From silive.com
Same-sex couples set to rally for marriage rights
2/12/2009, 4:13 a.m. EST
By VERENA DOBNIK
The Associated PressNEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of same-sex couples nationwide are prepared to apply for marriage licenses on Thursday — an exercise in legal futility.
The attempts are being undertaken to protest court and voter decisions restricting legal matrimony to opposite-sex couples.
Activists geared up for rallies at marriage bureaus or county clerks' offices in communities large and small — from New York, Arkansas, California and Florida to Kentucky and Nevada.
This week, which encompasses Lincoln's Birthday and Valentine's Day, marks the 12th annual Freedom to Marry Week, usually celebrated with marriage-license protests.
Same-sex partners and their non-gay friends, families and allies are demanding that no couple in a consensual, committed relationship be denied permission to marry — complete with the rights, protections and benefits the government assigns to the legal ritual.
This year's protests are more important than ever, said one New York organizer, because they come in the wake of California's Proposition 8 vote and just as New Yorkers look to their state Senate to pass legislation that could lead to legalized gay marriage.
"I want to have that option," said 23-year-old J. Heath Tucker, who doesn't want to get married now, but "when I find the person I fall in love with, I want to be able to get married."
He is a member of Join the Impact, a national community-based group that helped organize hundreds of people seeking licenses at the marriage bureau in lower Manhattan on Thursday.
This year's event "is more important because people had something given to them, then had it stripped away," Tucker said of California, where more than 18,000 same-sex couples were married last year.
As per that last paragraph, I think it is important to remember that the fate of the “marriages” of those 18,000 same-sex couples has yet to be decided.
So, throughout twelve years of “Freedom to Marry Week” observances, how has legalized homosexual “marriage” fared? Perhaps this chart will give folks an idea of just how important marriage between one man and one woman is for Americans:
States With Voter-Approved Constitutional Bans on Same-Sex Marriage, 1998-2008
~Pearl
7 Comments:
Even if the law granted same sex couples the opportunity to marry, it still would not be a marriage. They would not be living the reality of what marriage is.
I wish that you could see how much you're hurting real people and their families.
There was once a time when the majority of Americans felt that people of different races shouldn't have the right to marry. The were wrong then and you are wrong now.
You may feel that your side is just in defending "traditional" marriage or "protecting" families. The truth is you blithely ignore the fact that there is, nor never has been, such a thing as traditional marriage. It has been changed and updated thousands of times to shape itself to modernity. You blithely ignore also that gay and lesbian people have families and children just like you do. What? They don't deserve protection too?
As justified as the anti-equality side may feel, they are nothing more than terribly cruel and on the wrong side of history to boot. Until a day when Americans can see past their own aggressive ignorance I'll keep dreaming of a day when I'm a fully-fledged citizen of the country I was born into and pay taxes in.
How tiresome. They continue to insist on the same exact definition for relationships that are obviously different. One of the reasons heterosexual couples who marry get special recognition is because they agree to be responsible for any children their sexual union may bring into the world. This is a non-trivial commitment, and very important to society. Homosexuals will never have to make the sacrifices that an "unplanned pregnancy" demands, yet they insist they deserve the same exact recognition. It's like talking to a wall with these people, but I guess we have to continue to think about these things and present them effectively because an alarming number of people have no clue.
The point is joshcon80, is that the law can grant the opportunity to marry for same sex couples but at a more basic level, the level of human nature, it can't be a real marriage. Marriage is a part of our human nature, no amount law making can change human nature.
What if the law did allow same sex couples to marry? Would it then be ok to allow those couples to marry if they had the same biological parents? If same sex couples can get married then so should siblings.
A later news story indicated that hundreds, not thousands showed up and many of those who showed up were transplants from California. It looks like the stunned California gay community is working overtime to try to find somewhere where their convoluted idea of marriage will be accepted. I don't think the New Yorkers are buying it.
From the news report:
a consensual, committed relationship
The foundational social institution of marriage has a preferential status because it benefits society.
The relationship type that these protestors just described is not a social institution, much less a foundational one.
That is so, regardless of sexual orientation.
As for the reportedly 18,000 SSMs, they can easily transition to domestic partnership status.
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