When all is said and done...

[akhare]

Nowadays nobody is allowed to marry more then one - equal rights to anybody.

Nobody is allow to marry one of the same gender- equal rights again.

 

Sorry this equal right stuff is a very important thing and I am very glad that we have it.

By your argument

 

No <women / group of choice> are allowed to vote

 

constitutes equal right too -- correct?

[jdonn]

Codo, focus less on the EQUAL and more on the RIGHTS.

 

By the way, are you arguing single parents shouldn't be allowed to have children? Maybe we should just force them to marry someone so that they can more easily raise their children.

 

Your points are beyond ridiculous.

[helene_t]

I am not aware of statistics unfavorable to single or gay parents. But ethnic minorities and inner-city populations, on the other hand ....

 

However, human rights apply to everybody, and in that respect, statistics are irrelevant.

[Codo]

I didn't thought this is so difficult to understand:

 

If woman are not allowed to vote, they have no equal rights compared to man.

 

But if it is forbidden for anybody to marry someone of the same gender, this is an equal right to anybody. Where is the discrimination?

 

And Josh, sorry I cannot express my thoughts in a way that even you can understand them. Live with the idea, that I am (and my thoughts are) beyond ridiculous.

 

I tried to clarify why the states do support families.

IF you think that this should lead to a force to marry or stayed married if you have children, this is your pov. I think this is a stupid idea, but maybe not in your world.

[Lobowolf]

I have the opinion that gays should have the right to have a legal union.

 

But there is exactly no reason to give this right to them.

In the United States, at least, there's a reason. It's called the Equal Protection Clause, and it's found in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Huh?

 

Any man has the right to marry one woman.

 

Every woman has the right to marry one man.

 

Where is this not equal?

 

Nowadays nobody is allowed to marry more then one - equal rights to anybody.

Nobody is allow to marry one of the same gender- equal rights again.

 

Sorry this equal right stuff is a very important thing and I am very glad that we have it.

 

In my opinion it just does not work here. If you allow gay marriage, you allow gay marriage to anybody- gay or straight- and you still have equal rights. IT simply does not matter.

 

But I really enjoy the discussion.

It's helpful (though perhaps not necessary) to have some knowledge of American constitutional law with respect to this discussion. The question isn't one of "equal rights" or even "equal protection" as one would define them from a variety of dictionary definitions; the (legal) question is one of "equal protection" as a term of art - a phrase defined very specifically within a certain discipline, and refined over 150 or so years of Supreme Court cases. The arguments you make here were, for all practical purposes, made (and rejected) long ago with respect to interracial marriage ("Everyone has the right to marry someone of his or her own sex.")

 

Unfortuntely (for people who support gay marriage), "equal protection" means 3 different things, depending on the classification. Governmental bodies that discriminate against people based on sexual orientation get far more leeway than those that discriminate based on race. Gender discrimination is somewhere in the middle.

[jdonn]

If woman are not allowed to vote, they have no equal rights compared to man.

 

But if it is forbidden for anybody to marry someone of the same gender, this is an equal right to anybody. Where is the discrimination?

Let's only legalize marriage between people of the same race. That is not discriminatory since everyone can marry people of the same race, and no one can marry people of a different raise.

 

While we are it it let's charge $1,000,000 to marry, but we are not discriminating against poor people, because it is perfectly legal for them to pay $1,000,000 if they can find it and get married.

 

While we are doing that, let's make it illegal to marry anyone named Codo. That is not discriminatory because no one is allowed to marry someone named Codo, and everyone is allowed to marry anyone they want who is not named Codo.

 

We should also label all water fountains with a race of people such as African American, and only let it be legal to drink from a water fountain that is labeled with your race. Same as earlier logic, not discrimination.

 

Codo logic is fun, anyone else want to take it even farther?

[TimG]

If you and your boyfriend try to raise a little girl, it is quite difficult to teach her the role of a mother/Wife/Woman- there is simply nobody there to teach them by simply living at their side.

How does the role of a mother/wife/woman differ from the role of a parent/spouse/human?

[Codo]

1. If this is a question of Equal rights, why do you need a voting?

Just ask the Supreme Court, they will have sufficent knowledge of your

constituional law.

 

2. If I understood you right, equal protection is not equal protection. You have classes of equality. Yes I guess, my knowledge of your law is too limited to understand this.

 

3. You state that my arguments had been long rejected in the fight for equal rights for different races. Do you mind to explain to me where the logical mistake in this argument is?

[TimG]

Any man has the right to marry one woman.

 

Every woman has the right to marry one man.

 

Where is this not equal?

Men are allowed to marry women; women are not allowed to marry women. This is not equal.

[mike777]

It does seem that many millions who feel strongly in favor of CIVIL RIGHTS have voted against GAY Marriage. There seems to be some disconnect between marriage based on race and marriage based on sexual orientation. I can only guess that millions seem to not view this as morally equivalent. Not sure how else I can understand the vote.

 

To put it another way if the ballots in Florida and Calif, banned different races from marrying does anyone doubt the vote would have been radically different?

 

Btw I am in favor of gov't sanctioned gay marriage but the logic seems to demand that any type of marriage between consenting adults should be equal. I guess since some kids can also marry legally in many states the same applies to them.

[Codo]

How does the role of a mother/wife/woman differ from the role of a parent/spouse/human?

Would you seriously argue that woman and man are the same? That there body/way of thinking/emotions etc. are equal?

 

Or don't you think that gay parents have even more difficulties then straight parents?

 

(And again as a reminder, I don't argue against gay parents, I just tried to find a reasons why the states prefer straight families to single parent families or gay families...)

 

And maybe they don't do this in your country, but here in Germany, it is much easier to be a straight pair of parents then a gay pair.

When both partners are man they have big problems in even getting a kid. It is more or less forbidden (Well very difficult) to adopt children for single parents or gay couples. And if it is your kid, you will have a near to impossible task to convince the kid that it belongs to you and not to the mother. (This is not because you are gay, but because you are male and most judges send the kids to the mother. But being gay is no help either.)

 

And no, I don't support this thinking, I just try to explain it.

[helene_t]

1. If this is a question of Equal rights, why do you need a voting?

Just ask the Supreme Court, they will have sufficent knowledge of your

constituional law.

That is exactly what happened.

 

An earlier poll was won by those opposing gay marriage. Nevertheless, the state assembly voted for gay marriage. Then the governor vetoed it. Finally the supreme court rules the ban on gay marriage unconstitutional so gay marriage was back.

 

Therefore prop 8 was phrased as an amendment of the state constitution.

[TimG]

How does the role of a mother/wife/woman differ from the role of a parent/spouse/human?

Would you seriously argue that woman and man are the same? That their body/way of thinking/emotions etc. are equal?

I think that no two individuals are identical, that we all have different ways of thinking and different emotions. (There are obvious physical difference between men and women, but don't see how these come into play post child birth.) I believe the stereotypical differences between men and women are largely the result of society perpetuating those stereotypes rather than inherent differences in the emotional makeup of men and women.

 

Or don't you think that gay parents have even more difficulties then straight parents?

 

I think that the difficulties are imposed by society. The problems you mention, two men experiencing difficulty adopting and judges preferring children be with their mother rather than their father, are not difficulties based upon any inherent qualities of parents of that particular sex, but based upon your society's traditional expectations for parents of that sex.

[mikeh]

How does the role of a mother/wife/woman differ from the role of a parent/spouse/human?

Would you seriously argue that woman and man are the same? That their body/way of thinking/emotions etc. are equal?

I think that no two individuals are identical, that we all have different ways of thinking and different emotions. (There are obvious physical difference between men and women, but don't see how these come into play post child birth.) I believe the stereotypical differences between men and women are largely the result of society perpetuating those stereotypes rather than inherent differences in the emotional makeup of men and women.

 

Or don't you think that gay parents have even more difficulties then straight parents?

 

I think that the difficulties are imposed by society. The problems you mention, two men experiencing difficulty adopting and judges preferring children be with their mother rather than their father, are not difficulties based upon any inherent qualities of parents of that particular sex, but based upon your society's traditional expectations for parents of that sex.

This view is the politically correct position, of course.

 

The problem is that we are, as a species, shaped by evolutionary pressures, and all of the wishful thinking in the world won't change that.

 

Communism was founded on the idea that human personality was malleable. Destroy the structure of the capitalist society.. eliminate the middle and upper classes... either literally or through re-education (The Cultural Revolution, anyone?), and we can build the ideal member of the proletariat. It didn't work, and, with hindsight, we can see that it was doomed to failure, because elements of the human psyche are genetically programmed... self-interest, kinship group loyalties, dominance seeking, etc.

 

Equally, it is naive to believe, without support from well-performed scientific study, that the males do not differ, intellectually or psychologically, from the females in a species such as ours. Nor, for the same reasons, that blacks do not differ, viewed as a group, from whites, and whites from chinese, etc.

 

Thus, there is (I understand) compelling evidence suggesting that blacks, as a group, are better fitted for most athletic endeavours. There may be some evidence (I am not able to express a meaningful opinion on its validity) that some ethnic groups exhibit higher average intelligence than others.

 

None of this has anything to do with rights, and very little to do with individuals.

 

The average black may be more athletic than the average white.. but this difference is tiny on an individual level.... there will be a very large percentage of the white population that will be more athletic than the 'average' black.. maybe 48-49%. Group differences of this kind have virtually no impact at the individual level. But, spread over a large population, this kind of information suggests that we will never see an all-white NBA championship team.

 

The same is true in terms of intelligence... I gather that there is some evidence that ethnic chinese tend to have better IQ scores than whites... altho what IQ measures is itself an interesting topic. But that has no impact when dealing with individuals... the statistical likelihood that any given chinese individual is smarter than any individual white person is extremely low...swamped by all kinds of other factors.

 

If this is so between members of the same sex, on expressions of genetics far less obvious than the differences between male and female, then suggesting that men and women are functionally the same, after the phsyical acts of conception, pregnancy and delivery are over, is silly...unless you have a lot of evidence in support.

 

As it is, the evidence is to the opposite effect. Women, as a group, have smaller brains than do men, and the brains are themselves configured differently.

 

Smaller does not mean weaker, slower etc. Different does not mean inferior.

 

And even if smaller tended, in some measurable manner, to mean weaker, or different was in some manner equal to inferior, we would again be looking at statistical differences that would (I strongly suspect) have negligible impact when considering individual comparisions.

 

And there appears to be solid reasoning for thinking that psychology is influenced by evolution as well.. the field of evolutionary psychology is relatively new, but already well-established. Males and females have, as best as we can tell, had different functions in societies going back to our ancestral species.. it seems silly to assume, absent evidence, that our own species has somehow shaken off these influences.

 

Refusing to believe that there are differences is just as dangerous, altho in a subtler way, perhaps, than the old-fashioned belief that differences in attributes justified differences in the way people were treated by society. The old-fashioned prejudices led to horrific injustices, but the politically correct view that all differences are culturally imposed led to the equally horrific killing fields of Cambodia.

[Lobowolf]

Refusing to believe that there are differences is just as dangerous, altho in a subtler way, perhaps, than the old-fashioned belief that differences in attributes justified differences in the way people were treated by society.

In my experience, because perceived or actual differences between groups has historically resulted in disparate treatment (sometimes to the point of atrocity), there is a large subset of society extremely unwilling to admit to the existence of any differences.

[TimG]

And even if smaller tended, in some measurable manner, to mean weaker, or different was in some manner equal to inferior, we would again be looking at statistical differences that would (I strongly suspect) have negligible impact when considering individual comparisons.

I was careful to say "I believe the stereotypical differences between men and women are largely the result of society perpetuating those stereotypes rather than inherent differences in the emotional makeup of men and women."

 

I don't believe that there are no differences between the sexes. But, I believe the inherent differences are minuscule when compared to the learned differences or differences perpetuated by society.

[cherdano]

And maybe they don't do this in your country, but here in Germany, it is much easier to be a straight pair of parents then a gay pair.

When both partners are man they have big problems in even getting a kid. It is more or less forbidden (Well very difficult) to adopt children for single parents or gay couples. And if it is your kid, you will have a near to impossible task to convince the kid that it belongs to you and not to the mother. (This is not because you are gay, but because you are male and most judges send the kids to the mother. But being gay is no help either.)

 

And no, I don't support this thinking, I just try to explain it.

In Germany, it is also easier to raise kids in a traditional family where the father is working than in a family where the mother is working, or where both parents are working part-time. This does not mean that the government should enforce or encourage that equality.

[DrTodd13]

And even if smaller tended, in some measurable manner, to mean weaker, or different was in some manner equal to inferior, we would again be looking at statistical differences that would (I strongly suspect) have negligible impact when considering individual comparisons.

I was careful to say "I believe the stereotypical differences between men and women are largely the result of society perpetuating those stereotypes rather than inherent differences in the emotional makeup of men and women."

 

I don't believe that there are no differences between the sexes. But, I believe the inherent differences are minuscule when compared to the learned differences or differences perpetuated by society.

There was some research I saw a few months back that showed that gender stereotypes were actually magnified by egalitarian societies rather than minimized. So, it makes logical sense that the more primitive the society the more gender stereotypes they would have but despite how much sense it seems to make it turns out to be incorrect.

[jikl]

This is possibly one of the more offensive threads I have read on here.

 

Sean

[Codo]

Let's only legalize marriage between people of the same race. That is not discriminatory since everyone can marry people of the same race, and no one can marry people of a different raise.

 

While we are it it let's charge $1,000,000 to marry, but we are not discriminating against poor people, because it is perfectly legal for them to pay $1,000,000 if they can find it and get married.

 

While we are doing that, let's make it illegal to marry anyone named Codo. That is not discriminatory because no one is allowed to marry someone named Codo, and everyone is allowed to marry anyone they want who is not named Codo.

 

We should also label all water fountains with a race of people such as African American, and only let it be legal to drink from a water fountain that is labeled with your race. Same as earlier logic, not discrimination.

 

Codo logic is fun, anyone else want to take it even farther?

Josh thanks for this reply, funny and intelligent.

 

1. We must life with discrimination:

You are not allowed to drive cars when you are 14. Isn't this discriminating the youth?

You are not allowed to become President of the US when you are not born in the USA. Doesn't this discriminate anybody besides the US Citizens?

You and me, we are not allow to use the restrooms or showers for woman. Isn't this a sexual discrimination?

You are not allow to be a pilot when you are shortsighted. ISn'T this a discrimination of the handicapped people?

 

Obviously equal rights does not mean that anybody is allow to do anything. There are limits.

 

And I really don't understand why interracial marriage is a problem of equal rights.

 

If anybody is forced to marry someone from the same race/College/town whatever, anybody has the same right. But it is still wrong to enforce this. It is a useless and wrong limitation of anybodies right. And in my opinion this is the same with gay marriage: If you forbid gay marriage, you limit the free will of anybody, not of just a few surpressed people. So it is right to let them marry, but for other reasons then most stated here.

 

To make a marriage/a visit of an university/ a ferrari/ health care very expensive is of course a way to discriminate people.

So if you want to enable anybody to marry/ study/ drive a ferrari/ become healthy, you need to limit the payments of this.

Nowadays, our states make marriage quite cheap, don't support Ferraris and have different views about health care and university.

 

I do understand the wish to forbid all Codos to merry and maybe my wife will support your proposal, but I must protest- you will discriminate me compared to peole with another name. But if you enforce that anybody must marry someone whose name begins with the same letter, you have again the same rights for anybody- and still a silly law.

[mikeh]

This is possibly one of the more offensive threads I have read on here.

 

Sean

I hope my post was not one of the reasons for stating this. On rereading, I think that I may have been unclear: my point was that it makes sense to me that differences as profound, physiologically, as gender cannot be ignored due to a wish that differences don't exist...which wish seems born out of a reaction to a time (still present in our world today) when differences were equated with superiority or inferiority. And that aspect of differences is illogical, and as far as I know, when dealing with whatever intelligence is, unsupported by evidence.

 

It's like arguing that Mandarin is superior to Cantonese, or vice versa... altho, since I am not a linguist, this may be a dangerous analogy for me to use... maybe one is somehow superior to the other, but my impression is that they are closely related, different, but equally effective as languages. So it would be illogical to discriminate between the two languages, but equally illogical to expect that there would be no difference between the sounds made by a cantonese speaker and a mandarin speaker conveying the same thought.

[Codo]

In Germany, it is also easier to raise kids in a traditional family where the father is working than in a family where the mother is working, or where both parents are working part-time. This does not mean that the government should enforce or encourage that equality.

Nobody says that they should.

But it is still done. It is the reality.

 

Read § 6 of our "Grundgesetz". Marriage and family is something special and not to be compared with other legal unions like a "GBR" or another form of association.

 

In our constituion we have the equal rights and the special position of marriage and family. Both happen to stay there together.

But maybe this is realy to difficult to explain.

 

Try: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutz_von_Ehe_und_Familie

 

And: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleinerziehende

 

As written before, I know no studies about gay parents compared to straight parents. But there is a sense in protecting the family, as it seems to be quite difficult to have a single parent family.

 

(Sorry I have no english sources for this...)

[mike777]

1)Condo how can you explain something close to 100% of those voting are for, equal, civil rights.. race based unlimitited marriages....

2) OTOH, ... something close to 70% are against gay..incest(close relation).

3) What happen to equal marriage?

[helene_t]

Of course MikeH is right that the average man is psychologically different from the average woman, and that this is to a large extent genetically determined.

 

However, this has exactly zero relevance for this thread:

 

- Whether the difference is culturally or genetically determined has little practical consequences. Both are unavoidable. Politicians are not going to alter cultural sex differences much more than they are going to alter our genes.

 

- Even if (and this is no doubt true) men and women have on average different child-raising abilities, it does not follow that the average gay couple differs from the average straight couple in that respect.

 

- Even if (and I see little reason to assume this) gay couples have, on average, different child-raising abilities it does not necessarily mean worse child-raising abilities.

 

- Politicians can (hopefully) not prevent couples (or individuals) from raising children (except when neglect or abuse is evident) even if they can decide which marriages to give legal status. There were some right-winged politicians in Denmark who voted for gay co-parents being allowed to share legal parenthood even though they didn't like the idea of a gay couples raising children. The motivation was that since they are going to raise the children anyway we might as well give them as stable conditions as possible.

 

But the above is all irrelevant, since the only thing that matters is:

 

- Even if the average gay (or black, or moslem, or left-handed) is worse at doing something than the average hetero righthanded WASP, then it gives the government zero right to discriminate at the individual level.

[luke warm]

well i know there must be laws for there to be society, i just feel that the more local the laws the more say the people have... as i've said many times before, i have to separate my personal beliefs from my "governmental" beliefs in discussions like this... what i'm saying is, the voters of calif. have spoken and i don't think it's the place of the federal gov't to intercede in this... californians can always repeal this amendment if that's their wish

Sometimes it is the local government that decides to oppress people and take away their rights. The question is, who then should stand up to the local government?

 

Historically, a bunch of state governments decided that black people should be slaves. Should the federal government have figured "well, that's South Carolina's decision, the voters of South Carolina (not including the black people or women who were denied voting rights of course) have spoken, it's not the place of the federal government to intercede, South Carolinans can always eliminate slavery if that's their wish"?

it's my view that the states that allowed slavery were breaking the law of the land... it's also my view that a state has (legally speaking) the right to secede from a union... this was of course settled on the battlefield

Perhaps a reasonable question to ask is, does the US constitution exist only to define the powers and limitations of the federal government or does it also place limitations upon the powers of state and local governments? It is worth noting that both parties have strongly stated that the constitution should restrict the rights of state and local governments (for Democrats this has mostly revolved around free speech and privacy rights and separation of church and state, for Republicans often the right to bear arms and freedom of religion).

i think the constitution was meant to limit the power of the federal gov't while granting states (or the people) the right to govern themselves insofar as that governance comports with the basic rights of all people as set forth in the document