Prop. 8: Gay-marriage ban unconstitutional, court rules

Why there is any question that the legislation of religious dogma is unconstitutional is the issue.  The Right has succeeded in twisting religious freedom around so they can complain about not having their theocracy established.  It is a religious war on our consciences and civil rights, and they ought to be ashamed and seeking foregivness instead of whining and screwing their fellow citizens.

I love the idea that heterosexual marriage is being threatened by...marriage.  Back in the day, they used to insist that gays and lesbians were immature and incapable of more than promiscuous and temporary relationships.  Homophobic creeps!

Yes, the assault on freedom continues - fueled by bigots like you. But today was a victory for justice, decency and morality.

Your dogmatic error about the sin is the first problem.  But, your inability to appreciate that your dogma has no legislative warrant is unforgiveable.  Homophobia is ugly.  I know a lot of deeply misinformed people who get the Bible wrong, but I have no patience for their public behavior when it injures the innocent.  The theocratic politics of conscience is religious war, and they have no right to wage it.  If they want to express their opinions civilly, they can be like anti-abortionists who need to learn the same boundaries.  If you think homosexuality is a sin, I hope you are not gay or lesbian and do not have family or friends to offend or oppress either. 

Zealotry can be passive aggressive, and if they love the person they have an oblligation to learn what is and is not sin.  Otherwise, they are embarrassments to Christ as well.

Homophobic creeps still sums it up for me.  Did you think that the people who supported segregation deserved a pass for innocent prejudice?  Same thing here.  God sees and judges.

No, I disagree completely that it is possible to be "anti gay agenda" without subscribing to hate in this case.  If the gay agenda was to establish a kingdom ruled only by homosexuals then I'd say your argument has merit but to want to deny to others a basic right that you enjoy is hateful and indefensible.  Try to defend it!

I admit that the misconception is widely shared, but having been engaged in a serious study of the issue and the Scriptures involved, I am convinced on a number of levels that the case for homophobia as biblical is deeply flawed.  That there has been a lot of cultural homophobia and that some of it has intruded into religious traditions does not make the case for your moral certainty.  Sins of ignorance that harm real people are still harming real people and come under the judgement of the rule of love or justice.  Being able to discern what is true from what has become religious tradition is an essential part of Jesus' witness and Gospel.  It is why "the Holy Spirit" is the authority for interpretation of the Word and not the text by human reason.  People who are ignorant of the theology of biblical authority tend to fall for what that theology stands against.

I presume you are aware that racism and the oppression of women were also once thought to be biblical and God's will.  Both reflect a similar accretion of culture into religious traditions and both have been rejected on a sound biblical basis, not by repealing the Bible.  I can be sympathetic with the sincerely misled, but I do challenge them to think anew in the present and to examine these beliefs in the light of new knowledge and awareness.  Mistranslations have boosted homophobia, but the combination of experience and scientific rejection of the theories that justified the oppression of gays and lesbians speaks directly to the idea that God is the Author of all Truth. 

There is also this little factoid in the Scot's Confession of 1560 that discredits any interpretation of the texts that violates "the rule of love."  Hardly a modernisitic invention.  How do you feel about the left-handed, who are condemned in Leviticus?  Do you think women need to be silent in church?  Is he curse of Cain justification for white superiority? 

But besides this, Christians and other religionists need to appreciate that their revealed truths and dogma have no place in legal authority outside their religious communities.  Complaining that secular society does not observe your private religious scruples and insisting that others must bend for you is arrogant and against all the teachings of St. Paul about how to live in the world outside the church.  If you want my take on the biblical Word to us about homophobia, try reading Romans 2 all the way after you have heard him set up judgmentalism in chapter one.  The Gentile who fulfills the law without knowing it was as hard for circumcision Jews to accept as gay and lesbian Christians are for biblicists today.  If you pray for the "sinners," pray double hard for your own enlightenment.  Instead of defending all the reasons to continue being anti-gay, try to hear what the Spirit is revealing to you in these people and in the exposure of the lies about them.

If Jesus were to appear out of the blue today he would be branded a lazy, gay hippie and would be looked down upon by millions who prescribe to the same beliefs as the OP.  I wonder, do you think he would share bread with the likes of Mitt or with the OWS group.

What form of capital punishment would we choose?

Are you joking?

Did you just imply that preventing other people getting married is Freedom?

There are a lot of stupid things said here, but this, I think, is way near the top.

The legislation in question was enacted by a vast majority to clarify the constitution. The fact that two judges unilaterally took it upon themselves to deny the will of the people is the main issue here.

I have to say, I am not a follower of any religion, and it is entirely possible to be against homosexual marriage from a secular stand point.

The relationship between Man and Woman is THE very core of what propels our civilisation THROUGH TIME. Society, itself also transcends time, and as such, has a vested interest in nurturing the relationships that allow it to do that.

The core of the Homosexual quest for marriage is nothing more than bulging eyed greed at the tax perks and benefits that society bequeaths to the married couple.

I suppose you would have supported the popular vote to insure segregation in the South because these sincere racists believed that the Bible ordered the separation of the races.  Civil rights are not about majority opinion or we would never need a law guaranteeing them.  They are also not about having a majority finally able to support them because they are rights guaranteed by religious freedom and the unconstitutionality of an establishment of religion.  I do not care how sincerely these bigots believe that gay marriage is against God's law or that it makes their heterosexual marriage less sacred than they think it is.  They are wrong about it all.  Marriage is a civil institution, and if churches engage in blessing marriages, they are not required to do marriages that do not fit their religious standards for a religious service.  They may not disrespect the rights of gay married partners to be with a dying partner in their public hospitals.  They have no right to make their dogma binding on anyone outside their membership.  Period.

I said:  Did you just imply that preventing other people getting married is Freedom?

You can't answer that, can you?

If they keep this up, we will be able to get a majority vote to outlaw Mormonism or whatever we decide we don't want in our neighborhood.  Those who violate the religious freedom of others and cannot understand and appreciate the neutrality of civil community to theocracy, put their own religious selves at risk.  I would love to prevent the Religious Right from voting just because they are crappy Americans.  Think of the possibilities.  Or, we could just outlaw greed because it is against our religion.  Fortunately, the Founders were not able to agree on an American Church as the official brand of America.  This means we all have to keep our dogma out of other people's karma.  Learn to live, work and play with others, theocrats.

Your statement is illogical. Homosexuality has always been with us, and is found in nature - likely because if confers bennefits of natural selection. Thus society has a vested interest in nurturing homosexual marriages as well as hetrosexual marriages.

Homosexuality has always been with us, thus homosexuals are not together to get advantages - most of which never existed throughout time. Because homosexuals have always been together - many having families - then their right to marriage should not be denied.

I see that the conservatives in this discussion are attempting to argue that the "will of the people" has been thwarted.  There are a couple of things wrong with that argument: first and foremost the majority does not possess a right to deny Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to a minority and second the majority must have what's called a "rational basis" (a reason other than bias) for taking something away (marriage) from certain people. The Ninth Circuit decided the case narrowly, as they are wont to do, according to a "rational basis" argument.  They chose to decide the case narrowly so that this decision, which was made before the case came before the Supreme Court, will stand up since it is based on existing Supreme Court precedent.  Now, if and when it does go to the Supreme Court, if the Supreme Court reverses the decision the court will be reversing itself which will give the appearance of practicing a particular bias.

As to the first question the defenders of Proposition 8 have been doing all sorts of contortions to try to come up with a reasoned argument for granting marriage to only heterosexuals but their arguments have all fallen short. Every argument they have put forward has been shown to be based on faulty assumptions and unsound logic. There is no collective right to force the state to retain only a certain kind of marriage but there are Constitutionally guaranteed individual rights to privacy, association and equal justice. The thruth is that the real objection is based on religious bias but the Prop 8 lawyers know that admitting that will lose them the case since our system of jurisprudence does not recognize any particular religious dogma as legitimate legal doctrine. The second argument, "rational basis", fails as well since the defenders of Proposition 8 could not prove that taking away marriage rights from same sex couples accomplished anything of value but rather it was shown that it only served to inflict harm on a class of people, which is the gay population.  The state has an interest in disallowing voters the option of inflicting harm without merit and so it is not that the will of the majority has been thwarted but rather that they have been repreived from the unintentional harm that they inflicted on the social order and on some people by taking unto themselves a power that was never legitimately theirs to exercise.

I suggest that you Bible thumpers actually watch the oral arguments (available on C-SPAN) before you blather on with any more of your right-wing quack, quack quacking. Bellyaching might make you feel better but its a meaningless waste of time since your argument has already been discredited.     

Something similar happened back in 2001 when several judges decided they knew what was best for America. I personally have no problem with gays getting married anywhere in this country. What they do in their personal lives is their business and no one elses. If the righties didn't make this an issue every chance they get most wouldn't probably even care. But, once again it is the bible thumpers trying to tell us or decide for us how we all should be living. My answer to them is go cheney yourselves and often.

This proves once again the repugnuts don't want to tolerate anyone that isn't like them.

The parallel to Gore v. Bush is wildly inaccurate and absurd.  This is a case of civil rights and equality under law unlike the selection of Dubya which was both legal activism and tantamount to treason given the results.  You may have no problem with gay marriage, but gay and lesbian people have considerable trouble with the denial of their civil rights and a lot of real world consequences.  Of course it is the homophobic Right that wages the religious war called the politics of conscience.  But, if this is the best you can do from a different perspective it helps explain why this elemental justice has been denied for decades.  It is the appropriate role of the courts to over-rule prejudice established in law.  Or do you think segregation was not a fundamental wrong that needed legal reversal? 

Homosexuality is not abnormal. What would be abnormal would be if there were no homosexuals. I believe the consensus is that it sits around 10%, but It's easy to imagine that the number is higher than that. You can have them either as a permanent outcast demography or invite them in as  equal citizens. The Constitution favors the later.

Sexual orientation is clearly not a choice, but homosexual acts are sins to be hated, while the sinner remains worthy of sanctimonious, patronizing "love." Is it really any wonder why more and more people are coming to despise religion?

Your presumption that homosexuality is a sin is in error.  There is nothing wrong with the people or the relationships and no distinction that matters to anyone other than the prejudiced.  For a long time, the homophobes tried to prove that gay and lesbians were not 'mature' enough to sustain long-term committed relationships, but then we find all these great marriages that equal or surpass their heterosexual counterparts.  None of the purported reasons to justify gay and lesbian oppression have been found to hold any water whatsoever, and the biblical material is weaker than that which was used in the past to justify slavery and the discrimination against women.

I know that there is a large amount of cultural and religious ignorance on the matter, and that a lot of religious and "family advocates" have created considerable fog to confuse people and mislead them.  The pray away the gay closet cases continue to pursue their pathetic and harmful ways, and I have considerable compassion for the sincerely deluded but no patience to the damage they do to the innocent.

Barnyard anecdotal 'evidence' is what you find in the barnyard.  I know no gay or lesbian person who 'chose' to be gay, and I cannot say I chose to be straight.  It happened, and my gay friends have accepted that I am hopelessly heterosexual in my own being.  We are great friends, and while I have great women friends as well, the basic natural difference to me is that were I not totally and happily married, I can imagine an erotic attraction to the women. 

I have a good friend whose husband realized she was lesbian despite the fact that they had a good marriage and have a couple of kids.  Jim just knew Jane well enough and loved her enough to see that their friendship was not what she needed for romance and sexual satisfaction.  He is a great guy and they are great friends today.  But she is married to her lesbian partner.  It was the right thing for her.

I have another gay friend who describes the Bambi Syndrome where he kept waiting for the phase to end, and it didn't.  It was not a phase, it is who he is.  It is not a sin.  Not being who you really are is closer to that.  There are a number of conservative Christians who need to sacralize their heterosexual procreation to believe in their marriages.  They are threatened by gay marriage because it tells them that they are living a lie, even if they are doing it in the hopes that Jesus and God will approve. 

Jesus and Paul broke the rules of patriarchy by being celibate.  Paul refused to elevate celibacy above marriage, making our sexuality a matter of personal vocation rather than a heterosexual imperative.  He, and the Roman world around him, did not approve the "Greek way."  But Paul told the Roman Christian community that being judgmental was wrong, and when you read Romans 2 after the first chapter, it is hard not to get the point of the Gentile who fulfills the Law without knowing it as a metaphor for our need to avoid homophobia and recognize the revelation of human fullness we experience with gay and lesbian people.  It is always wrong to limit the possibilities of grace and salvation and to be blind to the light of the Holy Spirit.

One need not have elaborate theories to justify the natural selection intent of gayness.  There is a lot of diversity beyond our measures of order and efficiency.  Why left handedness other than to have first basemen whose glove is on the field side or hitters who can reverse the advantage of the curve ball?  We could postulate the value of population control.  We could point out that same gender relationships do not struggle with sexist crap about what men and women are supposed to do and be.  No power differentials in gay relationships, or none imported by extant cultural prejudices.

But that has nothing to do with the mystery of why we are attracted to others.  The theories that would limit marriage to the procreative fail because we have many childless couples and we do not question why seniors choose to marry at a late age or that they find great benefit from intimacy and bonding.

I hope you have the wonderful surprise of discovering that all you think you know about homosexuality is wrong.  My parents discovered this because I had the privilege of serving on a major national task force in the 70's and the process of education and the creeps opposing us opened their minds and eyes to the fact that they had a lot of gay and lesbian friends that they did not know were so.  May we all be liberated from the burdens of homophobia!  It is like getting out of racism and sexism too.  May grace be abundant and amazing for you.

Read Romans 2.  I hope you get it.  I am sorry for your bullheaded insistence on misunderstanding all this.  You will be left behind.  I believe the deceiver is working where lies and hate abound.  I am freed from that and grateful.  May the Holy Spirit and grace be yours.  I hope you will not harm others with your false beliefs and passions.  You do not understand the history of this subject either.  It is an issue of modernism.  It is a cultural prejudice that has infected religion and not the other way around.

You can only debate people if you agree to use logic and reason, and not shared superstious beliefs.

Your going to challenge the consensus of the scientific community based on your own personal experience of watching herd animals and your suspicions?

To repeat, if the behavior exists, it likely conferred an advantage. In the case of the Black Swan, nearly half the species was found to be homosexual. Gangs of males form couples(and practice sex with each other) and raid female's nests. It is *not* an anomaly. It is a  permanent, significant behavior. It has existed among all animals for as long as you care to study it. In humans, it is not caused by a desire to get marital benefits.

Do you seriously want to continue debating these issues? Your best arguments are based on superstition, wild guesses and wrong information. Can you see why courts don't decide these issues in your favor?

I mean, I have heard all these before. Marriage is good for raising children. Yet, sterile people and those not planning to have children are allowed to marry (and homosexuals have children based on adoption or from other people). Homosexual marriages means men can marry dogs or pedophilia. Yet these are non-consensual marriage. Homosexual marriages will lead to incest.  Yet there are obvious reasons why close siblings should not marry. Marriage is between a man and a woman 'throughout history'. Yet, so was slavery. 

Have I missed any?

Your religious opinion, thank God, has no legal standing.  If you want to be a bigot along with your church, it is your freedom under the constitution do so in the privacy of your conscience and cult.  You cannot bring that crap into public life without offending the religious freedom and consciences of others.  Don't do it or you are asking for a fight.

You debate whether this or that is a "sin".  When in fact there are many who don't believe there is such a thing as a "sin".  This debate has nothing to do with religion or the bible.  The debate is whether it is constitutional to ban what we call gay marriage.  Society as a majority may be OK with banning gay marriage but it has been found unconstitutional thus far.  I agree with that decision.  This is a classic case of why our forefathers insisted on a seperation of government and religion.  If we ever let that distinction disappear then sometime in the near future all of the men of America will be required to have facial hair and all the women will be required to hide their faces behind a veil.

A bunch of different people wrote, edited and revised a book over a period of centuries. A book full of contradictions, ludicrous laws by any modern standard, and a main character for whom there is no evidence outside of said book.

A game of telephone spread out over hundreds of years, superstitious mumbo-jumbo that pre-dates modern science, selective reading/interpretation, characters and events that parallel characters and events from other, much older religious and non-religious texts, and so on. Oh, yeah, the bigotry is certainly warranted. Let's base political, social and economic policy on The Hobbit, shall we?

Good grief. Is this not 2012? The US is the laughing stock of the Western World, and this thread helps expose why. Ghandi thought Western Civilization was a nice idea.

Assault on conservatism? Please.

We're talking about people who are, to quote Lewis Black, "stone cold fuck nuts." I only wish they were asleep and in danger of being awoken. They're wide awake, very loud and make up an embarrassingly high percentage of the US population (again, the US is the laughing stock of the Western World...we're right there with Turkey in our insanity). Imperialism isn't the only reason some claim to be Canadian when traveling abroad.

The same can be said for chemtrailers, adult Santa Claus believers, and global warming deniers or whatever you wish to call them. They're as bad as Creationists and anyone who takes The Bible so seriously that they wish to base public policy on it. "Stone cold fuck nuts." I refuse to mince words. The insanity of believing in things for which there is no evidence and mountains of contrary evidence contributes to a great deal of suffering.

But you can't reason folks out of positions that they reached without using reason.

When people, in the year 2012, start talking about "God's word," all I can do is hope they're joking. If they aren't, I hope they seek professional help.

I see that this conversation has devolved into a discussion about religion and I would just like to point out, to my great glee, that the fact is that the motivation that the proponents of Proposition 8 always had for promoting the amendment was, in fact, their religious conviction. Of course that is only a thinly veiled excuse for practicing hate since, as a matter of course, they have no difficulty ignoring any number of other Biblical directives, but that's beside the point.  My point is that the supporters of proposition 8 have contorted themselves into all sorts of knots (metaphorically speaking) to try and come up with a rational basis for enacting proposition 8. Since they can't just come out and admit that religious fervor is behind it without losing on the grounds that they are applying a religious test to a state licensing procedure their defense has been a complete and utter failure. So, ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha...ha      

It is not wildly wrong to say that the Southern Baptists did devolve into a cult.  Their theological reactionary position drove the good ones I knew out.  They are at the best theocrats, and their biblical stuff does not pass the sniff test of tradition.

What I am saying to those who insist on waging the religious war that is the politics of conscience is that they are becoming intolerable.  If they cannot contain themselves and figure out how to be decent neighbors and 'fellow Americans,' they will rouse the sleeping beast and get the fight they are picking.  I am not worried that my standing up to these civil bullies will rouse them further.  They are already on the warpath.  It is Liberals who have  been trying to treat them as decent neighbors by accepting too much of their crap who will get tired of being nice and punch them in the nose.

I do not believe the people of any jurisdiction have the right to vote to deny inallienable rights.  When we have to have a vote about truth and decency, it is because there has been an injustice supported by cultural prejudice and ignorance.  Homophobia is like racism and sexism in that it was 'popular' but wrong.  The facts have disproved every contention used to support discrimination against gay and lesbian people.  The courts properly reject this bad piece of theocratic bs just as they would attempts to revive segregation or misogyny.  You may miss your 'right' to discriminate according to your prejudice, or you may just misunderstand how democracy works; but in either case, the people of California should never have been able to bring this issue to the public ballot because there is no basis for the assertions that underly the Measure.  It is dogma, not science.  It is prejudice, not even "opinion."  Were it otherwise, we could just decide to vote Southern Baptists out of their civil rights including their right to vote.  It would just be what the majority believes.  They would have more evidence of clear and present danger than the homophobes ever did.  I still support religious freedom and the protection of conscience.  But, I am a liberal.

Mjolinier says "Homosexuality is, in my opinion, a behavior and thus, in my opinion again, should not be given special treatment that would negate the votes of 7,000,000 people."

I already dispatched that arguement. The majority is not always right. I mean, that's a pretty simple arguement to refute.

Mjolinier  also says "It might interest you to know that I am fully comfortable defending my religious views all the while believing in evolution and a 14.6 B year old universe".

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Google.  For what does this mean, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."?

Didn't God create the big bang (or perhaps a Big Bang, we don't really know, and why didn't God tell us that?) 'in the beginning', then he created some of 'the heavens', and then finally, after some 8 billion years, he got around to the earth? I mean, suppose for a minute you knew everything, and wanted to teach man introductory cosmology. Would you start out with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."? Of course not. Now, suppose you were a primitive farmer, who just read an origin story from Egypt that was exactly like that. Isn't that a more convincing explanation of why the Bible starts off that way?

I am an idiot, and if I was trying to explain cosmology, I might do it something like this. Space and Time (pilfering from Kant) are forms of intuition. Our consciousness imprints on reality time and space. Hence, there is no beginning and no end.  12 billion years ago  God (or whatever) created a great explosion that distributed all the material in the universe. 4.5 billion years ago the material collected into a vortex. The center of the vortex produced the bright and fiery spherical sun, and you can say the spherical earth rotated around it. 

That is my uneducated explanation of early cosmology. And even though I am an idiot, it surpasses Genesis.

Gee, I and not the Mormons brought religion into this discussion.  How clever of you.  I repeat, though, there are things majorities cannot vote away like our inalienable rights and human rights.  Your sophistry is too much to bear.  If you want us to be able to vote your rights away, just keep pushing this uncivil, undemocratic and stupid nonsense.  You would have made a great segregationist.

Its always unbelievable to me that people still have the nerve to defend the idea that they are entitled to a privileged status by virtue of their particular characteristic.  If that's not the definition of bigotry their is none. 

Right. So your arguement does not rest on the majority being right, but another reason. Thus, this arguement is not necessary or significant to the discussion.

So, I don't see where you have any arguements are of value - for the many reasons I have listed, over and over. I would summarize them again, but what is the use?

Exactly, and when the majority is wrong, we need to protect ourselves from them.  This is why we have inalienable rights and Constitutional protections of things like thought and conscience.  Dogma has no place in any law.  Even churches are ultimately subject to the authority of the Author of All Truth, and just because the read it in the Bible does not mean that they get what the Word says.  The Bible is a record of religion getting in the way of God.

Civil Rights should not be put on any ballot in this country to be voted on. Everyone deserves and needs to be treated equally and have the same rights from birth till death regardless of what the haters of equal rights for all think or want.

WWJD? 

Not as cosmology.  Creation stories are not science and when they are taken that way, you get into big trouble.  You also rob the Creation story of its power.  However, even if you believe in the Bible as history and science, it is still your religious dogma, not anything any other American citizen has to respect in the making of public policy. 

As to the marriage as a civil institution point, that merely keeps your religion, and mine for that matter, out of the public policy issues.  The point that matters is that no majority can deny any citizens their full and equal civil rights by majority prejudice under the Constitution.  It is not up to the voters of New Jersey whether marriage equality is to be honored or not.  They may affirm what is true but not establish what is not.  All the opposition to marriage equality is based on cultural prejudices and dogma.  There are no facts or evidence to support any limitation of gay and lesbian rights, and the only way they become a "protected class" is to have somebody messing with them unjustly.  Same as with race, where it is not "special rights" to not be discriminated against.  It is getting the same rights that apply to everyone else.

I have a hard time wrapping my mind around a God that can create all of the heavens and earth, planets and stars, mountains and flowers and animals of all kinds but creates only one human and then in order to create a woman he has to use a rib bone of the human male that he has created.  Then the world becomes populated by billions of unperfect humans that were created by the perfect being who were created for the sole purpose of worshiping their creator.  Then their was a son that died for all human being sins and yet the human being still will be judged as whether they are sinful or not in order to return to the creator or else spend an eternity in a lake of fire.

On the other hand science supports a big bang theory that was the true beginning of life as we know it but religion dictates that something cannot come from nothing.  There must be a creator.  If that is true then how did the original creator come into existence.  Was it a "big bang" and he or she or it was created from nothing?  Wait, we already established that that can't happen.  I have a headache.

Carry on.