Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

I like how that argument seemingly assumes that there aren't any gay women.

among many other bizarre assumptions. it's like he gives kind of a history lesson of all the horrible things that have been involved in traditional marriages (and still are some places, obv). and then says, "well, so, we don't do those kinds of things any more. but if we did, none of them would apply to gay marriage. so ...." and then i just lose whatever thread of argument he's trying to make. but it seems like it's part of the current phase of the anti-marriage brigades (which i would characterize as a rear-guard action, if it didn't make me snicker), where they know they're losing traction and they know it's important not to come across as bigots or zealots, so they have to come up for ever more baroque and impenetrable framings for arguments that of course remain bigoted and zealous at their core. it's kind of entertaining, although obviously it would be more entertaining if actual people's real lives and rights weren't at stake.

come up with, not for..

xxpost: yeah, that line did make me wonder if the whole thing was a parody. but that's not really the weekly standard's style.

that whole guy is a parody

he's apparently been beating this drum for a while:

Yes, marriage tends to regulate or channel the sexual appetite of men, and this is undoubtedly a good thing for women. But it is not the ultimate good. A husband, no matter how unfaithful, cannot introduce a child who is not his wife's own into a marriage without her knowledge; she alone has the power to do such a thing. For a woman, the fundamental advantage of marriage is thus not to regulate her husband but to empower herself--to regulate who has access to her person, and to marshal the resources of her husband and of the wider community to help her raise her child ren.

Every human relationship can be described as an enslavement, but for women the alternative to marriage is a much worse enslavement--which is why marriage, for women, is often associated as much with sexual freedom as with sexual constraint. In the traditional Roman Catholic cultures of the Mediterranean and South America, where virginity is fiercely protected and adolescent girls are hardly permitted to "date," marriage gives a woman the double luxury of controlling her sexuality and, if she wishes, extending it.

otoh, there's ... this ...

Cal decision is no change -- Prop 8 stands but so do the 18,000 marriages already performed.

That's unfortunate. Hopefully all of San Francisco up and moves to Des Moines.

It's unfortunate but also utterly unsurprising -- basically the court's said, "Well, stays as is." If anything I wonder what sort of prompt this will add to the rumblings about rewriting the state's constitution, as has started to kick in to high given the current basket case that is California's fiscal situation.

Goddamnit

:(

My friend in San Fran is bummed, but he looks at it this way: now "middle America" will get a chance to observe how sane and boring the existing gay marriages are.

well, it sucks. but otoh i really do think it'll be better to overturn it on another referendum vote -- which i totally think californians can and probably will do -- than for it be done by the court. i think the court did everything it could, really.

Yeah, that's sort of how I took this one too. Court was all, you took it out of our hands, so you now have to live with yourselves while all these other states show you up.

tipsy and Eric OTM

Yeah - unfortunate, but predictable.

Here is my friend Steve's report, live from city hall in SF:

it was weird there. all this chanting, then one long-haired dude came out with this thumbs down, all the gays started shouting "shame on you" and the pro-prop 8ers cheered, then the gays crossed the street to chant somewhere else, and it was over.

traffic being blocked now, apparently.

Lame that the courts didn't strike this down, but they didn't really have a legal rationale for doing so. You can't rule constitutional amendments unconstitutional.

back to the ballot box.

it'll happen

the ruling is pretty interesting tho:

Proposition 8 reasonably must be interpreted in a limited fashion as eliminating only the right of same-sex couples to equal access to the designation of marriage, and as not otherwise affecting the constitutional right of those couples to establish an officially recognized family relationship.
Ruling, pg. 37. And:

Accordingly, although Proposition 8 eliminates the ability of same-sex couples to enter into an official relationship designated “marriage,” in all other respects those couples continue to possess, under the state constitutional privacy and due process clauses, “the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage,” including, “most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish — with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life — an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage.” (Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th 757, 781.) Like opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples enjoy this protection not as a matter of legislative grace, but of constitutional right. Page 41

so it seems like they're explicitly saying prop. 8 isn't (and can't) take away rights, only the designation of the word "marriage." wonder how that will play out. is there an existing civil unions law in the state?

I... think so?

It's a slippery answer to a tough question. They're talking out of both sides of their judge holes b/c they don't want to be pinned down.

I haven't read the decision (in whole) but this fits w/ the idea that marriages that were performed are still valid but that no new ones can take place. Everyone has the right the constitutional rights and responsibilities associated with marriage, but Prop 8 forbids "official" marriage.

Blech.

I finally read Sam Schulman's article and this
Now to live in such a system, in which sexual intercourse can be illicit, is a great nuisance. Many of us feel that licit sexuality loses, moreover, a bit of its oomph.

reminds me a lot of Kirk Cameron's dad's assertion re gay sex

“It’s pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush. They are committed in almost a religious way. And they’ll take enormous risks, do anything.”

He says that for married men and women, gay sex would be irresistible. “Marital sex tends toward the boring end,” he points out. “Generally, it doesn’t deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does”

Man, I need to use this line of reasoning on straight buddies.

hetero sex is pretty fuckin dope fwiw

reminds me a lot of Kirk Cameron's dad's assertion re gay sex

wait what

Source of the Paul Cameron quote http://www.pflagdetroit.org/Holy_War_OnGays.htm

That is not the Kirk Cameron of "Growing Pains" fame, btw. It is a different Kirk Cameron.

Oh crap. Really?

too good to be true I guess

Haha - I'm embarrassed, but you can probably understand why I thought his son was THE Kirk Cameron.

Yes. California recognizes the "domestic partner" status for (a) same-sex couples and (b) heterosexual couples where one of the partners is 62 or over. They are afforded the same rights as married couples, but are just not "married."

And neither the 2008 decision or this most recent one (so far as I can tell) affects this.

er... why (b)?

not sure, California doesn't allow common law marriage either ... unless you were common law in a state that recognizes it before you moved to California.

(b) is very weird.

END MAY-DECEMBER DISCRIMINATION NOW

Oh wait, maybe that's a loophole to get elderly relatives onto your health plan? But wouldn't they already be classifiable as dependents, anyway?

Maybe it's a way to make sure that older people who're likely to spend time in the hosp get to have their partner of their waning years qualify as family? It seems like a really weird differentiation, but I guess with the number of "single" retirees, maybe it makes sense?

oic, like retirement home repairings where you are not at all likely to get married

Right, exactly.

I understand, and who knows what sort of process went on to arrive at this decision, but still, it's not like old folks are forbidden from having an official marriage. No harm in it I guess, still odd.

there are lots of reasons old folks don't remarry, almost all of them legal/financial. For ex., if you remarry, you may lose pension benefits of dead spouse, etc.

I don't think pension benefits work that way. Most death benefits don't have remarriage rules from my understanding, but there are undoubtedly other legal/financial issues.

pension benefits from divorce settlements probably have a remarriage clause.

could be, I dunno the niceties of the law in these cases - just speaking from personal experience where my divorced dad has no plans to marry his widowed girlfriend because her dead husband stuck some clause about her being cut off financially from his benefits if she remarried

into his will

My grandfather's will had a remarriage clause...so my crazy step-grandmother has been living with her much younger ex-con boyfriend for like a decade rather than lose the inheritance that pays for her life (and his).

Oooh, a telling xp.

maybe its just me but having that in your will seems like a sign of collosal assholism

Well, it was old fashioned of him. He married her to provide for her -- his responsibility as the man in her life. If she met and loved and married another man after him, that would be her new husband's responsibility. The end result is that she got all his lifetime of savings to put toward her support as a widow, and his children did not. Now she uses the money to support the man in her life.

My grandpa assumed that she would do the "honest" thing b/c he thought she was a person who shared his worldviews. Unfortunately that turned out not to be the case.

Btw fuck you.