Gay Marriage - morals

Gays push to recast marriage on morals
By Duncan Martell, Reuters

[In my opinion,
OK, so why do I cast my vote for gays? I'm not gay and I have a hard time identifying with the gay condition - whatever that is. I can't even imagine making love to or being ‘in love with' a man. And I'm also fortunate enough to have a wife who has never considered her association with women to be all that great even as friends or as ‘shopping buddies' - and women certainly tend to be much more associative than men - and I suspect that ‘gay' women outnumber gay men ten to one!

So, why should I care at all for gay rights? Why do I cringe at euthanasia of stray cats? Why am I upset over Catholic children who are allowed by their parents to be molested by their priests? Why does the so called marriage of thirteen year old girls to forty year old men here in Arizona bother me? Why does a Rabi who solicits sex with teenage girls on the Internet bother me? Why are so many people so fundamentally evil - that really bothers me.

We Americans are faced with much greater moral issues than the simple secular recognition of gay marriage in whatever legal form our society wishes to put it. It need not be a Christian issue at all unless the Christians wish to make it so - but they should be forewarned that this nation is not their exclusive domain - and if they dare to push it too far, they will indeed lose!

We are, after all, a pluralistic nation, and will remain so. We are a nation of many diverse ideologies which within reason must be respected. We really are not a Christian nation per se - we just have a Christian majority - and that is not the same thing.

If you consider just Christians, you will find an extreme diversity in that faith - many who may agree with me and, of course, those who do not. Fortunately we have the proverbial political separation of church and state which, whether expressly stated in the Constitution or other wisely implied prevents one belief system from overpowering competing systems. Thus we all are free to believe what we wish - or even what we are brain-washed to believe. (with the assumption that even those who are brain-washed have a modicum of free will).

I do have a fundamental question concerning those who wish to ban same-sex marriage. Is it that the problem is -- that the children from a same-sex marriage will not be Christian?

Just this evening my son, Larry asked, since he knew I am very interested in genealogy, how the fact that no one is getting married anymore would affect genealogy. Before I could answer and to my surprise, my Betty who has no interest at all in genealogy, pointed out that even without marriage, the mother generally gives the father's name to the child. If that is the case, obviously marriage means very little. ...AG]

As U.S. gays and lesbians prepare to battle a raft of state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage that will likely be on the ballot next fall, activists are recasting the issue as one that needs to be fought on moral rather than political grounds.

That is the message Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the oldest and leading U.S. grass-roots gay and lesbian coalition, has taken to more than 2,500 gay rights organizers at its annual conference held in Oakland this week.

"What I really want people to understand is rather than seeing these as political contests, these are really profound, unfair, bordering on immoral elections," Foreman told Reuters on Saturday. "Imagine if this was being done to a minority in Kosovo -- people would be outraged."

The conference, due to end on Sunday, is the first national gathering of gay and lesbian organizers since Tuesday's elections in which Texan voters approved, by nearly a 76 percent majority, a state constitutional amendment banning

Opponents, who believe marriage is only between a man and a woman, argue that same-sex marriage is unnatural and damaging to families.

If last year's conference, which came on the heels of elections in which 11 states approved changing their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage, was a time to vent anger and hurt over the defeats, this year the drive is to organize broad-based grass-roots campaigns to defeat more such votes, said Patrick Guerriero, president of the gay advocacy group Log Cabin Republicans.

"We've gone from some of the (2004) post-election anger to a movement that is optimistic about the future," Guerriero said in an interview.

"We need to be more mobilized as a community, more bipartisan in our message," Guerriero said, pointing to the need to engage people of faith, centrist Republicans and conservative Democrats.

UPHILL CLIMB
It will be a steep hill to climb, activists said.

"We're going to have another 10 to 12 anti-marriage, anti-family recognition constitutional amendments on the ballots next fall," Foreman said. "That's going to be an enormous challenge.'

Two key elements in the strategy to defeat more votes banning same-sex marriage will be reaching out to people of faith and demanding that Democrats, who have long counted on gays and lesbian as core supporters, stand up for the gay community, Foreman said.

"The Democrats' response to gay issues over the last few years has been incoherent and spineless, and that has only worked to their disadvantage," Foreman said. "There is a sense among large gay donors to the Democratic party that they need to have the party take a stand for us."