Okinrus said:
Wouldn't your biological parents give you a religious education anyways. Wouldn't your adopted parents give you a religious education anyways?
Let's get extreme for a minute. Let's say that one day I take up a crack habit. I start smacking my partner around and people are worried that my daughter has too many bruises for the natural rough and tumble of childhood. An investigation comes 'round and shows my daughter has been exposed to cocaine, has been beaten, and has hurt herself at least once because I wasn't supervising her as she climbed in a dangerous place while I was freebasing. Let's imagine that, as with many children who enter the foster system (that's where the largest number of children awaiting adoption are), my daughter has been sexually abused by someone (perhaps me).
No, I'm not going to stop smoking crack, I say. No, I'm not going to refashion my life around this little hellion. And so she's taken away. On the merits of my parenthood I should have a say?
Certainly, I should be able to oppose her adoption if I'm clean and working and stabilized again, but because I don't like some superficial label about her potential family? That's absurd.
It would have to be on a preference base. Many of the adopting parents are put on large waiting lists. It makes sense for the biological parents to have some say in who cares for their child.
Under what circumstances? If I have failed to establish a route of guardianship in my incapacitation, then I have failed to establish a route of guardianship.
The definition doesn't.
Yes, it does. It specifies gender restrictions on marriage in response to a prior lack thereof.
Changing the US constitution and being against gay marriage are two different issues.
Generally speaking, yes. But when the Constitutional amendment in consideration is a gender-based restriction on marriage, they become intertwined.
After this, you mentioned discrimination, I think. It doesn't work. Discrimination can only be applied here to what the individual can do, not what the group can do.
I reiterate a post from last July: "Gay Marriage - The Next Hurdle":
Tiassa said:New challenges face newly-married homosexual couples. In Connecticut, agent Katy Gossman was informed that her new wife, Kristin, would not be allowed healthcare under the Bureau's employee benefits. Over in Massachusetts, Donald Henneberger, neé Smith, has been denied a change of name on his passport by the National Passport Center. The letter, addressed to "Mr. Henneberger," read, "We are unable to comply with your request for a name change based on the documentation you sent because of the Defense of Marriage Act" ....
.... Very simply:
• In both cases the rights of a legal contract are withheld as the legal contract (e.g. marriage) is declared null and void on the basis of gender.
• In the case of the Gossmans, it will be difficult for the FBI to argue any other case; quite simply, the reason Kristin Gossman is denied healthcare is because she is the wrong gender.
• In the case of the Hennebergers, the same issue is at stake. Donald is the wrong gender for the NPC to cope with. Having specifically cited DoMA, the NPC's exposure comes specifically in citing a law designed to deny due process and equal protection on the basis of a person's gender.
In the months since, nobody has taken direct issue with those assertions, but like you, many have made the general declaration that it's not about gender, that groups don't have rights per se, &c. It would be helpful to my understanding of the homophobe traditionalists if they were capable or decent enough to answer the issue in more specific terms. There are individual cases on the record in the ongoing discussion of gay marriage, and these go ignored in favor of more general rhetoric that gives the appearance of ducking particulars.
The fact of the matter is that neither I nor a gay person can marry an individual of the same sex but we both can marry and individual of the opposite sex. These rights are expressed in terms of the individual not the group. Of course, the group can have rights; but even then, they're usually viewing the group as one entity, right?
So rape is the standard? Trade rights for unwanted sexual contact?
Sounds like coercion to me. Welcome to the rape culture, Okinrus.
Or had you not thought about that?
Tradition explains why this contract is called "marriage".
What tradition?
I mean, why don't we just go back to forced marriages, since you're an advocate of the rape culture? How about we return to the days of anti-miscegenation, since the court bucked tradition by allowing blacks and whites to marry?
It doesn't explain why the goverment allows the contract.
Doesn't need to. It's self-evident.
We can presume they do because they think it's beneficial to society. Otherwise, they would have neither marriage nor gay marriage.
Marriage is actually, traditionally, an ownership issue. Much like blue laws in the United States, laws languish unenforced until some circumstance calls them into question. In Tacoma, Washington, for instance, it was illegal into the 1980s at least to serve spirits to a native American. I don't recall that anyone was arrested or charged on that count, but since my brother, also adopted, is a native American, that one struck close to me. In the 1990s, I remember reading a news article in which a British court finally and officially struck down the provisions that made a wife the legal property of her husband. Whether or not the law had been enforced in the recent years before that is beyond me.
The tradition of marriage itself is proprietary. It's only the last century or so that the definition has changed, and we can largely thank "feminazis" (as their critics call them) for the changes.
Hence gays must show gay marriage is beneficial, and that it's more beneficial than civil unions.
And where in the history of philosophy, state, society, or the judiciary do you find support for that assertion?