[...] wrote about the angst, and blackballing going on in the film industry over Prop 8 yesterday and one of the main liberal targets has been hit. [...]

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[...] wrote about the angst, and blackballing going on in the film industry over Prop 8 yesterday and one of the main liberal targets has been hit. [...]

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WesMorgan, I agree with most of what you say. But my entire thought is founded on my opinion that the govt has, and had, no business defining marriage to begin with. They did so, using the religious rite originally, in order to dole out benefits and tax breaks.

Thus it follows that the “back end” you worry about is also a govt creation to nullify a govt contract that they themselves imposed upon those who wished to marry. Only they who had the power to “bless” (govt) could “unbless” the same.

Government… always the problem, and rarely the cure. What they begat, they generally mutilate beyond all original recognition.

INRE your comment:

Someone argued a relationship between marriage and procreation. In that context, how are we to consider questions such as that presented in Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the State actively prohibited the use of contraception by any persons? We’re walking a tightrope, here, between saying that marriage is for the purpose of procreation and saying that marriage MUST include procreation (or, at least, the possibility thereof), aren’t we?

I’m going to get to the procreation bit in a second. But first, this entire paragraph again is premised on the same foundation… that government holds the power to define and limit what started out as a religious rite.

There’s an interesting article by a Pastor Matt Trewhella called Five reasons Christians should not obtain a marriage license that argues much from the same position. My own personal opinions are not necessarily religious in their entirety, and actually are more laissez faire in their foundation, so I don’t necessarily hold with all his viewpoints. But Trewhella agrees with my own opinion that marriage is a right that the govt cannot grant or take away.

Nor should the govt should have the power to “bless” a union, thereby making it illegal if they don’t. Afterall, George Washington did not have a marriage license. In colonial America, it was required to have the parents permission, and public notice had to be posted a certain length of time prior to the ceremony.

Since govt entered the picture, they acquired a legal “jurisdiction” over the couple’s lives by the nature of the govt required contract. With a birth certificate, they acquired the same over their children. Then remember, it used to be illegal to issue licenses to interracial couples. Is your child “illegal” without a birth certificate (may not be able to run for POTUS… oops, maybe they can). If parents of interracial couples all agreed upon the union, did the govt have the right to say no?

Which all comes back to the basic… if the govt says no to a couple who wants to be “married”, is that marriage illegal? I say no personally… but you will be denied the govt benefits that are involved with their legal definition.

But I see marriage as two entities here… the traditional religious rite between a couple, and what the govt has decided is the criteria to grant benefits. Since so many of you think this is about benefits, there is no reason why those same benefits cannot be applied via a civil union status.

But the interesting thing is because the LGBT community, a distinct minority, is adamant and unrelenting about calling it “marriage”, the answer from so many of you is to either redefine marriage, or strip away the word “marriage” from the majority so no one is “offended”.

And what is wrong with “separate but equal”? We live with it just fine for gender. Man and woman are not the same… they are separate but equal in the eyes of the law (theoretically…)

So the counter is creating a blanket, nondescript “domestic partnership” status for those who apply. We again come down to the same problem under a “unisex” name… what is the criteria for a domestic partnership?

If an adult child lives with a single parent, do they qualify? How about an individual and their pet(s)? Why not a trio of people who own property by tenants in common? That’s a legal contract binding them together in a “domestic partnership” by the nature of their holdings. We again come back to the reason the govt intended the benefits…. to encourage a traditional family and to repopulate the nation.

Which brings us to the family and procreation part. No doubt, when the govt pushed it’s nose into our lives, they were assuming a traditional family of mother, father and children would receive whatever tax breaks and benefits they intended.

No where in my opinions, nor my original comments that Curt excerpted from other threads, did I suggest that the mandate of procreation be applied to marriage status, WesMorgan. And to clarify, I shall also answer Dave Noble’s question… as it pertains to the same.

Many heterosexual couples use what, by that definition, would be “unnatural” methods to procreate, e.g. in vitro fertilization, sperm donors, surrogate mothers, fertility drugs. Are they violating the natural order of procreation?

Yes, Dave Noble. Without casting a personal judgment on the right or wrong of medical advances, I do consider all the above an unnatural order of procreation… i.e. that without the intervention of man and technology, procreation would not be possible.

Under these circumstances, the man and woman would be married, but unable to procreate naturally. In that same vein, I do not consider adoption unnatural. And prior to medical advances, that was the traditional method for an infertile couple to have a child.

And even that was fraught with “govt” mandates….

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Cary, Curt, Mata,

Yes, Curt provided a link to the whole article, but he also cherry-picked his excerpts. In contrast to gay filmmaker Gregg Araki cited by Curt, we have gay filmmaker Bill Condon:

Condon, the gay writer-director of “Dreamgirls” and a Film Independent board member, offered this retort to what he calls the “off-with-his-head” crowd: “If you’re asking, ‘Do we take discrimination against gays as seriously as bigotry against African Americans and Jews?’ . . . the answer is, ‘Of course we do.’ But we also believe that some people, including Rich, saw Prop. 8 not as a civil rights issue but a religious one. That is their right. And it is not, in and of itself, proof of bigotry.”

And Dawn Hudson:

Dawn Hudson, executive director of Film Independent, says, “Are we happy with his donation? No. But he has a right to his religious and personal beliefs.

“The very cornerstone of our organization is diversity, and diversity includes sexual orientation. Rich’s actions have always been in accordance with those principles”

Curt asserts:

“Yes indeed….should there be firings and blackballing of individuals who supported Prop 8?

The answer is a resounding YES from the liberal left.

The liberal left like the conservative right is not monolithic. A review of the full article Curt cites will show that. I am a liberal, but if you asked me that question my answer would be a unequivocal “NO.”

On another note, Re: the cite to Mata Harley:

“It is only by the two, combined, that a child is borne of natural (not petrie dish) conception… a natural order to procreation.”

Many heterosexual couples use what, by that definition, would be “unnatural” methods to procreate, e.g. in vitro fertilization, sperm donors, surrogate mothers, fertility drugs. Are they violating the natural order of procreation?

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It depends. Do I have a problem with boycotts? No. Boycotts are a personal decision and people can boycott whatever/whomever they wish. Should a person be fired? That’s a different story.

Re: Cooper – It was a business decision, not a political decision. There’s a difference.

Should a Board of Directors of an automobile manufacturer ask for the resignation of a CEO/president that voted for someone that was against the economic best-interests of that manufacturer? Absolutely. It’s a business decision, not a political one.

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So, thebronze, you don’t see a problem with firings/boycotts/whatever around Proposition 8? One of the cases discussed in the linked article was a leader of a group with an explicit goal of diversity. For a leader of such a group to support Proposition 8 would be “diametrically opposed to the best interests” of said group, yes?

As I said, this is a tool used with some regularity by folks across the political spectrum.

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Hmmm…I wonder what you guys think about Dan Cooper’s firing.

Entirely appropriate. They wanted to remove a company president that publicly advocated wanting to vote for presidential candidate that was diametrically-opposed to the best-interests of the company he was the president of. O’Bama is expressly anti-gun, what sense does it make for a gun-company president to vote for someone that would seek to do that very company, harm?

Had he have just shut his mouth, instead of publicly proclaiming his intentions, it wouldn’t have been an issue. Sucks to be him…

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Well, the problem is that this debate, while certainly inflammatory, doesn’t really get to the crux of the interaction of “marriage” and the state. If you stop to think about it, we have quite a few variations on the general theme; there are:

* Marriage performed by the state (e.g. Justice-of-the-Peace),
* Marriage recognized by the state but performed elsewhere (e.g. “church wedding” with state license), and
* Marriage IMPOSED by the state (e.g. common-law marriage statutes in several states).

On top of that, we have the other end of the spectrum: no-fault divorce, annulment, zero secular penalty for adultery, and the like. There seems to be a great deal of concern about “preserving marriage” on the front end, but precious little interest in fixing up the back end. Why is that?

Someone argued a relationship between marriage and procreation. In that context, how are we to consider questions such as that presented in Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the State actively prohibited the use of contraception by any persons? We’re walking a tightrope, here, between saying that marriage is for the purpose of procreation and saying that marriage MUST include procreation (or, at least, the possibility thereof), aren’t we?

I keep coming back to the notion that, as far as government is concerned, they should recognize “domestic partnerships.” That might be a traditional marriage, it might be a same-sex marriage, it might be heterosexual cohabitation, or it might be two elderly folks pooling their resources to maintain a standard of living. Otherwise, for the government to pick and choose which aspects of “marriage” it wants to “protect” would seem to require a certain willful blindness and a good deal of hypocrisy.

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Well, at least you provided links to the entire debate, and didn’t just cherry pick the parts you agree with.

There are several law suits, based on the grounds of my exact arguments in the aforementioned debate – that the Constitutional rights of an unpopular minority, as protected in the Establishment Clause of the 1st and the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendments, cannot be stripped away by a majority vote. They also add that changes in the Constitution need to be implemented by legislation.

http://www.dailycal.org:8080/article/103642/prop._8_suits_win_supreme_court_review

I’m sure this’ll eventually play out quite fairly. So, I’ll add nothing more as you all banter.

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Boycotts, shunnings and blacklists are merely tools. We’ve seen them in use for decades, and will continue to see them for as long as we’re around…*laugh*

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