Author Topic: Obama Backs Gay Marriage  (Read 241 times)

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Offline Genichiro

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Re: Obama Backs Gay Marriage
« Reply #15 on: May 21, 2012, 21:30 »
Actually, I don't think the current system is really all that different from what you propose. A church wedding does come with the legal implications, but those are all filed separately. The church handles the religious aspects, while the legal aspects are handled by legal experts. Having a church ceremony is optional, since you can just as easily get a court wedding, free of any religious groups. The right wings extremists don't want gays and lesbians to even have a court wedding, because they wish to force their views on others, believing they are right, and everyone else is wrong, as freedom to marry is apparently a violation of their religious texts. All we do is make sure the bigots keep their views out of politics, and wait for them to die off; the hardliners just aren't going to change their views, no matter what the law says.
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Offline Zen

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Re: Obama Backs Gay Marriage
« Reply #16 on: May 22, 2012, 00:37 »
Yes, by law the church ceremony is optional, but in a sense it is also sufficient, since the minister is the one that signs the marriage license officially making the marriage legal (assuming the correct fees are included when the signed document is submitted.) What I am suggesting is partially about separating that power from a church official, making all of the legal aspects of a marriage seperate from the ceremony itself and the religious official that performs the ceremony. The other aspect is semantic. If you stop calling the legal contract between two people marriage, and call it something else like a domestic partnership or civil union, then eventually, people will stop confusing the legal aspects of it with the religious aspects. (Kind of like in Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed" - in that story, the moon on the planet the story takes place on is inhabited by a utopian collective  of anarchists, who left their home planet long ago. When they started the colony, they removed all terms about "posession" from their language. The idea being that language changes how you perceive the world, and if you never uter the phrase, "That's mine!" it will change your way of thinking a well.
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Offline Genichiro

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Re: Obama Backs Gay Marriage
« Reply #17 on: May 22, 2012, 06:54 »
Hm, fascinating. Well, even then, the problem with the bigots out there is that they are so pressed for their ideas to be law that even if you change the name, they don't want gays and lesbians to have any of the rights they have, either. I believe the law they just passed in North Carolina even bans Civil Unions between gays and lesbians.
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Offline Cirno

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Re: Obama Backs Gay Marriage
« Reply #18 on: May 22, 2012, 07:15 »
With people as stubborn as they are, I get the feeling that even if you completely separate the religious and legal aspects of marriage, and give it a different name for gays and lesbians, people will still try to pass laws to make it so it can't happen. Some people are just... foolish like that.

Offline Zen

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Re: Obama Backs Gay Marriage
« Reply #19 on: May 22, 2012, 11:12 »
Hm, fascinating. Well, even then, the problem with the bigots out there is that they are so pressed for their ideas to be law that even if you change the name, they don't want gays and lesbians to have any of the rights they have, either. I believe the law they just passed in North Carolina even bans Civil Unions between gays and lesbians.
Yes, bigots will be bigots. However, if we set the table by disentangling the religious and civil aspects of marriage, then in a generation or two, people will no longer think of them together. When you think about it, even if you get a justice of the peace to marry you, you still have to have a stupid ceremony! Most people want to, but why? It is a legal agreement. Why do you have to go into the court and do the whole "Do you"/"I do" bit? Why not just submit your paperwork and be officially recognized by the state as married? As long as you have a notarized document signed by both parties, that should be sufficient. (Yes, it would still need to be notarized, since forgery is still an option and you wouldn't want people to be able to bamboozle someone into being officially united with them without their knowledge because the other person forged the document. Not that it wouldn't be a crime to do so...)

If we did that, separated the ceremonial from the legal, then I believe that it would eventually lead to a world that had different views on the whole topic.

Oh, and the NC law does more than ban civil unions between gays and lesbians, it bans all civil unions, including heterosexual ones! So people who used to be considered married by common law (most states have common law marriage, where two people who live together in a marriage-like state for a long enough time have the majority of the legal rights of married couples.)

With people as stubborn as they are, I get the feeling that even if you completely separate the religious and legal aspects of marriage, and give it a different name for gays and lesbians, people will still try to pass laws to make it so it can't happen. Some people are just... foolish like that.
Yes, but I am thinking long term. If we change the system, the mindset will follow, eventually...
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Offline Genichiro

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Re: Obama Backs Gay Marriage
« Reply #20 on: May 22, 2012, 21:18 »
I think that just making all unions legal would be enough to change the mindset of the people in a few years. Actually, last I heard, polls show the majority of Americans favor marriage equality, it's just the few extremists that are left that are the problem. As for why they are the problem: they have the majority of the wealth in this country.
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Offline Cirno

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Re: Obama Backs Gay Marriage
« Reply #21 on: May 23, 2012, 07:50 »
It sucks that those with money can put it to use to force others under their influence.

Offline Genichiro

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Re: Obama Backs Gay Marriage
« Reply #22 on: May 23, 2012, 21:49 »
It's an unfortunate reality that those who are corrupted with power only look out to attain more of it, at the expense of anyone who stands in their way. If one way for them to gain money is to exploit people who share their personal opinions, then that's what they'll do. They'll do anything asked of those willing to throw money at them, just to get more money.
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