Yeah, gay marriage in general is a hot topic. If anyone is curious, I've got a post on it right here.

Blogger sucks, so you might have to hit the link again if it jumps you to the wrong spot in the archive. The post title is "On Gay Marriage."

Regards,

Kevin

im so tired of people hiding behind the meme that being straight or gay is genetic.

to expand on that just a bit...

who we are is our own choice. a complex choice with countless influences that blur the lines between personal, psychological, and biological of course... but a choice that is underneath it all ours, in such an intimate and inherent way that we should never be willing to say that who we are is programed by our genetics, by god, or by any other damn excuse we can come up with. we should not fall for the trap of believing even genetic predispositions are hardwired and unquestionable.

the reason so many are tempted to buy into the sexuality is genetics argument is because of a totally excessive fear of the very real hatred and violence they expect from so many who would say that if we are not "born that way" then we must be "living in sin". that is one of my biggest complaints about sullivan... his sense of his own sexuality seems as rigid and reactionary as the straight world that has been so hostile to so many of us. other than that hes mostly a sweetheart.

im here. im queer. its a choice, and its a damn good one.

The Jeffersonian question is, or should be: Why should government be in the marriage business at all? There should be no governmental preference or penalty attached to marital status. In many respects, it will be much easier to detach government from marriage than to resolve the gay/straight marriage conflict. The result will be more rational, too.

Good point, Polonius.

To answer Polonius ... government has, and should have, a /limited/ role in the question of marriage and family because the family is the smallest (and most intimate/intense) unit of social cohesion within larger society.

Prisons in the US today are full of angry black men, most of whom were raised in the absence of a father. Fifty or 80 or 100 years ago the black family was vastly stronger than it has been for the last generation or so.

The difference is that government not only ignored, but /penalised/ marriage in the course of its largely-failed multi-trillion dollar "anti-poverty" programs since 1965. Children of any colour do better in homes with a father and a mother in a committed life-long relationship.

Any survey of the prison population will confirm that statement -- and prisons are a totally non-productive use of taxpayer moneys.

We have trivialised marriage in the last 30 years or so, and I would add that the greatest damage to the institution of marriage has come not from homo-sexuals, but from Hollywood -- both in the way it has depicted marriage (as an unhappy joke) to the throwaway marriages that so characterise the entertainment community.

Government has an interest in marriage, because government ends up cleaning up the mess. Just ask the teacher of a Grade-IV student whose mother's third marriage in 12 years just ended.

Bart,
In you opinion, would it have been better for government to penalize marriage, as they truly did via welfare, or to have ignored or remained neutral on marriage?

I'm still working through some of this myself, but it seems in this cause it would have been better had welfare been originally set up as marriage neutral. If you extrapolate this, what kind of ligitimacy does government bring to the institution of marriage in the first place?

My wife and I were married by a JOP and we've just had our 15th anniversary this year, and there's no end in site. Is this because the government made us go and get a license and go through a ceremony? Or were we committed regardless?

Before, my thinking had always been that it's important that you have that public acknowledgement, and it still is, but it's not clear to me what the government is bringing to the table here. Which highlighted when considering the recent ruling in the Texas sodomy case; which BTW, I think was correct from a purely civic POV.

The Republicans are right, this will likely lead to government approval of gay marriage. I'm finding the other argument more compelling though, why does the government interfere with marriage at all?

In no way is Sullivan a conservative.

Getting the government out of marriage is fine, but it also means that people won't be able to complain if a state like Utah or the Muslim population of Detroit begin pushing for polygamy. Most of the same arguments used in favor of gay marriage (especially the civil/human rights arguments) can easily be coopted by advocates of polygamy, IMO.

I'm not entirely sure if that's something that a lot of people are going to be okay with. Western Europe is likely to face the same challenge given the size of its own growing Muslim community.

I'm not certain what the solution is to all of this, but it is something to consider because moves like this are going to have long-term consequences that a lot of people seem to be missing. One of the reasons why social consensus should always be key when discussing making radical changes like this, IMO.

Dan, you are of course right. The whole thing is unsettling to think about.

Sullivan is definitely a conservative based on his array of political positions. Nor is he the first conservative to make a case for gay marriage - I first saw one of those in the 1980s (National Review), and it was a very thought-provoking article.

The real debate, of course, is the one we're not having about the position and role of the family in modern society. The gay marriage debate doesn't make a whole lot of sense outside that wider discussion, but once that discussion is truly engaged the doors to gay marriage do open somewhat from a conservative perspective.

Where Sullivan's recent writings constitute a sharp departure from conservatism is his approval of the democratic evasion + judicial fiat approach being used here because he aproves of the ends.

My primary disagreement with the judicial fiat and democratic evasion process currently being used to advance the cause of gay marriage is that, as the term "democratic evasion" explains, it's basically saying to the population and their elected representatives that you aren't clever enough to come up with these social changes on your own so we're going to do it for you. I've seen similar examples pointed to regarding the use judicial fiat in the fight for civil rights in the South.

That's fine, so long as you agree with the objective at hand. The problem is that once you accept that judicial fiat and democratic evasion is an acceptable way to change public policy in regards to controversial areas it would seem to invalidate the whole role of popularly elected officials to begin with as well as the inherent right that all democracies have for its populations to make "unenlightened" decisions that may not be popular with the prevailing elite notions at the time.

I suspect that Sullivan would disagree with me on this one, but so be it. But one might keep in mind that should elite notions ever shift against homosexual marriage, one might not be so supportive of judicial fiat. That's why I'd rather be considered unenlightened or even intolerant than I would be blindly submissive to the will of a judge or judges who decided that they know what's best for me and society as a whole.

The issue facing us is two-fold, IMO: the role of judiciat fiat on controversial issues and the proper role of modern society in relation to the idea of a family. And until some kind of consensus is reached on both, I would be quite cautious about applying the latter in order to answer the former.

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Boy, was that one ever off-topic....

To Dan Darling, what precisely has this got to do with you?

I mention this because the underlying principle in constitutional law is individual liberty, not democracy per se. The Framers were quite aware that a tyrannical majority could be as abusive as any tyrannical king -- see Federalist No. 51 -- and that an independent judiciary served to counter this impulse -- see Federalist No. 78.

I can't speak to the legal aspects of Canadian law, but I can agree with the conservative saying that the U.S. "is not a democracy; it's a republic." That includes enforcing certain provisions of the Bill of Rights when the general public would not.

What's it to me? I would like to make some sort of legal entity out of the household of 21 years' standing that I occupy. The issue to me is not heredity or preference but simply equal protection under the law, and due process of law, i.e., citizenship either means something or it doesn't.

Neither Canadian Members of Parliament nor present-day Canadian judges are the ultimate authority on the lawful definition of marriage in Canada.

The Lawful Definition of Marriage in Canada

I personally believe that a gay man having sex in another mans feces is not normal.

New Jersey courts have already decided that, to accept gay marriage means you have to equally accept other deviant lifestyles, such as incest and polygamy.

I know many things that are not normal, but thankfully are still legal. It may surprise you to hear that the same argument is sometimes used by anti-gun nuts who disapprove of hunting.

The New Jersey courts point could be relevant and timely, but we'd need a cite to see exactly what it said before we could even begin discussing it.

N.J. appeals court rules against 'same-sex marriage,' state high court to get case next

http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=20971