Obama endorses same-sex marriage (Page 10)

No i didnt miss that part....I didnt know that the agreement of the Catholic Church was necessary.

You are correct about recent elections, but they have  voted far more often for the R than D (23 to 15 if im not mistaken)...Perhaps conservative is more fitting than extremely conservative

I guess you didnt read the rest of my initial post in this regard...We will disagree on that and we shall continue this discussion on another opportunity, as i think this topic has deviated from the OP.

My point is that I don't see people protesting any other forms of marriage that they consider sins. Why is this one different than the others? Depending on what church you follow there are different beliefs that are sin. I see no other bans on marriage that are sexual sins related. Swingers, adulterers, spouse beaters, and rapist and so on are all allowed to get married and have protection under the law even though they are people living in and committing sin.

So far the best argument is you if someone doesn't agree with it they vote to try to stop it. Not that it has any legal merit or that it's the compassionate thing to do but I at least understand the idea behind it. I don't think that makes it right but I understand that.

I personally think a constitution (state or federal) is a place to enumerate rights and preserve them.  Not to restrict them.  That said, what you posted, scoobysdad, is one strong reason to support states' rights and minimal centralized federal government.

You don't like living in a state with laws like North Carolina?  Move to one that suits your needs.

That's basic government design in the USA.  We don't all have to do things the same way.

OK, so then take away all benefits provided to legally married couples now at the federal level so that your suggestion actual makes sense.  And your marriage can only be recognized in the state it was performed in.  So if you are visiting another state and one of you end up in the hospital keep in mind you have no rights to visit, make decisions, or even find out the state of your partner.  Cause that is what it is like for us right now going by this grand rule of 'just move'

?Because no one is pushing to 'legalize wife beating'.  If wife beater's united to push pro wife beating legislation then religions would oppose it.  Do you really think that religion give a pass to EVERYTHING except homosexuality...? 

I understand what you're saying.  But look at something simple and non-controversial like a driver's license.  There's no national standard.  I can get licensed in my state of Washington and legally drive in any other state even though I never took their tests.  If I want to change my residency to one of them it becomes a different story.

Edit: I'm not saying it's the solution, just that centralizing everything causes people to butt heads more often than not.

No, but no one is trying to stop wife beaters from getting married. The point being made is the ONLY "sin" (it's not a sin) that is being prevented from entering into a marriage is homosexuality.

Homosexuality is legal, that is not the issue. The issue is to let two consenting people have their marriage legalized the same as any other American. That is two separate things, much like woman voters. It was legal for them to be a woman beforehand they just couldn't take part in an activity and be legally recognized the same as their counterparts.

Which is how it should work.  And how it works for us straight people.  But by making it specifically illegal in states causes a problem.

To follow up on your analogy, what if your state said that if your DL is from 48 other states, it's legal, but if its a Mass. licenses, you can't drive there.

Don't you mean we either have Marriage for all or no one?  Why differentiate with SS Marriage?  Seems pretty similar to calling it a Civil Union when we know it's a marriage.

Would granting your partner powers of attorney solve this problem for the time being? Even if you're not in a civil union or marriage? It seems like it might provide some peace of mind in the interim.

The problem is it's much more complex than that. Going off the top of my head, I believe there are something like over 100,000 benefits/laws affected by marriage that homosexual couples can't receive without marriage.

I think it's a shame that this is such an issue for people. 

For the record, I don't care who (or what) you love, what colour your skin is, how old you are, what country you come from, your political or religious views.... I'm just interested in nice honest caring people, who enjoy the world and their lives, and have the ability to laugh at themselves. 

I have hetero-, homo-, bi-, and a-sexual friends and I dearly dearly love them all.

On a side note - I just want to know when I can marry my wonderful beautiful gorgeous Cervelo RS.  We've been together since 2009 and we are blissfully happy.  Cloud - I love you!

I get the benefits/laws part. But as a solution to being able to legally represent the medical and financial interests of an incapacitated partner, wouldn't powers of attorney and a solid will suffice in every state? It would provide a considerable peace of mind if it would IMO.

Yes, I would like to hear the answer to this question as well.

It's an excellent argument. If you choose to get married in a place of worship you're accepting both the legal and spiritual responsibilities of said union. For someone like that to be passing judgement should be an affront to pretty much every religious and moral person.

I think Newt's philandering hurt him more than we might be led to believe. I mean the man never even got out of the starting blocks. Or is it possible that the religious right supported him 100% and they aren't the big bad political machine we think they are?

Here's one.

If this issue gets to the SCOTUS, this will be the foundation of the argument
for holding marriages of one man and one woman as a separate class under the 14th Amendment.

"Here is the core of the traditional understanding: Marriage is a two-in-one-flesh communion of persons that is consummated and actualized by acts that are reproductive in type, whether or not they are reproductive in effect (or are motivated, even in part, by a desire to reproduce). The bodily union of spouses in marital acts is the biological matrix of their marriage as a multi-level relationship: that is, a relationship that unites persons at the bodily, emotional, dispositional, and spiritual levels of their being. Marriage, precisely as such a relationship , is naturally ordered to the good of procreation (and to the nurturing and education of children) as well as to the good of spousal unity, and these goods are tightly bound together. The distinctive unity of spouses is possible because human (like other mammalian) males and females, by mating, unite organically - they become a single reproductive principle. Although reproduction is a single act, in humans (and other mammals) the reproductive act is performed not by individual members of the species, but by a mated pair as an organic unit." 

Please take while to work through that and understand what it means before simply rejecting it for some rhetorical effect.
If the criticism takes the form of "it's too technical" or something like that, well tough. Can't have it both ways. 

If you roll your eyes and say something like "but gosh, this is about my feelings not a "biological matrix"", then I think that you're just playing games.

Here's a CoJ thread from some six years ago where it got unpacked.
There are a few more available.

So there is in fact a non religious argument for holding marriage to be rightly understood as between one man and one woman.
If anyone is going to reject it, then you'll need to develop one that is more compelling. 

So far, I haven't seen one.

(you = universal you)

Now that I've provided what several people have been asking for,

show me a non religious argument for the elimination of slavery and the development of civil rights within the civil rights movement.
No fair using religious notions of the dignity of each human being as a notion that is taken for granted
or for using nietzchean notions of living off of the last breaths of christian morality until we can get to a pure post christian will-to-power culture.

Ready, set, go... 

My take on Obama is that he was feeling this way for some time and finally had the courage to say it.   I do buy the "Evolving" theory.    It may have been the end of his hopes for a 2nd term, it may be way more complicated in motivation that I believe, but it made me proud of him.

My own marriage would have be illegal in Nevada before 1959, just a few years before I was born.    Yes, I believe that the "miscegenation" thing equals the sexual orientation thing.  

ETA:  13 pages and not yanked yet?   Congratulations.