Utterly Meaningless

“Can we have a future in which we are more concerned with the love a family has than with the sometimes unanswerable questions of gender and identity?”

Yes. Don’t demand to call it a marriage, and we’re set.

Why? Does a marriage different from yours threaten you? Silly.

Nance

Rob, Tennessee homneshcoolers are having EXACTLY the same issue except in reverse, with the piece of paper called a high school diploma.

They demand their private, unlicensed and unaccredited thing called a diploma be the same in State eyes for all public purposes as any other diploma. Period.

And so it was done, and they won with that argument.

And now must live with it imo. Anything anybody wants to call marriage, tough! The State and public must accept it — right?

Speaking of which. Oh. My. God.

Did you just hear the twisted sister known as Miss California, talking about American freedoms her grandfather fought for at the Battle of the Bulge, and how SHE is the one who’s been hated and attacked for being true to her own identity (not the gay people.)

If she were indeed the victim and being stripped of the title, this might make at least a bit of sense — but she just WON and gets everything including the representation of a state discriminating against other Americans’ civil rights.

“I hope at the end of the day, everyone can respect MY rights as I respect theirs, and we can return to civility . . .”

Not that I ever respected Donald Trump but he stood up after all that and thanked her and said, “That was really beautiful.”

Maybe on her outside but not on her inside.

Is stupidity and intolerance wrapped in white plastic blonde really that privileged in this country? I may need to rethink what I call my citizenship . . .

Yes. Don’t demand to call it a marriage, and we’re set.

Did you bother to really read the article? She was a guy. Legally married to a woman. He became a she. Are they legally married? Is it a same sex marriage? Depends on what state they’re driving through.

And I really don’t understand why anyone should get hung up on whether or not someone ELSE can get married. It’s not like you’re going to be forced to have a same-sex marriage, Rob.

That’s a great article.

It really emphasizes the absurdity of gender-based married prohibitions. Of course, the same people who are against gay marriage tend to also be avid enforcers of the gender and sex binaries and thus neither wish to understand nor accept trans* folk.

LOL – David Schuster just did a much better rant against Miss CA than mine! I’ll go see if I can find it online . . . his fellow (female) commentators are trying to talk him down with, “Hey, some pageant competitors are smarter than others.”

Ya think??

I think we need to officially rename Rob’s kind of marriage with Miss Ca’s terminology: henceforth we shall call it “Opposite Marriage.”

Rob, words matter. We tried the whole “separate but equal” thing and discovered that separate is never truly equal.

“Why? Does a marriage different from yours threaten you?”
No. Changing the definitions of important words based on current popular opinion, in order to advance someone’s agenda, threatens me. Newspeak and the caterpillar and all that.

“Tennessee homneshcoolers are having EXACTLY the same issue except in reverse, with the piece of paper called a high school diploma. They demand their private, unlicensed and unaccredited thing called a diploma be the same in State eyes for all public purposes as any other diploma.”
I’m not following Vermont’s issue, but I’m FOR homeschoolers having the HEK equivalent of a gubment-issued diploma be considered the same in state eyes. I’m NOT for demanding everyone call it a “high school diploma”. I don’t care what it’s called. Call it Fred for all I care. It would make filling out a college application more fun that way: “Please attach one of the following to this application:
* High School Diploma
* Diploma from accredited private school
* Fred

“She was a guy. Legally married to a woman. He became a she. Are they legally married? Is it a same sex marriage?”
Yes, I got that.

“Depends on what state they’re driving through.”
You answered your own question, and your answer was correct. My opinion on the author’s specific situation is the same as any other same-sex marriage situation. Form whatever bonds of love you wish. Be as committed and faithful as you desire. Heck, raise kids if you figure your situation is adequate for them. But don’t call it marriage.

In other words, when I sign up for insurance benefits, I cannot change my selection in the middle of the year unless I have a “life event” such as marriage, divorce, death, adoption, or addition/subtraction of domestic partner. Switching genders is a “life event” in which I’d go from having a spouse and a marriage to having a domestic partner and a domestic partnership.

Again, I don’t care what you call it, just don’t change the definition of the word marriage.

“Rob, words matter. We tried the whole “separate but equal” thing and discovered that separate is never truly equal.”

You are correct – words matter. “separate but equal” was a new phrase someone invented in order to lie about social conditions and push the agenda that everyone should just go home and be happy and stop all this pushing for civil rights nonsense.

“Marriage” is a word that has existed in every language in every civilization we know about (assuming we know their language.) It’s always meant the same thing – a guy and a girl. Now, based on a scant few decades of agenda pushing, we’re expected to redefine it.

Phooey. Words mean things.

Aren’t you LDS? And you’re lecturing us on the historical meaning of the word “marriage”?

One guy and one girl, right?

Funny how people that spend so much time whining that they “just want the guberment to leave them alone” don’t have any problem demanding the government get involved to “protect the sanctity of marriage.” As though an institution with a 50% failure rate is somehow threatened by Jim and Bob getting married.

Did you guys realize even in education freedom, it’s the Church and not the State is the truly oppressive Licenser of Learning and Definer of humanity, controlling and micromanaging supposedly free-will individuals with its hierarchical governance and institutional laws?

Spunky is on about the TN diploma definition along these lines, so I went poking around the Notre Dame site, learned all sorts of interesting things about institutional licensing and controlling education standards by Church rather than State.

Father Edward O’Connor, retired Notre Dame professor of theology, 2003: “Notre Dame has, for all practical purposes, decided to evade the mandate which is the Church’s license to teach, conferred by the bishop, and prescribed by Ex corde.”

Notre Dame law professor emeritus Charles Rice: “If Notre Dame will not ensure that its required courses in theology are faithful to the Church’s magisterium, those courses (and required philosophy courses) should no longer be required. If the professors want to do their own thing, let them and the university abandon any claim that it is the ‘Catholic’ thing. . .”

If we mean to have truly free American education and family definitions including marriage, then let’s get it free from both State and Church — or else drop the rhetoric about real civil liberties.

Anarchy, yeah!

If it were up to me we would go back to the Roman definition of marriage…no government or church intervention. When you live together, you are “married” when one of you moves out, you are “divorced”.

People are paying the government money to sign a piece of paper so the government can recognize their relationship.

I will never get married. I do not need a ceremony or a piece of paper or approval from a religious group to know who I love.

“Marriage is an institution which furnishes The State and Church with a tremendous revenue and the means for prying into the phase of life which refined people have long considered their own, their very own most sacred affair.”
~ Emma Goldman (a TRUE Anarchist)

@JJ – Stefan Malyneux says Somalia is not an example of Anarchy…

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So…Anarchy, not!

“Why? Does a marriage different from yours threaten you?”
No. Changing the definitions of important words based on current popular opinion, in order to advance someone’s agenda, threatens me. Newspeak and the caterpillar and all that.

*********

The agenda that is being advanced is called civil rights. Human rights. Equality.

Why is that a threat to you?

Nance

Building on Shayrah’s comment, both marriage and being Miss California have become in modern society “contractual” as defined in secular law. Heck, so has being a high school graduate! Not to mention the constitution itslef, which is basically a contract between the people and its governmentment.

And yet we pick and choose among all the contractual concepts and language, pretending some relationships are more or less worthy than others either because they uphold or deny those definitions and obligations, sometimes in the same press conference! 😉

I didn’t think I would ever get married either, Shayrah. Then we decided to have children. Of course, one can have a baby without being married but it didn’t seem fair to them or us to make things more difficult.

But we are all free not to marry. That’s not a right anyone is trying to deny anyone else.

Similar to the abortion argument.

Or Miss CA. Nobody is denying her right to speak out — as stupid as I may think her opinion is. And nobody is forcing me to take advice from her, either. 🙂

But, if I were gay, lots of people would be denying me my right to live in a relationship with the same security under the law that all the straight people have.

Nance

I have never understood the argument that your kids need you to be married. We have a child and she is perfectly happy. How is it not fair to her that we decide not to participate in a silly out-dated ritual. How does a contract and a party create a “fair” situation for your kids and not mine.

Quick question: Why is it that we only want to fight for gay rights to marry? Why not throw in the polygamists as well? Shouldn’t we be fighting for everyone’s rights? Or is it because there are more homosexuals than polygamists and if you keep your cause streamlined you may get through to the public?

This could all be solved if we just got the government out of our relationships.

Just check out the history of the marriage license in America. It was basically a tool the government used to keep people from one another, not to bring them together.

It’s all so clearly connected to education, imo. Homeschoolers have GOT to not defend such monstrous nonsense as the most rudimentary human thinking and logic, much less educated exercise of good citizenship to help keep America free. It is destroying us to have idiot beauty queen celebrity evangelicals like Prejean and Palin, being taught this tripe and having it accepted as higher education! Prejean in fact is studying to be a special education teacher (at a bible college of course) — do you want her deciding whether to lock you autistic son in a closet for days on end because god told her it’s her “right” and your little boy is being tempted by Satan to attack her?

like Prejean and Palin stop whining about compulsory education (home education registration say, or school enrollment and attendance, and earning a diploma of publicly valid equivalent.)

(sorry, thought I cut that last part while I was rewriting)

Strangely enough, I heard Jesse Ventura mention government getting out of marriage on Larry King when talking about Miss CA…

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He also says he would like to waterboard Cheney…lol

S, the government isn’t going away and is no excuse to deprive gay couples of the right to the legal protections afforded by marriage.

Nance

Cheney — waterboarding — Guantanamo — sounds fine to me, JJ. 🙂

Nance

The government isn’t “in” marriage though, just because it has a license or permit,at least not no more than it’s “in” hunting, fishing, and public library use. It’s a bit more in homebuying (deed stamps) and divorce, driving, practicing cosmetology(all those chemicals!) and restaurant health and safety standards, etc.

Not to mention mass transit, peacekeeping and warmaking. Or education.

Of course, common law marriages are still valid in 11 states and DC. No license required.

I’ve lived long enough to see true stories in families that no one expected, some seemed unimaginable — until they did happen and turned everything upside down.

So I hope parents who for the moment are still blissfully unaware of all that and able to feel as Shayrah and her partner seem to, are prudent enough to protect themselves and their child/ren with SOME sort of binding provisions (insurance? some sort of no-nuptial agreement? adoption papers, perhaps, for the not-legit either by giving birth or marriage parent?)

My daughter is going to Europe in July using a government-issued passport that was much more of a pain to get than a marriage license.

But that doesn’t mean the government is “in” her trip, sheesh —

Hey Daryl, has any state ever recognized a same-sex marriage under common law?

Ever? Possibly but not on purpose, I’d bet. The common law usually has some kind of caveat that the couple would be eligible to be married. It was perhaps put in there to prevent accidental bigamy but would serve to prevent SSM.

You say they are not “in” marriage and yet here we are talking about how the government is taking the rights from homosexuals. Sounds like they are “in” it to me. I am not saying Big Brother is hanging out under your bed while you do it (although they might be). By using the word “in” I mean involved. But I am sure everyone knows that, even you.

This is obviously semantics and not actually arguing my point that the government is taking rights away from people by using contracts.

Also, saying that the government is not “in your daughter’s trip” is just about the strangest argument I have ever heard. Government is forcing you to pay them money and fill out forms and wait in lines just to go somewhere. You only think this is normal because you believe this is “what we as good citizens should do” and that the government protects us.

Let me get this straight, you believe the government protects me from divorce problems? Who are you people marrying? No wonder I never want to get married. Married people make it look so shitty. If you guys want to promote the idea of government/religious intrusion, you might want to make it look like fun.

BTW, there are insurance companies that don’t need marriage licenses for proof that you are in a relationship…I would know. ; )

One more thing, when you talk about the Constitution being a contract, you might want to read No Treason by Lysander Spooner.

lysand...on.htm

There are legitimate arguments against contracts, especially ones I never signed.

Well, first we have to have the septic tank pumped out. Then we’ll get back to the fun.

Why did I buy a house. . . 🙂

I think you are conflating government regulation with removal of rights.

I have the right to get around. Society thinks I should have a license and car insurance. So we have government regulations and laws enforcing those restrictions.

But what the law/government is doing with regard to gay marriage is a different thing. We are preventing consenting adults from enjoying the same rights and privileges as other consenting adults based entirely on their sex.

Now, at one time, society may have thought this was for the good. That gay marriage — that any acknowledgement of homosexuality — would be destabilizing. We are past that.

But the laws have not caught up yet. They will.

The laws and government will not go away. We, as a society, don’t want it to. It is how we do some of the things we want done. But it does need to evolve at times and this is one of those times.

And that is why empathy would be a good thing in a Supreme Court nominee. Someone who lives in these actual times and can judge cases based on our current reality and our historical principles, not one or the other, would be a valuable addition.

Nance

Who do you think is trying to lure into the paper money trap, old married progressive atheist overeducated homeschool government double agents, LOL?

And if making marriage and divorce look like fun would make you willing to get married and risk divorce, then your principles might not be set in stone quite yet. Relax, you even don’t know who you’re talking to yet.

Why pay for the septic tank Nance? You could just throw your shit in the street and let it leech into the water supply.

JJ, I was simply stating that if you are going to try and convince people to get married you might want to try a different reason other than “to protect you from your spouse” during a divorce. I have said many times to everyone around me, if someone can give me ONE good reason to marry, I will. I haven’t completely closed my mind to the idea of marriage. I just see it as a tool used by the government and religious groups and there are no perks that anyone can present.

I feel the same way about the existence of God. I don’t believe in God, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a God or there isn’t any proof of a God. It just means I haven’t found any evidence and I am pretty sure there is none.

That is why I can say I most likely will never believe in God or get married.

Also, why do you need the government to tell you not to put your shit in the street. I guess I am just more civilized than others. This argument is presented by Christians constantly. They say “If you don’t believe in God then why don’t you steal and kill and stuff?” I simply answer “Because I don’t like stealing and killing and stuff.” I don’t need God to tell me to be a good person and I don’t need the government, either.

I guess your God is Government.

As Bad Religion sang
“The voice of God is government. The voice of God is government…”

I have said many times to everyone around me, if someone can give me ONE good reason to marry, I will.

How ’bout not having to go through probate should your SO precede you? Or being able to visit him/her in the hospital and to make decisions concerning his/her medical care (without having to have a durable POA)?

There are literally hundreds of legal benefits associated with marriage. Is it right? Probably not. But it’s real, nonetheless.

Since I am presently acting as executrix for a deceased parent’s estate (on behalf of my nephews) let me second Daryl’s point. Do as you please after you’ve learned everything you can about it, or else just be cavalier and do as you please BEFORE you learn much about it. Either way, it is your child at issue, not ours.

I have said many times to everyone around me, if someone can give me ONE good reason to marry, I will.

So, Shayrah, are we all invited to the wedding?

Shayrah, I don’t really see where anyone here seriously cares whether or not you get married.

Do what you want. Nobody is stopping you.

Of course, you’re not gay.

I guess.

If you are, you absolutely may not get married in most states.

Nance

You mean Miss California was (gasp!) WRONG??