Gallup polls, for the first time, found a majority of Americans support gay marriage - 53% for and 45% against. And support is highest amongst the young, unsurprisingly.

What are your thoughts on this? I'll give mine:

Many young people know more people who are openly gay and have no problem with it. That includes many Christians, the people most likely to oppose gay marriage (and pretty much exclusively for religious reasons). Interestingly, while searching Google News, I found an article on a site called Christian Post that reported this news with the expected slant, and the comments section was filled with support for gay marriage.

The anti-gay people are looking more and more like outdated bigots who are on the wrong side of history. I imagine some of the politicians who use anti-gay rhetoric are merely saying what they believe their constituents want to hear, and will change their tune as soon as they detect a change in the wind (others, I think, are saying what they genuinely believe).

I'm of the opinion anymore that government shouldn't be involved in marriage AT ALL. No tax benefits or penalties, no legal recognitions, none of that. Let it be the cultural custom it was for thousands of years and let the organization that performs the marriage decide if it will do gay marriage or not. Not all religions think like the Catholic Church.

I contest the idea of it being a cultural thing, but I agree there should be a lot less government focus on marriage. Marriage is one of the few things that I want the government to be completely uninvolved with.

Agreed. It's a personal thing, nothing public

After some thought I have decided that I just want the whole concept of civil marriage to die or to be renamed CIVIL UNION. For everyone. You can still call it marriage if you want privately, but officially it is CIVIL UNION and most certainly NOT MARRIAGE. Which still probably cause problems so fuck it no one gets it. You've all lost your privilege to play because you couldn't play nice with the other kids. And if the religious people take this as a sign that they won and lord it over the others I will be outlawing even private ceremonies.

YOU GET NOTHING IF YOU'RE A DICK AND WANT AN EXCLUSIVE COOL KIDS CLUB.

I am sadly thankfully not God Emperor.

Y'know, I might support your God-Emperor bid if I got a nice commissar hat.

At any rate, either there's marriage for everybody or for nobody. Ideally, though, government would keep at arms length from marriage, as it should remain as fucking far away from people's personal lives/lifestyles as it's possible to imagine.

edited 25th May '11 7:17:58 AM by SavageHeathen

As long as marriage/civil union/whatever the hell you want to call it carries with it tangible civil rights and benefits, government has an interest in ensuring that it's available in a nondiscriminatory fashion. Like it or not, there are truckloads of tangible benefits to being married. Preferential tax treatment, the ability to adopt, medical consent, parental rights, survivor rights, insurance coverage — only some of which are enforced at a federal level. Further, it has undeniable if less-tangible social benefits.

There is also loads of anthropological evidence that marriage was not a religious concept to begin with, so trying to claim that it's a "private religious matter" is not only missing the point but Blatant Lies.

No, the "take marriage away from the government" tack is nothing more than a temper tantrum: "If you won't let me play with my toys the way I want, I'm taking them away!"

edited 25th May '11 7:22:13 AM by Fighteer

You can't claim it's just a temper tantrum.

Some people view marriage as a private matter, religious or not. Now that there's talk of reforming marriage, some people's idea of reform is putting government at arms length from it entirely.

I don't particularly care either way (that is, marriage for all is OK, removing private matters from the purview of the government is moar better).

Still, abolishing government involvement on personal matters is almost always a good thing.

edited 25th May '11 7:25:59 AM by SavageHeathen

It cannot be done. It's too embedded in the structure of our laws. It is not a coincidence that the people sore over gay marriage rights are the ones calling for it to be delegislated.

It would be as easy as passing a law in Congress that switched the word spouse with life partner or an equivalent term .

At any rate, if it's easier to just enact gay marriage into law, go for it.

Yes it is a temper tantrum and one I would be perfectly fine with having. But then I have no desire to get married even for the benefits. Fuck those.

One wonders why you even care about the issue, then.

Let's say we replace all instances of the word "marriage", or its various conjugations with the word "civil union" in all legislation. How does that change anything, other than making marriage an obsolete term used only by a bunch of people who want to feel morally superior to other people?

Out of a need to pointlessly hate and bitch about things. So boredom.

Where is the actual poll? I'm curious how the question was worded, and what I would answer (since I'm a conservative Christian and thus oppose gay marriage, but also a strong libertarian and thus oppose government intervention in many areas of life).

EDIT: found it. The exact wording was "Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?"

edited 25th May '11 7:41:12 AM by EdwardsGrizzly

So that's how you think it is? That nobody legitimately thinks marriage should not be a privilege of the state? That everybody who thinks so is butthurt over "TEH GAYZ GETTING TO MARREE EACH OTHERZ!"? I thought better of you Fighteer.

The idea of marriage at the government level never came about because of equality. It came about first to block Catholics, then extended to others including gays. Now you want to try and turn an inherently flawed system into another inherently flawed system only applicable towards gays? The big problem here which is why the system is flawed and thus in need of removal from government hands is a fuckton of marriages (straight or gay) are in it for the money and nothing more. Marriage provides a ton of government handouts and tax bonuses just for signing a piece of paper. A lot of people who otherwise wouldn't get married in the cultural sense (which also explains a lot of divorces) did so because there was monetary benefits to doing so.

Beyond that, there's no reason to have government in control of all marriages. There will always be groups like the Catholic Church who refuse to marry gays and a lot of marriages are just shams for money so really what's the point of keeping it in government's hands if that's the situation?

edited 25th May '11 7:36:04 AM by MajorTom

The problem tom, is Marriage also carries tangible and useful rights. Like the ability to make healthcare decisions for your partner if theyre incapacitated, or visitation rights to them in the hopsital. or the ability to jointly file taxes and open accounts

Eventually, Anti-Gay talk will be a thing of the past. Isn't it wonderful when bigotry literally just dies off?

And why should the government deny any authorized party from making those decisions?

Two or more adults that share common finances and live together are technically a household. If they live together long term and found it convenient, why wouldn't they file jointly?

How about extending benefits to people's partners, even if there's no marriage?

edited 25th May '11 7:42:53 AM by SavageHeathen

: Five frat dudes live in an apartment together. One of them gets hit by a car and falls into a coma.

Who should get the rights to decide what happens to him?

I would support the view that marriage should be kept away from the government if it was reflected in law. At present, all moving marriage away from the government will do is infringe upon the rights of homosexuals to get married to who they want.

So, yes. I do want homosexual marriage do be endorsed by the government.

Oh, no, I acknowledge the libertarian point of view, but since it's so often coupled with straight up homophobia, it's difficult to take it seriously when the consequences of removing the privilege will so obviously and blatantly be to enable discriminatory behavior.

Further, I very much dispute your notion that marriages are done solely for the financial benefits. Well... okay, maybe I don't dispute that per se but what I do wonder is what's the big deal about it? Marriage was stolen by religion a long time ago and made into some sacred Holy Grail of human togetherness without any evidence that I've ever seen that it matters one whit in regard to happiness, longevity, welfare of children, etc. My wife and I have been happily together for 10 years and have an adopted son and we are about as overtly religious as Hawking. We know gay couples who've been together just as long, just without any legal benefits. What, precisely, is the difference?

Okay, I see part of the issue here: this is all being filtered through that libertarian viewpoint where government has no business interfering with social institutions. Fair enough, even if I disagree. The point, however, is that is not the rationale of the vast majority of people opposed to gay marriage. Solve the discrimination problem first, then we can "fix" the "evil gub'mint handout" issue.

edited 25th May '11 7:58:24 AM by Fighteer

The problem is that "Anti-Gay" and "Pro-Gay" cover such a wide spectrum of viewpoints. For example, I have a religious belief that gay marriage is alway wrong, but also a political belief that it is none of the government's business. I believe that it is my right to not associate with people who do things I consider morally wrong, and thus would oppose legislation that would require me to do otherwise, but I believe that it is wrong to try to harm someone because of their beliefs or lifestyle. I also believe that it is wrong to speak hateful things against people, but also that the government should protect people's right to do so.

So does all that make me anti-gay or pro-gay?

No.

You end up with far greater societal problems. An absurdly huge amount of divorces are done for financial reasons and had they not been married to begin with it would have been no different than an unmarried couple having a falling out.

What happens if you build a marriage around the financial benefits but the marriage falls apart otherwise? What happens if that same marriage had a kid or a legally binding contract? Society ends up picking up the tab for their stupidity and greed. The courts get loaded with cases like theirs bogging down the judicial and civil system, the kid suffers all manner of things and worse, the legally binding contracts are rarely resolved in a manner that doesn't inflame one side or the other. At the end of the day, you end up with an expensive slow mess, two people who are likely to hate each other and possibly one or more third parties (kids, friends, business contracts, a thousand other possibilities) affected by the selfish decision of two.

Why should government continue to promote that?

In addition to what's already been pointed out about the real legal benefits marriage grants, another issue I find myself potentially running into is immigration matters.

My GF's country at least has a same-sex partner option for visas/immigration even though marriage isn't allowed... the US doesn't even have that much, even if you're married in a state where marriage is allowed, because immigration is a federal matter.

edited 25th May '11 8:01:38 AM by Jeysie