frankie's Journal: Dubya's sexual re-orientation

So, is he or isn't he? Like passing a car accident(*), I can't help but review the flip-flops one more time:

• 2000 Feb: The state can do what they want to do.
• 2000 Apr: The decision should be left up to cities and states.
• 2003 June: I'm undecided about GMA.
• 2003 July: There ought to be a law.
• 2003 Oct: Happy "Marriage Protection Week"!
• 2003 Dec: I will support GMA, AND I also support leaving it up to the states.
• 2004 Feb: GMA!
• 2004 Oct: How about if we just call them civil unions instead?
• 2005 Jan: C'mon guys, it isn't going to pass anyways.
• 2005 Feb: GMA!
• 2006 Jan: How about we talk about something else instead?
• 2006 May: GMA!

(*) = Actually, I don't rubberneck for wrecks. Partly because my peripheral vision is good enough to get the gist, but mainly because I'd really prefer if everyone didn't slow down so unnecessarily.

Easy to pull out of his pocket

[nizo]

This is a great issue to pull out of his pocket as a way to distract from everything else (8.3 trillion dollar nation debt, 286 billion dollar cost of Iraq war, etc). As an aside, with the right therapy I think we can cure him of his homophobia, but I could be wrong :-)

Yes, it's pandering

[Cujo]

Politicians pander. Successful politicians pander often. This is pandering and pushing emotional hot buttons. It's an attmept to improve the fall voter turnout among social conservatives.

It also strikes me as really bad constitutional law. It's just the wrong level of abstraction for the Constitution, and it imposes Judeo-Christian values, threateining inconsistency the 1st amendment. I also can't imagine how anyone could reasonably claim that this "defends" marriage. How someone could confuse the me

Re:Yes, it's pandering

[frankie]

Cujo, thank you so much for that last paragraph. I have wanted a rational discussion of this EXACT topic [slashdot.org] for over two years. However, the other guy [slashdot.org] had pledged a lifetime membership in the Axis of Weasels, and never came close to giving me a plausible answer.

How would you change current marriage law? What would you replace it with? Please show how your system handles survivor benefits, power of attorney when lacking written directives, insurance, etc.

Re:Yes, it's pandering

[Cujo]

I'm no expert on legal theory, but it strikes me you can already do most of things without marriage. Perhaps a voluntary registry of "life partners" could be used to resolve the tough nut cases like what to do if someone is suddenly on a respirator with a bad prognosis. None of those things have much to do with sexuality or procreation, so why not decouple them? I can see scenarios in which heterosexuals would designate a same-sex person as a "life partner," because they'd rather have their best friend

should be...

[Cujo]

"most of these things"

Re:Yes, it's pandering

[frankie]

Thanks. Yes, that's basically the same route I've been pondering. Decouple the financial/legal/social aspects of marriage into separately defined relationships.

Back in 2003, Mike Hawk posted a journal entry about his fear of gay marriage. I sent him a very long essay about how a decoupled system would solve the problem. He lambasted me that "solving the problem" meant that I didn't understand what was really important. Huh? When I asked, he of course refused to enlighten me, then deleted the journal a week