If you haven’t read it yet, take a few minutes to read Joanna Weiss’ terrific interview with Barney Frank from the Globe today.
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
If you haven’t read it yet, take a few minutes to read Joanna Weiss’ terrific interview with Barney Frank from the Globe today.
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
Excellent article! And what a wonderful reminder of how far we’ve come in just a few decades.
Having just been caught in a presidential traffic nightmare yesterday in NY, I got a chuckle from this comment – ‘Regardless, he said, Obama is not invited to his wedding. It’s nothing personal. “The Secret Service could ruin any party,’’ Frank said. “I think they overdo things. They shut down too much. I don’t want to be blamed for ruining everybody in the Greater Newton area’s Saturday.”’
Any normal living being has two simple and extremely powerful reflexes: keep self unharmed and pass genes to the future – this way biological species exist and continue, exist and continue, exist and continue and so on. If this chain is broken, the species seize existence.
Human institution of marriage is intended to create a family for children, who are passing genes of their biological mother and father to the future and who will become biological mothers and fathers selves and so on. This way mankind exists.
Are Messrs Frank and Ready going to get “married” for passing their genes to the future? No, they are not. They want to benefit from the marriage without taking the obligation before mankind to continue it.
Gays should improve and use the institute of civil union and do not trespass on the marriage, which they are not capable of.
Re:
It’s good to see that someone’s reading the Old Testament, but doesn’t the world and society evolve at all?
A man and woman beyond their reproductive years should not be married either?
Everyone can, through technology, have a child now. Should those children not have married parents? How do you account for the evolutionary changes that technology has brought? It only counts for man/woman couples?
What is the danger to marriage? If it can survive John Edwards, it can survive anything.
Re
You are pretty much on the money.
If, as Terry says, gay marriage is a sign of the “evolution” of society, i.e., the survival of the fittest in the species, then so much for teaching our kids evolution. It couldn’t possibly work.
I suppose if the headline mentioned two well-known gay pigeons, there would be a discussion about the inconsideration of cooing partners for the continuation of their species. Is the next thread about a pure white pigeon and her love for a handsome grey?
As with many prior comments, Re consistently makes a good argument for not allowing anonymous comments. At least Barry Cohen has the courage to use his real name.
Coward.
I can’t believe in this day and age, people still don’t get it. The good thing is the country is coming around and some of the comments on this board is in the minority as opposed to the majority.
Greg,
It only takes courage when you are surrounded by people infused with an irrational dogma, who will attack you with unpleasant slurs, and at times with violence, in order to prevent you from speaking the truth. However, the time will come when people will learn how much they screwed up the society in which they live by introducing so many self-destructive ideas. I hope we can discuss this in ten years or so on this blog.
Brilliant Barry.I use the word “evolve” and you have to knee jerk into Darwinian evolution.
The point is, with the changes in technology, the idea that a man and woman are the only possible parental pairs is obsolete. Are we not better off having committed pairs? Should we disallow all marriages among those beyond their fertile years?
Please answer clearly and with detail, I’d love to know your opinion. Less rhetoric, more substance: What is the danger to marriage and society if we allow same sex marriages? What potential damage can you foresee that we will we be discussing in ten years?
@Greg – saying that Re makes a good argument for not allowing anonymous comments is similar to saying that Barry makes a good argument for not allowing males to comment – neither is particularly representative of their class.
It’s sad when people can’t be civil about things they disagree with. A forum like this can be a useful place for reasoned discussion of important issues.
I think it is odd that so many people seem to miss the reality of what marriage means in our society. This is a financial/contractual relationship between two individuals. Granted this fiscal intermingling is supportive of children the full impact of a marriage goes way beyond that. It is not surprising to me that couples are having children prior to marriage to avoid the risk of divorce and the unwinding of combined assets.
@Greg.
Re is an info mask having no civil rights, including to sue or being sued, therefore Re is convenient to all participants of the blog, which may be considered as a cyber theatre, in which some actors are real persons and other are phantoms, like Re (stands for “Reference”). Re represents only an artificial stand for the sake of argument.
Re is not anonymous, because the email connected with Re is real, so the person standing behind Re may become known quite easy, if necessary.
Info masks (even multiple for one person) should be welcome at the blog. Without info masks the blog would die.
OK, I read Re’s post twice and I don’t understand it at all. But I can say this: Multiple “info masks” (whatever that is) for one person are not allowed here. Users are only permitted to comment under one name.
@GG has got it. Individual religious institutions have control over marriage as a religious ceremony. Re guy’s church(?) or Barry Cohen’s temple(?) may choose whether or not to conduct that ceremony for a couple, for whatever reason. That’s their right.
But — marriage as an institution is a government program that legally recognizes two people’s intent to spend the rest of their lives together. The government recognizes this by granting a different tax status and other specific legal rights to the couple.
Demanding that the government make decisions on which pairs of consenting adults can, and which cannot benefit from that privileged legal status seems to me the worst kind of activist meddling by the government into peoples’ personal lives.
One of the most important legal benefits of marriage has nothing to do with assets – it’s being next-of-kin, which is one of the reasons marriage is so important to many gay couples. Too many times, if half of a gay couple ends up in the ER or hospitalized, their partner is not allowed to be with them. There are too many horror stories of partners being kept from their dying loved one’s bed side, or not being allowed to have input into emergency decisions when their loved one is unconscious.
Laws relating to inheritance, the right to participate in end of life decisions and preferred tax treatment are incidental benefits of marriage, but the policy justifications used to support marriage have traditionally focused on childbearing and the importance of raising children within an intact family structure. Scientific advances have made childbearing by single women relatively easy, and single parenting is no longer stigmatized. The uniform adoption of no-fault divorce laws has greatly minimized the weight of the argument that the state has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of married couples, and divorce is freely available to unlock the bonds of matrimony. Given that we have so undermined the historical policy justifications for keeping marriage exclusive to one man and one woman, it is difficult to find any reasons to continue to deny these benefits to same sex couples without resorting to traditional religious values. While this may be appropriate within the practices of a religious community, religious mores do not constitute appropriate grounds for the denial of equal protection and benefits to all, or preferential status to some.
Terry,
To answer your question requires more time and more in-depth sociological and psychological commentary than the average citizen would ever consider. Most people today are driven by slogans, Madison Avenue type hype, self-imposed and externally imposed feelings of guilt, poor logical development, and bias (witness how election campaigning works).
I may try to address Lisap’s comments, since she replied intelligently though I disagree with her.
Lisap,
Your comments are interesting, but, there’s an old expression “two wrongs don’t make a right”. You are correct that mainstream society has itself devalued the notion of marriage. So, what all these open-minded supporters of homosexual marriage are offering is something they don’t really much value themselves. It will just further devalue marriage, which doesn’t bother them.
If marriage were what it once was, I would support it for anyone. I’d have no choice. It once was a contract between two parties, which defined their responsibilities to each other. Anyone can do that today. It doesn’t take a lawyer, a clergyman, or anyone else. It only affected the people who signed the contract.
Religions have raised the notion of marriage to a higher level by seeing it as a holy joining of the two entities that constitute the basis of life and future life, a man and a woman.
When marriage was just a contract, there was no pressure from G’s, L’s, B’s, or T’s to be married. It conveyed no benefits, only obligations.
Society probably only in modern times, outside of religions, has decided that a stable family structure, binding together a man and a woman, is a strong foundation for a society, and has conveyed many preferential benefits to it, which were never intended for any other union when they were created.
GLBT’s today want those benefits, not marriage. The marriage will never convey the respect they claim to want. People who support that type of relationship will continue to do so. People like me who don’t will never view that union as normal. Without those benefits, most in the GLBT community wouldn’t want marriage. It’s just a contract. And religions should be free to define their notion of “holy matrimony” however they want, as long as they don’t violate secular law, like by allowing polygamy.
My solution to the problem is to eliminate any benefits conveyed automatically by civil society associated with marriage. People should be treated as individuals by the state, with perhaps legitimate dependents for some purposes, like minor children or elderly parents, for example. I’d need to think a lot more about the overall impact of this approach, but it makes some sense to me.
The GLBT crowd lies about most of the benefits they lose. Power of attorney in case of inability to make decisions, medical proxies allowing visitation and decisions, inheritance, and a slew of other lost “benefits” are available by contract between any parties, without calling it marriage. As Lisap says, these are “incidental” benefits.
Then, with all this aside, we can focus on the notion of creating new life and whether or not we, as a society, want to limit the kind of world a child is brought into. We certainly feel we can change that world legally if we don’t approve of a child’s environment, and kids are often removed from their parents.
Says who? I attended a number of “Commitment Ceremonies” pre-2004, where the only benefits extended to the happy couples were toasters and some nice glassware.
Tricia,
A “Committment Ceremony” is more like what I said is okay. It’s between them only and doesn’t obligate the mainstream society to give them anything, or to treat them in any special way. No problem. I still consider it not to be a normal relationship, but I don’t care what they do that doesn’t force me to do anything.
Barry wrote “The GLBT crowd lies about most of the benefits they lose. Power of attorney in case of inability to make decisions, medical proxies allowing visitation and decisions, inheritance, and a slew of other lost “benefits” are available by contract between any parties, without calling it marriage. As Lisap says, these are “incidental” benefits.”
Actually, they aren’t always available – there have been many cases of medical proxies being ignored by hospitals. It is also currently impossible for two unmarried people to jointly have legal parenting rights – meaning that if the biological/legal parent dies suddenly, the co-parent has no legal rights.
I would have no problem if all couples, gay or straight, had civil unions and the only marriages were religious ceremonies that have religious but not legal significance. But as long as we invest marriage with legal properties not available any other way, it will be important for all to be able to avail themselves of it.
Barry –
it’s a bit breathtaking that you’re willing to speak so definitively about the motivations and thoughts of millions of people.
As one of those people I can assure you that I value marriage very much (22 years worth) and who knows, there may even be a few other people who do too 😉
I’m being a bit simplistic but I think it all boils down to – if two adults want to marry each other, that should be their decision, not mine, not the government’s. Sometimes I’ve seen people getting married and I didn’t think it was a good idea for various reasons. When they went ahead and got married despite what I thought it didn’t undermine or devalue my marriage.
So sure, you’re entitled to your opinion that gay couples shouldn’t get married but not entitled to try to prevent them from getting married.
… and please, stop ascribing thoughts and motivations to anybody but yourself.
Ironic that the many of the people who scream about big intrusive government are the same ones who want the government intruding in people’s relationships and sex lives.
Barry, I guess you’re right about me not valuing my marriage enough. My wife just pointed out that we’ve been married 24 not 22 years
Jerry, I hope you considered your response to that carefully. It’s a trap. 😉