Legalizing gay marriage has always been right. Now, according to Gallup, it is popular. For the first time in 15 years of Gallup polling on the issue, a solid majority of Americans support same-sex marriage.
This week will go down in history as the tipping point on gay marriage. Not only because a solid majority of Americans now support legal gay marriage, but also because the opponents of gay marriage have thoroughly discredited themselves.
Today Gallup reported that 53 percent of Americans favor according all the legal rights of "traditional" marriage to same-sex couples. Among Democrats, independents, liberals and moderates, and Americans under the age of 50, support is overwhelming, ranging from 59 percent to 78 percent. The Gallup poll is not an outlier, as statistician Nate Silver noted last month about the trend in gay marriage opinion polling.
On one side, the bedrock American belief in fairness has prevailed. Meanwhile, the last few weeks have been chockfull of news about the stunning hypocrisy of those who have fought to stop gay marriage.
First the Catholic Church. In the Pope's words, same-sex marriage "distorts the essence and purpose of the family." Church officials have called for Catholic politicians who advocate gay marriage, abortion, or god forbid, have sex outside of marriage, to be denied communion. And then this week, we're treated to this rationalization on sexual morality. Why did so many priests sexually abuse children? Blame the sexual revolution, according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and released on Wednesday. Priests simply couldn't control themselves in the loose environment created by the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.
Next to the Republican party. The newest champion of traditional family values in the 2012 presidential field is Newt Gingrich. Here's what Gingrich had to say about protests against the Mormon-funded anti-gay marriage initiative in California, Proposition 8:
I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact... These secular extremists are determined to impose on you acceptance of a series of values that are antithetical, they're the opposite, of what you're taught in Sunday school."
Although he paints himself as a traditionalist, Gingrich is a serial adulterer who has traded in two religions for his current orthodox Catholicism. He has gone through two wives (one of them cancer-ridden) and is on marriage number three, even as he warns that gays will destroy traditional religion and marriage. Gingrich walks his anti-gay talk. He was instrumental in the recall last November of the Iowa Supreme Court justices who had ruled in favor of the legality of same-sex marriage.
Let's not forget Republican U.S. Senator John Ensign, who resigned a few weeks ago to avoid being expelled from the senate over ethics charges stemming from his attempt to cover-up his affair with a staffer--a woman who was his best friend's wife. Ensign had previously pushed for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on this logic: "Marriage is an extremely important institution in this country and protecting it is, in my mind, worth the extraordinary step of amending our constitution."
In case you're prone to dismiss these two examples as the just the delusional edge of the rightwing, cast your eyes on one of the exemplars of mainstream Republicanism. Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child ten years ago with a housekeeper who worked in his family's home. At the time, of course, Schwarzenegger was a husband and a father -- and not yet governor. During the course of two elections, he concealed the information from the citizens of California and his own family. Although Schwarzenegger is regarded as socially liberal, he in fact twice vetoed legislation to make same-sex marriage legal in California.
So-called traditional religious values were the last slim justification for denying some Americans the constitutional right to marry. Certainly I'm not saying all opponents of gay marriage are hypocrites. But when so many exponents of traditional marriage show such contempt for basic moral values, they lose the credibility to preach morality at the rest of us.
With a Republican party of this character, Democrats will have to take the lead on making sure popular opinion in favor of gay marriage is enacted as the law of the land. Better late than never.
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Gay people will be able to legally marry.
That's it. The world as you know it won't change. You won't even know about it, unless you get invited to a wedding. There will be absolutely no change in your life.
I can give you another correlation: The root cause of the rising social and psychological dysfunctions that threaten civilization has been the continued rise of people who believe that corporations and have more rights and more important than citizens, the continued effort to allow corporations to do whatever they want without consequences, the continued effort to concentrate all wealth in the hands of the fewest number of people.
This is all correlated with your proposed dysfunctions and it doesn't have anything to do with the gays. Of course, I can no more prove this than you can prove that the root of all the worlds problems are homosexuals.
Why cant people, of all sexual orientations, just live together with someone who makes them happy? Why do we need some ceremony to commemorate a union that will statistically go down in flames? Just go down to the court house, sign a peace of paper, and be happy?
Or maybe I'm just restarted...
http://www.religioustolerance.org/mar_bene.htm
Please - could we stick to the topic - which is marriage and NOT child-rearing.
All people? My parents divorced when I was a month old.
Allowing two people to marry does not discredit an institution, divorce does that. There was a time where divorce was unheard of. A divorce?! Really?! Scandal! Now- tell your friend you're getting a divorce, and they have a "Divorce Party." A bachelor/ette party in reverse.
Divorce is by far more damaging than Daddy and Daddy took me to my dance recital and cheered me on. When I think back on when my parents divorced- I am elated that they did when they did. I was too young to know the strife and change a divorce causes, I was too young to think "Mommy and Daddy don't love me."
I am proud of my fathers-in-law. I am proud of my sister-in-law. She was 8 when my father-in-law came out. She has grown up since proud knowing that her father had the courage to come out in a society that is unfair and cruel to those who are different. By far harder, than who her parents were, was the need to travel between her parents' home. For a child of divorce, it doesn't matter the gender of their parents- the impact is the same. When I need my parents to be there, they will never be there together. Equality for everyone.
Do you mean the trend that started in the early seventies, long before marriage equality was an issue, back when it had absolutely nothing to do with the alleged influence of people who want to get married, but instead relied upon a vastly different set of cultural rules and expectations (they are swedes, not americans) AND the bad behaviour of heterosexuals who could get married? Do you mean the trend that had instead leveled off after the marriage-lite was granted to gay people, and has been slowly on the uptick ever since?
This loudly trumpeted threat of dmage to heterosexual marriage becuase gay people can get married is just another nasty form of biogotry, one that has avbsolutely no basis in fact, logic, or experience. Like all bigotry. but don't let that stop you.
If marriage has been harmed by anyone, it has not been by gay people. It was done by heterosexuals. To blame us for causing heterosexuals to devalue marriage-- a 40% divorce rate, a 40% out-of-wedclock birth rate, 25% adultery rates-- is just the basest kind of bigotry. We value marriage. It is heteorseuxals who don't, who behave badly, and then who blame us.
try dealing with some real world statistics, instead of the propaganda you are peddling. The states with the lowest divorce rates, abortion rates, out-of-wedlock births, those in the northeast, have marriage equality. The virulently homophobic states like Texas have the highest rates.
You are also confounding marriage and child rearing. You say the cause of divorce is the absence of the love of two opposite sex parents. I fail to see the connection.
http://tinyurl.com/3pg8pub
As an aside, has anyone checked the bathroom stalls in the airports recently? That would kind of round up the hypocrisy.
The answer is pretty simple.
If you want to marry, marry a member of the opposite sex.
The message we send to our LGBT youth? Marriage is for hets. Not everyone gets a trophy.
And you're not alone, many hets do not get to marry.
More precisely, it has further undermined the institution. The separation of marriage from parenthood was increasing; gay marriage has widened the separation. Out-of-wedlock birthrates were rising; gay marriage has added to the factors pushing those rates higher. Instead of encouraging a society-wide return to marriage, Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/660zypwj.asp
Like any sane married white couple got divorced because all of a sudden inter-racial couples were allowed to marry.
It's nonsense.
It was set up to protect particularly the wife, who stayed at home and raised children, and therefore had no income/savings/property of her own.
What you're actually doing, in this statement, is indicating that marriage is defunct altogether in modern society, because it has no relevant purpose at all except for a small minority of individuals. Why get married at all if what it "protects" no longer exists, or exists in a different form?
If "an overwhelming number of Americans" were in favor of gay marriage than just why are so many states passing legislation that outlaws it?
(Here's a hint as to which states they are: the ones that are last in every analysis of education, income, children born to teenagers and all other indicators of poverty).
Such is a recipe for DISASTER. It's supposed to be Mom and Dad with the kids. We've seen the abberations and the catastrophic results of such. How about YOU GROW UP and get a clue.
There is also no evidence that being gay is inborn. Not only do people choose to be gay but not even heterosexuality is inborn. Sexuality is multifactorial and changes. Also the 10% of people are gay number is from an incorrect reading of a Kinsey Report, the number is more like 3% of people are gay. Also the conversion rates of people from gay to straight is better than conversion rates for Drugs or other addictions
gays are people, they should be loved like anyone. i just don't support their marriage
Certainly appropriate that someone as intellectually dishonest as you would end your comment with two more lies - that you think gays should be loved (when you in fact condemn us) and you just don't support gay marriage (when serious bigotry, not marriage, is obviously the issue in your case).
We saw this in California. They cited poll after poll after poll, claiming Prop. 8 was toast. Then, the ACTUAL election went down. Prop. 8 passed.
Even in my home state of Florida, liberals bragged about Amendment 2's defeat, claiming that NONE of their polls had it reaching the 60% supermajority requirement (as of 2007) required to pass.
But, when the dust settled....62-38, Amendment 2 PASSED!!!
Now, Minnesota is on the clock; their amendment passed its Assembly and Senate and will be on the 2012 ballot.
Let's see if history repeats itself.
Really? Why?
If two consenting adults are in love and wish to commit themselves to eachother-what say does government have over that?
It is truly NONE of the government's business whatsoever!!!
If we are a Nation which values freedom and liberty, than let people be free and at liberty to marry whomever they wish.
How can anyone be against that?
Government should recognize ONLY civil union contracts-for ALL Americans.
The marriage part is religious and the churches and synagogues etc. can handle all that-or not-it's up to them and their flock.
Even the LGBT activists (with whom I was meeting in CA during the Prop 8 campaign) conceded it was THEIR advertising that was the disaster -- the Gavin Newsom ad was the turning point.
Lots of finger pointing in LA amongst the activist orgs that week!