wcj1

So that's how I got in this predicament... I did not immediately ask if he was a US Citizen, and then show him the door when he said no. See, you are never too old to learn something.

Anyway, let's try another hypothetical. Your boyfriend has a medical emergency (you choose: car accident, plague, whatever) and is unconscious and the hospital will not tell you what is going on, nor let you make any treatment decisions.

BillJ

jadedinsider

I love Roseanne Barr when I heard her recently say "why are gay people pushing for marraige anyway, have'nt they already sufferred enough!?"

But seriously, we were so close to getting a legislative majority and stalling Bush, and the "liberal" courts had to put us back on the front burner of scaring the "fundies" to the polls.

Let's want what we want but strive for reality. Reality is that the word marraige scares them way to much, and who ends up losing, we do, year after miserable year. Everytime the fundies run to the polls to vote against us, they pull all the ( R ) levers also. We would already have hospital, tax, and inheritence rights on the federal level if we just hit America with the words "Civil Union". You substitute any polling question out their with those two words and we go way above 50% in almost every demographic. I'll settle for "seperate but equal" , for now. They are too stupid to know that it is the same thing. Eventually enough of them will die off and you can have your "marraige." But in the mean time, let's be smarter than them and just change the words to our benefit. It is only for 10 years or so.

As for marraige, the hetero world has already botched that up badly enough. What is their success rate for this "sanctity", 45/46%. Give me break fundies! If you want to protect marraige and the family, get a constitutional ammendment to ban divorce "outside of God's law." Allow re-marraige only in the event of adultery or death of a spouse. THAT is God's law. AHH, but now they start to squirm, see them, squirming in their pews? Now they are uncomfortable because your pointing the finger of truth at them, the real destroyers of "family values."

As for me, I'm with Roseanne!!

royalwing

What is marriage? According to Wikipedia: "A marriage is a relationship between or among individuals, usually recognized by civil authority and/or bound by the religious beliefs of the participants. The fact that marriage often has the dual nature of a binding legal contract plus a moral promise can make it difficult to characterize."

It's exactly what's in this last sentence which makes the debate on the introduction of the possibility for same sex couples to get married so difficult, both in the US and other countries. In my opinion it al depends on how secular a state is, both in law and day to day reality. The more secular a state is, the less its laws are influenced by religious morality and the easier it is to press for a modern application of the law.

The same for the law on marriages. In a secular state ideally a marriage with rights from and duties to the state is a civil marriage, where the relationship can only be recognised in the town hall F.e. after calls for full equality for all citizens, whether straight or gay, in the Netherlands no special law was made for same sex couples to get married. It was as simple as getting the reference to man and woman to be scrapped from the marriage law.

Unfortunately there was a catch. Because of international pressure, as far as I know, there was/is no possibility for gays and lesbians to adopt children from outside the Netherlands.

Dutch religious traditionalists (one could call them also fundamentalists) argued that this drive for equality is against what the Bible teaches. That argument was countered: churches are still free to decide whoever they marry. Obviously Roman catholic churches do not wed same sex couples, however after long debates quite a number of the protestant churches followed the civil wedding law and made it possible for same sex couples to have their wedding blessed in the church.

My advice in this debate would be to have a step by step approach. Aim for civil union as a first step. At the same time try and make it clear to the public at large that in a modern western society civil wedding and church wedding are/should be two separate matters. If all citizens in our societies are supposed to be equal for the law then the legislators should also consider making it possible for the gay and lesbian citizens to marry for the law.

jadedinsider

Thank you royalwing!!!

Thank you for making my point much more eloquently than I ever could. Only in America does the boundary of civil and religious marriage cross lines. Correct me if I am wrong. Perhaps I should have said only in the western world? A perfect example of this for those of us more "simple" minded folks, Prince Charles and Camilla. I remember vividly their wedding day. They and the "Family Firm" trotted down to the city hall and performed a "civil" ceremony to be legally wed in the eyes of the state, they then proceeded to the chapel to wed in the eyes of the church. Two distinctly and seperate situations. Only in America do the lines blur. I am sure there are other places, but most western world nations have seperation of the two. Where else in western society does the clergy perform BOTH. Where else does the clergy say "by the power vested in me by the state of ____ ?" Talk about violation of the speration of church and state?

royalwing

That is indeed an excellent example where state and church are separated and basically two ceremonies took place, a civil and a religious.

GarySAN

time to move on

Doppy

So you can say confidently that you will never fall in love with someone who isn't a US citizen? You must have a better crystal ball than the rest of us.

Imagine your best friend, who you really care about, falls in love with someone who isn't a citizen. Then can you see the value of marriage?

In any event, like I said above, even if you don't want the rights for yourself, it doesn't mean that you can't have empathy for those who do. Like I said before, if the white majority didn't emphathize with African Americans, the latter wouldn't have the right to vote.

In a totally selfish world, whites wouldn't have given blacks the right to vote. In fact, to some extent voting is a zero sum game (the more people who vote, the less my vote counts), so expanding the number of people who had the right to vote actually takes away from those who do the expanding. (Unlike marriage, which is not a zero sum game.) Would you also be indifferent to losing your voting rights?

StudentExplorer

While for it, I dislike the fact that it seems to have become the defining goal for the LGBT community.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

No, just look good and well mannered. Versus some straight slop (and there are gay men that are also total pigs so don't get me wrong) wearing a baggy "Hooters" sweatshirt from Wal Mart. Like the other night when the 300 pound troll sitting next me was snoring and passing gas the entire flight. Spent about all of the flight in the first class galley with the FAs as to pass out from the stink.

anonplz

Think about it: when you are a young man, all you want is sex, sex, sex. Who cares about relationships or that "deep" stuff?

Yorkshire Traveller

Well, we had our 'Civil Partnership' just over a week ago (October 20th!)

We have been together for ten years and for us it was important that we protect pensions, inheritance (no inhertiance tax in the UK between spouses) and the like. We faced the situation that if one of us died, the surviving partner would have had to have sold our house to pay the 40% inheritance tax on the estate. This is now no longer the case.

Plus of course we had a really great bash with 150 friends to help us celebrate

Nigel.

jamiel

Sitting here in Detroit overlooking the Detroit River and Windsor, ON gives an interesting perspective on the subject. There are loads of people who cross in either direction between Michigan and Windsor to go to work every day.

One acquaintance lives/citizen of in Canada, works here for a large consulting firm, crosses every day for work, his partner is a school teacher in Canada. He doesn't want to get married because it's awkward to cross into the US when you are (and he obviously does it every day).

Another acquaintance lives/permanent resident of Canada, works for large consulting firm, partner a banker/citizen in Canada. They married so they could live together (which they do in Canada). They wanted to be together, so they married.

I was seeing a guy in Windsor for about 6 months. Not a great relationship, but a strangely comforting feeling that for the price of a tunnel toll, I could be married with all the legal benefits thereto applying.

Clergy from the US can do ceremonies in Canada with little fuss. MCC/Detroit does it fairly often. Again, for little more than the price of a tunnel toll and recording fee in Canada, you can be legally married (even as both are US citizens).

Legal firms in Canada advertise weekly in our GLBT newspaper. It clearly is an untenable situation that every New Jersey decision puts a nail into the coffin.

GarySAN

Congratulations! Wish you all the best.
Gary

KenJohn

Many contragulations and to many more happy years!
An FTer and no details about the honeymoon ?

Doppy

That's what you get for not sticking to the American citizen only gay bars.