The Possibility Of Gay Rights Should it be allowed?

[Dooga 0]

I wouldn't really agree with people who think gay marriage is some kind of degradation of society. Although marriage is sort of vague to be used as a description for same sex partnership. Define marriage....

[@mberlust 0]

Gay Rights is a very tough cookie to bite into. And Religion is very important in a conversation such as this, so it must be included.The reason religious people don't like the fact that people are gay is mostly because you can't reproduce. So? We have about 6 billion people as it is, and having people who can't reproduce would at least level out the friggin huge amount of people we have.There are women and men out there who can't concieve babies, but they can still get married.Marriage is about love, not gender.I don't think it matters what sex your partner is. If you love him/her, then you should be able to get married. Just because you do not like the opposite sex should not forbid you to join together in Holy Matriomony. (or however you spell that)Being married is a speacial bond. If you love your partner enough to want to be bonded together, I think you should be able to.

[Madkat-Z 0]

My opinion on this is that, first off its nobodys business and this shouldn't be a matter for the federal goverment. If any goverment should be allowed to deal with it should be the State, not federal. Anyway, the only other thing I will say is that I have no problem with it being called marriage, but I think that maybe a good idea to call it something other then marriage. I do belive however gay couples should have the same rights as any other couple.

[BooZker 0]

And Religion is very important in a conversation such as this, so it must be included

Why? There is a law that states "Seperation of Church and State" So why should we include it? I never bring religion up in a conversation. 1 reason is im not religious. I'm looking at why they should get married in the legal matters. I don't give a sh** what other peoples religions are. We are looking at Gay Marriage not religious marriages. This has nothing to do with religions. People make it have to do with religions.

[matto 0]

...Speaking of religion, my rabbi wrote an article about how to obtain gay rights. It isn't focused primarily on religion, well sort of.... Here it is:

The Only Winning Way to Fight the Ban on Gay Marriage by Rabbi Michael Lerner

Now that President Bush has endorsed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages, those who hope to stop it need to understand why their strategies have been so unpersuasive in the past.

Gay and lesbian groups have tried to use the language of equal rights as their launching pad for mass support, posing themselves as a victim of discrimination akin to that suffered by African Americans. But while many Americans stand with them in relationship to issues of non-discrimination in hiring or equal rights to visit their partners in hospitals or inherit their partners property, they draw the line at marriage.

The opposition to gay marriage comes from two different kinds of concerns, each of which can be effectively fought if the supporters of gay marriage stop placing all their eggs in the equal rights basket and instead seek to understand what might be reasonable in the position of those who oppose gay marriage, and how to respond to those reasonable concerns.
There are two such concerns. The first is that there is a huge crisis in family life today, and the Right has been able to convince people that the crisis is in part generated by homosexuals. A movement to defend gay rights must address that family crisis.

Thats why the Network of Spiritual Progressives, which recently held a national gathering and teach-in=to Congress in D.C. in May to reconstitute a religious left made the first plank of its eight part Spiritual Covenant with America a commitment to build a world based on love and caringto counter the ethos of materialism and selfishness that are rooted in the world of work and in the me-firstism and looking out for number one that have increasingly become the yardstick of common sense in advanced capitalist societies.
All day long people work in corporations that teach them that their own worth is dependent on their ability to contribute to the bottom line of maximizing money and power. People quickly learn that their own ability to succeed requires learning how to see other people through a utilitarian or instrumental frame: how can these others be of use to me in showing the people who have power over my employment that I am going to be useful to them in terms of contributing to their bottom line? People who spend all day long learning how to use others to maximize their own advantage bring home with them a consciousness that tells them that everyone is just out for themselves and that it is self-destructive and irrational not to be a maximizer of self-interest.

It is this way of seeing each other that undermines loving families. Increasingly people make commitments to each other within this kind of utilitarian framework: Im with you as long as I think that you are able to satisfy MY NEEDS better than anyone else who is likely to want to be my partner or spouse. Instead of seeing the other as an embodiment of the sacred who deserves to be loved and cherished, the legacy of the old bottom line of the marketplace is to teach us to think in terms of how others will satisfy our own needs, and to discard them if we can ever find someone who wills satisfy yet more of our needs.

No wonder, then, that so many people feel insecure in their families. And the homophobic sections of the Right have then used that insecurity to blame the problem on homosexuals. Yet there is nary a family that has ever broken up because there were homosexuals in the neighborhood.

Those of us who oppose the consttutioanl amendment banning gay marriage would be far more effective if we were to become the progressive pro-families movement that sought to advance a New Bottom Line: corporations, legislation, government practices, social institutions should be judged efficient, rational and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they contribute to our capacities to be loving and caring, kind and generous, ethically and ecologically sensitive, and capable of responding to others as embodiments of the sacred and repond to the universe with awe and wonder.
Spiritual progressives could show that this New Bottom Line, when applied to our econmic and social institutions, could actually make a difference to families, while no families at risk of break up will be helped by a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

The second objection to gay marriage comes from those who point to marriage as a holy sacrament whose dimensions have for most of human history been set by religious communities. They are correct, and for that very reason marriage ought to be taken out of the state entirely and replaced with civil unions with agreements like other contracts enforced by the state. Let all marriages be conducted in the private realm with no legal sanction by the state, and then those religious communities that oppose gay marriage will not sanction them, and those like mine that do sanction gay marriage will conduct them, and the state will have no say one way or the other, nor any role in issuing marriage certificates or divorces. It will enforce laws imposing obligations on pepople who bring children into the world, and it will enforce contracts between consenting adults (civil unions), but it will get out of the business of giving state sanction to what had always been a sacred sacrament.

This strategy could prove far more powerful. Imagine if we could create a culture of resistance to state power over personal life that led tens of millions of liberal heterosexuals to simply stop using the state's marriage as a legitimator, and instead had spiritual ceremonies (some based in religious communities, others based in secular spiritual communities or friendship circles that affirmed marriage, using their own criteria for who could be married. These couples could then draw up their own legal contracts that were the equivalent of a "civil union" and enforceable by state laws just as any other contract would be. As this movement spread, the power of the state to accept or deny homosexual marraiges would become irrelevant, because gays and lesbians would be getting the same kind of marriage as everyone else--the one that heterosexuals were voluntarily getting in order to protect and identify with homosexuals. Within a decade this would create tremendous pressure on the state to either rescind its anti-homosexual legislation or validate this new kind of reality in which most people were not going to the state for marriages but instead going to their own spiritual community to insist that marriage is a sacred and not state-power-dependent relationship.

But of course in the meantime, with the struggle being waged in the public sphere to explicitly deny homosexuals the rights granted to heretosexuals, there needs to be a powerful movement against those offensive measures. If that struggle focused on the commitment of both hetero and *person* sexuals to lead a campaign in defense of the family by challenging the Old Bottom Line and demanding changes in all our institutions to foster in us the capacities of love, caring, etc. that nurture our abilities to be loving, and rejecting the ethos of the marketplace that undermines those capacities, we'd be far more effective than with any struggle that was simply an attempt to demand "equal rights" and frame the struggle entirely in the language of "rights."

This approach is far more likely to be a winning strategy for those who wish to beat back the ongoing assault on gay rights.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine, National Chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP), and author of ten books, most recently: The Left Hand of God:Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right (Harper San Francisco, 2006). He is the Rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco. RabbiLerner@tikkun.org

He's quite smart. What do you guys think of his "strategies"?

[gaea 0]

My opinion on this is that, first off its nobodys business and this shouldn't be a matter for the federal goverment.

This has nothing to do with religions. People make it have to do with religions.

I'd say the very heart of the problem (besides what I, personally, see as peoples' close-mindedness) is that currently the word "marriage" is used in two different senses: in a legal sense, and in a religious sense. As such, there is a blatently simple solution: extend the seperation of church and state to the process of marriage. This would mean that all couples (regardless of the genders involved) would be eligaible to recieve a "civil union," which would grant them all the legal priviledges now bestowed upon married couples. Then, at the couples' discression, they could also choose to get married--a ceramony carried out by whatever religious faith they choose to follow.

Presto, no more quote on quote "violation of the scancity of mariage"...except (ofcourse) by other religious groups that conservatives already dismiss out of hand. And come on, lets face it, different religions (or even different sects within the same religion) will always find ways to bicker and hate eachother, so this isn't exactly anything new.

P.S. I can't take credit for thinking up this solution, one of my friends came up with it a few months ago while we were discussing a rather similar topic.

[glamour_trash 0]

 

- It is not normal. Show me in nature, any other animals have homosextual relationship. In facts in wild, two adult lions can not live in the same region. Two queen bees can not be together, they have to divide their kingdom.

 

- It is against the production of next generation.

 

- If for any reason the gay people can not act as nature expect from them, then let this not by shouting or make prades or asking equality in every items of life . Disable people can be respected but they have to know their abnormality. The blind or deaf people have not to go fight and say it is equality. The people with heart problem have not to practice hard activities. People with bone problem have not to compete in running or swimming. People with sight problem and using glasses better to them not participate in some activitites.

 

You asked my opinion and I gave it.

Notice from jlhaslip:

Deleted duplicate posting.

 

I don't like that at all. People can't help if they are gay, hormones help determine someone sexuality, as well as what they've been exposed to etc. Everyone starts out as a lesbian and then hormones determine whether they are male or female and heterosexual or homosexual. link

[Madkat-Z 0]

I'd say the very heart of the problem (besides what I, personally, see as peoples' close-mindedness) is that currently the word "marriage" is used in two different senses: in a legal sense, and in a religious sense. As such, there is a blatently simple solution: extend the seperation of church and state to the process of marriage. This would mean that all couples (regardless of the genders involved) would be eligaible to recieve a "civil union," which would grant them all the legal priviledges now bestowed upon married couples. Then, at the couples' discression, they could also choose to get married--a ceramony carried out by whatever religious faith they choose to follow.

Good point. I the only problem I see is that the meaning of civil union needs to be definition better because with how your thinking of it, that means anyone or anything can get civil union. Not saying theres a problem with getting a civil union your toaster, but I think that maybe going alittle far with the who is eligaible to get a civil union.
Edited June 6, 2006 by Madkat-Z (see edit history)

[Tetraca 0]

I don't care if a person is homosexual. All deserve equal treatment, in justice, power, and privelige.

[gaea 0]

Good point. I the only problem I see is that the meaning of civil union needs to be definition better because with how your thinking of it, that means anyone or anything can get civil union. Not saying theres a problem with getting a civil union your toaster, but I think that maybe going alittle far with the who is eligaible to get a civil union.

Hehe, quite true. I'd be inclined to draw the line at: Any human being who is of legal age (18 in most of the US) and is of sound mind. Of course the exact wording would be left to the legistatures.

[Absolute 0]

Here's something that says everything:

i dont know where in the world you came up with the top 10 but its very wrong. Since when in the United States can blacks not marry whites and vice versa?? Anyway, the way i see the whole issue is that if you dont bother me i wont bother you. The United States are supposed to be free. Your free to make whatever choice you want as long as it does not physically or mentally harm another individual. I dont see where two people who love eachother cant get married. In a country where the divorce rate among men and women are well over 50% it would be a shock if most of the marriages even lasted at all. Let them do whatever they want to as long as they aren't harming anyone else. Its not like gays are sitting on a corner trying to pick everyone up. I'm straight and happy with it...Let them be happy being whoever they want to be. Who are we to judge?

[JasperIk 0]

I don't like that at all. People can't help if they are gay, hormones help determine someone sexuality, as well as what they've been exposed to etc. Everyone starts out as a lesbian and then hormones determine whether they are male or female and heterosexual or homosexual. link

I read that whole thing and did not read anything about everyone starting off as a lesbian. People don't even really start of as female, their body parts just appear the same, but on the inside they are either male or female. The only reason why they even look the same is because males don't develope on the outside, untill much later, but we are always male, regardless of when our outter body developes. Besides this, lesbian is for females who are attracted to females, not men who are attracted to females, gay or straight. It comes from a story, about some island named Lesbo or something like that, it was greek. So do you really mean, everyone starts of being attracted to females? Even then, i don't believe that is true.

[hulunes 0]

umm,i dont know why gay rights has been a controversial topic always?maybe different region has different legal restriction.in my area,they are freedom and legal naturally.i have watched the film "backbroke mountine",which is good movie what it showed to people about gay.

[rejected 0]

Sodomy was originally outlawed because it was considered recreational sex. It's legal in many areas now.Also, the anus is a muscle. When having anal sex, the anus is forced open, and the skin can possibly rip. The makes for a very easy way to get AIDS and other STDs. Originally when AIDS was discovered, most people thought it only happened to homosexuals because of that. People have passed on this belief through families, but without reasoning.Sorry if my post offends anyone, but all people posting in this topic should be mature enough to read this.

[BooZker 0]

Also, the anus is a muscle. When having anal sex, the anus is forced open, and the skin can possibly rip. The makes for a very easy way to get AIDS and other STDs. Originally when AIDS was discovered, most people thought it only happened to homosexuals because of that. People have passed on this belief through families, but without reasoning.

I'm mature enough to read that like you said, but why did you bring that up? You can't get it if you or your partner dosnt have it. Gay or not gay both have to know about there partner before having sex without pertection.