Wow, interesting thread. Nice varied opinions! :) But oh am I going to get into hot water for this one. :p

I find it funny that you would say Star that comparing polygamy to same-gender pairings is like comparing apples with oranges. The people who are against calling same sex marriages mariiages, say the exact same thing!! So that is kind of funny. If we are really going to begin defining what is marriage, and changing the definitions, then why not start rethinking it entirely? Why is that any different? I really don't think it is.

I applaud you FR for pretty much stating the conservative, though not really religious view right on the money from what I have read and heard. They would feel that they are not stopping gays from marrying...just do it to someone of the opposite sex, like some other homosexuals have done in other civilizations that Josh mentioned. :p

I would add something to what FR said, just really an addition. I have said it before, but I'll repeat it again. There are no real benfits to marriage that cannot be received in other means. I am not sure why people are talking about some sort of pie in the sky kind of ideal about the laws, as if they do not happen. I did not say what I said lightly. I have not only read pieces about it, but have known associates and friends who are operating within the law just fine in terms of rights for partners. Heck, the company I work for gives generous benefits to partners, regardless of the laws, as do many private organizations who want these people as employees, since they do tend to skew higher in education and income wise (at least the vocal ones). Perhaps I am biased since I lve and know people in major metropolitan areas. But I am not just talking out of my butt!

In fact, that is a good segway...you make some pretty big claims about people's sexuality Bard. I think you are actually quite wrong about the commonality of some of those acts, especially anal sex. That is still considered deviant...dare I say...freaky? :p behavior. There are many people who have not engaged in anal sex, or analingus (can we say those things on the board???). SO many people who disagree with this behavior are not doing it as a wink, wink, nod nod to heteros on this. I have heard talk radio where opponents of banning the law said they thought it shoudl be illegal for heterosexs and homosexs.

But let us talk about that pesky law. Many conservatives, who believe in the constitutionality of laws disagreed with the ruling. And it was NOT because they cared whether two guys wanted to get all hot and heavy. The primary belief that was non moral was this: they argued that the couple had the right to privacy. But people did not like the idea that you could flout the law based on that principle. What if you murder someone...as long as you do it in your own house, you could cite right to privacy. You think it sounds extreme, but it makes sense....and if we are going to discuss what is constitutionally permissable since when does the constitution give you the right to defy and disobey the law, just because you do it in private between two consenting adults?

Do not get me wrong, was the law stupid? Yup! It should have been taken off ages ago. But that is the point. People who did not like the verdict said it shoudl have been upheld, and what should have happened was that Texas (it was in TX right?) should have purged it from their books. THis wouldn't even have been an issue if the police wasn't so headstrong and annoyingly stupid to not only break into the wrong house, but refuse to let it go. It was like they just had to prove themselves right, and buts them for something. I am more than familiar with the constant but watching of the police up here. :rolleyes It is this same reason that Roe V. Wade is usually challenged or question, because hey felt they created something that was not constitutionally protected. But I guess I will save the rest of my Roe V. musings for the other thread.

Who is the government to say who gets what? They do it all the time! Why do people pay tax for schooling, when people are childless, or sending their kids to private school? It is because we see this as beneficial for our nation. The government (and I might have said this too) have always rewarded behavior they thought helped our sovereign principality here. Why do you think people get discounts, and tax breaks for owning houses? They are not getting what they put in, they are getting MORE than what they put in, because the government sees house-ownership as positive behavior. People who own their own businesses can write off almost anything! But that is because the government sees owning your business as positive behavior.

What does marriage between a husband and wife bring? Children! Yes, not every couple can conceive, and yes there are gays who have kids either through previous marriages, surrogates and the like. But the vast majority of couples eventually have children, if they are within child bearing age. And children are the future of our nation, therefore an asset, therefore something government wants to encourage...much like home and business ownership. And those are where the real benefits for marriage start kicking in, because they want to make it a good enviroment for child-rearing.

If polygamy is a surefire way to cause inbreeding, wouldn't same sex pairings be a surefire way to end breeding? And since we are bringing up studies, there have been a growing number of them that show that the best enviroment for children to grow up in are families with the biological mother and father. And these are not studies done by right-wing-christian-fanatics-r-us. These are studies done by independent think tanks, universities and the like. What can be said to that?

And it's funny. I remember back a few years (I would even say a decade ago or longer, I'm that old :p ) when the arguement was homosexuals shoudl be allowed to adopt because they can love the children that are unloved and rotting in foster care, and orphanages. They were advocating caring for crack babies and the like. But now that technology has been creeping along, and being a surrogate parent more common place and accepted, that seems to no longer be the case. People are wanting their own biological children, which is natural.

And people are not really having children anymore. I recently read an article where it said that 40% of women of child-bearing years are childless. That is an astonishingly high number. Not so surprising that we can't postulate why, but if this continues it can reach a critical rate. There are already a few countries where they are not producing enough to replenish the population, and are trying to figure out how to stop that, lest they die out. So many people who advocate man/woman marriage cite the prospect of having kids. I get as nauseated as the next person over the over-emphasis of the nuclear family. But there is a reason the 2.5 kids is advocated: that is enough to ensure that each partner can be replaced, and a little extra in case one person doesn't make it fully to adulthood. Much of the despair that plagues the inner city is specifically because many..especially boys...don't feel they will survive to maturity. ANd if this tragectory continues, even the immigration rate may not be able to stave it off. I believe that is what has kept us at bay...at least recently.

Lastly (as if I hadn't stepped in it already :p ), I agree with Nickx, that I really don't think you can compare gay marriage, or the lack thereof, to the civil rights issues, Jim crow, slavery and the like. If you wanted to specifically compare it to interethnic dating...specifically euram and afam pairings, then I could see that. But there is a huge difference between not being able to marry, but otherwise being fully able to participate in this society, and being lynched, or having crosses burned on your yard, or rotting in jail for decades on the mention that you may have raped some woman that you never saw in your life.

Truthfully, don't give a darn about how many percentages of Christians there are in this country. If it is for your own personal edification, hey, that's on you or not. My point has always been, if you actually want to see change occur, you darn well better start caring about that, since the nation looks a lot more like Kansas than it does California.

I know I said this earlier, but I don't think this point is slight. African Americans received rights not by trying to crash, or destroy the system, but by solidly working through and within it. And not an iota of progress was ever made until it at least gained a large support of people who were not African American. In the link that Rob provided, either the article or a linked article delineated how difficult it is to get an ammendment ratified. African Americans weren't getting any rights until they could garner the sympathies and beliefs of the general populace, even if it was by a determined and vocal minority. But they did that specifically through using what was familiar to the public. Until that happened, nothing happened.

And the things that were challeneged just on a judicial basis (affirmative action and segregation of schools) have slowly been eroded away. People have made legal challenges and are winning. FR brought up an interesting question, and right now I think you really can't put it to a majority vote. Rather if you do, I think the laws would not pass. The public support is not there for it. In fact I have already been hearing grumblings about the judicial branch having too much power, changing legislation as opposed to merely ruling on it.

And before we say 'well, see look how far we've come', how far have we come? I just heard on Bill Maher's show last night that the miscegenation (afam/euram marriages) laws of Alabama, the last ones, were officially removed in 2000, not 1969, but 2000. As of 1997 8% of afam males are married to euram females. Less than 4% of afam females are married to euram males. The statistics only go up slightly when afams inter-marry with other ethnicities, and for some groups it may be even be less. Whereas other ethnicities marry eurams with percentage numbers in the 30s, 40s and 50's. Afams, though only making up 121/2 percent of the country, are below the poverty level at 30%. Eurams, for comparison, make up about 70% of the country, but only 8% are below the poverty level (the stats were pulled from NY Times articles).

Schools are virtually as segregated as they were back in the 60's. Not by law, but by subtler forms of ecomomic seperation. There will be entire schools now where over 90% of students are either euram, afam, or latino (depnding on where we are in the country).

Oh, and recently, in Minnesota, they erected three bronze statues of afams who were lynched by a nearby street pole. THe citizens were riled up, and upset by the memorial, and people in the town noticed the n word being used more frequently, and I don't mean in the "yo what's up my n*!" kind of way. And these aren't older than dirt people who we are waiting to die off...these were young people. I have read a study, for instance, where resumes with the same credentials were sent to various companies, and when names like Samantha, Tom, and Dylan were on it they received many call backs. Those same resumes with names like Laqueesha, Ebony, and Kareem received virtually no responses.

I guess I say all of that to say, if the two are being compared, well...then there is certainly a very, very long way to go on all fronts. And that if afam rights are being used as a type of measuringstick, well that stick isn't all that long to begin with.

thanks,
dini
:betsy

"Look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and everything you do. Yeah, they were all yellow. I came along, I wrote a song for you, and all the things you do, and it was called Yellow." - Coldplay