(no subject)

[usernamenumber]

Re-posted from jodisays:


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esp. if you are in a solid blue state and obama doesn't need it, consider helping out the no on prop 8 in CA. out of state muckaluckas are giving the anti gay marriage folks a huge influx of money, and hey...we could try to do that too! there is a matching going on October 19th (Sunday) on the no on 8 website, so consider it, even if you aren't in cali.
also, if you can't donate, add a post like this to your lj (or twitter, or facebook, or whatever) and consider writing to the bloggers, webcartoonists, etc that you read regularly and ask for a plug. we have got to start doing to external bush beating like the right wing.
noonprop8.com
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Comments

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

That was very much like where I stood for a long time, but there's a fundamental problem with that line of approach as I see it: there actually are Christian, Jewish and, possibly, Muslim sects that will marry same-sex couples. The reasoning that ultimately brought me to the side I'm on with regard to issues like prop8 is not the usual (at least, I assume it's the usual) "people shouldn't be allowed to discriminate" line so much as "churches should be allowed to discriminate or not as they please". I would oppose any effort to force churches to marry same-sex couples just a strongly as I oppose prop8. The court decision that prompted prop8 by finding its predecessor un-constitutional (so, of course, the solution is to change the constitution) explicitly protects the rights of churches to not marry same-sex couples if they so choose, while protecting the rights of those faiths that see it differently. The one exception to this rule in my eyes, which I hope we can agree on, is the state, which in its civil ceremonies simply cannot be allowed to discriminate.

As such, my ideal would also be to differentiate between the religious ceremony of commitment that is marriage and the legal contract that is a civil union, but not quite in the way you describe: The government would grant civil unions (not "marriages") without discrimination, giving couples legal recognition and benefits, and churches would grant marriages, for whatever purpose and benefit their beliefs assign them, at their digression. Everybody gets equal treatment under the law and no one gets to claim ownership of the term "marriage". Sometimes in fits of optimism I even wonder whether the church might support such an initiative, since it already differentiates between eternal marriage and temporal marriage anyway.

[rhosyn-du.livejournal.com]

Agreed, agreed, and agreed.

Quite frankly, I'm rather appalled that religious institutions are legally allowed to upfront donate to political campaigns at all. Individual members of various religions? Sure. Religious institutions themselves? Uh, whatever happened to that crazy "separation of church and state" idea people were throwing around, huh?

On a more personal level, I'm pretty disgusted that in this particular case so many religious organizations that claim to value honesty are donating to a campaign that has taken to outright lying in their advertising and cold calls about the consequences of the proposed law (after a socially conservative judge ruled that they couldn't put those same lies in the voter information packet because they were legally complete BS, no less). I realize it's naive to assume that people are always going to act in accordance with their own stated morality, but this level of disconnect was not something I expected to run into, and I can't help feeling very saddened by it.

In general, I think that decisions about state law should stay within the state, but in addition to agreeing with you on taking the high road on that point being a bad idea (at least when it comes to civil rights issues), there is absolutely no denying that Prop 8 has national consequences. The US Constitution guarantees that each state shall recognize and respect the property rights granted in every other state. The Defense of Marriage Act grants every state the right to refuse to acknowledge marriage other than one man/one woman performed in another state. CA's joint property laws mean that as long as gay marriage is legal in CA, the DoMA is in conflict with the US Constitution, and it's only a matter of time before that issue is raised. None of the other states where gay marriage is legal have property laws that would cause the same conflict. So, yes, this is a state measure, but it has some rather substantial national consequences, so it's hard to argue that this is a cut-and-dried state-only issue.

Also, point of linguistic pendantry, "marriage" has only been around as a term for about 700 years, so it's doubtful that it's had it's religious meaning for thousands of years.