They actually protected gays.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4179376.stm
The Supreme Court declared sodomy laws unconstitutional about a year and a half ago. I think the differing age of consent in some states for homosexuals may have been overturned too.
And yet they still can’t get married >.>;
Gay rights activists welcomed the ruling, saying that 63 men have been arrested under the laws in the past five years.
My question is, how did they get caught?
They can’t get marriage <i>licenses</i>. Our society uses recognized marriage as a reward for providing a useful function (generating and raising future taxpayers). Same-sex couples can and do adopt, but society still seems to prefer that a child gets an upbringing with a mother and a father figure. Yes, single-parent households do exist, and that’s also only having parents of one gender, but other than:
<ol>
<li>Removing the child and placing them with a foster couple
<li>Mandating that the single-parent remarry or face option 1
</ol>
there doesn’t seem to be much of an option. Besides, doing either except in cases where the child would be removed by CPS even were there two parents; physical/emotional abuse, drug/alcohol abuse, dire financial straights (I think I’ve heard that as a reason, but doubt that the government is proactive in policing it) would be as egregious an example of government overreaching as were those sodomy laws 984 mentioned.
As to wether gay marriage sould be legalized, I’m in the I-throw-up-my-hands camp. Those with positions for and against are quickly becoming as firmly entrenched as those on other old saws like abortion. I doubt it makes a barn of diffenence either way, except to clog up legislatures and constipate political forums.
Damn, my country could use some fiber.
They can in Massachusetts.
But don’t expect anyone to honor it if you leave the state.
On a sidenote, I think it’s funny how you can get a marriage license for under $100, but if you want to get a divorce it’ll roll you back a cool 1k. Extra if you want to get your own friggin name back. 
Yeah, and it only costs like $.75 for a bullet to shoot yourself.
There’s a message there.
Do they sell bullets individually? Sweet.
For 75 cents, that bullet better shoot itself.
Actually, that’s not true, because getting married does not require one to have children. Married couples can easily choose to remain childless. The reward for generating and raising future taxpayers comes later, in the form of child tax credits and things like that. But many of the individual benefits entailed in recognized marriage, such as the ability to visit one’s spouse in the hospital, apply to heterosexual couples regardless of whether or not they do or will have children. There is no conceivable reason why benefits such as these should be tied to whether or not the couples can “generate” children.
Besides, lesbian couples can have children regardless, if they go the artificial insemination way. They still can’t get married.
This discussion seems really surreal for me. There has been so much drama over the gay marriage thing here in MA, it feels like the whole country is fighting against our one state.
My next door neighbors were actually the first gay couple to receive a marriage licence in the United States. Their pictures were all over the newspapers and stuff.
I personally don’t see the big deal. What is so great about marriage that straight people need to keep it for themselves? Something like 60% of marriages in the US end in divorce anyway. Maybe if gay people start getting married, they can lower that percentage a bit.
Thats to discourage stupid people from getting married, and/or punish them when they realize how stupid they were.
I think we could do with less marriages at young ages personally…
That seems to be the trend nowadays anyway. Most people are getting married in their late twenties or early thirties.
First the Bruce Lee statue, and now this. Damn it Hong Kong, at least let somebody be cooler than you. Like, Sweden or someplace.
Actually, the figure is something closer to 50% of first marriages end in divorce. If you start taking into account second, third, and later marriages, the marriage “success” rate comes closer to 70%, if I remember my figures correctly.
Anyway, if we see marriage (or civil union as a term to encompass only the government aspect of marriage) as merely a kind of contract which extends special priviledges such as right of sucession and such, I don’t see what’s the big deal about the divorce rate. If we thought of marriage as only a religious institution, then yeah, I could see the problem. But many people do not get married in any sort of religious fashion (or through mere lip service). That just means these people are no longer happy together, and it may be in their best interests to call it quits. No big deal (aside from kids and divorce settlements, but that’s something else).
Before I start I guess I should point out that a lot of our long standing predjudices against things, be they non-kosher food or homosexuality, which usually do show up in religious doctrine, have much to do with keeping a small tribe of nomads in the desert from dying off. For example, the meat of the “unclean animals” of the Old Testament is either hard to prepare well or doesn’t keep well enough in desert conditions to prevent disease, which is your biggest threat next to other tribes. As well with homosexuality; in a band of 40 or so people, you can’t afford to have breeders being taken out of the system.
It’s like your parents/grandparents/teachers/mentors/saturday morning cartoon heroes used to tell you; [recite style=“singsong”]“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”[/recite]
Anyway, if we see marriage (or civil union as a term to encompass only the government aspect of marriage) as merely a kind of contract which extends special priviledges such as right of sucession and such, I don’t see what’s the big deal about the divorce rate.
Which it should, as our government cannot by law discriminate against marriages based on what kind of religious authority presided over the ceremony, if any.
If we thought of marriage as only a religious institution, then yeah, I could see the problem. But many people do not get married in any sort of religious fashion (or through mere lip service). That just means these people are no longer happy together, and it may be in their best interests to call it quits. No big deal (aside from kids and divorce settlements, but that’s something else).
I think it’s pretty safe to assume that Baptist ministers aren’t going to be presiding over gay wedding ceremonies any time soon, so realistically I think this is an argument over legal marriage.
True, requiring that would be overreaching on the government’s part, just like the sodomy laws I mentioned later in the post, sort of tying it back to the literal topic of the thread. I was quite proud of myself. <.< >.>
Married couples can easily choose to remain childless.
It’s only been really, “easy,” by which I mean, “reliable,” for a few decades. Marriage is a lot older than that. When these traditions were established, a married couple were pretty likely to get at least one pregnancy going for them.
Obviously the system doesn’t account for birth control, but I don’t see that as a contradiction. It’s still common for married couples to eventually have children. There’s social pressure to have children from surrounding families, for example. “Keeping up with the Joneses,” “Misery loves company,” and all that.
The reward for generating and raising future taxpayers comes later, in the form of child tax credits and things like that. But many of the individual benefits entailed in recognized marriage, such as the ability to visit one’s spouse in the hospital, apply to heterosexual couples regardless of whether or not they do or will have children. There is no conceivable reason why benefits such as these should be tied to whether or not the couples can “generate” children.
After some consideration, I don’t think anyone really understands the dynamics of marriage as we practice it; the effect of a marriage license, and the cost of getting divorced, on our behavior. It could be that homosexual marriage would be just as stable for childrearing as heterosexual marriage, but I can’t predict that. I think I <i>do</i> understand, however, the reason these practices were adopted in the first place; to ensure continued growth and relative peace in the society.
Society tends toward conventional pair-bonded couples as environments for raising children into productive, safe citizens. The crime rate amongst children with abstentee fathers seems to support that assumption. Of course, I’m talking about male children, but they seem to be the chief troublemakers in any society – all that testosterone has to go somewhere.
Furthermore, married (as opposed to single or dating) men (as opposed to children and adolescents) don’t get into a lot of fights either (remember that Spartan men weren’t allowed to see their wives very much, and some boxing promoters still make their fighters stop having sex the week before a match). Combine that with the fact that marrying your men to your women is a pretty damn good way to keep your tribe’s population up, and that it makes sense that children raised in such an environment would likely go off and breed themselves, and you can see why marriage is an attractive policy for a group authority to adopt.
Priviliges like hospital visitation, and probably child tax credits as well can be easily encompassed under domestic partnerships, which are cropping up all over, and they almost certainly will. I don’t see any reason why society should declare a kind of pair-bonding which is not as productive as traditional marriage to be absolutely equivalent to it. Eventually it will, of course, but I think it will be a while before the contribution of married couples is considered inconsequential enough that it sees no difference in the partner you choose. It’ll probably happen pretty quickly if cloning takes root.
I see being gay nowadays as much like being left-handed; it causes a little friction because you’re not in a majority, but it’s a livable diversion from the norm. In certain circumstances would be a liability for the group (I doubt there were many people in the Roman legions or in Athenian Hoplite phalanxes fighting left-handed; can’t be competing with your neighbors in formation for room to employ your weapon) but as a society develops (better armor or different tactics for you lefties out there) it can generally compensate for or afford the slippage involved in letting people do things in the most comfortable way.
Well, that took me all afternood to write, and I’m too tired/bored to edit it any more. Hope you liked it as much as I did.
It’s days like this I’m glad to be Canadian and to not have to deal with this shit anymore.
That’s not stupid, Trilly. That’s a very smart way to make lotsa money on stupidity (and overhasty actions).