This blog gets indignant
Let’s imagine a world in which the Mormon Church, the Catholic Church and 52% of Californians decided that Lawyers were icky, and therefore ought to be stripped of their rights to get married. Existing marriges, with the the cuts of a million pens across ballots would be erased. Families would be ripped apart, thousands would find themselves in legal limbo.
We should hardly be surprised when, after the vote came down, Lawyers were outraged. Boycotts and legal challenges might be the tamest possible response. Indeed, if there were riots, we should understand exactly what caused them. The fact that Michelle Malkin fails to understand the outraged demonstrations in the wake of the Prop 8 vote is a failure of both empathy and imagination.
I don’t read hateful bigot Michelle Malkin, but hateful bigot John Weidner decided to post one of her columns verbatim. What is, morally/legally, the difference between Lawyers and Gays? If we can deny rights for Gays, why can’t we deny rights for Lawyers?
And if, California decided to dissolve John Weidner’s marriage because he and his spouse “chose” the lawyer “lifestyle”, I would think of less of John were he not to demand justice. If John didn’t feel the smallest quiver of rage, he wouldn’t be a respectable human being..
Quite frankly, the fact that we’re seeing mostly peaceful demonstrations, rather than insane riots, is mystifying. We’re going to see some pretty epic legal battles going forward. And the Anti-8 coalition has the full throated support of this blog. And screw anyone who would dissolve a marriage because they found it distasteful.
No one , including Michelle Malkin, has any trouble understanding the “outraged demonstrations”, They are transparent attempts to drown out all opposition to gay marriage without the need for rational discourse.
The moral difference between lawyers and gays is that gays are not professionally precluded from being moral.
There is no legal difference between lawyers who are married to members of the opposite sex and gays married to members of the opposite sex consistent with the the law and the meaning of marriage.
Why, you’re right Aramkr! The anti-Prop-8 protests are certainly not an outraged reaction to having fundamental rights stripped from a section of our society which had previously enjoyed those rights! Silly me for thinking otherwise…
Please do feel free to give me a single rational reason why two men– both of sound mind and over the age of 18– should not be able to marry.
There are, as I see it, two primary reasons for the institution of marriage. The first and more fundamental is for the healthy, orderly continuation of the species. The second is for the healthy and orderly pairing of individuals to establish the kernal of the social network for purposes of mutual support and companionship over the course of the individuals’ lives in the larger society.
If one of these purposes fails to be realized in the course of the marriage ( i.e., in the case of involuntarily childless marriages or marriages that turn loveless ) the value or the marriage may be salvaged by the other. But, I think, to enter into a union without both intentions is to do something other than to marry. If one begins to subsume these other intentional activities under the term “marriage” then the concept of marriage is adulterated and weakened and nothing of substance is gained in returned.
In other words two women or two men cannot marry because the preconditions are not there.