Terri Schiavo (Page 11)

How this became a thread for gay rights I'll never know but.....

I am straight

my co worker is gay

we both have someone we love in our lives

WHY do other people (usually religouse fundamentalists (both Christian and muslam and others)) feel the need to make something that is peacefull and good into a complete waist of time, money, and understanding.

It seems that it is ok for people to have violent mariages (domestic violence is considerd a non reason for divorce by some sects) but if you are of the same sex......YOUR GOING TO BURN IN HELL!!??!! What the @#$#$@?????

get a grip!

possum ...... I will advocate on your behalf if and when we are "judged" if needed.

In a male pigish way i also think lesbians are hot and I think there is something interesting about blokes going at it hammer and tong!..... but personally i like my sex life the way it is and i hope you all do to.

gay rights ??????? ........ of course!!!!!!!!

I think I want to marry my brother.

I can't follow this. At first post i thought that you were joking. I wonder why there sould be a moral line other than "free will and no one is hurt"? Is that your question? I tried to read very carefully but i missed your point why they (arguments etc.) lose their value.
It is exactly what i think: "gov't should not legislate morality, we should all be open-minded, as long as no one is hurt and they are consenting adults"
gov't should be involved in order to regulate protection of rights of all parties
when something is out of law, let it be poligimy or whatever, there is no laws to protect rights of those people - if they brake the law they still have human rights
i also don't qute get this "one marriage" thing. we here have separate weddings: one civil and one (private) in chosen church (if the church is willing). they are usually separated by one week. or the civil part of wedding is performed in the church at the same time. or there is only civil wedding.
do you have only church wedding? so it depends on church? and what with the churches that allowe more then one spouse?

uhm, this is tricky. "free will and noone is hurt" is pure contradiction, it shouldn't be. this is terribly wrong. it reminds me on that scary story of women who died of eye infection. in my country people are not so sensitive to right of refusing help. here her close relatives would start the procedure of proclaming her insane in order to save her life. the head people of such an organisation (who proclame righ to refuse medical attention with deadly result) would be filed for brain washing e.g. for slavery. no kidding! if someone dies, they would charged for men slauther. they even might be charged for terrorism.
what is sane, what is insane? who is to say?
and all this started from society declaring vommiting is better choice then being fat women?
huh. this stuff is so tough. anyway i am electric engineer, i don't have "phylosophical muscle" at all!

"If you wanted to know how sick you have to be for Congress to care about your Health Care...." - Now we know!
- Jon Stewart

"The Tsunami didn't take President Bush away from his vacation, the Schiavo case won't....wait, who is that I see?"
-Jon Stewart

Now we're talking!

Okay. Hopefully my last post on this subject. I believe our christian lawyer is completely correct with all his statements re: how many of the arguments for gay marriage are flawed. I need to poke around and find the exact argument used to get the courts to agree that not allowing gay marriage in Massachusetts is unconstitutional according to the state constitution (which, of course, they're not trying to change so they can prove the court wrong). Generally and historically speaking, social mores and acceptability of new ways of living have come about _because_ of a change in the law and not the other way around. There really would be no such thing as minority rights otherwise; the majority would never allow it.

(On a tangetial (sp?) topic, I wonder how marriage rights ended up a state issue rather than a federal one. One of the reasons why (and, I think, one of the more compelling reasons) many pro-gay-marriage folks think civil unions are not enough is because they will generally not be recognized across state lines. So if my sweetie and I were vacationing in Wyoming, and she got in an accident, I would have no legal right while in Wyoming to determine her medical treatment if we were only had a civil union legal in Massachusetts. Her parents could then come in and completely cut me out of the process entirely and HAVE EVERY LEGAL RIGHT to do so. I find that scary.)

Anyway. Perhaps the following comments are what Chucky and welshy are looking for in order to spice things up a little bit. PERSONALLY, I think ... well, I think a few things. I think any consenting adults should be able to marry. Any and of any number and, really, of any relation. (Doesn't anyone here read humanistic science fiction ala Heinlein?!?) The reason the state would have a compelling case to limit the marriage of siblings or parents/children would be because the possibility of defective children _generally_ is much higher. This speaks to one of ASA's points. When genetic mapping becomes more advanced, however, there could be found cases where the offspring of siblings could be shown to be genetically viable with no bad recessives being reinforced while the offspring of two completely unrelated strangers could always be shown to reinforce bad recessives.

I think group marriage _when all participants are consenting (which has often been the problem with the way polygamy has traditionally been practiced)_ actually does more to foster the eventual continuation and support system of a family than a fairly fragile two-person construct. In fact, I'm sure we would all be surprised to find out how many group families already exist under the legal radar.

All that said, drizzle over a few ladels of dead sea water because when public policy is made based on idealism (see above) versus realism (look at history), we're all in trouble. For examples, look at prohibition, gun laws, drug laws, and many many more.

*bowing out*


amanda

Sorry, for the sake of being general, I should have said "Nobody is asking a heterosexual body to marry a gay person." "Why is that so difficult to swallow?"  Why is that so difficult for some people to swallow?

My sense of moral and right relates to liberties, as expressed in the Constitution. It would be immoral to limit marital rights to some consenting adults and not others; to people whose lifestyle or religion we approve of, for example. Immoral in the sense that it is a moral affront to our national bible, the Constitution, which basically lays out that we are all equal under the law (even if the country started out with some people being more equal than others but those days are - or should be - long past). 

Saying that some people are more equal than others (some people may marry and some not) is immoral in a Constitutional sense. If we are to speak of moral rights, then I would say yes, they exist, and they can be found in the Constitution and stated much more eloquently than I ever could.

My understanding is that the constitution does not talk about moral rights but rather legal rights (asa/john, weigh back in please... i want to see that nuclear bomb in your back pocket) So I'll assume, if I'm correct about the constitution, that your sense of a moral right to gay marriage refers back to the Declaration of Independence and its acknowledgement that we have an unalienable right to liberty.

If that's where your heading in forming a moral defense for gay marriage, then I might be with you.

We know that there have been some terrible supreme court rulings that have affected the unalienable right to liberty. Think: the Dred Scott Case. Yet, the unalienable right to liberty, in fact, still existed even though the court said that it did not apply to a certain class of people.

Would you make the same argument in defense of the unalienable right to life?

Do you think that Roe vs. Wade was a good decision? Would you honor their decision if a future court reversed Roe? Would you honor the constitution if the states ratified a Right to Life ammendment?

Wow. What an interesting discussion. I have to give props to everyone for well thought out replies on both sides without (mostly) resorting to name calling.

A few pages back someone (dontracy I think) was talking about morality & I think he said something along the lines thats it's his view that it's immoral to end your own life. I was thinking while riding yesterday - Since Terri is the one who said she did not want to remain in a vegetative state and expressed her wishes to refuse treatment, thus ending her life, wouldn't that mean that she is the one who was being immoral? Just thinking out loud. Sorry to get off topic.

Marriage is a state issue because the Constitution gives the federal govt no power over things like that, and the 10th Amendment guarantees to the states and the people all powers not reserved to the feds by the Constitution. It's one of the quiet but super-effective amendments.

You are dead right that your MA marriage rights change when you cross the state line. There was a very controversial case in Iowa a few years back where lesbians with a VT civil union wanted it dissolved by an Iowa court. The judge shrugged, said "Sure, why not?", granted them a dissolution, and next thing he knew he was getting screaming picketers and threats. Little did he realize he'd just created a precedent acknowledging the legitimacy of homosexual civil unions in Iowa. This is why we now have a stupid law about it. Nothing annoys me more than the law getting in people's pants, whether it's gay marriage, abortion, etc. People ought to mind their own damn business.

Carrie

Polygamy is hot.

Isn't that just the PC way of saying "threesome"?