HuffPost political reporter Sam Stein joined the panel on CNN's "John King USA" Wednesday night to discuss Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling that California's Proposition 8, a ballot measure which banned same-sex marriage, was unconstitutional.
Stein made the case that gay marriage has become an issue that is no longer strictly partisan. "I'll cite as evidence Steve Schmidt, the guy who ran John McCain's presidential campaign, who made a very big show going in front of the Log Cabin Republicans a while back saying conservatives need to realize that this is an issue of fundamental rights," he said. "I think that it is actually not a political issue, it's a philosophical one."
WATCH Part I:
WATCH Part II:
Rita Nakashima Brock, Ph. D.: Prop 8, Judge Walker and the Biblical View of Marriage Equality
Rabbi Michael Lerner: Why Jews Should Rejoice at the Overturning of Prop 8
Why should gay couples have to pay a bunch of lawyers for what straights can get from an Elvis impersonator in Vegas for fourty bucks?
We have a similar problem today with gay rights. Marriage also falls into the legal and civil realm as it can involve property, power of attorney, spousal benefits from insurance and work as well as custody of children. There is more relevant law here than whatever religion you claim to follow which tells you to hate the gays. You don’t get to be less of a citizen or a human than the next guy just because you love someone that others don’t approve of.
Your religious or secular gay hate is your issue. Equality under the law is EVERYONES issue.
When the Constitution gives African Americans the legal status of a 'slave', then the LAW accepts slavery, period.
There is not something like 'inalienable rights of all humans'. Rights have ALWAYS been a matter of political decision, which means that they are related to culture, and not somewhere written in nature.
If today a judge can read the Constitution in such a way that gay marriage becomes illegal, it means that other interpretations were possible too, and that you needed a judge interested in equal rights for gays to go and find the arguments that allow us to read the Constitution in this way. And it's much more likely to find such a judge when a culture as a whole is moving towards the idea of equal rights for gays than when a majority opposes it.
That's why imo we need a federal law that unequivocally guarantees that gay marriages are allowed in the US and perfectly equal to hetero marriages. And we will only have such a law when we vote for a majority in Congress that wants such a law too.
it's certainly true that young people support gay marriage more than older people, regardless of political affiliation.
But today 70% of the liberals support it, and only 25% of the Conservatives. 56% of the Dems, 28% of the Republicans.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/128291/americans-opposition-gay-marriage-eases-slightly.aspx
So it ALSO remains a political issue, whether we like it or not.
It's important to recognize this fact, because we cannot depend on courts alone, we need new, more appropriate laws, that respect gay rights more. And to obtain them, you need to know HOW to vote. A Republican politician will never seriously change gay rights in this country, as long as only a small minority of his voters want him to do so while a big majority opposes it.
Even with the Dems it's necessarily slow, because today the Dem party is a big tent, there aren't only liberals, but also a lot of 'moderates', that's why less Dems support gay marriage than liberals. That's also why having a BIG Dem majority, that can break the filibuster, is so important if we want to move forward on gay rights, because you need enough liberals to put this on the polticial agenda in DC, especially at a time where other big problems have to be solved.
The alternative: to wait 3-4 generations, until Conservatives support gay rights too ... .
15% of Americans are registered Republicans. If 100% of them are anti gay marriage guess what?
I didn't say anything about "registered". I was including Teabaggers and "independents" in "largely" Republican.
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixéd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.[1]
–William Shakespeare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_116
www.gaynycdad.com
I think most small-government advocates should feel the same way as I do - and I am by all means for less goernment intrusion in our lives.
True equality. Gotta love it.
The 'small-government' theory may be about less government intrusion in our lives, but that's only in theory.
Fact is that those who defend this small-government idea in general actually vote for bills that have very serious effects on many families accross the country, it's just that you don't see those effects as easily as when you're paying your taxes. The Bush tax cuts for example, that had an overall negative impact on the revenues of middle classes and will soon be the biggest part of the structural deficit, deficit that small-government supporters will mandate those same middle classes to pay, and not the wealthiest Americans.
On the other hand, gay marriage will certainly not affect those who oppose it financially, but it do will make them hate their government more, it will make them feel less 'at home' in the US, so it will ALSO have an effect on their private lives.
If you think about it, most of the important pieces of legislation Congress votes and even many of the important decisions the SC makes have a serious effect on our lives. People often only invoke the 'small-government' idea to fight against an effect they don't like or don't agree with. That's what makes the argument imo very weak, if not simply false.
;-)
No, thanks.
Hence, the word "progress".