Journal bethanie's Journal: [NYTimes] Gay Marriage -- Georgia & New York 44
ARTICLE 1 of 2
July 7, 2006
News Analysis
For Gay Rights Movement, a Key Setback
By PATRICK HEALY
When Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage in November 2003, gay rights advocates imagined a chain reaction that would shake marriage laws until same-sex couples across the nation had the legal right to wed.
Nowhere did gay marriage seem like a natural fit more than New York, where the Stonewall uprising of 1969 provided inspiration for the gay rights movement and where a history of spirited progressivism had led some gay couples to envision their own weddings someday.
Yesterday's court ruling against gay marriage was more than a legal rebuke, then -- it came as a shocking insult to gay rights groups. Leaders said they were stunned by both the rejection and the decision's language, which they saw as expressing more concern for the children of heterosexual couples than for the children of gay couples. They also took exception to the ruling's description of homosexuality as a preference rather than an orientation.
"I never would have dreamed that New York's highest court would be so callous and insulting to gay people -- not in New York -- to have a legal decision that treats us as if we are alien beings," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
The New York ruling came the same day that the Georgia Supreme Court reinstated a ban on gay marriage.
The New York decision thrusts several challenges before gay activists: Do they continue waging legal battles when more courts seem skeptical about forcing gay marriage on the public? Should the cause turn toward more modest goals like supporting civil unions and domestic-partner benefits, like the law that Connecticut passed last year?
For now, at least, so-called marriage equality is the fight that both sides want to wage, and opponents are predicting that New York will be remembered as the beginning of the end of gay marriage.
"When people look back and write the history of this issue, they will view the New York decision as the Gettysburg in this big contest," said Monte Stewart, president of the Marriage Law Foundation.
Public opinion polls show that many Americans oppose gay marriage, and it is an issue that even separates some gay people, who see the marriage debate as a distraction from such pressing concerns as increasing federal and state support for AIDS research. The debate, in turn, has helped intensify gay marriage's effectiveness as a political weapon, which was widely noted last month when Republicans in the United States Senate were defeated in a vote on their proposed constitutional amendment banning gay unions. The House may take up the issue soon.
Gay supporters who saw hopeful tidings nearly three years ago in the Massachusetts ruling had not believed that a stinging new defeat could happen here.
"The New York Court of Appeals has a long tradition of protecting equal rights for New Yorkers, but today the court let us down," said Christine C. Quinn, the first openly gay speaker of the City Council in New York.
Before the decision, some gay leaders predicted that it would take only a decade for several states to legalize gay marriage and the United States Supreme Court to set a single standard of civil marriage for all states by allowing gays to wed everywhere. Yesterday, some of those leaders said they were dispirited enough to wonder if it would take two decades or more to reach that goal. Not knowing seemed to hurt the most.
"New York just reminded us that we'll have to go through a long period of conflict and confusion before we make it to the other side," said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who will make arguments in a gay marriage case in California on Monday.
Both sides agreed that the legal analysis in the New York decision would be read by, and perhaps influence, judges in other states who are considering similar cases. A ruling in a New Jersey case is expected by August, and another decision is forthcoming in a case in Washington State. Four other states -- California, Connecticut, Iowa and Maryland -- have court cases pending.
Opponents of gay marriage immediately hailed the New York decision as a sign that the legal and political campaign toward gay marriage nationwide had stalled. More than 40 states have laws that restrict marriage to a man and woman, and no high court or state legislature has granted gays a right to marry anywhere except Massachusetts.
Mr. Stewart, of the Marriage Law Foundation, said he was particularly pleased by the "superb and straightforward legal analysis" of the New York decision. He argued that it would provide a foundation for jurists in other states to restrict civil marriage to a man and a woman.
Specifically, Mr. Stewart praised Judge Robert S. Smith for refusing to use the racist legacy of miscegenation laws as a justification for extending marriage rights to same-sex couples. Too often, Mr. Stewart said, trial court judges and politicians are cowed by the premise that barring their unions would be the same as barring people of different races to marry.
"It's going to carry a lot of intellectual clout with other judges around the country," Mr. Stewart said.
David S. Buckel, senior counsel and director of the Marriage Project at the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which is pressing court cases to legalize gay marriage, acknowledged that the New York decision "will certainly be an opinion that other states will look at."
Yet Mr. Buckel and other supporters of gay marriage said parts of the ruling could shock judges and other Americans into seeing gay marriage in a favorable light. In particular, they noted one section suggesting heterosexual couples need marriage to be preserved as a way to shore up their faulty relationships and protect their children who might suffer in broken-home situations.
"It's a mess of a decision that in the end makes a very weak argument: That you can justify barring same-sex couples from marrying because of the unstable relationships of heterosexual couples," Mr. Buckel said.
With the New York case out of the way, the New Jersey case is taking on particular prominence, given that some legal analysts say that the New Jersey Supreme Court has a history as an assertive force for social change. Seven long-time couples sued in 2002 for the right to marry; five of the couples have children.
Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay support group, said he was surprised that the New York decision connected the rights and responsibilities of marriage to child-bearing.
He also said he found Judge Smith's use of the phrase "sexual preference" to describe homosexuality -- instead of "sexual orientation" -- to be provocative, and he predicted that many readers of the opinion would view the decision as retrograde.
"If nothing else, this ruling will cause people -- gay and straight alike -- to reflect on this judge's unusual view of gay marriage and then come to their own conclusions," Mr. Solmonese said.
Gay leaders also pointed out that more corporate leaders are standing by their side. Yesterday, The Boston Globe reported that 165 business and civic leaders in Massachusetts were mobilizing to protect gay marriage by fighting a proposed constitutional amendment there. That amendment could go before voters in 2008, raising the possibility that the number of states permitting gay marriage could go back to zero.
ARTICLE 2 of 2
July 7, 2006
Georgia Court Upholds a Referendum Banning Same-Sex Marriage
By BRENDA GOODMAN
ATLANTA, July 6 -- In a unanimous reversal of a lower court decision, six justices of the Georgia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state's 2004 ban against same-sex marriage was constitutional.
Seventy-six percent of Georgians who voted in a referendum in November 2004 supported the ban, but a Superior Court judge ruled in May that it violated the Georgia Constitution because the ballot question addressed more than one issue, including civil unions.
The Supreme Court ruling was expedited at the request of Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, who had threatened to call a special legislative session if the court did not act on an appeal by August. Critics said it was a move to rally conservative voters for his re-election race.
"I'm delighted that they ruled unanimously in favor of the people of Georgia, that they clearly understood what they were voting for," Mr. Perdue said at a news conference.
Gay and civil rights groups had hoped the court would toss out the sweeping amendment because they said its dual purposes -- to limit the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman and to refuse legal benefits and protections to same-sex couples in civil unions -- were unfairly linked in the referendum. They said this forced voters who might have agreed with only one part to have to approve both.
Moreover, the section of the amendment dealing with those legal benefits and protections was not printed on the November 2004 ballot or posted at polling places. Voters could see only the section that limited marriage to a man and a woman.
The opinion came on the same day the New York State's highest court, the Court of Appeals, decided that the state had no legal obligation to recognize same-sex marriages.
"I was very disappointed," said Karla Drenner, a Georgia state representative who led the fight against the amendment here. "It's a very sad thing when the empire state of the South and the empire state of the North decide to discriminate on the same day."
Ms. Drenner, a Democrat, said, "I think the public was deceived here in Georgia."
The Georgia Supreme Court, however, ruled that voters had not been misled by the two-part question.
Justice Robert Benham, who wrote the court's opinion, found that the section on civil unions did not "address a different objective than that of the amendment as a whole," and thus did not violate state law. One of the court's seven justices, Harold D. Melton, did not participate in the ruling.
COMMENTARY:
I'm not willing to see this as a complete loss for gay rights. My hope is that it will encourage gay AND straight rights folks to take a different approach to this issue. Rather than trying to convert marital status to one that will apply to ANY two people (with certain qualified exclusions, like familial relations and lower-end age limits) to be "married," it's my hope that both straight AND homosexual people might work for the creation of a religion-free "civil union" status to be created.
I also find it very interesting that anti-gay-marriage arguments are made in the whole "Think of the children!" vein. 'Cause I agree, everything we do is obstensibly for the sake of our children, or at least (as in SW's case) for the well-being future generations. We need to ensure that our society will be viable after we are gone and do what's best and what's right for kids.
If that's a foregone conclusion, then I have a question: What happens to those kids who are gay?
July 7, 2006
News Analysis
For Gay Rights Movement, a Key Setback
By PATRICK HEALY
When Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage in November 2003, gay rights advocates imagined a chain reaction that would shake marriage laws until same-sex couples across the nation had the legal right to wed.
Nowhere did gay marriage seem like a natural fit more than New York, where the Stonewall uprising of 1969 provided inspiration for the gay rights movement and where a history of spirited progressivism had led some gay couples to envision their own weddings someday.
Yesterday's court ruling against gay marriage was more than a legal rebuke, then -- it came as a shocking insult to gay rights groups. Leaders said they were stunned by both the rejection and the decision's language, which they saw as expressing more concern for the children of heterosexual couples than for the children of gay couples. They also took exception to the ruling's description of homosexuality as a preference rather than an orientation.
"I never would have dreamed that New York's highest court would be so callous and insulting to gay people -- not in New York -- to have a legal decision that treats us as if we are alien beings," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
The New York ruling came the same day that the Georgia Supreme Court reinstated a ban on gay marriage.
The New York decision thrusts several challenges before gay activists: Do they continue waging legal battles when more courts seem skeptical about forcing gay marriage on the public? Should the cause turn toward more modest goals like supporting civil unions and domestic-partner benefits, like the law that Connecticut passed last year?
For now, at least, so-called marriage equality is the fight that both sides want to wage, and opponents are predicting that New York will be remembered as the beginning of the end of gay marriage.
"When people look back and write the history of this issue, they will view the New York decision as the Gettysburg in this big contest," said Monte Stewart, president of the Marriage Law Foundation.
Public opinion polls show that many Americans oppose gay marriage, and it is an issue that even separates some gay people, who see the marriage debate as a distraction from such pressing concerns as increasing federal and state support for AIDS research. The debate, in turn, has helped intensify gay marriage's effectiveness as a political weapon, which was widely noted last month when Republicans in the United States Senate were defeated in a vote on their proposed constitutional amendment banning gay unions. The House may take up the issue soon.
Gay supporters who saw hopeful tidings nearly three years ago in the Massachusetts ruling had not believed that a stinging new defeat could happen here.
"The New York Court of Appeals has a long tradition of protecting equal rights for New Yorkers, but today the court let us down," said Christine C. Quinn, the first openly gay speaker of the City Council in New York.
Before the decision, some gay leaders predicted that it would take only a decade for several states to legalize gay marriage and the United States Supreme Court to set a single standard of civil marriage for all states by allowing gays to wed everywhere. Yesterday, some of those leaders said they were dispirited enough to wonder if it would take two decades or more to reach that goal. Not knowing seemed to hurt the most.
"New York just reminded us that we'll have to go through a long period of conflict and confusion before we make it to the other side," said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who will make arguments in a gay marriage case in California on Monday.
Both sides agreed that the legal analysis in the New York decision would be read by, and perhaps influence, judges in other states who are considering similar cases. A ruling in a New Jersey case is expected by August, and another decision is forthcoming in a case in Washington State. Four other states -- California, Connecticut, Iowa and Maryland -- have court cases pending.
Opponents of gay marriage immediately hailed the New York decision as a sign that the legal and political campaign toward gay marriage nationwide had stalled. More than 40 states have laws that restrict marriage to a man and woman, and no high court or state legislature has granted gays a right to marry anywhere except Massachusetts.
Mr. Stewart, of the Marriage Law Foundation, said he was particularly pleased by the "superb and straightforward legal analysis" of the New York decision. He argued that it would provide a foundation for jurists in other states to restrict civil marriage to a man and a woman.
Specifically, Mr. Stewart praised Judge Robert S. Smith for refusing to use the racist legacy of miscegenation laws as a justification for extending marriage rights to same-sex couples. Too often, Mr. Stewart said, trial court judges and politicians are cowed by the premise that barring their unions would be the same as barring people of different races to marry.
"It's going to carry a lot of intellectual clout with other judges around the country," Mr. Stewart said.
David S. Buckel, senior counsel and director of the Marriage Project at the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which is pressing court cases to legalize gay marriage, acknowledged that the New York decision "will certainly be an opinion that other states will look at."
Yet Mr. Buckel and other supporters of gay marriage said parts of the ruling could shock judges and other Americans into seeing gay marriage in a favorable light. In particular, they noted one section suggesting heterosexual couples need marriage to be preserved as a way to shore up their faulty relationships and protect their children who might suffer in broken-home situations.
"It's a mess of a decision that in the end makes a very weak argument: That you can justify barring same-sex couples from marrying because of the unstable relationships of heterosexual couples," Mr. Buckel said.
With the New York case out of the way, the New Jersey case is taking on particular prominence, given that some legal analysts say that the New Jersey Supreme Court has a history as an assertive force for social change. Seven long-time couples sued in 2002 for the right to marry; five of the couples have children.
Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay support group, said he was surprised that the New York decision connected the rights and responsibilities of marriage to child-bearing.
He also said he found Judge Smith's use of the phrase "sexual preference" to describe homosexuality -- instead of "sexual orientation" -- to be provocative, and he predicted that many readers of the opinion would view the decision as retrograde.
"If nothing else, this ruling will cause people -- gay and straight alike -- to reflect on this judge's unusual view of gay marriage and then come to their own conclusions," Mr. Solmonese said.
Gay leaders also pointed out that more corporate leaders are standing by their side. Yesterday, The Boston Globe reported that 165 business and civic leaders in Massachusetts were mobilizing to protect gay marriage by fighting a proposed constitutional amendment there. That amendment could go before voters in 2008, raising the possibility that the number of states permitting gay marriage could go back to zero.
ARTICLE 2 of 2
July 7, 2006
Georgia Court Upholds a Referendum Banning Same-Sex Marriage
By BRENDA GOODMAN
ATLANTA, July 6 -- In a unanimous reversal of a lower court decision, six justices of the Georgia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state's 2004 ban against same-sex marriage was constitutional.
Seventy-six percent of Georgians who voted in a referendum in November 2004 supported the ban, but a Superior Court judge ruled in May that it violated the Georgia Constitution because the ballot question addressed more than one issue, including civil unions.
The Supreme Court ruling was expedited at the request of Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, who had threatened to call a special legislative session if the court did not act on an appeal by August. Critics said it was a move to rally conservative voters for his re-election race.
"I'm delighted that they ruled unanimously in favor of the people of Georgia, that they clearly understood what they were voting for," Mr. Perdue said at a news conference.
Gay and civil rights groups had hoped the court would toss out the sweeping amendment because they said its dual purposes -- to limit the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman and to refuse legal benefits and protections to same-sex couples in civil unions -- were unfairly linked in the referendum. They said this forced voters who might have agreed with only one part to have to approve both.
Moreover, the section of the amendment dealing with those legal benefits and protections was not printed on the November 2004 ballot or posted at polling places. Voters could see only the section that limited marriage to a man and a woman.
The opinion came on the same day the New York State's highest court, the Court of Appeals, decided that the state had no legal obligation to recognize same-sex marriages.
"I was very disappointed," said Karla Drenner, a Georgia state representative who led the fight against the amendment here. "It's a very sad thing when the empire state of the South and the empire state of the North decide to discriminate on the same day."
Ms. Drenner, a Democrat, said, "I think the public was deceived here in Georgia."
The Georgia Supreme Court, however, ruled that voters had not been misled by the two-part question.
Justice Robert Benham, who wrote the court's opinion, found that the section on civil unions did not "address a different objective than that of the amendment as a whole," and thus did not violate state law. One of the court's seven justices, Harold D. Melton, did not participate in the ruling.
COMMENTARY:
I'm not willing to see this as a complete loss for gay rights. My hope is that it will encourage gay AND straight rights folks to take a different approach to this issue. Rather than trying to convert marital status to one that will apply to ANY two people (with certain qualified exclusions, like familial relations and lower-end age limits) to be "married," it's my hope that both straight AND homosexual people might work for the creation of a religion-free "civil union" status to be created.
I also find it very interesting that anti-gay-marriage arguments are made in the whole "Think of the children!" vein. 'Cause I agree, everything we do is obstensibly for the sake of our children, or at least (as in SW's case) for the well-being future generations. We need to ensure that our society will be viable after we are gone and do what's best and what's right for kids.
If that's a foregone conclusion, then I have a question: What happens to those kids who are gay?
Here's an idea... (Score:1)
I agree with your assesement though at the end. Go for civil unions and remove marriage from a government issue, hetero- or homo- sexual. Return marriage to the churchs where it belongs.
Marriage has a meaning since the beginning, one man and one woman (except for mormons, okey, and a few others who sported harems). The efforts of the gay movement are their own worst enemy in choosing to go after marriage instead of civil unions.
Re:Here's an idea... (Score:2)
I skimmed the actual ruling, available here [state.ny.us] n PDF. An interesting point is the suggestion that the strength of same-sex parenting is one reason to deny marriage to same-sex couples. As the court put it, no one adopts or gets artificially inseminated by accident, as opposed to the casual inseminator of heterosexual family law an
Re:Here's an idea... (Score:2)
Re:Here's an idea... (Score:1)
Re:Here's an idea... (Score:2)
No! No! No! No! Not only no, but a thousand times, Hell No! The regulation of marriage is not one of the powers delegated to the Congress, so it has no place making pronouncements about it. Fucking Statists.
Re:Here's an idea... (Score:1)
Even if the federal government do not have to define marriage, the states do. Just like any other law congress is where laws are defined. Not the judicial branch. Marriage until
Re:Here's an idea... (Score:2)
Re:Here's an idea... (Score:1)
Re:Here's an idea... (Score:2)
Re:Here's an idea... (Score:1)
Re:Here's an idea... (Score:2)
Here in .ca (Score:1)
Gay marriage has been legal for a while although the new Conservative government wants to undo it all. There hasn't been a plague of locusts yet. Mind you, if the Toronto terrorists succeeded I'm sure Pat Robertson would be saying that his invisible man is punishing us for liberal thinking.
"There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation." -Pierre Trudeau, 1967
"straight rights" (Score:2)
I agree with the civil unions for ALL approach, but I am deeply saddened by the fact that courts are more often than not finding that gays aren't entitled to basic equality. I suppose it's not a surprise, but to claim that this nation stands for equal protection under the law (as enshrined in the 14th amendment) is much harder to do today. We still have the ideals, I guess, but we don't live up to them.
Re:"straight rights" (Score:2)
Whether or not people are offended by homosexuality or by premarital sex or extramarital sex or whatever is their own business, and they're entitled to it -- as long as it doesn't inhibit anyone else'
Re:"straight rights" (Score:1)
When you think about it, homosexuality (and the acts of its practitioners) is actually LESS damaging to society than, say, extramarital sex.
To play Devil's Advocate; if gays are allowed to marry, do you think they'll be more or less likely to stray into the realm of extramarital sex? Your argument may be headed in the wrong direction.
Full disclosure: if you didn't know, Kim and I aren't married ("You mean Anna is a 24 day old bastard?!" Yep, and I'm a 40 year old bastard.) The term "bastard" is so lame,
Re:"straight rights" (Score:2)
And my mom called my dad one so often that I grew up thinking it was a term of endearment.
I agree that it's quite outmoded at this point, particularly as an epithet. I certainly didn't mean it as such.
As far as gays and extramarital sex -- um, YEAH -- by definition, if they get married then of COURSE extramarital sex rates will i
Re:"straight rights" (Score:2)
The idea that if there's a large enough group of them who band together and lobby and get legislation passed to outlaw any of it, or to say that I can be denied any civil liberties or entitlements as a result of my private sexual acts is a MAJOR problem.
Yes, I completely agree, this is a MAJOR problem. Why people think they should deny each other's rights on this basis I will never understand, but sadly it is a real factor in this country (as well as many others - consi
Re:"straight rights" (Score:1)
Re:"straight rights" (Score:2)
I really needed that kind of "stroke" today.
Re:"straight rights" (Score:1)
Re:"straight rights" (Score:2)
Re:"straight rights" (Score:1)
Re:"straight rights" (Score:2)
If state's had laws that possibly implied people were entitled to be given a big pile of money, it would be the similar.
Except state's don't have laws like that. They do have ones about equality.
Hit 'em in the head with a Bible until they aren't (Score:2)
Speaking of homosexuals. I was at Nava yesterday and this waiter was half Native American, half Phillipino. He should have been a model. I was flirting with a waitress (surprise, surprise) when he walked up and we started talking. I told him I bet he got all kinds of girls, and if I were gay, I'd be hitting on him. He said, "You could have me, I don't like girls." He then showed me a picture of him with long hair. If I hadn't seen him first, I'd have thought
STOP THE NEWSPEAK!! (Score:2)
It might interest you to know that gay, for some 1000 years meant the following things:
gay:
# Showing or characterized by cheerfulness and lighthearted excitement; merry.
# Bright or lively, especially in color: a gay, sunny room.
# Given to social pleasures.
# Dissolute; licentious.
The word you seek, if you stop using orwellian newspeak, is HOMOSEXUAL. Yes it is "offensive" becau
Re:STOP THE NEWSPEAK!! (Score:2)
And when marriage becomes a term that applies ONLY to people who can (and presumably DO) produce offspring, then I think it only fa
Re:STOP THE NEWSPEAK!! (Score:2)
My view on gay marriage - I shan't be involved in one (although I'd enjoy being invited to the wedding). Other than that, I don't see why folks don't just mind their own business. A same-gender couple wishes to celebrate their love for each other - cool. The world needs more love. They wish civil benefits equal to what different gender couples receive? cool. Doesn't subtract anything from me, nor for that matter, anyone else who's not involved.
Incorrect dear fellow. (Score:2)
Marriage was born of the need to secure familial alliances, and pass on inheritances to heirs, at first weapons, hunting tools, later homes, livestock, eventually just any form of property and titles (nobility, etc).
I am not fighting against "gay marriage" I personally do not give a shit, but I
Re:Incorrect dear fellow. (Score:2)
Hey. You.
Yeah, you, with the bits of spittle forming at the corners of your mouth. YOU.
Remember how you called me a liberal and a... *coughcough* feminist?
How about a little light [slashdot.org] reading [slashdot.org] of your own?
You know... before you start shoving people into teensy weensy little pigeonholes and shit. (Hint: there's more where those came from. Much much more.)
Mmm kay?
Thanks.
Buh bye.
Not one bit :) but thanks. (Score:2)
And I didn't pigeonhole you, you pigeonhole yourself if that's what you think
But I strangely notice that most "female" "feminists" are actually feminazi's, they're butch
Re:Incorrect dear fellow. (Score:2)
Amending the US constitution, useless? Why, next you'll have us believing we should disband Congress because we need no new laws: Certainly, what laws we have will cover every conceivable issue we as a society will ever face in the future...(ad absurdum, perhaps, but needed to be said nonetheless)
As
Re:Incorrect dear fellow. (Score:2)
We take the bill of rights, we add an ammendment to set that ALL CITIZENS CAN VOTE, AND ALL HUMANS OF ALL COLORS SIZES AND SHAPE
MISTAKE... Let me Rephrase (Score:2)
All human beings, of all colors, creeds, shapes, sizes, and sexes that are able of body, sound of mind and not of criminal preference, shall be eligible to become Citizens of their State and also of the Republic.
Ammendment 12
All citizens with the exception of felons serving time in prison, shall be eligible to vote in ALL federal and state elections without restrictions once they are past the age of 18.
Convicted felons shall be eligible to vote once they have been out of prison and without anot
Re:STOP THE NEWSPEAK!! (Score:2)
Marriage is referring to couples that can biologically produce children. A barren couple might have trouble, but some, later DO have kids. A homosexual couple will NEVER produce children, there are no natural fixes for the condition that might exist to certain forms of infertility.
I'm hurt. All the "gay" folks I've spoken to seem to only want the benefits. I personally hold that we remove marriage from the political spectrum by moving it to religious land. And moving into taxable area something
Re:STOP THE NEWSPEAK!! (Score:2)
Another nutjob.
I swear, I collect these things the way TL collects waitresses' phone numbers.
It must be a gift.
Blame the heteros. (Score:2)
Re:Blame the heteros. (Score:2)
Re:Blame the heteros. (Score:2)
I thought the whole thing against gays was that they couldn't reproduce with each other, and the children needed to be protected, and... and... and...
Now I'm just confused.
Re:Blame the heteros. (Score:2)
So far they're contributing just a tiny, tiny percentage of the births, but that's likely to increase.
Post #1: political (Score:2)
I'm not willing to see it as a loss at all. Heck, I'm almost ready to see it as a victory.
I can see, even in this bluest of blue states, the Republican Party mounting the same "those damn activist judges!" campaign that works so well elsewhere in the country, and ammending my state's somewhat illegible constitution to expressly prohibit gay marriages of any kind. And if they don't do it here, they sure will in Texas or the rest of the bigoted -
Post #2: religious (Score:2)
There's no such thing as a kid who is gay. It Just Can't Happen. You might as well argue for rules to protect divorced kids, or retired kids.
Even if there is a genetic predisposition towards homosexuality -- and i'm not convicned that there is -- it's just plain politics to call someone who has that predisposition and not only doesn't act on it, but doesn't have sex one way or the other, gay. If you're of the age where you're having sex, you're not really a kid -- y
Re:Post #2: religious (Score:2)
First of all, are you aware of the just-released study that found younger brothers are more likely to be gay? [sfgate.com]
Re:Post #2: religious (Score:2)
To say that this isn't true is like saying that dogs don't have personalities or "souls," that they are just stimulus-response types of creatures. You may not be able to PROVE "scientifically" that there's more to a dog's mind than pure behavioralism, but ANYONE who has a dog in their life can tell you you're full of s
Re:Post #2: religious (Score:2)
No, it's about who you choose to fuck.
Let's say that we have a set of identical boy-twins, both of whom also have an identical sexual fantasy life, in which they dream about having sex with a man. Surprisingly, they both have a clear and testable reaction to gay pornographic images that far exceeds their reaction to heterosexual pornographic images.
Brother A says "I'm gay!" and lives a full-blown homosexual lifestyle, eventually moving to Massachusets where he