http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/14/3216987.htm

A small group of homophobic douchebags claiming to be “christian” attacked a same sex & trans folks rights rally in my hometown of Adelaide, South Oz, a month or two ago. One person was dragged from her wheelchair.

This person there :

***

Lesbian and church minister, Reverend Sue Wickham, says it was an awful end to a peaceful demonstration. “… Anyone who carries a banner that begins with the two words ‘God Hates’ is to my mind is not representing the Christ that Christians believe in.”

***

Summed it up perfectly in my view. That’s true regardless of whether or not you believe Rabbi Jesus was literally a divine figure or not, methinks.

*ahem* EQUAL marriage or SAME SEX marriage. Gay does not equal lesbian does not equal bisexual does not equal transgender. Don’t disappear the rest of us for ease of terminology. Equal marriage and same-sex marriage aren’t that hard to remember surely.

Really? I must admit I’ve always thought that “gay” was a blanket term covering lesbians and male homosexuals alike – so to speak.

I didn’t think there was any problem with calling all same-sex lovers “gay” & didn’t think that was considered as “disappearing lesbians” at all.

However, if you say so and really feel it’s bad then I will respect that and call it ‘same sex marriage’ in future.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2778326.html

& here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M83T_URahOI

Recent political and comical discussion on the topic & Gillard’s position.

Notably, Opposition leader and probable next PM conservative Liberal party leader Tony Abbott has previously said he feels “threatened” by gay people.

This opinion piece :

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2775426.html

Noting :

New York now joins Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont and Washington DC in having legalised gay marriage. Internationally, the club also includes Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden. So we should not pretend the decision of the New York legislature is ground-breaking. Once implemented in a jurisdiction, gay marriage fades into the background. While its introduction is controversial, its existence is mundane. Yet there’s still a lot to learn from the New York decision for supporters of same-sex marriage reform. [Bold added.]

is interesting too.

Pretty sure that polling indicates most Australians support same-sex marriage and homophobia is finally, thankfully, dying world-wide – well in the civilised parts of the world anyhow – Africa and the Islamic world being the exceptions.

@173. Cynthia Moreno : Thanks.

Congratulations, Newyorkers. Here in Argentina same-sex couples have been allowed to get married for a year or so and the sky has not fallen yet (in spite of priests and conservatives’ predictions).

I do believe, though, that given that there’s no such thing as “black freedom”, “gay marriage” should be called, you know, “marriage”… maybe?

Viva Perón, Carajo.

I agree with most of what you wrote, but the apparent inconsistency of this comment made me curious. A marriage of 2 brothers or 2 sisters or a father and son obviously would not lead to close inbreeding. Do you say that those should be illegal?

Well, I see no reason why they should be illegal. But there’s no way I’d want to marry my brother!

I’m a bit wavering on the topic myself, but I’m more of a mind to say “screw it, two consenting adults, just make it legal across the board.” Two people don’t need to be closely related to share common recessive deleterious alleles. If we’re going to fret over inbreeding, then why not make all potential couples submit to genetic testing before approving the marriage?

The point about inbreeding is that it massively increases the chance of recessive deleterious alleles being passed on homozygously (and therefore being expressed). You share exactly 50% of your genes with each of your parents, and you share at least some of your genes with each of your siblings (I can’t remember the exact details here, but I think it is possible – although remotely unlikely – that you share only a very few genes with any specific sibling, depending on exactly which alleles each of you inherited from your parents).

Or is it maybe more a matter of basic human squeamishness?

Well, we actually have an instinct that usually makes our parents, offspring and siblings unattractive to us in that way. AFAICT, all mammals have this instinct (and probably reptiles and birds have it too).

This is all rather hypothetical of course, as there is not currently a significant minority clamoring that their rights are being violated because they’re not permitted to marry their sisters.

Uh, yeah. I’m kinda hoping it stays hypothetical.

We have age of consent laws for a variety of things, for a very good reason. Two kids can’t get married. An older one sex person can’t get married to an underage person of the other sex, or of the same sex. There is a good reason for this, and it has nothing to do with same sex marriage laws. And, of course, animals can’t give consent, same with people in comas, go figure. So don’t go knocking someone out and trying to “get married”, whether they’re of the opposite sex or not, because that’s about at the same level as trying to get married to a duck (or whatever the current argument animal is).

If we’re aiming for laws that deal with – inheritance, visitation rights, insurance, etc., etc., so long as the two people are consenting adults, what, exactly, is the problem? Perhaps I don’t want to get married, but I’ve got a best friend that I trust to make decisions for me. Does it matter if that best friend is related, of the same sex, or just someone I’ve met randomly? These are the kinds of rights that I hope “unions” will have, along with taxes, etc, etc, etc.

That same argument can now be applied to any legal-age adults: 2 brothers…..2 sisters….a mother and her son….a father and his daughter….or his son…..or his nephew……and on and on.

Perhaps in principle, but in reality any marriage that leads to close inbreeding would and should still be illegal.

I agree with most of what you wrote, but the apparent inconsistency of this comment made me curious. A marriage of 2 brothers or 2 sisters or a father and son obviously would not lead to close inbreeding. Do you say that those should be illegal?

I’m a bit wavering on the topic myself, but I’m more of a mind to say “screw it, two consenting adults, just make it legal across the board.” Two people don’t need to be closely related to share common recessive deleterious alleles. If we’re going to fret over inbreeding, then why not make all potential couples submit to genetic testing before approving the marriage? Or is it maybe more a matter of basic human squeamishness?

This is all rather hypothetical of course, as there is not currently a significant minority clamoring that their rights are being violated because they’re not permitted to marry their sisters.

That’s just humanity.

“If there are three humans in a room, there will be six opinions.” -Samara from Mass Effect 2

Because people’s rights still end where others begin. Let’s not celebrate the affirmation of one group’s rights by violating the rights of another group, mmmkay?

The right of a church to operate as it sees fit is strongly protected by the Constitution. Catholic churches, for example, generally will not perform marriages involving divorced and/or unbaptized people.

Why do we allow religions to discriminate in a society that is supposed to support freedom and justice for all?

Especially since we grant them tax-exempt status.

There is a crazy notion in many religious quarters that we’re trying to force their churches to perform these weddings or else . . .

The thought struck me while reading your comment – well, why not?

Why do we allow religions to discriminate in a society that is supposed to support freedom and justice for all?

The argument on this forum and others has been: Intelligent Design attempts to re-define science.
That is a no-no.
I agree.

Redefining science would not be a problem if ID did not demand magic as part of it. ID has no factual or logical basis, and sought to redefine science simply to allow itself to be included as science.

So the problem wasn’t that ID required a redefinition of science per se, it was the why and the how of that demand that were the problem.

But re-defining marriage?
No problem!!!

And where is the relevance of this to ID?

Are you at some point going to show that ID’s attempt to redefine science is in some way analogous to a redefinition of marriage? Or not?

That isn’t a ‘same-sex’ resolution, it’s an ‘Anyone can now marry anyone else!’ resolution.

Well, and so?

Although I suspect (IANAL, BTW) that it would still be illegal for a brother and sister to marry one another for the same reasons that this was made illegal in the first place.

The argument for ‘same-sex’ marriage boils down to: 2 adult human beings are in love and want to get married and shouldn’t be discriminated against.

Absolutely.

That same argument can now be applied to any legal-age adults: 2 brothers…..2 sisters….a mother and her son….a father and his daughter….or his son…..or his nephew……and on and on.

Perhaps in principle, but in reality any marriage that leads to close inbreeding would and should still be illegal.

And why does it default to the gay side of the argument?
Why is there no consideration for those who want to maintain a standard?

It doesn’t default to any side of the argument. That’s the whole point. Gay people should be granted the same rights and opportunities as anyone else.

As for maintaining a standard, that is what this law will establish. Equal treatment for all consenting adults. Forbidding gay people to marry is setting a double-standard, for no reason.

Offend gays? That’s bigoted and mean-spirited!!!!!

No, offending gay people is OK. Treating them differently from everyone else is discrimination born of bigotry.

Offend the rest of society? Welllll……who cares? They’re backwards and bigoted anyway!

How does gay marriage offend anyone who isn’t a bigot?

Will you next be claiming that red-headed people should not be allowed to marry? Or that people who eat Marmite should not?

How silly for us – or any nation – to have defined standards….

Well, you don’t, actually. New York state now does have a standard. That standard is that people should be given equal rights and opportunities, not limited by traits or circumstances over which they have no control.

What is silly is for a nation to enshrine a double-standard in law.

sarc/off

Sarc off yourself.

Not necessarily. Only if you don’t think that there is something special about being raised by a male and a female parent. If instead you think that males and females are fundamentally different, and that the ideal situation for a child is to be raised by one of each, together, then it is not homophobic to say that as a society we should maintain opposite-sex marriage as the gold standard. It might be wrong. But it is not patently homophobic, irrational, what-have-you.

But is it not intrinsically homophobic to suppose without evidence that a child cannot be raised equally well by a gay couple as a hetero couple?

I think you could make the case that traditional marriage has earned special status because it has demonstrated that it works well, even if it has dubious origins.

(Okay, in re-reading the above, I am not even convincing MYSELF, but I think a decent argument could be made.)

I agree that your formulation of the argument is not convincing, but I’m not sure that a convincing formulation could be produced.

It seems to me more that society has (up until, say, the 1950s or thereabouts) been shaped to fit the “gold standard” of marriage rather than marriage proving itself to be effective independently. Having a child raised mostly by its parents does not fit our evolutionary history (in which child care was typically shared between the mother, one or more aunts and a grandmother), so child care isn’t a point in favour of marriage.

Certainly in Britain, marriage used to be one tool whereby women’s participation in society was suppressed (by which I mean that a woman’s status was determined solely by her husband’s or father’s, and that married women automatically had higher status than unmarried women of comparable social rank).

Don’t disappear the rest of us for ease of terminology. Equal marriage and same-sex marriage aren’t that hard to remember surely.

So although, an individual hetero couple’s marriage is not threatened by same-sex marriage, the institution of marriage is changed for future generations.

I think I see what you are saying. That the idea of what marriage means changes would be seen by some as some kind of threat.

In my mind this brings up another question: why only two people? I can’t think of any logical reasons that a grouping of, say, three people who share the same feelings for each other shouldn’t be allowed the same rights. (Or four, or five, but given how difficult it can be to find just one person to share your life with, I imagine the increasing numbers will have exponentially decreasing instances.)
One argument I heard, from my father, was that people would abuse it for tax purposes, but surely marriage as it is is already abused that way by some. There would be details to work out but the reason the system is being changed in the first place is that is unsatisfactory, and I think improvement is worth a little thought and effort.

And Phil, I think it’s is a congratulations to ALL who believe in civil rights since New York is no longer insulting our intelligence. While I’m very happy about New York and I am gay, my friends seem way more ecstatic and most of them are straight.

That same argument can now be applied to any legal-age adults: 2 brothers…..2 sisters….a mother and her son….a father and his daughter….or his son…..or his nephew……and on and on.

So? Your point is? Society is our own creation, we get to define it any way we choose. Some people choose a broadening approach to fairness and equality. What’s your choice?

And why does it default to the gay side of the argument? Why is there no consideration for those who want to maintain a standard?

Seven out of 50 states allow same sex marriage. 43 out of 50 do not. Seems to me the default goes the other way. Typical spoiled brat argument. Other people aren’t kowtowing to MY point of view, therefore…wah! wah! waaaaaaaah!

You want heterosexual marriage alone to remain the standard? Then come up with reasonable arguments for why it should and convince people why they are better than arguments for why it shouldn’t.