Lame.

Meanwhile your dodging is done. You are stuck on the same merry-go-round you fabricated in some years ago. Move on.

Despite your gay emphasis you conceded that is not a requirement for those who'd SSM. You disavowed the sexual basis for the complaint you repeat against the marriage law. Yet your bias hangs there with no visible means of support.

I do not deny "same-sex couples" (as you arbitrarily put it) marriage. But those who choose such a nonmarital option choose something other than marriage. They own that and, in so doing, exercise a liberty and are denied no right.

Again, you fled the query but have returned to make an unjustified demand anyway. That is on the record.

Under the man-woman basis of marriage law, you are free to believe what you feel is best. But you would impose your SSM idea on all of society. There is no point in your feigning neutrality. Be an adult and own your bias. A bias you have left unjustified. A bias that is at odds with your own line of argumentation against the marriage law.

You ask of yourself so very little that it must be astonishing to be queried about your bias and your advocacy of a conceptual mess -- the SSM idea. Your comments are on the record and illustrate the weakness of the pro-SSM view. Than you for that contribution here.

You are free to believe whatever you will. However, when you force others to live by your beliefs, that is discrimination. Would you expect people to hold you to religious ideals other than the ones you believe in?

"Son of adam, you say people have been fired and sued for believing in "natural marriage" (whatever that means). Can you show some proof?"

I refer you to the blog archives that talk about people who have in fact been sued for adhering to their beliefs. I refer to Massachusetts where catholic adoption agencies were forced to close their doors because they wouldn't adopt to anyone other than a mother and a father.

Isn't that not proof? Or do you think it's justified to have the first amendment rights of others trampled to make yourself feel better?

I expect you disagree and would instead rely on the label rather than the idea. The superficiality of that approach ought to trouble you but you probably imagined it would trouble me.

In this conflict of ideas, I do not need to be right for you to be wrong. You are at odds with your own argumentation. It is true that my argument is sound but that is because the marriage idea is sound. You have no such advantage in arguing for the conceptual mess that is the SSM idea.

Fitz is kindly helping you to understand better if only you were motivated by a desire to understand that which you oppose.

Unfortunately, it would be premature to agree to disagree, because you do not comprehend that which you oppose. Fitz has more patience than I and I commend him for that.

Fitz, your efforts may be met with relentless disdain but the substance must be engaged forthrightly if the SSMer is to grapple with the actual disagreement. We can only lead the horse to water but we cannot make it drink. Cheers.

"To deny a same sex couple who marry in Maine their legal rights is no different than those who denied the rights of interracial couples in the 1950's. It is a denial of the law, whether you agree with it or not."

This is simply false as a matter of fact. When a black man & white woman marries it is still a union of a man & woman.

When two men or two woman "marry" it requires the very definition of marriage be changed for everyone.

Maintaining the definition of marriage is not unjust discrimination or a violation of the 14th amendment.

Read my post above and you will at least have a handle on your opponents understanding.

And anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time knows that SS"M" has resulted in job losses and trouble with the courts.

Just ask Cynthia Gifford, who owns a NY Christian farm with her husband, who had a human rights complaint filed against them because they declined to host a gay wedding on their property.

Also ask Dr. Angela McCaskill, a chief diversity officer who was put on leave because she signed the petition that put Maryland's same-sex marriage law on the ballot. Now that SS"M" has passed, I wouldn't be surprised if she were coerced into resigning.

And what about the O'Reilly family, Christian innkeepers in Vermont who had to pay $30,000 for their refusal to make their facilities available for same-sex weddings despite offers to refer the couples to other providers and in spite of the deeply-held religious views of the inn-keepers?

SS"M" attacks our civil rights like religious liberties in the interests of advancing gay identity politics for wealthy and influential special interest groups. Brace yourself for more religious liberty compromises that can definitely be found on this blog in the coming months!

To all you perverts interested in my private life, I hope you all take to heart what happened yesterday. It was a day of reckoning.

Tell that to those who have been fired and sued for believing in natural marriage, Markoh. The redefinition of marriage is more about promoting gay identity politics than gays marrying each other. And woe be to those who stand in the way!

Did you learn from SSMers the essential(s) of the same-sex type of relationship you have in mind such that it is the same as the husband-wife relationship but at the same time distinguishable from the rest of the types of relationships that populate non-marriage and non-SSM?

By your comment you posed as one well-informed so you might have a substantive answer?

In those hearings, the SSMers did not provide such an answer. And what they did emphasize amounted to a blatant assertion that gay identity politics is supreme to all other considerations. Without that, the imposition of SSM had no basis in governmental policy, much less cultural significance.

But you pose as one who knows better as a firsthand witness to the hearings. So you might readily answer the query on-point.

Or you might stomp your foot and runaway from that query which arises directly from those hearings.

Seems I recall a small vocal minority in a country called Germany doing the same thing and almost taking over the world. Another small country was similarly doing the same thing in the Pacific. It took a day that went down in infamy to wake us up. Out of these victories emerged another vocal minority that said communism was the best. Equality for everyone of with the exception of a chosen select few. A brave President challenged them to "Tear down that wall" and it finally happened.

I'm not saying that homosexuality should be compared to Hitler, Imperial Japan, nor Communist Russia, but history has shown that homosexuality and other reduction in morals accompany the collapse of an empire.

I'm asking what is your rationale? Whether you believe in the Bible or not, man has always killed. He has always tried to dominant another for survival. A set of laws were written in the Bible, becoming the basis for our laws today. Our country was founded on these principals.

"What God has joined let no man put aside", not what man has joined together. I will continue to try and pursue my happiness, and you may pursue yours, but don't let your pursuit force me to give up mine and force me to accept yours.

You want to marry, and it's now legal in your state, fine. Find a church or government agency that will do it, but don't force those that oppose it to do it or surfer any consequences. Even a private business should have the right to state a belief and not be forced to do something against their moral belief. We had those that fought for their right to object to fighting. Thank you Ali, but a same-sex couple can sue a reception hall that had already stated that they do not provide their services for this because of their religious and moral beliefs. Where is the rationale in that?

You seek to be considered normal and be treated equally, but you also expect others to only accept your way or pay a penalty. We have a God given right, you have your selfishness desires.

"YOU may not have a religious reason for your opposition to marriage equality, but if so you would be in the extreme minority of NOM folks."

Actually most arguments in favor of traditional Marriage are secular. Though religious arguments are equally as valid because religion itself serves as a moral guidance for most people.

I can direct you to several articles made by prominent conservatives and liberals and even libertarians explaining why the male/female definition of Marriage should be upheld.

SSM = Specious Substitution for Marriage.

The hasty comments of SSMers here illustrate the conflict that their SSM idea sets against the marriage idea. SSM does not expand marriage out it is an outright rejection of marriage and of much else. The imposition of SSM, by whatever means, is arbitrary and ham-handedly sets the Government aparatus against civil society.

SSM is specious down to its superficial roots. And it is morally and culturally hazardous. No matter, SSMers favor the supremacy of gay identity politics over and above all other considerations.

Don't try to tell the family court judge that.

Once that marriage ends, it's all about the best interests of the child(ren).

How come?

You got married.

On the otherhand marriage as traditionally understood and defined is insurmountably linked directly with procreation.

It is made up of the one and only coupling in society capable of procreation - the male/female union.

While any member of the class of male/female maynot or even cannot have children...the class itself (male/female) is the one and only coupling capable of procreation.

Male/male & female/female couplings on the other hand are always and everywhere encapable of procreation.

So when you say - "marriage has nothing to do with procreation" your simply wrong as a matter of open and obvious fact.

And when you say "People have kids without getting married." - you stumble across one of the key reasons for preserving the definition of marriage. Opposite sex couplings have children routinly. Hence the movement to encourage those couplings to get married before they have children...or mary once a child is conceived.

Something that will be even more difficult once the definition is changed and the concept that natural Fathers & Mothers are essential to a childs proper upbringing is dealt another large blow by the acceptance of same-sex parenting inherant in same-sex "marriage" is now recognized as the law of the land.

>> Behold.

Fundamental transformation.

Laws against theft are in the Bible. Laws against theft are in our civil laws. Some people argue against theft based on Biblical principles. Some argue against theft based on civic principles..

The arguments often overlap. Likewise for arguments for preserving the definition of marriage. Just because many people who support marriage are motivated by religious beliefs dosent make there arguments religious or the public policy behind the laws simply a matter of sectarian belief.

And this is noty about semantics. Semantics is using different words for the same thing. This is a argument over the substantive meaning of a social insitution. Not over what we call it but rather what it means.

This is what I mean by anti-intellectual.. You dont seem to have any grasp of your opponents thinking.. Yet you are dead set on changing the definition of marriage.

This new marriage understanding is different than the one that nwas declared a fundemental consitutional right..

Again read my posts above and do some of your own research..

Until you can engage in substantive debate that centers in on the profound change your advocating, it seems rather pointless because a true debate or argument cannot be had. Instead it becomes incumbent on me to explain what you should already understand.

So, you're telling me that your reasoning isn't religion-based, but you're still fervently anti-gay marriage? Then why is this an important issue to you. The paragraph you listed doesn't give me an answer. Unless semantics are really that important.

And quit calling me anti-intellectual. Saying that doesn't make you an intellect, or even correct.

If not, the rhetoric that redefining marriage is inevitable will become a reality.

The time when the homosexual special rights movement can be ignored has long since passed. Unfortunately, people didn't realize that in 2004. It wasn't until four years later that we got NOM.

Also, our focus needs to broaden.

Homosexual special rights activists are in the schools, indoctrinating kids.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/08/opinion/la-ed-textbook-20110408

We're not.

Homosexual journalists are leading this revolution, deliberately spinning things -- through clever choices of words, selective inclusion and omission of facts, and ubiquitous selection of photographs or other images that convey support for homosexual so-called "marriage".
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/10/us/gay-journalists-leading-a-revolution.html

Why isn't this extreme bias being analyzed? Where is our side? Why can't journalists -- that believe that the union of a man and a woman is a uniquely special event, that should be preserved, be more influential -- or are homosexual topics for homosexual journalists (experts on the topics). The newspapers would do something if they saw that we were methodically exposing their shameful, embarrassing, disgraceful bias.

Do we even *have* any lobbyists?

NOM collects money and distributes it to state campaigns. Its leaders debate SSM advocates. The media calls on them to make statements. It maintains this blog.

It needs to expand.

Homosexual special rights lobbyists are getting "sexual orientation" into hate speech and bullying laws, in lists of race, national origin, and gender -- as if sexual preference was also an immutable characteristic -- facilitated by politicians that are paid to serve as their handmaidens (or at least to keep their opposition suppressed).

I did not mention my religion or even that I may or may not believe in God. This is you revealing your own prejudice as to the "real" motives of your advesaries.

Its not about my opinion or that you believe "It doesn't matter one jot or tittle that YOU don't like it"

It is about our fundemental rights and international human rights... Its not about our feeling about homosexuals...its about our understanding about the importance and purpose of marriage..

You want to redifine it...and we know the effects that will have...and we also know its unconsitutional to do so.

Read my other posts above and perhaps you can rid yourself of this anti-intellectual approach to the social institution of marriage..

This may also help inform you about your advesaries mindset...

"Marriage is neither a conservative nor a liberal issue; it is a universal human institution, guaranteeing children fathers, and pointing men and women toward a special kind of socially as well as personally fruitful sexual relationship. Gay marriage is the final step down a long road America has already traveled toward deinstitutionalizing, denuding and privatizing marriage. It would set in legal stone some of the most destructive ideas of the sexual revolution: There are no differences between men and women that matter, marriage has nothing to do with procreation, children do not really need mothers and fathers, the diverse family forms adults choose are all equally good for children. What happens in my heart is that I know the difference. Don't confuse my people, who have been the victims of deliberate family destruction, by giving them another definition of marriage."

Walter Fauntroy-Former DC Delegate to CongressFounding member of the Congressional Black CaucusCoordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s march on DC

First: it's a life not a "lifestyle." Second, no state has "banned" anyone's life or style. Lastly, there's nothing sick and perverted about being part of a monogmous, loving couple. Mind your own business, keep your nose, and your religion out of other people's lives.

Ah, a new tune to an outdated song. Was wondering how NOM would start to spin their new efforts to DENY equality to all Americans. People have been able to obtain a civil marriage for years WITHOUT a religious ceremony.

And no one is forcing same sex marriage on anyone. If you don't believe in SSM, don't marry your same sex partner, simple. But to prevent anyone else from doing it is just discrimination, pure and simple.

"Traditional marriage" in the US changed to allow black people to marry, then to forbid polygamy, then to permit marriages between people of different races......"

These "changes" never effected marriages basic understanding definition and social purpose.. Same-sex "marriage" does fundementally change the concept itself..

Discusing the Supreme Court precedents of Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987); Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374 (1978); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942)

The New York Superior Court said this in support of the traditional definition of marriage...

“To ignore the meaning ascribed to the right to marry in these cases and substitute another meaning in its place is to redefine the right in question and to tear the resulting new right away from the very roots that caused the U.S. Supreme Court and this Court to recognize marriage as a fundamental right in the first place.”

–Hernadez v Robles; New York Superior Court (J. Graffeo concurring)

Ken (writes)

"Eventually people will see that NOM's message makes absolutely no sense at all. We do not need NOM to rescue us from a danger that does not exist."

It would seem that NOM is the none with the clear understanding of marriage & the law... And the danger you believe " does not exist" is manifest in 50% divorce rates, 40 percent illigetamacy rates and collapsing marriage rates and resulting demographic uupheavels

"Would all the straight people who plan to stop reproducing because gay people can get married please raise their hands?"

This is a unsophisticated and anti-intellectual take on your advesaries arguments..

As I say above "Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival."

~Skinner v. Oklahoma, (1942), United States Supreme Court.

Under the regime of the "pure relationship theory" of marriage... a concept born of the sexual revolution and one that same-sex "marriage" further reinforces and locks in formally as a matter of law... Countries & peoples that promote this understanding fall into a death spiral..

Marriage no longer has the cultural authority to channel people into long term commited relationships were childbearing and rearing are the central and culturally understood purpose.

They end up with miniscule and dwindiling populations well below replacment level..

http://www.demographicwinter.com/index.html

The wages of sin it would seem really is death.

That's revisionist history, Dan. The state did not invent marriage. It simply recognized it for the way it had already been defined over thousands of years of cultural development. When it becomes big enough to claim ownership of marriage and redefine it to please wealthy and influential special interest groups, then we have strayed away from the principles that have made this country great.

"By the way, if you believe in religious freedoms, this means that denying Unitarians the right to legally marry couples violates the principle of freedom."

By that reasoning, that also means that denying Fundamentalist Mormons the right to legally marry polyamorous groups violates the principle of freedom. But I guess freedom only applies only to those your own personal bias favors.

Eventually people will see that NOM's message makes absolutely no sense at all. We do not need NOM to rescue us from a danger that does not exist.

Um, that was male-female marriage, not SSM.

"As soon as the US government treats all its citizens the same - the ability to exercise what the USSC called one of "mans most basic civil right" - "

The quote your refrencing is from Skinner v Oklohoma and is again quoted in Loving vs Virginia.

"Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival."

~Skinner v. Oklahoma, (1942), United States Supreme Court.

In that opinion as well as Loving and prior decisions as well as sunsequent precedents including Baker V Nelson were all talking about marriage as traditionally defined.

Obviously same-sex coupling is not "fundamental to our (mankinds) very existence and survival"

You can no more change the definition of marriage and say your protecting it or "expanding" it...than you can change the definition of "arms" to mean down pillows or "speech" to mean words and ideas that support the current statist regime, or "religion" to mean practicing Catholicism... and the like.

This is not clever rehtoric your engaged in..it is open and obvious subterfuge of a fundemental consitutional right..

Your lying to yourself.

Would all the straight people who plan to stop reproducing because gay people can get married please raise their hands?
...
I didn't think so.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I don't think same sex couples care a fig about what you believe a marriage to be - or what you believe to be normal or abnormal sexual attraction / behavior.

As soon as the US government treats all its citizens the same - the ability to exercise what the USSC called one of "mans most basic civil right" - the ability to license to the person of *their* choice regardless of race, religion or the gender of their spouse, same sex couples will live their lives according to what they "believe".

If marriage is no longer about regulating procreation, then people—using their own discretion—will view marriage as a purely emotional union like ordinary friendships.

And any union built primarily on emotions—like ordinary friendships—lack a compelling moral reason to honor norms or to warrant legal regulation.

Many people's appreciation for marriage and its norms have largely deteriorated under the influence of certain social and legal developments.

Cultural developments such as The Sexual Revolution ridiculed traditional norms of sexual conduct making it harder for spouses to abide by marriage's norms.

While Radical Feminism undermined the male's role in the home, an easy exit under No-Fault Divorce and Abortion on Demand denigrated men and women's views of marriage and family life.

The results agitated social ills of absentee fathers, teen and out-of-wedlock pregnancies, declining literacy and graduation rates among children, and overpopulated prisons.

When a marriage culture declines all of society certainly suffers—primarily children and those in the poorest sectors of society.

2014...2016...sure but now we are just another European country....destined for failure and bankruptcy. The United States of America has unofficially been split into two separate nations...the final nail in the coffin comes when the disaster that is Obamacare comes into effect.

"My legal marriage is not a threat to marriage. Marriage is not some collective entity that can be injured."

Yes it is...Marriage is what is called a social institution. Social institutions are ideas...that's what they are...that's all they are..

Sophisticated people understand this at the level of philosophy and principle..

Same-sex "marriage" is a completely different understanding than true marriage..

James is highly ill-liberal and anti-intellectual.. The people behind this however are not. They know what same-sex "marriage" does to the institution

James is what Lenin called a "useful idiot".

The leadership at NOM understood from the begining that NO state is allowed to change the definition of marriage. This is the clear and obvious legal understanding.

NOM has spent the last ten years trying to show SCOTUS how popular the real conception of marriage is...through the ballot box.

None of this changes the facts of the law however... Those states that have same-sex "marriage" be it through the courts or popular vote have violated the United States constitution as well as international human rights law.

Everything else is window dressing..

America has been fundamentally transformed.

Look out below.

And unlike rocks and cookies, civil marriage is a construct of laws. It is what the law says it is. Your opinion is just that: an opinion. It is protected by the First Amendment, and if you want to waste your time screaming on a street corner that marriages between two men or two women are invalid, go ahead.

As to "meaningfulness" - it is meaningful in the eyes of their government, their friends and family.

The fact that it is not "meaningful" in the eyes of your church is immaterial. Your church can go about its business today as it did yesterday.

Right now 100% of same sex couples can get married (if they travel to NY).

The percentage of US citizens that are treated equally when applying for a civil marriage license went from 11% to 16% last night.

If the USSC denies cert on Prop 8, that number will increase to 28%.

I appreciate to you that same sex couples getting married is not "real marriage", but it is "real" to them and their friends and families - and that is all that really matters.

To the NOM hating trolls,
So I guess it's ok when "SSM" supporters want to impose their views of marriage on everyone, regardless of faith(some of which doe recognize your conception of marriage)? Be careful that your now-divorced-from-reality concept of "civil marriage" doesn't become so "inclusive" as to become meaningless. There are plenty of arrangements and relationships still discriminated against and aren't recognized as legal unions even under your definition. You are going to have to realize at some point that not all discrimination is bad, otherwise you should be fighting for the rights of blind people to drive(for example).

And California will soon be able to resume equal marriage rights as well. Marriage did not lose yesterday, it was just extended to people who have been discriminated against. Your organisation would do well to focus on strengthened the quality of existing marriages that so often end in acrimony and divorce, insteading of campaigning on the wrong side of history.