Massachusetts to hold same-sex weddings
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| Sun, 05-16-2004 - 12:31pm |
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Gay%20Marriage%20New%20Era
Sunday, May 16, 2004 · Last updated 6:34 a.m. PT
Massachusetts to hold same-sex weddings
By DAVID CRARY
AP NATIONAL WRITER
For better or for worse, depending on which side of the ideological aisle one chooses, a divided America crosses a historic threshold Monday as state-approved marriages of same-sex couples take place for the first time.
Promised a waiver of the normal three-day waiting period, the seven gay and lesbian couples who successfully sued for marriage rights in Massachusetts will wed before relatives, friends and supporters in Boston and three other towns. The United States will become just the fourth country in the world where same-sex couples can tie the knot.
The couples' jubilation will be shared by gay-rights advocates across the country, including many in states such as New York, California, Washington and New Jersey where comparable lawsuits are moving forward.
"This isn't just one historic moment in Massachusetts," said Kevin Cathcart, executive director of the gay-rights group Lambda Legal. "It's the start of what will be a long period of progress and breakthroughs, with gay couples in other states also winning the right to marry."
For foes of gay marriage, Monday's weddings represent a stinging defeat - but one they hope will be reversed by a backlash among politicians and voters nationwide.
"What I'm starting to see is people who are apolitical, who never got involved before, saying, 'This is too much - we don't want same-sex marriage foisted on us,'" said Mathew Staver, president of a Florida-based legal group, Liberty Counsel, that is opposing gay marriage in numerous court cases.
Both sides in the debate expect the issue to figure prominently in the November election, with Massachusetts serving as a rallying cry and alarm bell.
Candidates for Congress will face pressure to explain their position on a proposed federal constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. Voters in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Missouri and Utah - and probably several other states - will consider similar amendments to their state constitutions.
"It will be a national referendum about gays and gay marriage," said Rod McKenzie of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "We're the underdog when it comes to all these ballot measures - the scale is bigger than we've ever had to deal with."
In states with the ballot measures, divisive campaigns already are underway.
An Oklahoma gay-rights group, for example, took out newspaper ads last week showing an outline of the state with "Closed" stamped over it. The ad contended that businesses would leave - or stay away - if voters approved the constitutional ban on gay marriage.
State Sen. James Williamson, a Republican from Tulsa, called the ad outrageous and predicted that a ban would attract new businesses.
"There is a real hunger for a return to traditional values and for leaders who will draw a line in the sand to help stop the moral decay of this country," he said.
Nationwide, both sides are planning marches and rallies over the coming week - among them, pro-gay marriage events in Iowa City, Iowa, and Las Cruces, N.M., and a "Not on My Watch" rally in Arlington, Texas, for pastors opposed to gay marriage.
Also following the Massachusetts events with interest will be the thousands of gay couples who married in recent months with the encouragement of local officials in San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and a handful of other municipalities.
Those marriages are clouded by varying degrees of legal uncertainty, and even in Massachusetts there is a possibility that voters in 2006 could jeopardize the impending marriages by approving a constitutional ban.
Katie Potter, a Portland policewoman who married partner Pam Moen in March, said she was delighted by the Massachusetts developments yet worried that it could take years for marriage rights to extend nationally.
"It's important for my two children to be able to say, 'My parents are married,'" Potter said.
Anti-gay marriage activists have no sympathy for such arguments.
"If we move down the road to legalizing marriage for unnatural homosexual couples, it will lead to an explosion of intentionally motherless or fatherless households," said Dave Smith of the Indiana Family Institute. "That is a radical social experiment that will place children in harm's way."
Though opinion polls show that most Americans oppose gay marriage, the rate of acceptance is much higher among people under 30 - for the younger generation, polls show a roughly even split on the issue.
"There's an absolute inevitability there," said Lambda Legal's Cathcart. "There's no reason to think the next generation of young people will go backward."
Mathew Staver, referring to the same demographic trends, said the next 18 months would be critical for gay-marriage foes.
"The window is now to pursue a federal marriage amendment that would put a halt to this nonsensical patchwork of litigation," said the Liberty Counsel attorney.
Even if many Americans wish otherwise, Massachusetts, as of Monday, will join the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada's three most populous provinces as the only places worldwide where gays can marry, though the rest of Canada expected to follow soon.
In the Netherlands, which pioneered gay marriage three years ago, the practice now stirs little controversy. Cheryl Jacques, a former Massachusetts legislator who now heads the Human Rights Campaign, a major gay-rights group, hopes her compatriots eventually emulate the Dutch.
"For the vast majority of Americans, Monday will be a completely ordinary day - nothing's going to change," she said. "But for some Americans in Massachusetts - gay and lesbian families - it will be a truly historic day, when their families will be made stronger and their children will become safer."
"I'm very proud of my state," Jacques added. "Massachusetts is going to teach the rest of the country a lesson - equality doesn't hurt anyone."
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Lambda Legal: http://www.lambdalegal.org/
Liberty Counsel: http://www.lc.org/
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YOU might consider her a martyr, but I consider her a victim of a tragic set of circumstances.
And you refuse to see that she wasn't shot BECAUSE she was Christian or BECAUSE she believed in God.
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"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B
"Are you saying I am personally attacking you?" No!
"Or just saying that personal attacks dont happen on this board?"
First hate crimes in general are a joke. If someone kills someone or beats them or anything else they should get the same punishment. I don't care about their motivation, wrong is wrong. To suggest that you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt (the criteria for a criminal prosecution) that you understnad someone's rational is simply not possible. I don't care why a gang of kids beat a gay child, or why someone was beaten as they left a bar or why someone in Texas is dragged to their death. They should all get the punishment that is appropriate. To allow hate crime legislation sets up the following scenario.
4 white men beat Charlie who is gay in a bar. They get convicted of a hate crime and get 15 years in prision.
4 white men beat John who is straight but called them a bad word. They get 5 years in prison.
The crime is the same and the punishment should be too.
****
"When a lesbian is denied entrance into the critical care room her partner of 35 years is in, to say goodbye before the life support is discontinued?"
Disgree with that. She should be allowed in.
****
Blacks were denied equal rights because of their race. They are equivilent in every way but because of their skin color they are denied basic human rights. That is wrong and was correctly fixed, although that too has gone to far.
Women were asked to be productive members of their society but were not able to have a voice in their society.
Homosexuals have all the same rights that other men and women do.
The problem is that your's is not a crusade for rights but privelages. A drivers license is a privelage. A marriage license is a privelage. It is not a right. Should you want to partake of these privelages you must meet the guidelines that everyone else needs to meet.
Your examples are weak and define no rights. Those people in your example should be prosecuted for their crimes not their thoughts.
oh yea and "IT JUST ISN'T" (wouldn't want to disappoint) :)
Jim
http://www.lionking.org/~kovu/bible/section09.html
By Robin Scroggs, professor of New Testament, Union Theological Seminary, a happily married heterosexual who has been acclaimed in many Christian publications for his serious research about what the New Testament really says about homosexuality.
Scroggs reason for his research was a discussion of homosexuality by ministers. "I sat amazed as I heard the Bible being invoked in ways that were wholly inappropriate to any canons of biblical scholarship. Perhaps something snapped in me...for better or worse I decided somebody needed to provide resources that would give both clarity and honesty." He says he has no personal interest but sees the tragic results of false biblical scholarship and the tragic rejections of homosexuals in the name of Christian righteousness or even love. It is about time someone spoke honestly about the issue, not just from emotional homophobic assumptions of what the New Testament really says.
Conclusions:
1: The NT church was not very concerned about homosexuality as a problem, All three instances referring to homosexuality are from preformed traditions, either Greek or Jewish. No single NT author considers the issue important enough to write his own sentence about it! The argument "against nature" is the most common form of attack on pederasty in the Greco-Roman texts. Pederasty involved forced male rape even by heterosexuals and slave boy prostitutes. It says nothing about today's loving homosexual relationships. Even in Romans 1, where Paul integrates the illustration of homosexuality into his larger theological arguments, there is no advance beyond idolatry and pagan vices of 1 Cor 6:9.
2: Female homosexuality gets even less attention appearing only in Romans 1, and here with less emphasis than male homosexuality. This is doubtlessly because little was said in the Greco-Roman world about lesbianism, and because in OT law no penalties attached to such female practices. This again suggest pederasty was the vice, not homosexuality in general. In Romans 1 Paul's language "about male homosexuality, must have had, could only have had, pederasty in mind."
They get defensive when someone religious disagrees with them because they inherently know what they are doing is against God's will
I can't speak for Christians who support same-sex marriages...but what of those of us who don't believe in the Christian god?
Well I had a seance with Thomas Jefferson just last week and he said I was right.
Seriously though if you read the letters, articles and journals from the people who helped draft the founding documents you understand their thoughts.
Creator was meant as a reference to God and so it was capitalized. To make that a generic statement you would have to make it a small C. You are partially correct. They didn't say Jesus or God to respect other religions but they also capitalized the C to make sure you recognize that we allow freedom OF OF OF religion but there is a Creator and his teachings are going to be the bedrock of this republic.
Jim
What would you concider it when homosexual is asked if they are gay and they answer, Yes I am gay, and then shot, are the just a victim in the wrong place at the wrong time??
What does that have to do with my post?
"The author looks at the issue from a Christian and Biblical perspective, but he presents enough medical evidence to convince a truly honest seeker that homosexuality is not consistent with the design for the human race. "
"it indicates that many homosexual men have many, many more partners than anybody else (including gay women). "
"It also indicates that, at least as of the 1970's, most gay relationships did not last longer than a few years. In other words, there really is a different set of behavior patterns in the homosexual community."
"In "The Great Nature-Nuture Debate," the author shows how homosexuals are probably not just "born that way," but there are a whole variety of factors that contribute to homosexuality -- biology, family situation, culture, experience, etc. -- and that these factors vary from person to person."
"His theory of social constructionism is particularly interesting and should be paid heed to -- that the way people understand themselves (in this case sexually) often comes from the culture that they're living in. "
Still want to quote him and his work?
I take what you say about the NT not condeming homosexuality if you'll take the above as gospel...errr...uhhh...true I mean.
Jim
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