You have taken this statement out of context. Read the post to which I was responding. The LBGT battle like that of other "equal rights" is one of power. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no right or wrong, rational or irrational.
The battle is for equal power and there most definitely is a right and wrong. Anything but 100% equality for all humans is WRONG.
If one group weren't being oppressed by another, basic human rights wouldn't be such a political issue, or be seen as a power struggle.
just to continue the thought; can we all pass the Rosa Parks/Loving v. Virginia stage and move on? with respect to "in your face" aspect, don't you think that the people put out not by the homosexuality but by "in your face" aspect of it? That what one side perceives as "intolerance" is indeed the repulsion of "extreme"? That the promiscuous heterosexual behavior is very much not tolerable in the same environment(s)? As an example when my daughter came from middle school with the story of a girl from her school got youtubed giving oral pleasures to 2 boys she picked at gas station, as a parent I don't really care about the homo/hetero aspect, I just don't want it around my 11/13yo.
Sometimes intolerance is used to battle.....intolerance. We're all guilty of it to some degree. I myself have had to lower my hackles and accept the slings and arrows of people who deride my brothers and sisters in green and blue. That's just life.
Equality or diversity- take your pick. And marriage is not a "basic human right", it is an institutional right, which is part of the reason that I am not fond of central power over such a large and diverse nation whether through the likes of the DOMA or Affirmative Action. I also agree with cyclopathic. He gets it. You know its funny, but I grew up around hippies, artsy people and intellectuals. I have had homosexual friends since I was in HS including two who have been happily married for almost 2 decades. I've heard a lot of arguments from a lot of different angles, yet none has convinced me that any particular minority subsets "deserve" any special langauge or privilege by virtue of their class. From what I have gleaned over the years there is always an angle to the cause, not to mention a lot of corruption. This is no different.
OK, we get it. You're against same-sex marriage. So I have a simple solution: Don't marry somebody of the same gender as you! Next!
I don't give a squat one way or another. It should be left up to the states to issue license. And if another state does not choose to recognize it, then so be it.
That would violate the Constitution of the United States. Not sure why you think a central power over a large and diverse state is better than central power over a large and diverse nation. I do agree that all the central powers should just get out of the marriage business altogether.
I had an entire argument for government's role in marriage, then I found this wikipedia article about the history of marriage around the world: [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage]Marriage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] Probably more accurate than my statement would have been.
I've mentioned this in other threads but it bears repeating: Restricting marriage to religion only would make it impossible for atheists & agnostics to get married. Much as the religious may not be able to stomach people being irreligious, I don't think they'd intentionally seek to prevent the irreligious from getting married. They haven't done so yet, and that they have NOT sought to ban the irreligious from getting married is a de facto admission that marriage is NOT, in fact, a religious construct, but a CIVIL construct. People may choose to wrap it in religious decoration, even imbue it with personal religious significance, but any religious dimension given it is OPTIONAL. The one branch of society that affects every member is governance, not religion, so governance is the one branch that should regulate a facet of culture that is also universal: marriage. All who cry "Get gov't out of the marriage business" have it exactly backward. Keep gov't where it is and get religion out of the marriage business is the correct direction - as is already the case throughout most of the world. It isn't the church that issues the license, it's the state.
Who is doing the 'restricting'? Government, right? That isn't getting the government out of the marriage business, it is making it more governmentally restricted than it is now. Getting the government out of the marriage business, means they don't care one way or the other, in any action or legislation, about whether people call themselves married or not. Start by imagining a world with no marriage at all. Then some people decide that they want to commit themselves to each other, and invent marriage. If you were one of those people what would you want that ceremony to be like? Would your first thought be, "Let's give the government the sole ability to sell us licenses to perform this ceremony"?
Many religious people would not consider this a problem. In fact it would be a good thing - god blessing sinners is blasphemous. To me, the defining moment of marriage is when two people decide to share their lives together, and to declare that decision in front of friends and family. The thing with the priest and the thing with the government forms are both secondary.
Article 4 Section 1: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
Marriage involves more then just two people loving themselves these days, thus the government has to be involved, it involves legal matters also.
Ah. So I can carry my concealed pistol in California or New York because I have a Texas or Iowa license?
That's backwards. Because the government is interfering in marriage, they should therefore involved? Much of the problems in marriage these days are caused by divergence between what some people want it to mean, what other people want it to mean, and what the government legislates it to mean. Get rid of the government involvement altogether, and each person can have the marriage that they want (and codify that with their spouse, as suits them). If people wish to have a legal contract in addition to whatever else their marriage represents, that can be adjudicated and enforced just like any other contract. Implicit contracts in an age of rapidly changing customs is a recipe for strife. Certainly all of the current customs of marriage are not universal for all of history.