Will N.H. Civil Unions Affect Primary?

Law Allowing Same-Sex Couples To Enter Unions Goes Into Effect Seven Days Before Voting

(CBS)  New Hampshire Democrats have given the Republicans a potent issue that's ready to burst into the open just before the leadoff presidential primary: gay civil unions.

There's a risk: Republicans who decide to run with the issue in hopes of energizing their GOP base could also be seen as gay-bashers and alienate the state's political independents. There are a lot of those in New Hampshire, and they can choose either party's ballot in the Jan. 8 primary, exactly one week after the new civil unions law takes effect.

The law won't come in quietly.

"We hear reports of couples planning ceremonies for 12:01 on New Year's Eve. I'm certain this will be something that is in the news," said Fergus Cullen, chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. "It will remind moderates and independents in New Hampshire that they didn't plan on civil unions and same-sex marriage when they voted for Democrats last year."

Civil unions and same-sex marriage were essentially nonissues in the 2006 campaign for governor and the Legislature, then GOP-controlled. But the issue gained prominence - and unexpected success - when Democrats seized control of both houses of the Legislature that November.

Republican Mitt Romney's campaign is already hinting at a final-week television and direct-mail campaign intended to tap opposition among core GOP voters to same-sex unions.

"Of the four leading Republican candidates, only one supports a Federal Marriage Amendment," a Romney direct mail piece told voters during the last week of November. The same piece said that "in 2004, McCain broke with Republicans and voted with Senators Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy against a same-sex marriage ban."

So far, Romney has had the most to say about the issue. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani supports gay rights and stayed with a gay couple after separating from his second wife. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor, is amenable to civil unions. Arizona Sen. John McCain acknowledges he is uneasy when talking about the subject.

Romney often says he's against discrimination but cannot embrace same-sex civil unions. He says, "Marriage is an institution which is designed to bring a man and woman together to raise a child."

Could it be an effective wedge issue, exploiting voters' own discomfort about the issue?

"I don't think it will work, not in New Hampshire," said Charlie Black, a McCain adviser and a veteran of the past three Republican presidential campaigns. He is advising McCain not to make civil unions a key part of his campaign's final weeks.

A big question is which primary the independents will vote in, Republican or Democratic.

Registered independents - or undeclareds, as they are called in New Hampshire - outnumber both Republicans and Democrats in the first-primary state. Though polls have indicated that most plan to vote in the Democratic primary, a blowout on either side in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses could prompt many of them to vote in the New Hampshire primary in which they think they can make a difference.

There has been no public polling to suggest civil unions would be a huge mover, but the increased visibility of the issue could be a boon for Romney as he tries to solidify the last bits of support among his party's base. He trails Huckabee in Iowa and is in a tight race with him in New Hampshire, according to the latest AP-Ipsos polling.

University of New Hampshire pollster Andrew Smith said more Republicans than Democrats opposed civil unions in a survey last spring. Most of the opposition came from older voters - who traditionally vote and are on direct-mail and activist lists.

Republican campaign advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing internal strategy, know that New Hampshire independents might be turned off if the campaigns go too far. But they said not raising the issue might brand a candidate as weak among party activists.

"There are lots of people who are tolerant of other lifestyles who nonetheless don't believe in same-sex marriage and think that Democrats in New Hampshire made a mistake when they allowed that this year," said Cullen, the state GOP chairman.

On the other hand, when Democratic Gov. John Lynch signed the law in May, some conservatives predicted he would take a hit in the polls. It didn't happen, and in July the second-term governor still had 76 percent support, according to a University of New Hampshire poll for CNN and WMUR-TV.

[kansas1946]

"We hear reports of couples planning ceremonies for 12:01 on New Year''s Eve. I''m certain this will be something that is in the news," said Fergus Cullen, chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. "It will remind moderates and independents in New Hampshire that they didn''t plan on civil unions and same-*** marriage when they voted for Democrats last year."
************************************

No, it will remind them that families are being protected from the spit-slinging right wingers and their hatred. It will remind them that couples can rest assured that the state courts will handle their financial wishes correctly, their end of life issues will be in loving hands, and their childrens lives will have more stability.
Most independets and moderates support civil unions.

[kenshin051]

NH Freedom to Marry Coalition endorses John Edwards for president.

for more information on the LGBT issues from Edwards, go here:

http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/lgbt/

(please excuse the shameless plug.)

[kenshin051]

NH Freedom to Marry Coalition endorses John Edwards for president.

for more information on the LGBT issues from Edwards, go here:

http://www.johnedwards.com/issues/lgbt/

(please excuse the shameless plug.)

[mudrose-2009]

No, it will remind them that families are being protected from the spit-slinging right wingers and their hatred. It will remind them that couples can rest assured that the state courts will handle their financial wishes correctly, their end of life issues will be in loving hands, and their childrens lives will have more stability.
Most independets and moderates support civil unions.
Posted by kansas1946

It will also remind people that the lefties are hell bent on destroying the traditional family. That''s why g/ay marriage is so important to them. It divides the people, families, children, the culture under the guise of fairness and equality. Ugh.

[Ed0719]

All this rhetoric about "destroying traditional families" is repeated over and over, but nobody ever answers the question: how? How does Bob and Ted getting married or "civil unioned" affect in any way any other couple or family? Is your family so weakly held together that having a gay neighbor marry his partner going to cause your wife to leave you? All that the right-wingers can do is shout unfounded accusations and lies, they''ve never, EVER, presented any facts to back up their scare tactics. These same types of people are the very ones who used these exact same scare tactics about interracial marriages. They also used these same scare tactics about women''s suffrage.

Haven''t we all grown tired of their unfounded scare tactics already?

[mudrose-2009]

All this rhetoric about "destroying traditional families" is repeated over and over, but nobody ever answers the question: how? How does Bob and Ted getting married or "civil unioned" affect in any way any other couple or family? Is your family so weakly held together that having a gay neighbor marry his partner going to cause your wife to leave you? All that the right-wingers can do is shout unfounded accusations and lies, they''''ve never, EVER, presented any facts to back up their scare tactics. These same types of people are the very ones who used these exact same scare tactics about interracial marriages. They also used these same scare tactics about women''''s suffrage.

Haven''''t we all grown tired of their unfounded scare tactics already?
Posted by fuziwuzi

Unfounded scare tactics. If everybody get''s justice, who get''s justice? If everybody is rights, who has rights. If everybody is gets marriage, who is married. Why don''t you check out how many children are born out of wedlock in England.

[mudrose-2009]

Marriage is not a right. Heteros have no more right to marriage than homos. However, our society has structured the institution of marriage between a man and a woman and studies have found that children fair better with a father and a mother. Not two mommies and a daddy, or two daddies and a mommy. Married is a social institution not a personal relationship. It''s about children. Haven''t we all grown tired of the same old argument how marriage hurts us when people denigrate it to the simple notion of personal relationships? Aren''t we tired of the same old scare tactics of how does g/ay marriage hurt you?

[mudrose-2009]

While individuals freely choose to enter marriage, society upholds the marriage option, formalizes its definition, and surrounds it with norms and reinforcements, so we can raise boys and girls who aspire to become the kind of men and women who can make successful marriages.

[mudrose-2009]

Without this shared, public aspect, perpetuated generation after generation, marriage becomes what its critics say it is: a mere contract, a vessel with no particular content, one of a menu of sexual lifestyles, of no fundamental importance to anyone outside a given relationship.

The marriage idea is that children need mothers and fathers, that societies need babies, and that adults have an obligation to shape their sexual behavior so as to give their children stable families in which to grow up.

Which view of marriage is true? We have seen what has happened in our communities where marriage norms have failed. What has happened is not a flowering of libertarian freedom, but a breakdown of social and civic order that can reach frightening proportions. When law and culture retreat from sustaining the marriage idea, individuals cannot create marriage on their own.

[mudrose-2009]

In a complex society governed by positive law, social institutions require both social and legal support. To use an analogy, the government does not create private property. But to make a market system a reality requires the assistance of law as well as culture. People have to be raised to respect the property of others, and to value the traits of entrepreneurship, and to be law-abiding generally. The law cannot allow individuals to define for themselves what private property (or law-abiding conduct) means. The boundaries of certain institutions (such as the corporation) also need to be defined legally, and the definitions become socially shared knowledge. We need a shared system of meaning, publicly enforced, if market-based economies are to do their magic and individuals are to maximize their opportunities.

Successful social institutions generally function without people''s having to think very much about how they work. But when a social institution is contested--as marriage is today--it becomes critically important to think and speak clearly about its public meanings.

[mudrose-2009]

AGAIN, what is marriage for? Marriage is a virtually universal human institution. In all the wildly rich and various cultures flung throughout the ecosphere, in society after society, whether tribal or complex, and however bizarre, human beings have created systems of publicly approved sexual union between men and women that entail well-defined responsibilities of mothers and fathers. Not all these marriage systems look like our own, which is rooted in a fusion of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian culture. Yet everywhere, in isolated mountain valleys, parched deserts, jungle thickets, and broad plains, people have come up with some version of this thing called marriage. Why?

[mudrose-2009]

Because *** between men and women makes babies, that''s why. Even today, in our technologically advanced contraceptive culture, half of all pregnancies are unintended: *** between men and women still makes babies. Most men and women are powerfully drawn to perform a sexual act that can and does generate life. Marriage is our attempt to reconcile and harmonize the erotic, social, sexual, and financial needs of men and women with the needs of their partner and their children.

[mudrose-2009]

How to reconcile the needs of children with the sexual desires of adults? Every society has to face that question, and some resolve it in ways that inflict horrendous cruelty on children born outside marriage. Some cultures decide these children don''t matter: Men can have all the *** they want, and any children they create outside of marriage will be throwaway kids; marriage is for citizens--slaves and peasants need not apply. You can see a version of this elitist vision of marriage emerging in America under cover of acceptance of family diversity. Marriage will continue to exist as the social advantage of elite communities. The poor and the working class? Who cares whether their kids have dads? We can always import people from abroad to fill our need for disciplined, educated workers.

[mudrose-2009]

Our better tradition, and the only one consistent with democratic principles, is to hold up a single ideal for all parents, which is ultimately based on our deep cultural commitment to the equal dignity and social worth of all children. All kids need and deserve a married mom and dad. All parents are supposed to at least try to behave in ways that will give their own children this important protection. Privately, religiously, emotionally, individually, marriage may have many meanings. But this is the core of its public, shared meaning: Marriage is the place where having children is not only tolerated but welcomed and encouraged, because it gives children mothers and fathers.

[mudrose-2009]

Of course, many couples fail to live up to this ideal. Many of the things men and women have to do to sustain their own marriages, and a culture of marriage, are hard. Few people will do them consistently if the larger culture does not affirm the critical importance of marriage as a social institution. Why stick out a frustrating relationship, turn down a tempting new love, abstain from *** outside marriage, or even take pains not to conceive children out of wedlock if family structure does not matter? If marriage is not a shared norm, and if successful marriage is not socially valued, do not expect it to survive as the generally accepted context for raising children. If marriage is just a way of publicly celebrating private love, then there is no need to encourage couples to stick it out for the sake of the children. If family structure does not matter, why have marriage laws at all? Do adults, or do they not, have a basic obligation to control their desires so that children can have mothers and fathers?

[mudrose-2009]

THE PROBLEM with endorsing gay marriage is not that it would allow a handful of people to choose alternative family forms, but that it would require society at large to gut marriage of its central presumptions about family in order to accommodate a few adults'' desires.

The debate over same-*** marriage, then, is not some sideline discussion. It is the marriage debate. Either we win--or we lose the central meaning of marriage. The great threat unisex marriage poses to marriage as a social institution is not some distant or nearby slippery slope, it is an abyss at our feet. If we cannot explain why unisex marriage is, in itself, a disaster, we have already lost the marriage ideal.

Same-*** marriage would enshrine in law a public judgment that the desire of adults for families of choice outweighs the need of children for mothers and fathers. It would give sanction and approval to the creation of a motherless or fatherless family as a deliberately chosen "good." It would mean the law was neutral as to whether children had mothers and fathers. Motherless and fatherless families would be deemed just fine.

[mudrose-2009]

Same-*** marriage advocates are startlingly clear on this point. Marriage law, they repeatedly claim, has nothing to do with babies or procreation or getting mothers and fathers for children. In forcing the state legislature to create civil unions for gay couples, the high court of Vermont explicitly ruled that marriage in the state of Vermont has nothing to do with procreation. Evan Wolfson made the same point in "Marriage and Same *** Unions": "[I]sn''t having the law pretend that there is only one family model that works (let alone exists) a lie?" He goes on to say that in law, "marriage is not just about procreation--indeedis not necessarily about procreation at all."

Wolfson is right that in the course of the sexual revolution the Supreme Court struck down many legal features designed to reinforce the connection of marriage to babies. The animus of elites (including legal elites) against the marriage idea is not brand new. It stretches back at least thirty years. That is part of the problem we face, part of the reason 40 percent of our children are growing up without their fathers.

[mudrose-2009]

It is also true, as gay-marriage advocates note, that we impose no fertility tests for marriage: Infertile and older couples marry, and not every fertile couple chooses procreation. But every marriage between a man and a woman is capable of giving any child they create or adopt a mother and a father. Every marriage between a man and a woman discourages either from creating fatherless children outside the marriage vow. In this sense, neither older married couples nor childless husbands and wives publicly challenge or dilute the core meaning of marriage. Even when a man marries an older woman and they do not adopt, his marriage helps protect children. How? His marriage means, if he keeps his vows, that he will not produce out-of-wedlock children.

Does marriage discriminate against *** and lesbians? Formally speaking, no. There are no sexual-orientation tests for marriage; many *** and lesbians do choose to marry members of the opposite ***, and some of these unions succeed. Our laws do not require a person to marry the individual to whom he or she is most erotically attracted, so long as he or she is willing to promise sexual fidelity, mutual caretaking, and shared parenting of any children of the marriage.

[mudrose-2009]

But marriage is unsuited to the wants and desires of many *** and lesbians, precisely because it is designed to bridge the male-female divide and sustain the idea that children need mothers and fathers. To make a marriage, what you need is a husband and a wife. Redefining marriage so that it suits *** and lesbians would require fundamentally changing our legal, public, and social conception of what marriage is in ways that threaten its core public purposes.

Some who criticize the refusal to embrace gay marriage liken it to the outlawing of interracial marriage, but the analogy is woefully false. The Supreme Court overturned anti-miscegenation laws because they frustrated the core purpose of marriage in order to sustain a racist legal order. Marriage laws, by contrast, were not invented to express animus toward homosexuals or anyone else. Their purpose is not negative, but positive: They uphold an institution that developed, over thousands of years, in thousands of cultures, to help direct the erotic desires of men and women into a relatively narrow but indispensably fruitful channel. We need men and women to marry and make babies for our society to survive. We have no similar public stake in any other family form--in the union of same-*** couples or the singleness of single moms.

[mudrose-2009]

Meanwhile, cui bono? To meet the desires of whom would we put our most basic social institution at risk? No good research on the marriage intentions of homosexual people exists. For what it''s worth, the Census Bureau reports that 0.5 percent of households now consist of same-*** partners. To get a proxy for how many gay couples would avail themselves of the health insurance benefits marriage can provide, I asked the top 10 companies listed on the Human Rights Campaign''s website as providing same-*** insurance benefits how many of their employees use this option. Only one company, General Motors, released its data. Out of 1.3 million employees, 166 claimed benefits for a same-*** partner, one one-hundredth of one percent.

People who argue for creating gay marriage do so in the name of high ideals: justice, compassion, fairness. Their sincerity is not in question. Nevertheless, to take the already troubled institution most responsible for the protection of children and throw out its most basic presumption in order to further adult interests in sexual freedom would not be high-minded. It would be morally callous and socially irresponsible.

If we cannot stand and defend this ground, then face it: The marriage debate is over.

[mudrose-2009]

From excerpts of "What is Marriage For" by Maggie Gallagher.

[realpatriot1]

mudrose,

Your sincerity isn''t in question either, at least not with me.

How do gay couples relationships impact on the marriages of straight couples? Marriage as we know it is in trouble for a variety of reasons, but the reasons lie within the relationships themselves.

If *** are prevented from marrying they won''t all of a sudden be available for straight marriages with children(well, except for Madonna & Michael Jackson).

Regarding the issue of children in a heterosexual marriage plenty of couples choose to not have children. My wife and I are among them. We are happily married while many of the couples we know with children are not(I''m not suggesting cause and effect).

I don''t want to steer the discussion off onto family planning but there are too many children in society without a family or in a broken one and not enough loving homes willing and able to take them in.

We''ve recognized as a society(for the most part) that
when couples can''t work out their problems that it often damages kids as much when the parents stay together than when they divorce.

We need successful marraiges for the kids we already have more than we need to have more kids or limit who can provide a stable and loving home.

I''ve now opened up a can of worms on family planning/birth control/abortion, gay adoption in addition to your issue about the role of procreation in marraige. I''m going to shut up now.

[simonsez40]

The fear of Civil Unions crack me up - if heterosexual couples are so fearful of their ''institution'' crumbling - then why don''t they concentrate on making it more of a serious committment than a laughing stock - over 50% ends in divorce.

Mudrose your arguments are based out of pure fear of what you know NOTHING about.........go concentrate on the real ills of this world and strive to LEARN and Increase your knowledge instead of spitting bigotry and hatred because you are afraid........

[denn034]

Civil Unions and Gay Marriages are practically the same thing. In fact, the difference seems so slight as to be disingenuous. The arguments for such could also be used to justify polygamy or other marital arrangements as well, just replace civil union or gay marriage with polygamy to see that. Furthermore, it''ll only promote the very conduct that leads to AIDS and STD infections not to mention dramatically increasing suicides. Why would a city, county, state, or federal government want to promote something that can only lead to more deaths, infections, and misery for it''s citizenry not to mention poverty inducing AIDS health care costs? We need a marriage amendment that limits marriages between one man and one woman only which, has never hurt society throughout human history.

[simonsez40]

Posted by denn034

You''re nuts! Again read and educate yourself denn! AIDS has no bearing on civil unions - notta! Again a way to get the masses into a frenzy. AIDS will be here whether civil unions are allowed or not........and I''m sure there are many CHEATING ADULTERERS IN MARRIAGES THAT SPREAD AIDS.......

[simonsez40]

DENN I read your post and cracked up at the ignorance! Geez COMMITTED couples are the ones that want CIVIL UNIONS - you speak of an orgy like atmosphere that can be created by both Straight and GAAY folk......your reasoning is ludicrous!

Again the ignorance that is rampant through society truly amazes me.....no wonder BUSH won (questionnable) twice. Lord help us all!

[denn034]

"You''''re nuts! Again read and educate yourself denn! AIDS has no bearing on civil unions - notta! Again a way to get the masses into a frenzy. AIDS will be here whether civil unions are allowed or not........and I''''m sure there are many CHEATING ADULTERERS IN MARRIAGES THAT SPREAD AIDS.......
Posted by simonsez40

The 2002 World Almanac that I have has a statistic that plainly shows that 70% of all AIDS infections result from homosexual contact between gay men. You may want to crazily ignore that inconvenient truth but, I''m not going to. The only opposite *** couples that spread AIDS are one''s where one or both are bisexual or drug abusers ONLY! Only an incompetent, crazy, idiot would say otherwise. Period!

[denn034]

"DENN I read your post and cracked up at the ignorance! Geez COMMITTED couples are the ones that want CIVIL UNIONS - you speak of an orgy like atmosphere that can be created by both Straight and GAAY folk......your reasoning is ludicrous! Again the ignorance that is rampant through society truly amazes me.....no wonder BUSH won (questionnable) twice. Lord help us all!"
Posted by simonsez40

Insults aren''t valid arguments or reasoning. Period!

[simonsez40]

AND? What does the spread of AIDS have to do with two people wanting the right to have a CIVIL UNION? Again you prejudices (shallow and based in fear) don''t hold up any argument on two adults wanting to consummate their relationship legally.

Is this your only argument? We could also point out that the divorce rate is over 50% in the United States with Southern States having a higher average - and that would include teen pregnancy, incest etc......

I can point out ugly facts about straight and heterosexual marriages as well all day long.....

[simonsez40]

I''m not insulting anyone - I''m saying stop spitting out fear quotes and proclaiming heterosexual marriage isn''t in trouble. I find it quite the opposite - male to female marriages have made the INSTITUTION a MOCKERY! You all should be ashamed.......

[denn034]

"I''''m not insulting anyone - I''''m saying stop spitting out fear quotes and proclaiming heterosexual marriage isn''''t in trouble. I find it quite the opposite - male to female marriages have made the INSTITUTION a MOCKERY! You all should be ashamed......."
Posted by simonsez40

No evidence or valid argument, again. Insults and inflammatory rhetoric doesn''t make your reasoning any less invalid. Common sense, the 2002 World Almanac, and the entirety of human history are on my side NOT to mention God (see Leviticus 18:22 and Romans 1:26-27). Get used to it!

[simonsez40]

Denn - then start quoting you scripture at MARRIED couples and start spreading the gospel to make marriage laws stronger and apply laws that would make it harder to DIVORCE.

As of right now the word MARRIAGE means nothing to half of Americans. Bottom line is you are using the bible and your bigotry to deny basic and equal rights to a majority of the population.

Don''t insult me with YOUR INTERPRETATIONS of the Bible - if we all read the bible and got the same meaning then there wouldn''t be 33,000 different PROTESTANT Denominations......

[simonsez40]

I believe Iran and several other Middle Eastern nations rule by their religious sects and beliefs - if you wish to FORCE citizens to follow your religious beliefs and adhere the basis of your constitution on those values......

Then move to Saudia Arabia, Iran.....there are many to pick from.....

[denn034]

"Don''''t insult me with YOUR INTERPRETATIONS of the Bible - if we all read the bible and got the same meaning then there wouldn''''t be 33,000 different PROTESTANT Denominations......"
Posted by simonsez40

It''s a historical fact that the Jews of OT times and the Christians of NT times opposed homosexuality. Bible scholars by and large insist that scripture was interpreted literally except where it''s obviously figurative at the time of writing so, interpreting it otherwise divorces scripture from it''s historical context. Period! You''re more interested in perversion than truth. That''s your problem.

"As of right now the word MARRIAGE means nothing to half of Americans"
Posted by simonsez40

That''s irrelevant and doesn''t in any way detract from the fact that heterosexual marriage throughout human history hasn''t hurt anyone. Period!

"Bottom line is you are using the bible and your bigotry to deny basic and equal rights to a majority of the population."
Posted by simonsez40

All I said was the Bible and God were on my side not yours. An easily demonstrable fact as Leviticus 18:22 and Romans 1:26-27 shows. Do you really believe that homosexuality was acceptable during OT and NT times? Sorry but, only a moron would believe that contrary to the overwhelming testimony of human history.

[denn034]

"I believe Iran and several other Middle Eastern nations rule by their religious sects and beliefs - if you wish to FORCE citizens to follow your religious beliefs and adhere the basis of your constitution on those values......

Then move to Saudia Arabia, Iran.....there are many to pick from....."
Posted by simonsez40

How does not wanting to promote AIDS, STDs, high suicide rates, poverty inducing health care costs constitute forcing my views on anyone?

[mudrose-2009]

Mudrose your arguments are based out of pure fear of what you know NOTHING about.........go concentrate on the real ills of this world and strive to LEARN and Increase your knowledge instead of spitting bigotry and hatred because you are afraid........
Posted by simonsez40

You people are just adorable. When you don''t like what you hear, everyone is a bigot. Everyone else doesn''t know what they''re talking about. Only you understand all the intricacies of society. The know-it-alls. Lefties are the know-it-alls about everything. They are the elitists. Hahahaha. Get a grip your heterophobe.

[mudrose-2009]

I''''m not insulting anyone - I''''m saying stop spitting out fear quotes and proclaiming heterosexual marriage isn''''t in trouble. I find it quite the opposite - male to female marriages have made the INSTITUTION a MOCKERY! You all should be ashamed.......
Posted by simonsez40

And you are going to rescue it? Hahahahaha. Hate to tell you but all you little lefties with your laws are breaking down the family. No-fault divorce. Loosening parental controls on children - give them condoms and birth control pills in middle school. Let the little girls cross state lines for abortions without parental concent. No spanking! Are you getting it, stupid?

[mudrose-2009]

THE PROBLEM with endorsing g/ay marriage is not that it would allow a handful of people to choose alternative family forms, but that it would require society at large to gut marriage of its central presumptions about family in order to accommodate a few adults'''' desires.

The debate over same-s/ex marriage, then, is not some sideline discussion. It is the marriage debate. Either we win--or we lose the central meaning of marriage. The great threat unisex marriage poses to marriage as a social institution is not some distant or nearby slippery slope, it is an abyss at our feet. If we cannot explain why unisex marriage is, in itself, a disaster, we have already lost the marriage ideal.

Same-s/ex marriage would enshrine in law a public judgment that the desire of adults for families of choice outweighs the need of children for mothers and fathers. It would give sanction and approval to the creation of a motherless or fatherless family as a deliberately chosen "good." It would mean the law was neutral as to whether children had mothers and fathers. Motherless and fatherless families would be deemed just fine.

[kansas1946]

It will also remind people that the lefties are hell bent on destroying the traditional family. That''''s why g/ay marriage is so important to them. It divides the people, families, children, the culture under the guise of fairness and equality. Ugh.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by mudrose at 08:53 AM : Dec 14, 2007

*********************************************

That is the biggest bunch of nonsense I have ever heard. Your family must be awfully shakey if who someone else marries affects it.

Myself personally, I have been married forty years to the same man, I have two daughters that are married to men and they have traditional children. Most of my friends are married and intend on staying that way. The "destroying families" bunk is just the bumper-sticker slogan of ministers trying to scare the be-Jesus out of their flocks so they will give more money. It is nonsense.

[denn034]

Let me make this so simple that even a newborn moron can understand it. The liberals say that anyone that opposes homosexuality is an intolerant bigot. One only needs to replace the word "homosexuality" with another word to see the error in that logic. Anyone that opposes polygamy is an intolerant bigot. Anyone that opposes pedophilia is an intolerant bigot. Anyone that opposes bestiality is an intolerant bigot. Do you see how overly broad and general that nonsense is. Such an anything goes mentality will cause everything to go in the end if it isn''t kept in check.

[denn034]

The attempt to silence people with the intolerant bigot epithet is a direct threat to the very democracy that cannot exist without dialogue. The liberals that advocate this nonsense are a direct threat to society and democracy. Period! Anyone who thinks that a Bible that was written during a time that didn''t accept homosexuality could possibly support such can only do so by divorcing it from the historical context from which it arose and that takes it out of context. Psychologists see no problem with this narcissistic nonsense and that''s why I oppose psychology as the threat to society it is. Letting gay persons join the military doesn''t advocate their lifestyle but, advocating their lifestyle like civil unions and gay marriages do can only lead to more AIDS and STD infections and suicides and that''s not a good thing! The willingness of liberals to abandon society to AIDS and STD infections, suicides, and high poverty inducing AIDS and STD drug costs is troubling. We need a marriage amendment to limit marriage to one man and one woman only and to stop advocating the liberal''s anything goes mentality that can only result in everything going in the end.

[denn034]

"Get a grip your heterophobe."
Posted by mudrose

I like that.

[realpatriot1]

denn034,

Setting aside your own personal feelings about homosexuality for a moment, do you really think that denying people the ability to be monogomous won''t result in more indiscriminate *** and consequently greater spread of disease?

If one partner has AIDs and gives it to the other and they are monogomous the infection stops there. If gay couples are prevemted from haing a partnership they will still have *** and the disease will spread.

Also, try telling people they can''t be with the one they love and see what effect that has on suicides. I''m sorry, but many of your arguments don''t make sense and are just rationalizations to not accept the relationships of others. That''s your right but it doesn''t constitute a compelling argument.

Insults aren''t valid arguments and neither are irrational fears that have no basis in fact.

[rowdytexan2]

I don''t think allowing civil marriages among gay and lesbian people poses a threat to anything. They''re not trying to promote their lifestyle, they are just trying to get the same rights as any other married couples. If they are living together and supporting each other as a family, what harm can there be in allowing them the same tax deduction and insurance coverage as male female relationships? It doesn''t mean our society is saying woo hoooo, let''s all be gay!

Do you really think that by opposing their marriage union and now allowing it that their lifestyle is going to go away, thus society just doesn''t have to deal with it? We have worn blinders for years and persecuted them because they happen to be different. It''s the same thing as persecuting those that don''t have the same religious beliefs. Or have a different color skin. Or any other kind of persecution.

The world has become globalized, we cannot continue to live in fear and paranoia of the way peoples are different.

As a nation, we have already torn down the ''idea'' of the traditional family. There are more people living single lives supporting children by themselves than anywhere else in the world. We are having to hunt down fathers that refuse to support their children and prosecute them for non-payment. How much sense does that make?

It is intolerance and hypocrisy that has brought us to the very place that we are in right now. Would you have us all live like clones?