Like civil rights, the gay marriage/adoption issue will be resolved when homophobia itself is no longer economically beneficial. For example, I know a real estate broker in Maine who was extremely po’d when the state house passed a marriage amendment…….until the sale of his biggest listing was put on hold in light of a petition to overrule it. The gay couple who made the offer is looking for a second home in a state where they could be recognized as legally married.

Look for gay marriage rights to inject $$$ into New England’s state and local economies in years to come. Gay adoption will free up state $$$ spent on foster services, and gay families will, ultimately, contribute to stimulating home prices and a windfall of fiscal payoffs, including increased private/public school revenues through higher enrollment and home values. There will also be observable consequences in the retail sector across the board.

It was easy to be a racist shop owner when blacks had no money. It was easy to be a segregationist shop owner when blacks had less money. Things changed, slowly, when blacks became their own market, and changed radically with the emergence of black musicians/entertainers, athletes. And today, with black professionals, racism has pretty much disappeared amongst educated and successful capitalists.

The same is true for homophobia. You’d be a hard to pressed to find a hardcore gay-bashers at Bill and Melinda’s cocktail parties, any Wall Street traders, or Main Street go-getters.

Capitalism has zero tolerance for anything that hinders exchange, and it’s only bottom line: profit. Homophobics are left over from a time when homosexuality was a threat to assets, armies, and kingdoms……literally, a long time ago. Homophobia is isolated to those whose economic vitality has not yet benefited from same-sex relations in any observable way…..just as racism once did. In fact, bigots are not really bigots…..just people who haven’t profited off those they hate on, or aren’t educated enough to see how it happens.

The moral qualms over homosexual marriage are so naive to market dynamics, and so economically irresponsible as to be infantile. They will survive only so long as the term “regulating the market” is taken literally….and not understood in its fullest scope: regulating “morality” is not a moral issue, it’s an economic one.

Personlly, I am opposed to marriage as anything but a religious union. If I were to support any legislation, it would be the criminalization of heterosexual privileging….which makes about as much sense as homosexual rights. I don’t support either.

Like most things, the market will take care of homophobia. Capitalism judges nobody.

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When a man or a woman find a spouse, they may marry thinking that they will live ‘happily ever after’. They may think that nothing can disturb their happiness and that their life together will be like sunshine every day without any clouds. They may also doubt whether there will be any serious problems in their relationship because everything has gone so well so far.

However, the fact is that we live in an imperfect and fallen world in which nothing is as it was when Adam and Eve lived together in Paradise. In practice, this imperfection means that when people get together, they also bring to the marriage their own difficult personalities and especially their selfishness, which is a result of the Fall of Man and certainly the biggest reason of homes breaking up these days. If we do not want to be freed from this selfishness, it can greatly harm the relationship.

In any case, below we are going to deal with this area especially in the light of the Bible. We are going to concentrate on those common mistakes and ways of doing things of which we might be guilty because we have not seen them in ourselves, nobody has ever told us about them, or because we have not understood them in the light of the Bible. If you notice any of the issues we are going to bring up in your own life, you can be freed from them; especially if you ask for God’s help.

http://koti.phnet.fi/elohim/help_to_marriage

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@Kevin

Why should the term marriage suddenly be owed by religion (you also mention social but what does that mean)? As far as I can see the history of marriage isn’t clear in that it hasn’t been purely been owed by religion. Many people throughout history have been married and have either been atheists or at least religion wasn’t a driving factor. Marriage is already a legal and understood term. Because those mainly from a religious background object to gays being married – why does that mean we have to change the term? Whereas baptism is a religious term. Because two people marry that has little to do with approval by anyone but those involved. I don’t see why your 1st condition can’t be ‘Marriage’.

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This is one of those topics that I think a simple middle ground exists that both conservatives and liberals can agree to. Basically, things would be much easier if the government got out of marriage altogether. I’d love to see us transition to a system that followed these guidelines:

1) CIVIL UNIONS: Any 2 (or more) people should be able to enter into a civil-union contract, which may stipulate things like
* joint ownership of their combined assets/liabilities,
* joint guardianship of their children,
* they grant each other the right to make medical / legal decisions in case of their own impairment.
* and so on…

The governement’s role with respect to these civil-union contracts should be nothing more than legally enforcing the stipulations of the contract.

Note: in this context, I see no problem with a man and 4 women entering into a civil-uinon contract (given an adherence to the existing rules of legal contracts such as forbidding coersion, being of an age of legal consent, etc.). Nor do I care if two family members, e.g. brother/sister, do so.

2) PARENTING: Legal gardianship should be a privilege granted to individuals who can demonstrate the ability and intent to provide a healthy upbringing to the children in question. The privilege could be granted by default to the natural parents, but could be stripped away should it become clear that they are not providing a healthy upbringing. Though no two situations will be the same, I’d expect some objectivity to the question of “healthy upbringing” in the form of minimal quality-of-care standards established by a recognized source of authority on pediatric health, such as the AAP.

The artical mentioned an interest to “protect children from homosexual adoption”. Here, here! If the AAP, as a recognized authority on pediatric health, felt a conclusive evidence-based case had be made that “any 2 people who both have a penis or both have a vagina are *fundamentally* incapable of providing a minimum level of care for children” (this seems so obvious that it’s hard to imagine the case not being made), then this should and would be included in the aforementioned guidelines, and children would be protected. Lacking such a generally-applicable guideline, I suppose any need to “protect children from homosexual adoption” would have to be met on an individual basis, e.g. by demonstrating each specific homosexual couple was likely to do the sinster things we know all homosexuals *really* want to do with children.

Once legal guardianship has been established, it is in society’s interest that all children be raised in healthy environments. To this end, tax deductions for people who are raising children, public education, public pediatric facilities, etc., seem like sensible investments for society to make. This, I believe, is the appropriate slot for many of the incentives/benefits we currently grant to legally married couples (irrespective of their desire or intent to raise children).

3) WHAT “MARRIAGE” BECOMES: The concept of marriage, once removed from the legal realm, would be entirely in the social / religious realm. Though 2 men could walk around talking about each other as “spouses”, the morally superior True Christians of society would be free to refer to them as “bachelors”, and would never need to give tacit approval of such men’s disgusting and degenerate lifestyles. Christians could even go further, e.g. excluding the men from joining such desirable activities as “married couples bible study”, if not from entering their congregation altogether (just imagine how crushed these vile men would be!).

My over-arching point is that “marriage” should be a social/religious institution similar to “baptism”. Consider: my daughter was rinsed with water two weeks ago; and from the Lutheran church’s perspective, she is now officially “Baptised”. From my atheistic perspective, she probably had a little dust rinsed off her head. And from the perspective of many Christian sects, infant baptism doesn’t “count” and she can’t be “Baptised” until after she accepted Jesus as her Saviour. The point is, regardless of the perspective, I have never, ever, heard anyone express a wish to have Congress get involved and dictate a legal definition of “baptism”… and this WORKS PERFECTLY. Note particularly that the lack of legal definition DOES NOT diminish the value and meaning of my daughter’s baptism in the eyes of the religious community. Just think of all of the time and energy we’d save if marriage was placed in the same social realm…

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@Alex

Is there such thing as a Right? Who says we have a right to anything? In the US does Right start and end at the Bill of Rights? Sure there are laws and laws are added and appealed as time goes by.

As for your concern over gays having children….what would you do? So if a woman has a child and later lives with another woman in a gay relationship – do you want the government to come in and seize the child? Government ‘approval’ is baloney and is a thin disguise for homophobia. Either gay people should be able to raise kids or not. Adding marriage is a red herring.

Besides I know plenty of people who are married and do not have children by choice. Marriage is not soley about having kids.

@hawk

The lesbian couple decided to split. The non-biological woman claimed “not my child, not my DNA. I’m not paying support!” The court nullified the pre-existing contract and the man is now paying support

Society seems to cope pretty well with heterosexual couples when a child is not biological theirs – through adoption – either by one or both parents. Adoption is legal – so their is no escaping responsibility whether you are straight or gay.

Really think you guys should think out of the box on this one – not everyone should be forced to live in a Stepford Wife Chocolate Box ‘reality’ where we all have to be straight, marry and have 2.4 kids. Plenty of people live perfectly happy lives which don’t conform to the norm. I’m married and I have 2 kids – but because I happily choose the norm doesn’t mean I think everyone else should do the same. I think at the end of the day – some of you are probably religious and just don’t like gay people and would rather then whole thing was outlawed and just go away. If you believe in freedom of choice then you have to get over your prejudices. Seeing two guys get married looks weird mainly because we haven’t seen that before. But in time – like the grudging acceptance in some quarters of homosexuality – that will also become more accepted.

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Nudists are a good example of the difficulty that any general protection for liberty runs into. They aren’t harming anyone. They just think that because the human body is beautiful or natural or whatever, it should be seen. Mill’s distinction between direct and indirect interests allows such cases to be handled. The belief that the human body should be seen is an interest in what people think. That makes it an indirect interest, not a direct intrerest. Without direct interests at stake, engagement in this behavior in public spaces is properly subject to regulation by the majority. Under a general protection of liberty, people would have a right to practice nudism in private no matter what the majority thinks, but they would not have a right to go nude in public.

This may be why the founders did not include any general protection for liberty in the Constitution. They would have had to solve this public-private question first, and they didn’t know how. Mill did not introduce the distinction between direct and indirect interests until the mid-1800s, and he himself never recognized that this distinction provides a basis consistent with liberty for forcing some behaviors which do not directly harm other people out of the public sphere. In fact his book On Liberty screws this up. When it comes to things that should be banned in public but not in private, he violates his own principle of liberty and starts calling mere offense a harm.

Now Lawrence v. Texas has introduced a general protection for liberty into American constitutional interpretation. This will quickly lead to the need to distinguish public and private behavior, and Mill’s distinction between direct and indirect interests is the way to do it. One of the question it answers is gay marriage. Since gay marriage is about what other people think, it is not a right.

As for whether there is a right to marriage between a man and a woman, the Court’s finding in Loving v. Virginia is very interesting. It does not explicitly refer to the Ninth Amendment’s assertion of unenumerated rights “retained by the people,” but its language neatly fits into this structure. It even adverts (without attribution) to the inalienable rights of the Declaration:

The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888).

This makes Loving a clear predecessor to Lawrence, and a powerful companion. Where Lawrence was explicit in searching out the unenumerated rights of the Ninth Amendment, Loving is nearly explicit about finding these unenumerated rights in the Inalienable rights of the Declaration. Pursue that interpretation logically, and the result will be Mill’s principle of liberty.

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The notion that there is a constitutional component to certain sexual compulsions is patently absurd. If marriage is a “right”, then so is whatever anyone desires.

What of nudists? Why are they walled off in “colonies”? They can’t help the way they were born. Hell, we were all born naked! As long as nudists have to suffer the indignity of dressing up and pretending to be clothesists when they go to the mall, baseball games, whatever; none of us can claim to be living in a free country.

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The SCOTUS only recognizes the Declaration of Independence as a Document of historical significance. It does not however recognize it as a document holding any legal significance on Constitutional issues.

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Mr. Johnson is of course correct that the Constitution does not explicitly mention a right for homosexuals even to have their behavior tolerated. It does, however, assert in the Ninth Amendment that there do exist unenumerated rights. My essay looks at the implication of recognizing and adjudicating the most obvious expression of these unenumerated rights: the inanlienable rights of the Declaration of Independence. As I have analyzed it, these rights say that homosexuals DO have a natural right under the Constitution to be tolerated but DO NOT have a right to marry.

I think that the logic for this interpretation is strong enough to justify imposing it as a restriction on federal law, but federal law is ALL that the Ninth Amendment originally restricted. That makes it highly questionable whether even the most ineluctable interpretation of the unenumerated rights of the Ninth Amendment can properly be imposed on the states.

To this extent I’m in agreement with Mr. Johnson. The good thing about Lawrence v. Texas is that for the first time the Court recognized a general protection for liberty. That was a pretty glaring omission for a country declared to be founded on an inalienable right to liberty and dedicated to securing the blessings of liberty. Still, this general protection for liberty should not be automatically extended over state law, as Lawrence did.

To secure a general protection for liberty, we really ought to pass a constitutional amendment, recognizing the full natural liberty of individuals, and barring ALL levels of government from infringing this natural liberty. If we do this, there will still be no right to gay marriage, because there is no natural right to gay marriage.

Some will claim a natural right to euthanasia, polygamy, etcetera. Like gay marriage, these claims can be analyzed though moral reason. A good general rule to include in any constitutional amendment that establishes general protection for liberty would be to say that where the principles of liberty do not establish a clear liberty right, the matter should be left for the states to decide.

In the present case, the principles of liberty ARE clear: homosexuals DO have a natural right to be tolerated. They do not have a right to marry, or to be approved in any way.

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If DOMA is struck down in the Supreme Court it’s all over. Doesn’t matter if your state forbids same-sex marriage, the “Full Faith and Credit Clause” circumvents it (which is what DOMA prevents). All that homesexual couples will have to do is get married in a MA, VT, IA, etc., and move to another state that doesn’t allow it. The new state will have to recognize the marriage…game over.

This is why gay/lesbian groups are going to state-friendly legislations and courts….to essentially build a “concensus” so the Surpreme court will take up the matter (DOMA) and officially rule on it.

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