As a straight man, I find it more than a little suspect amusing that I keep writing about gay marriage. And I'd stop, if it wasn't so damn fun:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush said Tuesday that he supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage to "prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever."
Apparently the current meaning: "an institution, solemnly entered into (unless you're drunk, or in Reno) by two individuals (unless you're a member of the Unification Church) who love each other to the exclusion of all others (unless it's just for the money, or a green card) until death they do part (unless one of them obtains an annulment, or a no-fault divorce)," needed a little reinforcement.
"After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization."
The Socratic school? Wait, I know this one...the city-state?
Shhh, he's still talking:
"On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard. Activist courts have left the people with one recourse. If we're to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America. Decisive and democratic action is needed because attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country."
I can feel my own wedding band loosening already.
Save us, Mr. President, I beseech you. Only by legislating against those uppity homos will you ensure that I won't have to breathe their foul "gay" air while covering my child's eyes and ears as we sprint through an ever-growing gauntlet of queer couples, all aggressively seeking to foist their anti-family, ass-poking agenda upon me and mine.
But Bush also said state legislatures should be left to define "legal arrangements other than marriage," suggesting that such an amendment would do nothing to stop states from allowing civil unions for same-sex couples.
"Our government should respect every person and protect the institution of marriage," he said. "There is not a contradiction between these responsibilities."
I'm really looking forward to how the hell they're going to write this thing. If they follow Bush's lead, it's going to be even more vaguely worded than the Second Amendment.
Bush called for a civil debate on the controversial issue.
"We should also conduct this difficult debate in a matter worthy of our country, without bitterness or anger. In all that lies ahead, let us match strong convictions with kindness and good will and decency."
It's not the debate that needs "good will and decency," Mr. President, but your proposed Consitutional tampering. This little amendment you're trumpeting will reverse the expanding civil rights tradition of "two centuries of American jurisprudence." Is there decency somewhere in that?
Now that's a debate.
In his State of the Union speech last month, Bush has addressed same-sex marriage, saying, "our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage."
Translation: "Until my administration captures Osama bin Laden, gets our military out of Iraq, and creates actual job growth, I'll be forced to freak out our indolent, Cheetoh-scarfing public by tossing around non-threats like 'steroid use in sports' and 'gay marriage.' Y'all have a good night."
If only we'd had a President who was so firmly dedicated to resisting any fundamental change in the nature of the institution of marriage back when all these uppity states were ditching their anti-miscegenation statutes, I tell you what.
Nevertheless Pete at A Perfectly Cromulent Blog has the ultimate, last-word, final, nail-in-the-coffin assessment -...
| --Posted to Collective Sigh on Feb 24, 2004 3:28 PM:. |
The previous poster with all the initials I won't try to reproduce is sort of right. If one partner in a legal marriage changes gender, the marriage isn't automatically invalidated--but if anyone takes an interest and challenges the marriage, it often is. Cases in recent years include a deceased man's children getting his marriage to a male-to-femals transsexual invalidated so that they could inherit his estate instead of her, and a court upholding a woman's claim that she was never actually married to a female-to-male transsexual and that he therefore had no legal standing as a father to their children (even though she knew his status when they married and when they decided to have chlidren).
I know I"m taking seriously a comment you clearly meant to be satirical, but for some folks it's a serious issue, and not for taking lightly.
Peenman angry. Peenman angry when gubmint try make world behave like gubmint want.
First, I don't like "detail" stuff in my constitution. To me, the constitution should be a document, a map if you will, by which we steer our nation. The only ammendment I would even consider would be one dealing with the obligation of States to recognize other States marriages. Not something like "boys must marry girls".
Second, I don't want anybody trying to shape the institution of marriage. By and large, this should be left to the church. I don't want the validity of any marriage to be subject to approval/disapproval by the government. If I had my druthers, JOPs would only bestow civil unions and not marriages.
Finally, I have yet to anybody who would really mind if civil union status were granted same sex couples. The only people interested seem to be the media (sex=ratings)and the rule makers.
Peenman still angry.
If Peenman not know people mad at same-sex civil union, Peenman not live in Texas.
Seriously?
Like people at the water cooler?
Maybe we're all just too self-absorbed up here.
Or maybe I should say sufficiently self-absorbed.
I've been out of Texas less than a decade, but it's hard for me to imagine regular, every day folks getting their britches twisted about this.
Wierd.
make that "weird"
Perhaps the marriage GWB is trying to save is Anita Perry's. He does like to do favors for friends, even when they drag the constitution into it.
The only major constitutional amendment that restricted citizens rights had to be repealed. Let's not go there. Amendments that restrict citizen's actions are not desirable.
And it's really sad for poor ol' Dubya that the mayors and county clerks are making his canned 'let the people decide, not activist judges' speech look stupid, but then again, there's not much he can do about that.
Yes, Virginia, there are people who have their heterosexual panties in a wad over gays getting hitched. My beloved spouse has gotten into her first flame war with a soon to be ex-pal of hers over it.
As the search engine in My Beloved's quest for the rhetorical smackdown, the He-Man Homo Hater's Club boils down to "God says so." So that gave us a lot of material for mockery, since you can find justification for all sorts of silly things in the Bible.
Peenman:
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment is one of those pesky little detail clauses you would seem to decry.
It ended up being the case that we needed a strong definition for both United States citizenship and state citizenship because the previous state of generalized referenced to "citizenship" left too many open questions. So the Reconstruction-era Congress, in addressing the post-Civil War era Constitutional problems, stuck in a clause that tells us what citizenship is at a very fine level of detail indeed--down to making sure to say that the children born in the U.S. of foreign ambassadors aren't citizens.
That's just one of the places where the Constitution gets very specific because sometimes you need a roadmap that goes all the way down to individual street addresses to get where you're going.
Rick, the whole "God says so" thing is pretty flimsy, the Bible being pretty cirumspect about homosexuality. At least the passages with which I am familiar. Pity your wife has to lose a pal over it, but smacking the religous right can be good sport. And I still don't see how gay civil unions are going to affect heterosexual civilly unioned or married couples.
And I'm not against the constitution adressing some details, like citizenship. I oppose amendments that impact or come from our culture. (Poorly) paraphrasing Jefferson, I don't want my (our) descendants to be restrained by the social mores of their barbarous ancestors.
Because I'm an engineer who likes to break things, let me see if I can detect a wee crack in the system.
Now, near as I can tell, many laws of the land currently require marriage to be between a man and a woman.
However, I believe that this requirement only holds at the time of the actual ceremony. Should one or both individuals change gender over the course of the marriage, the marriage is not invalidated.
So, Biff and Steve cannot marry. But Biff and Svetlana could marry, and then Svetlana could have a procedure to make her into Steve, and there isn't any mechanism in place to scrub the marriage.
Now: what procedures are in place for one to officially change one's gender? People have operations to have this done; surely there must be a mechanism for getting the record-keepers to acknowledge the change. I imagine it involves a doctor's signature, since I rather doubt the Social Security office has anybody drop trou on the premises.
So, imagine the following process:
1) Biff and Steve want to get married.
2) Steve goes to a cooperative doctor to have himself reassigned as a woman.
3) Steve goes to the Social Security office to have the change entered into the books. Ideally this should be done in drag.
4) Biff and Steve get married.
5) Steve returns to the doctor and, POOF!, is reassigned as a man.
6) Steve returns to the Social Security office -- on the same day as step 3) if possible -- to correct the error. He can drop trou and wave his male member as proof if the clerks prove recalcitrant.
Once married within the law, always married within the law. Biff and Steve, Marital Haxx0rs, have scored a victory over GW Bush and the rule of law. OWNED!!1!