Same-sex marriages… why not?
Here it is days after the elections and I’m still wondering….why? Why do so many people want to take away a fundamental right from others? I’ve heard that allowing same-sex marriages takes away from the sanctity of marriage. I’ve truly pondered that one for a long, long time and I don’t get it. What does anyone else’s marriage have to do with mine? Sorry, but what other people do in their marriage hasn’t got anything to do with me. My marriage is strong enough to take the fact that half the marriages in the U.S. end in divorce — we’re still okay.
So, when I got a link to Keith Olbermann speaking about Prop 8 in California. I listened and I realized that he’s asking the same questions that I’ve been asking since the issue became a major one several years ago. Only Mr. Olbermann is far more eloquent than I’ve been.
Please listen and think about what he’s saying. And if anyone can tell me why gays marrying in any way can effect their marriage I’d like to know — because I still don’t get it.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I will never understand why some people choose to deny a couple the right to marry. It does not only cover matters of the heart and morality, but legal issues and insurance to name a few.
I think things like “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire”, Vegas weddings, starter marriages, and high divorce rates erode the sanctity of marriage more than two homosexuals who love each other.
It really breaks my heart that less than 50 years ago I would not have been able to marry my husband because of anti-miscegenation laws. A lot of the reasons against gay marriage are similiar to reasons against interracial relationships. Here are two quotes used:
“Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant to the very principles of Saxon government. It is subversive of social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy, and ultimately this slavery of white women to black beasts will bring this nation a conflict as fatal as ever reddened the soil of Virginia or crimsoned the mountain paths of Pennsylvania. … Let us uproot and exterminate now this debasing, ultra-demoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy”
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
The first was in 1913 when Representative Seaborn Roddenbery (Democrat of Georgia) introduced a proposal in the United States House of Representatives to insert a prohibition of miscegenation into the US Constitution and thus create a nation-wide ban on interracial marriage. Also in his proposal was the “one drop” rule.
The second is from a trial court Judge Leon Bazile who defended racial segregation in a case between Richard and Mildred Loving to live together in Virginia. The couple ultimately took their case to the Supreme Court who ruled in their favor. Loving v. Virginia is landmark case that ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States. This happened in 1967.
November 14th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Kat, well said. The problem with the people against it is they are seductive in their reasoning — what they say usually makes sense until you think about it a bit. The justification for paying women less for doing the same work as a man was that “men needed more money because they had a family to support”.
That sounds well and good until you stop and think that women might also be supporting a family either because they were widowed, divorced, a single parent, or husband disabled. Also, men with two children didn’t get paid more than men with one child. Once you thought about it — it fell apart.
I think the same is with this “if you let gays marry it takes away from the sanctity of my/our/whatever marriage”. With thought you realize that the only people who can take away the sanctity of ones marriage are the ones in that marriage. What others do or don’t do has nothing to do with your own marriage..
Yes, the rules against marriage between the races didn’t make sense. In fact, we’re all people no matter what our race, religion, culture, sexual orientation and we all live on planet Earth. Why keep people who love each other and are consenting adults from marriage and the protections under the law that that gives to them.