No’ I’m not going to put up one of the marriage is love banners that has popped up all over LiveJournal. I’m not going to put up any of its derivatives either (although I do love the classic gaming one and the Homer Simpson one)
I am against gay marriage and am for “civil unions”
I am not against gay marriages because I am a homophobic or anything. Even though in the United States and elsewhere I guess, marriage is a domain shared by the government and by religious institutions. In order to get married, you have to have a service in front of a government official, and then have a service in front of an authorized religious figure. Now, if two men or two women are in love enough to commit themselves to each other, then I believe that the government should support them and that they should have the same legal and civil benefits that a “traditional” couple would have. A homosexual couple has the same chances of having a healthy and stable marriage has a heterosexual couple.
However, I believe that most of the major religions are against homosexuality. Three of the five major ones (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) forbid a man to sleep with another man. Not sure about Hinduism and Buddhism. Now if the government recognizes gay marriages, then these religions would be forced to recognize and would have to perform something against their religion. To me, this would violate the whole principle of separation between church and state.
I believe that civil unions is the best compromise between the two sides. It gives the homosexual population the civil rights and privileges that they should have. It solidifies the governments stance against discrimination against sex, race, gender, etc. And it lets the churches worships in the way that their religions dictate.
Politically, this thing is just a train wreck. Now, I honestly don’t think that Mayor Newson did this out of some overriding sense of duty or anything. If anything he did it to grab the gay vote and to distract away from the homeless issue (which he should really be working on). Who knows, maybe he didn’t want to lose the U.S. Gay Capital title to Boston or Mass. Moving on to the Govenator, ordering the state attorney to stop the marriages was just silly of him. Like Locklyeer is going to pay too much attention to him. The state will get involved, because of the law that was passed that defines marriage has between a man and a woman, so this is def. going to goto the state supreme court, and then later to the U.S. Supreme Court. Bush, of course is going to oppose it and is probably working behind the scenes on trying to get a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. Now that is crazy, we don’t need to bring the constitution into this mix. **sigh** The fact that he has been not too vocal about makes me wonder if he is close to getting the votes that he needs for the amendment.
In the end, this is going to get uglier before it gets better.
