Bandwagon Jumpers and Gay Marriage
We’ve all done it. We’ve all been guilty of piggybacking our own beliefs onto the beliefs of others in order to get them recognized, but to sit there and tell supporters of Gay Marriage that the ban on it in California also speaks volumes about racism and hatred is not fair. I believe that it takes power away from those couples who are desperately trying to seek some societal recognition for the lives they lead. I see nothing wrong with those couples receiving recognition from the law. I see everything wrong with activists for other organizations who have nothing to do with gay marriage on your average day of the week, showing up to make a fuss because it gets their cause back in the newspapers. Grow up.
Many Christians, right or wrong, believe that the bible says that those who are homosexual cannot be married. I have been unable to find passages that corroborate that, but I have found passages that are ambiguous. These are the same passages that Christians often cite to support their arguments that gay marriage is against God. I don’t see a lot of biblical support for the argument, to be brutally honest with you folks. But I can tell you that the law has no place in forcing religion to do something it does not wish to do. Christian churches that believe that gay marriage goes against God, do not have to perform marriage ceremonies for same sex couples. Churches that do, can perform those ceremonies if they like.
The law should not enter into this. Marriage is a faith based union. It was given legal status to protect families because that is one of societies primary goals. If we protect the family unit at its most basic nature, then we are protecting the longevity of society. The law should not give a damn as to weather that family has a mother and a father, or two fathers, or two mothers. However, it has long been taught to Americans that we can legislate whatever we want. We have been taught that everything has a place in the law. And now, after two decades of victims rights advocacy, and protections for people who were already protected under the law, we have church-goers and churches themselves vying for the right to have a little of their beliefs legislated.
It’s only a natural progression of events.
November 24, 2008 9:57 am 
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By tsykoduk, November 24, 2008 @ 10:07 am
Marriage is faith based. Civil unions are a fiscal / legal thing. Personally, I am fine with priests not marrying gays, I am not fine with the government not giving some one the same rights based on a choice (or lack there of) of who they want to spend their life with. The law does not force priests to marry people they do not feel should be married, it allows those people to have the same rights and responsibilities as “Breeders”.
Who are we to tell a gay couple that have lived together for 30 years that one cannot make medical choices for the other, or even be told what is going on by their doctor, because some voters are afraid of “marriage getting diluted”?
There is a legal separation of church and state. By the government trying to legislate morality, that line is blurred. At this point, the government is telling priests who they can and cannot marry. It’s also telling it’s citizens that they do not have a choice in civil unions – that the government can tell them who and who not to “union” with.
By Random Gemini, November 24, 2008 @ 10:16 am
You mostly recapped what I said above, except for one thing, and I hear this phrase a lot so I don’t fault you for it… but it is patently false.
The government’s JOB is to legislate morality. Laws are the extension of our judgment as a society as to what we can and cannot accept. What we can and cannot accept as a society is our collective moral consciousness.
Laws are, at their very core, morals.
I agree that it is not the government’s job to tell religion what to do. The government has no place in faith, but legislating against crimes (thefts, arsons, rapes, etc) IS in fact, legislating morality. There are some countries where it is perfectly legal for a husband to rape his wife.
That choice is made by the moral standards of the society that laws are made by.
By tsykoduk, November 24, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
Yeah, yeah yeah. I do disagree. It’s the federal government’s JOB to protect us from outside threats. Really, anything out side that is unconstitutional. As you get closer to the voting public, IMHO it’s ok for the government to get more into the “business” of local people.
My basic rule is if both parties are willing, and no third party’s rights are infracted in any way, people should be free to do what ever they want.
And – as an aside – Laws are not morals. Laws are contracts of behavior agreed upon between groups of people and their government, with established consequences. Morals of groups might guide the creation of laws, however, they are not core driver. If that was the case, corporate law would be guided by higher ideals then pure profit.
By Random Gemini, November 24, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
I have to ask you what is it that you think drives the creation those “contracts of behavior” other than morals.
The moral standards of a community are what define the limits of what a community will tolerate. The community writes down those limits in the form of law.
By Thenardier, November 25, 2008 @ 6:56 pm
Our civil system was set up based on the Judeo-Christian moral system. There is a give-and-take through time between the legal framework of a government’s moral compass and that give-and-take causes a morphing to occur for both parties. I think the course of the Christian Evangelical movement from the Snopes Monkey trial through 1980 is one good example among many I can site where a moral center was decided upon that was somewhat outside the structure of the governmental laws without being illegal.
However, fundamentally, this argument stopped being a religious argument when marriages moved into the civil realm. When civil marriage licenses were issued by state and federal entities, the equation changed, and when rights such as next-of-kin entered the picture over time, being able to draw the line at whether this is a strictly religious or civil argument became a pretty fuzzy one, in my opinion.
I see where you are coming from. I am not near California, but I know someone near San Fransisco, and I have been following Prop 8 news. I agree with you that people did a lot of piggybacking of their ideas — on both sides. However, I disagree that that marriage is a religious institution, because it stopped being strictly one about 200 years ago. All arguments around Prop 8-like items should first understand this fundamental definition of civil marriage law.