Monday the D.C. Council will begin the final debate on whether to legalize same sex marriage in the District of Columbia. According to the Washington Post:
After months of strategizing, the debate over whether the District should legalize same-sex marriage is entering its final stages as a council committee takes up the issue Monday. Hundreds have signed up to testify, setting the stage for one of the largest council hearings ever, officials said. Another hearing Monday is scheduled before the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, which must decide whether to allow a ballot initiative on whether marriage in the District should be restricted to unions involving one man and one woman.
To get an initiative on the ballot, its supporters must convince the elections board that their proposal would not discriminate against gay men and lesbians. Most legal observers expect the board will deny the request. This summer, the board rejected a referendum proposal to block the city from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states.
Protestors and supporters of same sex marriage have signed up to speak. The Council is expected to approve same sex marriage before Christmas.
Because of the location and uniqueness of Washington, D.C., whatever happens will very much affect Virginia, Maryland, and other near-by states. Much of what the Council will consider involves protection of churches and clergymen who oppose same-sex marriage.
Some of the testimony will center on whether the bill, which is sponsored by council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), goes far enough in exempting religious groups and affiliated organizations from having to participate in same-sex weddings.
Under the draft before the committee, churches and religious officials would not have to marry same-sex couples. Religious organizations could also deny reception space and other services to same-sex couples “unless the entity makes such services, accommodations, or goods available for purchase, rental, or use to members of the general public.”
Other than symbolism, how does same-sex marriage change anything? Since D.C. is not a state, can the federal government impose any sort of sanctions on what they might be getting ready to do? Would only those same-sex couples who reside in D.C. be able to actually benefit from marriage?
Should the legislation pass making same-sex marriage legal in D.C., should same-sex couples be entitled to everything traditional married couples are entitled to? If someone doesn’t approve of inter-racial marriage, are they allowed to opt out? Can’t ministers refuse to marry people without giving a reason?
How would this legislation affect same sex couples who live in Virginia? While Virginia does not recognize same sex marriage, could the couple be arrested? Would they be able to file a joint federal tax return and not a joint state return? Just how would all of this work?
The Virginia Marriage Amendment
(And then those after thought questions: will I be sorry I posted these question?)
Maybe it’s it age thing but most young people don’t see the gay community any different than the straight community. I’m a straight guy and have a few gay friends (both gay women friends and guy friends). I really don’t see the harm in allowing them to say they are ‘married’. They already have civil unions, what’s the difference other than what you call it?
M-H, where’s the thread on the big indecent exposure kerfuffle in Fairfax!?
Slowpoke, I had the same problem. Empty your cache. tools/internet options/general tab
Just log in with one of your other email addresses and I will approve you. That will get rid of the pic. I cannot just erase you. If I could erase people, you would be way down the list. 😉
Leila, the guy who exposed himself from his own home? That dude? I started on it and never finished. I got side tracked.
Hello, productive comment and giving perspective from a younger person’s point of view.
Thank you.
Hello gives a perfect example of how an entire generation has been taught that what was once a perversion is now a way of life. This same generation could have as easily been taught as were generations before. Will we be better off as a society because now young people have no guidance about sexual orientation? That’s just it, when people are young they look to adults for guidance, but now the guidance is flawed and so the misguided flourish. What’s next, underage sex? Don’t say it can’t happen. Fourteen and pregnant in Mexico is already a celebrated way of life.
I don’t think Hello was taught that, I think younger people are more acceptant of lots of things. If I may reflect on my own youth, it was perfectly ok to ‘beat up a queer’ on the way home from school. No one needed proof, one just needed group approval.
I had almost no guidance to be heterosexual. It just happened. I am sure if I weren’t, I would have been very closeted because no one wanted to inflict that kind of social stigma on one’s self. However, those in the closet were still gay.
I think that Hello’s way is a lot more civilized.
I doubt very seriously if everyone in Mexico celebrates their daughter’s pregnancy at 14. I just have to assume you don’t know many folks from Mexico. The ones I know do not want that for their daughters.
Ok, can you tell me why you wouldn’t guide your son or daughter to take on ‘traditional’ relationships when they are young. Why, other than being PC, would you promote them engaging in a ‘gay’ relationship? What positive could possibly come of it? We spend tons of time and money trying to correct other mental problems, and then this one we promote, why, because society now says that we should. Yes, there are those who biologically may be on the rail, but I think the majority of so called gays were guided into the lifestyle because society now promotes it. Society is now against drug use, and most kids don’t get involved because it is looked upon as being wrong. What if the few that want to legalize drugs somehow get society on their side such that it becomes acceptable? Now you’re going to have an even harder time guiding your child down the ‘straight’ and narrow!
I agree with most here that marriage equality should exist everywhere in the country. I have to laugh as these sexually repressed and sexually obsessed celebates carping about other people’s equal rights and justifying their own sexual hang-ups by saying it’s really God’s sexual hang-up. Like God is really sitting up there keeping score on human body parts and where we stick them. What an idiotic anthropomorphism.
Also, I’m with the ‘Skins fan whose sign says “Undying Loyalty” or something like that.
I don’t think we guide our kids to be straight, I think we guide them towards good relationships. Since 9 out of 10 people are heterosexual, we go towards the default.
I wouldn’t encourage my kid to be gay. Most of the people I know who are gay are gay….they were not socially conditioned.
I guess this is where I need to ask you, SA, how many gay people do you know? How many do you know where you can talk to them about being gay? I am guessing none. I think if you had ever talked to anyone gay about the subject, you might walk away feeling a little differently.
I am not very PC, at least not for the sake of being PC. I have never seen a gay life style promoted. Most people I know who are gay have struggled horribly over it. The older the people, the more struggling.
I don’t know what to say about the drug use. There is a strong movement to decriminalize pot.
SA, can you offer any evidence for your view that a majority of gay people were “guided” into their sexual orientation because society promotes it? How would that, for example, account for all the gay people who came of age in a society that was dead set against it? They, like most people, knew their sexual orientation quite young. From what you suggest, you as a heterosexual must have also made a choice. However, there is no evidence that sexual orientation works like that, although of course one can repress one’s orientation if forced to.
As for your “what next? underage sex.” I have to ask what century you are living in? There hasn’t been anything new about underage sex in the United States for many many decades. The US has the highest teen pregnancy rate among all its industrial peers, although the two things are not clearly the same thing. Sweden on the other hand, for example, has one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the industrialized world. But it isn’t because Swedish teenagers aren’t having sex. And it isn’t because Swedish society has condemned homosexuality. Gay marriage is legal in Sweden.
This isn’t even to open the question of what “underage” means in America and how it has changed since far more traditional times, when the trend was toward younger ages for marriage not older.
Justin, I don’t think anyone has dragged out God here on this topic. Must have been another blog. 🙄 If someone had done that, Rick would have taken care of it.
God is one thing, but bringing the Skins into it??? 🙂
If you don’t think God is a big part of this fight, try listening to the testimony of the people against marriage equality in DC. Or try looking at the dollars that went into banning marriage equality in Virginia and various states whenever there was an important election to win. It’s not just cynical partisans who support bigotry to win elections. You need voters to fall in line for that, and most of them will tell you it’s okay to hate because it’s in the Bible.
My point is that people in general don’t do things that society frowns on, and so if someone is on the fence about something they will tend to go with what society finds acceptable. In the case of gay relationships society in the past frowned on the lifestyle, and therefore most undecideds would have chosen the straight life so as to be accepted into mainstream society. Today mainstream society, if not by choice but by law, can’t any longer frown on the gay lifestyle. Therefore those on the orientation fence without biological issues no longer have proper guidance from society. Hence many who would otherwise be straight are caught up in a lifestyle that will ultimately be detrimental to them.
SA, with all due respect, I would urge you to look at your language. For example, “undecideds,” “without biological issues,” “caught up in a lifestyle,” “otherwise be straight.” In a previous post you said you thought the “majority of so-called gays were guided into it.”
You appear to think a majority of gay men and women don’t have the “biological issues” that produced their sexual orientation. Over and over again you cast sexual orientation as a choice. You place gay people on an orientation fence that there is no indication most are on. People can certainly decide on action. They can repress their orientation to love and be attracted to their own gender, but this cafeteria notion of sexuality you have does not square with any evidence, at least certainly not about any majority. This notion of masses of fence dwellers who choose homosexuality as an orientation along with this week’s chocolate cake selection doesn’t exist. The vast majority of gay people, like the vast majority of straight people, simply know their orientation because it is what they are. They don’t choose the orientation. I’ll ask again, when did you make your choice? Why do you think a majority of gay people don’t have the biology for their orientation just as straight people do? What you seem to want is that gay men and women be forced to live as straight people, because you would puke, you said, if you saw them kiss. You are nostalgic for a closeted society. You would prefer the situation that creates, for example, a fake marriage in which a gay man in the closet marries a woman but inevitably has furtive sex with men. To me, the consequences of that sort of behavior are what endangers people.
Justin, you are very correct. The arguments are often God-driven and biblically based. My only point was that point of view rarely makes it to Anti discussions.
SA, I just don’t think that is how it works. I don’t think people sit on the orientation fence. I think people might repress their feelings for many years, but it doesn’t make them any more or less gay.
SA, when I was a child, a small child, before I went to school, I knew that a friend of mine was ‘gay.’ I never heard the word, I never heard the concept, but I knew ‘Sam’ was ‘different’ in that way. And remember, I am a contemporary of yours.
I didn’t live in a household were these sort of things would have been discussed in front of me or around me, let I knew in my mind, without having a word for it, was gay. My parents were friends with his parents so knowing outcomes was possible. His parents who are in their 80s now would deny to the death that their son is gay. The person he has been with most of his adult life is his ‘roommate.’ His mother refuses to read Rita Mae Brown, a local author, because she is a lesbian, they left they Episcopal Church because of the schism.
Is Sam less gay? No. Was I surprised once I learned words and concepts? No. My mother and I actually discussed it once I was grown. She thought his parents were nuts.
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I think you are trying to say that society in general is more accepting of the fact that people are gay. I am not sure that acceptance runs in all families. Granted the family I know has million year old parents, but, plenty of families can be just as rigid as these people. Many a gay kid has been disowned or bannished from their family. I don’t think societial ‘rules’ necessarily penetrate individual families.
I know several people who have gone along, repressed feelings, married, had children….you know the rest. Somewhere along mid-life they realized what was going on. Some snuck out to various places where people hook up (talking rest stops, memorials, battlefields here) just to watch and eventually became participants. There were many years of repression. Some people never act on their feelings. Others have come to grips. Some were outted because of getting caught, others outted themselves after much soul searching.
I am not going to say younger people have it easier. I don’t think there is an ‘easier.’ Contemporaries are still mean, jokes are still made, parents still don’t want to deal with THEIR kid being differerent.
SA, I think that people are most ofdten born gay, they do not get to make a conscious choice on who they are attracted to, any more than you or I can.
And I don;t think it is good for anyone to pretend otherwise. See “Brokeback Mountain” for a poetic illustration.
I’ve never met a gay person who did not go through some degree of torment because of that fact. Who on earth would choose that sort of agony? It’s hard-wired into their DNA, no doubt.
If you overlook the cheesy “aging” makeup and a couple of mumbled Heath Ledger lines that I couldn’t understand no matter how many times I played them back, Brokeback Mountain was actually an amazing and heartbreaking movie. The short story by Annie Proulx is excellent.
Emma, I got so caught up in the movie I forgot they were gay. They were just star crossed lovers, much like Romeo and Juliet. I thought it was a heartbreaking movie. Other than the tent scene, ( I shut my eyes), it was a fabulous movie. Jake Gyllenhaal was terrific. He is a fav of mine anyway, every since October Skies.
I was also overwhelmed by the abject poverty of an area I had always considered beautiful.