized or not. And because of this fact, in part, abortion with limits was legalized. Evolve people!!!
Tilted
..
The answer is simple and obvious, and it's the same answer that applies to so many situations in which people wish to limit the freedoms of others without substantial, legitimate, and justifiable reason to do so. Nobody wants to admit the truth, but it is the truth nonetheless.
You ready? Insecurity. Most people are fundamentally insecure for one reason or another (or more like many reasons). Pursuant to that, they need affirmation that they are 'good' or that the things they do and the way they do them is 'right'. They need their beliefs, their lifestyle, the essence of who they are, to be recognized as good or better than. Sometimes they seek this affirmation through the government - the authority - the official sanction-er. That makes the goodness seems less arbitrary. They need the government to say that something else is wrong, or to not sanction it in the same way, because somehow that means what they do is right. For some people, the default way of affirming themselves is by de-elavating others, as opposed to by elevating themselves.
It is all about insecurity - and the resulting need to have someone else or something else say or recognize that we are good or right. We see this in so many aspects of life. The argument that same sex marriage would somehow degrade or demean the institution of marriage is laughable. It's preposterous, and it is used because it is one of the few notions that anyone can come up with which can create a facade of legitimate objection. The legitmacy thereof is superfical at best - and one need only pull back a very thin layer to see that.
Just look at the record for heterosexual marriage in our society. It's very impressive, isn't it? How many end in divorce? How many are characterized by perpetual dishonesty, anxiety, or resentment? How many are manifest embodiments of faithlessness and insincerity? I'm sorry, but same sex marriages aren't going to discredit, demean, or in any way diminish the institution of marriage more so than it already has been. If anything, it might redeem it a tiny bit.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say it did demean the institution of marriage. So what? What has that to do with each individual's marriage? How does that harm individual marriages? How is the importance, the sacredness, the specialness, the beauty, of a specific couple's marriage in any way reduced or compromised by the state of someone else's marriage or the state of the instiution itself? It isn't. Fundamentally, what people have is between themselves - what is shared between them is the essence - it's what matters. If what you have is special, if it is true, if it is everlasting, if it is honest - then it is so, and those conditions don't depend on the actions or sanctions of others. If the condition and nature of your relationship does depend on those outside factors, then it probably isn't all that special to begin with.
I've been in a loving, devoted, intensely intimate and connected relationship - and I can tell you this, nothing that anyone else did or thought about that relationship had the power to change the nature of the bound we had. That power rested with us. That bound was all about us and what we shared - it was ours - and depended on nothing and no one else. I've also been in long term relationships where that bound didn't exist to the same degree - and nothing, no label, no sanction, no outside acknowledgement or factor, could have ever made them comparable to the other one. So, if someone honestly thinks that someone else's marriage - inappropriate, unnatural, disgusting, sinful though it might be in your eyes - somehow demeans or discredits or marginalizes or reduces their own marriage, then I say that probably has more to do with their own relationship than it does others.
If part of the basis for the sacredness someone feels about their marriage is some sort of faith - some sort of religion - then fine. They may well want the sanction of that faith on the institution, as that is part of what makes it dear to them. They have every right to that, and they have the right to feel that their faith sanctioning a different kind of marriage would somehow change the nature of the sanction of their own. That's entirely reasonable, and is between themselves and their faith - but it has nothing to do with our government, nor its sanctioning of others marriages.
I think many, many people have great, fulfilling marriages that are truly special - and that reality is not conditioned on the nature and character of other relationships. I have enough to concern myself with, with my own relationships, and I sure as heck am not going to be concerned with the nature of relationships between other consenting adults. The truth is, I don't care to care about them much at all. I like to think of my relationships as unique and special of their own right - part of what has made them special is the notion that they were completely different than anyone else's (something that was obviously not true, but that is how I perceived them). To me, the notion that the nature of other people's marriages was quite different than my own, would only serve to make me feel that my marriage was more special.
Now, one could argue that my statements make the case that same sex partners shouldn't need the government sanction. Fair enough. But, to the extent that that is true, it is much more legimate for someone to want something when there is no real reason to have it, than it is for someone else to deny it to them when there is no real reason to deny it to them. The former is about the right to be who you are, even if it doesn't make sense to others, the latter is about telling others who they can be, because it doesn't make sense to you. The former may be silly and vain, but the latter is arrogant, presumptuous and oppressive.
The arguments advanced against allowing same sex marriage fall apart under the slightest bit of deliberate scrutiny. And what's left is the truth - people, all of us, are fundamentally insecure about all manner of things. And, some of us deal with that by seeking affirmation of ourselves and our ways from outside sources and forces. That's all fine and dandy, until we try to use the power of the collective political body as the tool through which we provide ourselves that affirmation.
Tilted
..
That's why I phrased it the way I did. No, the actual text in the Constitution does not say 'a wall of separation between church and state'. But legally, that is part of what the words of the First Amendment mean - because that is what the Supreme Court says they mean - and they are the body that has the authority to say what the words of the Constitution mean.
A Supreme Court decision is not a Constitutional amendment, but unless and until it is reversed or changed, it has the same legal force. Legally speaking, the First Amendment might as well say 'there is a wall of separation between church and state'. The issue is then, well, what does that mean? What exactly it means can be argued, and often is - but whether or not there is a legal wall of separation between church and state in this country is clear - there is.
Pushrod
Patriot
You need to read better. I said it should be in my opinion!