What do think about gay rights?

Yea yea, I goofed. :( lol

Now, back to the gay rights.

soozin wrote:
Religious and social values aside, I believe that it is absolutely none of our business what people do in their personal lives. Loving someone of the same gender, and having sex with them and marrying them and raising a family, hurts no one. In comparison, I think that we should be far more concerned with the availability of drugs and alcohol and guns, which do kill people, than with the actions of people that have finally found happiness and love.

I gotta hand it to ya, soozin- you've pretty much summed up my entire argument there. The only point I have to add is that the reasons against gay marriage are normally religous ones (I AM NOT SAYING THAT ALL RELIGOUS PEOPLE ARE AGAINST GAYS OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT), and that the US has prided itself on the seperation of Church and State for a while now. Religious ideals should not be allowed to rule the lives of those not in the religion.

That's true; my government class had a discussion about the subject and all of the people that were brave enough to speak against it were averse for religious reasons. I suppose that it would be hard to be open-minded to something that you and possibly your entire family believe to be fundamentally wrong. Still, it doesn't excuse the lack of tolerance that people show.

soozin wrote:Still, it doesn't excuse the lack of tolerance that people show.
Deffiently true, in my personal opinion. But, I've heard the opposing view point argued like this;

Quote:We shouldn't have to tolerate something if it's out right wrong. You wouldn't tolerate being abused every day of your life, would you? I wouldn't.Quote:

My response was asking how two people being gay was "abusing" him. He had no response for the simple question.

Mods- if you feel that this thread is just a repeat of the old gay rights one, please slap my hand and close it! The creation of this thread was mainly because the other thread has been inactive for a while now- and because it dealt with gay rights, whereas this thread (I hope...) is about the issue of marriage and such, and a possible bill to congress to amend the current situation.

This whole idea started in sworddance's and my AP Gov class- we, as an assignment, had to create a bill on a controversial topic (we didn't get Gay maggiage, so this is why this thread has popped up). We figured that it might be fun to debate about this on coursenotes. Here is sworddance and mine's opinion/ideas on a bill to Congress for the leagalization of Gay marriage:

sworddance wrote:
"In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any
ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative
bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word "marriage"
means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband
and wife, and the word "spouse" refers only to a person of the
opposite sex who is a husband or a wife."

Here's a point for the Bill WE would have written. Either the term marriage must extend to include civil unions, or the two terms should simply be referred to as the same; either way, it collapses, effectively, the barrier between the two and provides for equal benefits. Or perhaps it would be best to do as I actually thought it was (and I can't remember where I got that info, but I was so sure about that, so now I'm a little confused) and define marriage as a marriage performed by a church official, broadly defined to include of any religion as religion is defined by the USC, including also the legal contract, whereas the legal or "civil" union would be defined as solely the legal contract. In fact, doing that would mean, basically, that gay "marriages" would not be concretely they-must-be-allowed, but the contract would be essentially the same AND the benefits must be aligned to be the same. Civil union simply changes its definition, and a non-church "marriage" of either
hetero- or homosexual couples would be legal. Therefore, religiously, the "marriage" can remain a man-woman union depending on whether or not the priest and/or that particular church chooses to make it so. But that would also mean that there would have to be a section in the bill declaring it unconstitutional to decide that a gay couple could not have a "marriage", on its new definition, but also that a church and/or church official could not be forced to perform the ceremony. They have a right to marriage, but also, the priest has the right to refuse, just as any, for example, business employee has the right to refuse service.

Anyway, that was my randomness in search. How about that course-notes thread we mentioned?

To add on to her points, I strongly belive that if a bill were to be passed giving gay couples the same benifits offered to married couples, we should define it as marriage-to do anything less seems to me like there would still be a diffrence between marriage and civil union, of which there would (and, I belive SHOULD) be none.

Alright, here goes... first of all, xena, do I always sound like that when I talk about politics? Talk about your voice changes....

Anyway, so here' s what it comes down to, in my opinion. All US citizens have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It can also be said by correlation that all citizens have the right to legal union and the financial benefits of said union; well, homosexual couples are citizens just like any other, and therefore, based on the policy of nondiscrimination toward any minority, the policy which we as a nation have adopted, despite any other argument a homosexual couple must have an equal opportunity to receive these benefits.
That alone is the best argument the proponents of gay rights can make. However, the problem with this argument is that it means the legislation which would be passed would simply say that gay couples have the right to marriage. Personally, I foresee that a bare statement like that would lead to future court cases in which a homosexual couple attempts to sue a church official and/or that church for refusing to perform the service.
Here I spell it out- "this would be bad."
For one thing, it essentially makes that priest/church a martyr for the cause, refusing to do what he saw as morally wrong, and the gay couple becomes the enemy, and therefore gay couples in general become the enemy all over again.
For another, it seems to me as I said before that the priest has the right to refuse. He has a freedom of choice as well, as you all know.
So it leads back to the question of benefits. You can't not[I][/I] give the same benefits as to heterosexual couples, but you can't force a priest to perform the rights. Also, as xena said, it would still be a violation of rights to say "you can have this but we're calling it something else," since that implies that they still can't have an actual marriage.
So, what do you do?
You go to the source. You see, much of the validity of US law relies on the definitions of the terms used therein. The quote that I sent to xena, which she quoted, comes directly from the USC (that's United States Code, for those who missed that reference, wherein the laws which governed our nation are written out in an extensive document of 50 titles, each with 100+ subtitles and/or sub-chapters and/or sections and/or subsections and/or paragraphs and/or sub.... you get the point). The interesting thing about it was, I couldn't find a single[I][/I] definition for the term "civil union".
In redefining the term "marriage" and/or adding a definition for the term "civil union," we cut to the source and create a situation in which the rights are the same, the benefits are the same, and no one is forced into a situation they are averse to, for whatever reason. I don't think I need to re-explain it, because xena just quoted me on how to do that, so scroll up if you have to! :P

And btw, in case there was any confusion about redefining terms in the USC, it can be done. In fact, that is often used in legislation- if you want an actual example, the Patriot Act is one. Whatever your opinions on it, it just stands here as a reference so you may, if you wish to wade through that thing like I did, check to see that redefining specific terms is an effective and widely used way to change law. it's just another method, essentially.

So, tell us what you think. What we posted here is basically the bill we wanted to write, but we ended up, through a series of unfortunate misconceptions, doing our project on the Patriot Act.... 'nuff said.

Ok, xenahorse and I goofed; we wanted to create a different thread, similar to this, but more specific. Oh well; we'll see if we can revive this one, and that'll work just fine for us. :D
But, forgive the A.D.D. jump here, check out Alex de Tocqueville's work Exploring Democracy in America and you may figure out why slavery could not possibly have lasted here in America and why it was doomed to die.
That being said, we'll try to get around to moving that other thread I mentioned into this one. Too tired to do it right now though lol but it's coming up... make this thread look alive! :mad: ;)

If you guys want, I could probably put your posts in the new thread in here...

That would be really nice if you could- since the thread got locked we can't go back in and copy the text ( I think...I haven't actually TRIED to...), and we both wrote a fair amount.

Done. You're posts are here and the thread will be deleted.