Keith Oberman's eloquent message to Mormons?

[_truth dancer]

The reality is there are gay and lesbian couples... what harm is going to come if their partnership is considered a marriage?

You have deracinated the entire concept.

LOL!

How about you actually answer the question?

I would love to have someone explain what harm is going to come if a gay partnership is considered a marriage. Who is going to be hurt? How is our country going to be harmed.

I'm not asking for someone to tell me that it is going to be bad and horrible and terrible for the world... I'm asking for a real reason. :-)

I think this is about the fifteenth time I have asked without a response.

In terms of Oberman... rather than just tell me how stupid he is, why not address the "speech". Do you have an actual response to his comments?

~td~

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Wrong. See the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, and the 2008 CA Supreme Court decision in In re Marriages.

Yes yes Rollo. The standard leftist retreat to case law. The fact of the matter remains that the supreme law of the land says nothing upon the matter ....

But yet the Constitution provides for the U.S. Supreme Court to interpret was is constitutional and what is not. Ergo, the "case law." If you want this to change, throw out the Constitution instead of blaming "leftists."

This is precisely why the constitution is "hanging by a thread"; people like you are in an all out, sustained, and relentless assault upon it and its principles in the name of your own body of alternative principles and models of social organization. Your primary venue is, of course, the courts, as this is the least democratic branch of government and was never meant to engage in what is fundamentally legislative activity, as they spend much of their time doing now.

Equality under the law sure is a bitch. What were our Founding Fathers thinking!?

[_Droopy]

I think this is about the fifteenth time I have asked without a response.

And this would be about the fifteenth time I've answered this question at length on other threads going back two years or more. I'm not going to do it again here because, frankly, if you weren't paying attention all the other times, your probably not going to absorb much of it now.

[_Droopy]

But yet the Constitution provides for the U.S. Supreme Court to interpret was is constitutional and what is not. Ergo, the "case law." If you want this to change, throw out the Constitution instead of blaming "leftists."

You miss the point and beg the question at the same time. The Constitution provides for the Supreme Court to interpret law, but much of what the court has been doing over the last several decades is not law interpretation but law creation, which is not within the scope and purview of the court. Deciding to reinterpret and reconceptualize centuries of moral, religious, and social mores regarding marriage and the nature of family is well outside their legitimate scope of jurisdiction.

Equality under the law sure is a bitch. What were our Founding Fathers thinking!?

Equality under the law is only relevant if homosexual marriage can be understood as being equal to heterosexual marriage. If it cannot, then equality under the law cannot make equal what cannot be made equal at a deeper conceptual and moral level.

You see, the the entire thing is circular. Homosexual marriage must first be assumed as legitimate and equal with heterosexual marriage for the law to make it equal as a matter of legal fact. What the Left is trying to do is force the law into the position of confirming their own biases and values with the understanding that the rest of society will eventually conform out of sheer fatigue in resisting the idea over time and of having no further legal precedent with which to challenge the altered institution.

This is how the Left has always worked-though subversion.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

The Constitution provides for the Supreme Court to interpret law, but much of what the court has been doing over the last several decades is not law interpretation but law creation, which is not within the scope and purview of the court.

Pure semantics. How can any court interpret and apply the Constitution to a particular case with unique issues and not create law? It's impossible. And that's why courts follow the doctrine of stare decisis.

Deciding to reinterpret and reconceptualize centuries of moral, religious, and social mores regarding marriage and the nature of family is well outside their legitimate scope of jurisdiction.

But that's precisely what equal protection under the law does. It's how blacks and women attained certain rights previously only held by white men.

Equality under the law is only relevant if homosexual marriage can be understood as being equal to heterosexual marriage.

Marriage is marriage. When the Court decided Loving v. Virginia, it did not address the question whether interracial marriage was "understood as being equal to [same race] marriage."

Homosexual marriage must first be assumed as legitimate and equal with heterosexual marriage for the law to make it equal as a matter of legal fact.

No. Marriage is marriage. Whether gay marriage is so bad or dangerous that there exists a compelling state interest justifying the gov't to discriminate, is a different issue.

What the Left is trying to do is force the law into the position of confirming their own biases and values with the understanding that the rest of society will eventually conform out of sheer fatigue in resisting the idea over time and of having no further legal precedent with which to challenge the altered institution.

You're still missing the point. It's about equal rights and protection under the laws, not "biases and values." In this country the gov't CANNOT discriminate among groups unless it has a damn good reason. Period.

This is how the Left has always worked-though subversion.

Then I guess our Founding Fathers were "leftists" because they set up this constitutional system that's got you so frazzled.

[_truth dancer]

I think this is about the fifteenth time I have asked without a response.

And this would be about the fifteenth time I've answered this question at length on other threads going back two years or more. I'm not going to do it again here because, frankly, if you weren't paying attention all the other times, your probably not going to absorb much of it now.

LOL... In other words, you just don't like those gay people and they are sick and should not have the same rights as non gay people!

Ok then... ;-)

~td~

[_Droopy]

The U.S. Supreme Court says otherwise -- see Loving v. Virginia.

I'm not the slightest bit interested in what the Supreme Court says unless it is within the context of a strict construction of the text paying rigorous heed to the original intent of that text. Keep arguing precedent and case law, and I'll keep arguing the constitutional text and its original context and meaning. That's fine with me.

Wrong. It simply says we are entitled to equal protection under the law. The "conditions and circumstances" come into play when the court decides whether the gov't has shown an appropriate reason for the discrimination (under different standards, the strongest being a "compelling state interest").

Precisely. The government has a deeply compelling reason to prevent the redefinition of family, marriage and gender, and that is to preserve a free, civil, morally coherent society from destruction by a tiny group of organized sexual fetishists and their enablers.

Just as civil rights for blacks and women departed from history and culture, but we did fixed that under our Constitution. Tradition is never a reason to allow discrimination and injustice to continue. Our country is better than that.

Homosexuality is a behavior, a lifestyle, and a culture accompanied by numerous socio-cultural attributes and elements attached to various sexual sub-groups within the general homosexual sub-culture. Race and sex are inherent, genetic features, not ideations, desires, cultures, or or lifestyles. Black and female have no moral or social import.

The same could once be said of blacks and women in comparison to white men.

See above for this sorry leftist hobby horse argument. Without a shred of scientific evidence of any Gay gene or reductionistic genetic "cause" of homosexual propensities, you are stuck with the hope that genetics will someday provide your ace in the hole, while being trapped in the reality that homosexuality has no "cause", but only multiple and complex influences and biases. Ideology, however, especially when bathed in moral sanctimony, tolerates little philosophical nuance, let alone dissent.

Equal rights and protection under the law are hardly an "afterthought." Equality is what this country's founding was based on.

You could care less what the country's founding was based on. If that were the case, you would be for limited government with strictly enumerated powers, and for the separation of powers. Judicial legislation, however, clearly does not bother you as long as you like the results. The country was based on equal rights. Yes. It was also based upon rule by the consent of the governed, and a balance between majority rule and minority rights. The majority has rights too, however, but your ideology and moral pomposity allows you to support a vanishingly small minority of whining tyrants seeking to overturn the vast majority's basis for social and civilizational meaning.

I say they do not have that right, in the constitution or anywhere else. I also claim that you and those like you are lawless purveyors of Korihorism masquerading as moral paragons when the leprotic rot of your own immorality as enablers of the grossest wickedness (they that have "pleasure in them that do them". Romans 1:32) drips from your forehead.

The Saints, as well as others of the just and upright of the earth, can see right through you Rollo, right through you.

[_Trevor]

Droopy, that was beautiful.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

I'm not the slightest bit interested in what the Supreme Court says unless it is within the context of a strict construction of the text paying rigorous heed to the original intent of that text.

Take it up with the Founding Fathers.

Keep arguing precedent and case law, and I'll keep arguing the constitutional text and its original context and meaning.

In other words, you'd like Article III of the U.S. Constitution to be thrown out, along with the U.S. Supreme Court. Got it.

The government has a deeply compelling reason to prevent the redefinition of family, marriage and gender, and that is to preserve a free, civil, morally coherent society from destruction by a tiny group of organized sexual fetishists and their enablers.

No court will recognize that little diatribe as qualifying as a "compelling state interest."

Homosexuality is a behavior, a lifestyle, and a culture accompanied by numerous socio-cultural attributes and elements attached to various sexual sub-groups within the general homosexual sub-culture.

Isn't heterosexuality the same?

Race and sex are inherent, genetic features, not ideations, desires, cultures, or or lifestyles.

So is sexual orientation.

Black and female have no moral or social import.

That's how white men used to think.

Without a shred of scientific evidence of any Gay gene or reductionistic genetic "cause" of homosexual propensities, you are stuck with the hope that genetics will someday provide your ace in the hole, while being trapped in the reality that homosexuality has no "cause", but only multiple and complex influences and biases.

Isn't heterosexuality the same?

You could care less what the country's founding was based on. If that were the case, you would be for limited government with strictly enumerated powers, and for the separation of powers.

I am, and one of those limits is discrimination against a particular group without a damn good reason.

It was also based upon rule by the consent of the governed, and a balance between majority rule and minority rights.

Not when it comes to the gov't treatment of citizens. The gov't CANNOT discriminate without a compelling state interest. Period.

The majority has rights too, however, but your ideology and moral pomposity allows you to support a vanishingly small minority of whining tyrants seeking to overturn the vast majority's basis for social and civilizational meaning.

To the extent the majority decides gov't, then its rights are limited because the gov't power is limited. It's called equal protection under the law.

I say they do not have that right, in the constitution or anywhere else.

Several courts have disagreed, and I believe the U.S. Supreme Court will as well.

I also claim that you and those like you are lawless purveyors of Korihorism masquerading as moral paragons when the leprotic rot of your own immorality as enablers of the grossest wickedness (they that have "pleasure in them that do them". Romans 1:32) drips from your forehead.

Unlike Korihor's society, we have a constitution that requires equal protection under the law.

The Saints, as well as others of the just and upright of the earth, can see right through you Rollo, right through you.

Do they also see right through the leftist Founding Fathers who set up a system of fundamental rights and equal protection under law?

[_asbestosman]

Abman, civil unions do not bestow all the rights that legal marriage does.

You're right. I was sayingthe government should just take away government recognized marriages and leave civil unions for all. Then you have equality under the law.

What if the government said to you that you can't be married, but only have a "civil union"?

It wouldn't bother me, but that's not the point. The point is that it bothers them.

Legal marriage does away with all of these discrepancies. Within the US now you have divided laws, but this is nothing new, as it was in the days of interracial marriage, where people people had to move to different states for an interracial marriage to be "lawful". Do people still fret and fume about this in the US, interracial marriage? No. But it took over a century before the US finally harmonised on this. All of this goes back to one thing - equal rights for all.

And this could be accomplished by only giving civil unions to all.

[/quote]My point was analogical, about how slow the Church is to accept equal rights, and in this case, even though it would not be forced to accept Gay marriage in the temple, it is proactively seeking to deny common civil rights to all, outside the jurisdiction of its freedom to curtail who enters the temple.[/quote]Not necessarily. Does the church oppose civil unions for all without governmental recognition of marriage?

My other point is this - Mormon denial of "the negro" entry into the temple was based on a false, irrational, and now discarded "doctrine", but one which was held to have come "by revelation".

I don't claim to know whether it was false or irrational, but is behind us. If God gives a relevlation that gays should be married in the temple, then I will accept it. However, I'm not going to go maverick (what a word), and start marrying gays in the temple any more than I would have given blacks the priesthood before 1978 but after the leaders had told us not to (but I'd still cheer for Elijah Abel). It's not my job to steady the ark.