Gay marriage is good for america....

[6SpeedTA95]

Gay Marriage Is Good for America
By JONATHAN RAUCH
June 21, 2008; Page A9

By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week. The first to be wed in San Francisco were Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, pioneering gay-rights activists who have been a couple for more than 50 years.

More ceremonies will follow, at least until November, when gay marriage will go before California's voters. They should choose to keep it. To understand why, imagine your life without marriage. Meaning, not merely your life if you didn't happen to get married. What I am asking you to imagine is life without even the possibility of marriage.

Re-enter your childhood, but imagine your first crush, first kiss, first date and first sexual encounter, all bereft of any hope of marriage as a destination for your feelings. Re-enter your first serious relationship, but think about it knowing that marrying the person is out of the question.

Imagine that in the law's eyes you and your soul mate will never be more than acquaintances. And now add even more strangeness. Imagine coming of age into a whole community, a whole culture, without marriage and the bonds of mutuality and kinship that go with it.

What is this weird world like? It has more sex and less commitment than a world with marriage. It is a world of fragile families living on the shadowy outskirts of the law; a world marked by heightened fear of loneliness or abandonment in crisis or old age; a world in some respects not even civilized, because marriage is the foundation of civilization.

This was the world I grew up in. The AIDS quilt is its monument.

Few heterosexuals can imagine living in such an upside-down world, where love separates you from marriage instead of connecting you with it. Many don't bother to try. Instead, they say same-sex couples can get the equivalent of a marriage by going to a lawyer and drawing up paperwork – as if heterosexual couples would settle for anything of the sort.

Even a moment's reflection shows the fatuousness of "Let them eat contracts." No private transaction excuses you from testifying in court against your partner, or entitles you to Social Security survivor benefits, or authorizes joint tax filing, or secures U.S. residency for your partner if he or she is a foreigner. I could go on and on.

Marriage, remember, is not just a contract between two people. It is a contract that two people make, as a couple, with their community – which is why there is always a witness. Two people can't go into a room by themselves and come out legally married. The partners agree to take care of each other so the community doesn't have to. In exchange, the community deems them a family, binding them to each other and to society with a host of legal and social ties.

This is a fantastically fruitful bargain. Marriage makes you, on average, healthier, happier and wealthier. If you are a couple raising kids, marrying is likely to make them healthier, happier and wealthier, too. Marriage is our first and best line of defense against financial, medical and emotional meltdown. It provides domesticity and a safe harbor for sex. It stabilizes communities by formalizing responsibilities and creating kin networks. And its absence can be calamitous, whether in inner cities or gay ghettos.

In 2008, denying gay Americans the opportunity to marry is not only inhumane, it is unsustainable. History has turned a corner: Gay couples – including gay parents – live openly and for the most part comfortably in mainstream life. This will not change, ever.

Because parents want happy children, communities want responsible neighbors, employers want productive workers, and governments want smaller welfare caseloads, society has a powerful interest in recognizing and supporting same-sex couples. It will either fold them into marriage or create alternatives to marriage, such as publicly recognized and subsidized cohabitation. Conservatives often say same-sex marriage should be prohibited because it does not exemplify the ideal form of family. They should consider how much less ideal an example gay couples will set by building families and raising children out of wedlock.

Nowadays, even opponents of same-sex marriage generally concede it would be good for gay people. What they worry about are the possible secondary effects it could have as it ramifies through law and society. What if gay marriage becomes a vehicle for polygamists who want to marry multiple partners, egalitarians who want to radically rewrite family law, or secularists who want to suppress religious objections to homosexuality?

Space doesn't permit me to treat those and other objections in detail, beyond noting that same-sex marriage no more leads logically to polygamy than giving women one vote leads to giving men two; that gay marriage requires only few and modest changes to existing family law; and that the Constitution provides robust protections for religious freedom.

I'll also note, in passing, that these arguments conscript homosexuals into marriagelessness in order to stop heterosexuals from making bad decisions, a deal to which we gay folks say, "Thanks, but no thanks." We wonder how many heterosexuals would give up their own marriage, or for that matter their own divorce, to discourage other people from making poor policy choices. Any volunteers?

Honest advocacy requires acknowledging that same-sex marriage is a significant social change and, as such, is not risk-free. I believe the risks are modest, manageable, and likely to be outweighed by the benefits. Still, it's wise to guard against unintended consequences by trying gay marriage in one or two states and seeing what happens, which is exactly what the country is doing.

By the same token, however, honest opposition requires acknowledging that there are risks and unforeseen consequences on both sides of the equation. Some of the unforeseen consequences of allowing same-sex marriage will be good, not bad. And barring gay marriage is risky in its own right.

America needs more marriages, not fewer, and the best way to encourage marriage is to encourage marriage, which is what society does by bringing gay couples inside the tent. A good way to discourage marriage, on the other hand, is to tarnish it as discriminatory in the minds of millions of young Americans. Conservatives who object to redefining marriage risk redefining it themselves, as a civil-rights violation.

There are two ways to see the legal marriage of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. One is as the start of something radical: an experiment that jeopardizes millennia of accumulated social patrimony. The other is as the end of something radical: an experiment in which gay people were told that they could have all the sex and love they could find, but they could not even think about marriage. If I take the second view, it is on conservative – in fact, traditional – grounds that gay souls and straight society are healthiest when sex, love and marriage all walk in step.

Mr. Rauch, a senior writer with National Journal and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, is the author of "Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America" (Holt Paperbacks, 2004).

Another good opinion piece from yesterdays WSJ.

I thought this was a pretty good opinion piece. This guy brought up some excellent points and something that conservatives need to think more about when coming to sometimes ridiculous conclusions based solely on their feelings or religion without any grounds in the constitution and freedom of choice that we pride ourselves on in this country.

I think the state should recognize gay couples, marriages, unions, I dont care what its called but they need to have that right. I do not think a church should be forced to marry someone they deem unfit, that is their right as a church to do as they please. But the state has an obligation to ensure that everyone is treated equally under the law.

[Stylerod]

I have no idea why people are against it. I do think some rules need to be put in place which I have stated before, but if two adults decide to be in a legal union I don't know why anyone would want to stop them.

[JaJae]

This was a very enlightening article and he made a lot of good points.

[A_C_E]

Originally Posted by 6SpeedTA95

I think the state should recognize gay couples, marriages, unions, I dont care what its called but they need to have that right. I do not think a church should be forced to marry someone they deem unfit, that is their right as a church to do as they please. But the state has an obligation to ensure that everyone is treated equally under the law.

I agree with everything here except for this one bolded statement.

By not allowing gay couples the right to marriage, and I mean the term "marriage" itself, you are still fundamentally pegging gay unions as separate and apart (in a discriminatory fashion) from straight couples. It's inherently unequal and in violation of the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, IMO.

[A_C_E]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

I have no idea why people are against it. I do think some rules need to be put in place which I have stated before, but if two adults decide to be in a legal union I don't know why anyone would want to stop them.

There are still a lot of bigoted, crazed religious fanatics in this country.

[6SpeedTA95]

Originally Posted by A_C_E

I agree with everything here except for this one bolded statement.

By not allowing gay couples the right to marriage, and I mean the term "marriage" itself, you are still fundamentally pegging gay unions as separate and apart (in a discriminatory fashion) from straight couples. It's inherently unequal and in violation of the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, IMO.

I agree, but I'd rather them get unions than nothing. But that would be a huge step in the right direction IMO.

[6SpeedTA95]

Originally Posted by A_C_E

There are still a lot of bigoted, crazed religious fanatics in this country.

*see my family

[A_C_E]

Originally Posted by 6SpeedTA95

I agree, but I'd rather them get unions than nothing. But that would be a huge step in the right direction IMO.

True.

[Dispatcher]

I don't have a problem with gay marriage. However, I don't believe much of what was said in that article. First of all, marriage itself doesn't make people happier...being in a committed relationship does. And it's so easy to get a divorce nowdays that the argument that married couples stay together longer than people who are not married doesn't hold water. Half of all marriages end in divorce. That is the reality.
I don't believe for one second that gay marriage is good for America...or that's it's not good for America. If it is something that gays feel they need, that is fine with me. But let's not overstate the impact one way or the other.

[Kytro]

The government should only handle the legal aspects of marriage and certainly it shouldn't be called marriage - it should really be handled as an inter-personal contract.

[Spideynw]

Prostitution and drugs are good too.

[Kytro]

Originally Posted by Spideynw

Prostitution and drugs are good too.

Well some drugs are, but I take it you mean illegal drugs (which are none of the government's damn business nor is you you decide to have sex with or why).

Iin any case your attempt here to draw parallels between gay marriage, drugs and prostitution is flawed because it assumes law is moral a compass.

[Ezra Smack]

I have a real problem with the state having the power to license personal relationships of any kind.
Marriage should be treated like any other contract between two people without inferring any obligation on others.
If two people want to make a pledge of some sort to each other that's fine. Just don't force me to recognize it by according these people special privileges.

[Spideynw]

Originally Posted by Kytro

Well some drugs are, but I take it you mean illegal drugs (which are none of the government's damn business nor is you you decide to have sex with or why).

Iin any case your attempt here to draw parallels between gay marriage, drugs and prostitution is flawed because it assumes law is moral a compass.

Huh? What are you talking about? I am saying the government should not be involved in marriage, sex for money, or what people injest.

[Kytro]

Originally Posted by Spideynw

Huh? What are you talking about? I am saying the government should not be involved in marriage, sex for money, or what people injest.

Ahh, I see. Must have been tired

[motivez]

I read an article awhile back talking about the economic benefit to California from all of the marriages.. apparently, the gay folks like to spend quite a bit on their weddings.. and it's been a pretty nice boost to the California economy

edit: found it!

(AP) Same-sex weddings could create hundreds of new jobs and pump hundreds of millions of dollars into California's economy, according to a new study released Monday.

Gay couples are projected to spend $684 million on flowers, cakes, hotels, photographers and other wedding services over the next three years - so long as voters don't put a halt to the same-sex marriage spree, according to a study by the Williams Institute at University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.

During the three-year period, the researchers project that about half of the state's more than 100,000 same-sex couples will get married and another 68,000 out-of-state couples will travel to California to exchange vows. The nuptial rush is expected to create some 2,200 jobs.

The study estimates that over the next three years, gay weddings will generate $64 million in additional tax revenue for the state, and another $9 million in marriage-license fees for counties.

"This is clearly a win-win situation," said Lee Badgett, study co-author and research director at the Williams Institute. "It's good for the larger economy, there's a trickle down to state and local governments, and people get to celebrate their relationships."

Badgett said same-sex weddings could help prop up the state's tourism industry, which has been hit by skyrocketing fuel costs, rising airfares and a sagging economy. Picturesque locales and romantic getaways should see more business from gay weddings and honeymoons.

Researchers studied the economic impact of gay marriage in Massachusetts - the only U.S. state that allows gays and lesbians to marry - to develop their projections for California. They also used data from states such as Vermont that allow civil unions or domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.

The California study focused on the next three years because researchers found the number of gay weddings tapered off three years after Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2004.

Counties are expected to start issuing gender-neutral marriage licenses next week after the California Supreme Court overturned a voter-approved ban on gay marriage last month.

But the gay wedding march could be cut short if California voters approve a Nov. 4 ballot initiative that would overturn the court ruling and ban same-sex marriage.

Study: Gay Marriage Good For Economy, UCLA Researchers Say Same Sex Unions Will Create Jobs, Generate Revenue - CBS News

I personally feel like you have to be a pretty shitty person to try to tell people they can't celebrate their relationship in the same way you should be able to because they're different than you.