Oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment In th USA

[Julian Alexander]

Have you all tried to do something to stop the senate committee to allow this amendment to pass. I know that some of you dont want to interfere but please dont allow the them to put discrimination into in the constitution, which for more than 200 years has not had any hate remarks in it.

 

Please do something to help

[Myr]

actually... it has only had the hate words removed from it since 1860's which is over 130 years.

 

I, of course, oppose this ammendment. I'm positive that both my Senators are going to vote against it. (Chuck Schumer and Hilliary Clinton)

[Gentim]

I don't think we have too much to worry about. The 67 votes necessary to get it out of the Senate are not there. Even if the Republicans totaled 67 Senators, there's enough of a difference of opinion over not only whether this amendment belongs in the Constitution, as many Senators believe the issue is up to the individual states, but over the language that would be in the amendment. The House is in even worse shape for the supporters of such an amendment. As two-thirds of the House is needed as well, it seems to be very hard to see where the votes would come from.

 

If worse should come to worse and the Amendment should get out of the Congress, 34 of the states would have to agree over what has traditionally been a seven year period (Remember the Equal Rights Amendment of the late 70s and early '80s??). Hawaii, Oregon, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and California, along with possibly Massachusetts would probably oppose such an amendment. Some states would not agree to it simply because of their belief that the issue belong to the states, not the federal government.

 

I know that this should be killed in its infancy, but I just don't see that the national political scene would allow such a measure in the foreseeable future.

[Myr]

The arguement, a valid one, is that Mass's supreme court, only 4 of the 7 judges, decided the whole issue, because of the free faith and credit clause of the Constitution. In effect, the judges have removed this from the state's right to decide.

 

And I'll point out that they did the same with abortion.

 

It's best to leave everything as the status quo. There is likely going to be a backlash against the gay community because of this bloody marriage issue. Even Bush supports (or at least says so) Civil Unions.

[wep363]

the very idea of gay marriage scares most people because it legitimizes gay couples. One preacher i know said that if this is not passed next thing you know your sixteen year old son is going to be marry a 65 year old man and people will be marrying cows!

 

Most gays are seen as sexual deivents by the general public including me at one point. Yes me. When i was in my 20's i saw a movie about a gay teen 15 year old from Chicago on TV that got in trouble with the law for shacking up with a 30 something sleese ball. At this point in my life I thought that gay sex was just that....sex. But something happened in that movies that influnced me so much I took up writing gay love stories.

 

When the teen returned to school all the kids gave his trouble as he had been outed to everyone. One of his teachers decided to take a chance of getting fired and came out to this kid. He did it but writing three words on the chalk board when he was alone with this kid..."I am HAPPY!"

 

He want on to explain to the kid that he was in a relationship and he and his mate were a very happy couple. Just as with this kid it never accured to me that two men living together as a couple could live happely together. I guess i was just into sex like this kid and never looked beyond that.

 

I know the fed is not going to move on equal rights for gays but as i saw in a comersical yesterday in 36 of our 50 states if you comeout to you boss he can fire you and their is nothing that you can do about it. Before we worry about our right to marry we should be addressing discrimation. The only way to do that is to legatimize gay relationships.

 

Until the public see homosexuals as normal people instead of a bunch of queers hanging out at public bathrooms at night looking for a quickie this is not going to change.

 

There......that is the most i have said in a month of Sundays. I've been busy working on my fixeruper.

[movieguy47]

Here is the news i posted elsewhere on the subject

 

 

New England Senators Form Coalition On Gay Marriage

by Lolita C. Baldor

The Associated Press

 

Posted: July 12, 2004 8:17 pm ET

 

(Washington) New England's 12 senators span the political spectrum, from Massachusetts

[Julian Alexander]

We did it! Just moments ago, the Federal Marriage Amendment lost in the Senate by a stunning, bipartisan vote of 50-48. We won this historic victory for two reasons: First, because the politics of division don't work, and second: the votes were on our side.

 

And thank you Myr for the history lesson

[Guest jamieanderson]

Nice to see that we are winning so I thought that I

[dkstories]

Nice to see that we are winning so I thought that I

[Guest jamieanderson]

Permission granted my friend, you may quote it in its entirety.

 

Jamie.

[Myr]

*sigh*

[dkstories]

My thanks, and I did. What I got in return was an article...here, let me paste it in here, describing how since gay marriage started in the Netherlands, the society has gone downhill.

 

As America moves closer to embracing same-sex "marriage," one can almost picture people in the wedding industry rubbing their hands in delight. After all, if we legalize gay "marriage," we'll have more weddings than ever, right?

 

Wrong. We will end up having fewer marriages, not more. Just ask the citizens of Holland, where marriage is going the way of typewriters and buggy whips.

 

In the Weekly Standard, Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, points out that in recent decades -- a time when parental cohabitation was sweeping across Northern Europe -- the Dutch clung to the last, ragged remains of their religious traditions. Yes, they engaged in cohabitation -- but when Dutch couples had children, they usually got married.

 

Not anymore. During the mid-1990s, the rate of out-of-wedlock births began to shoot up. By 2003, the rate of increase nearly doubled to 31 percent of all Dutch births.

 

What accounts for this phenomenon? Gay "marriage." These were the years, Kurtz notes, "when the debate over the legal recognition of gay relationships came to the fore in the Netherlands." The debate came to an end when Holland legalized full same-sex "marriage" in the year 2000.

 

The conjunction of these two social phenomena, says Kurtz, is no coincidence. During Holland's decade-long drive to legalize same-sex "marriage," gay advocates openly scorned the idea that marriage ought to be defined by the possibility of childbearing. Love between two partners -- any two partners -- was the real basis of marriage. Thus, as one gay "marriage" advocate told the Dutch Parliament, "there is absolutely no reason, objectively, to distinguish between heterosexual and homosexual love." Dutch leaders bought this argument. Marriage would be reduced to -- as Kurtz put it -- "just one choice on a menu of relationship options." In marriage, as with cheeseburgers, you could have it your way.

 

Then a funny thing happened on the road to redefining marriage: Dutch people simply stopped getting married -- even when they had children. This really ought to come as no surprise. After all, Kurtz writes, "Spend a decade telling people that marriage is not about parenthood, and they just might begin to believe you. Make relationship equality a rallying cry, and people might decide that all forms of relationships are equal."

 

The ease with which the Dutch jettisoned marriage happened in large part because the Dutch had already abandoned their Judeo-Christian heritage. The few religious voices raised in defense of traditional marriage were drowned out. And as a result Holland is now going the way of Scandinavia -- where acceptance of gay "marriage" has led to the continued deterioration of marriage.

 

What's happening in the Netherlands gives us clear evidence of what gay "marriage" does: People stop getting married, and children suffer. Let this serve as a warning to Americans. Marriage between one man and one woman must be protected and strengthened. If it isn't, then American families -- already deeply damaged by divorce and illegitimacy -- will be destroyed.

 

This caused me to go to the UN web page and pull up statistics on Marriage in North America and Europe. What I found was that the Netherlands marriage rates were still higher than the US rates, and the divorce rate was LOWER in the Netherlands than the US, as was the birth of children out of wedlock. While the rates in the Netherlands were not among the lowest in Europe, they were equivalent to countries that didn't allow gay marriage. Those bits of information kind of blew their argument out of the water and they've been quiet on the topic of the article since then, although there were like twelve guys all jumping up and down and pointing the article as proof of their claims. When it was debunked, they just shut up and said it's not really the issue here...

 

Got to love 'em, but even more, got to love winning the argument.

[Sparhawk]

What an article DK, How anyone could buy into that hogwash. Any one with an iota of sense would not buy into that. It just shows you that folks with a cause will grasp at anything. Quite a number of the folks in my neighbor hood are retired from unions. It constanly amazes me that if they union says it is so, then that is all there is to it. They do not seeem to be able to think for themselves. Well I had better leave that one alone.

 

Nice Post Dan.

[Guest jamieanderson]

Actually the article doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I had another argument with a similar group on the subject of euthanasia. It is permitted in The Netherlands, but only under VERY controlled circumstances.

 

I was informed that something like 90% of the people who died in this country were killed by their doctors!

 

Sadly they picked the wrong person to drop their made up statistics on. You see, Harry is a pathologist and one of the things he can lay his hands on readily is all the facts and figures over how people die. What they had done was publish the percentage of the people who die while under the care of the medical profession. They then implied that the doctors had killed them.

 

Basically, these types think that they can claim anything that they like as no one will ever check up on their

[movieguy47]

Here is another view that i posted elsewhere

 

 

New Report Says Same-Sex Marriage Does Not Influence Heterosexual Marriage

 

You can't prove a negative. But University of Massachusetts economist Lee Badgett demonstrates that the adoption of same-sex marriage and same-sex partnership rights in Scandinavia and the Netherlands has not changed previously-existing trends in marriage, divorce, cohabitation, or out-of-wedlock childbearing. Same-sex marriage has not undermined heterosexual marriage where it has been adopted and is unlikely do so in the United States. Surprisingly, in many countries where there is greater tolerance for same-sex marriage and unwed childbearing, children actually spend more of their lives with their two biological parents than in the U.S.

In a briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families and the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, Professor Badgett presents evidence from Scandinavia and the Netherlands to make her case. Since the passage of partner recognition laws, and contrary to widely-quoted claims:

 

* Heterosexual marriage rates in Denmark actually increased after adoption of same-sex marriage. They are now the highest they have been since the early 1970s. In other countries that adopted same-sex partnerships, marriage rates remained the same or increased slightly.

 

* Divorce rates have remained the same.

 

* The majority of families with children in Scandinavia and the Netherlands are still headed by married parents. In fact, in Norway, 77% of couples with children are married. And 75% of Dutch families with children include married couples. By comparison, 72% of U.S. families with children are headed by married couples.

 

(The reason that these strong marriage figures coexist with high rates of out-of-wedlock births is that in Scandinavia and the Netherlands most cohabiting couples marry after they start having children.)

 

* Acceptance of same-sex partners has not weakened commitments to children. In fact, the average Scandinavian child spends more than 80 percent of his or her life living with both parents -- more time than the average American child!

 

No Difference:

 

According to Badgett, none of the evidence demonstrates that same-sex partnership laws were responsible for the slight increase in heterosexual marriages. The point is that the partner recognition laws have had no impact on the circumstances and situation of marriage and families in Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

 

Detailed comparisons:

 

Marriage and child-bearing have become less directly connected over time in most European countries and in the United States. In Denmark, the number of cohabiting couples with children rose by 25% in the 1990s. Roughly half of all births in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and almost 2/3 in Iceland, are to parents who are not married. But these trends were well-established before adoption of same-sex marriage and have not increased faster since. In fact, Badgett's data shows that similar changes in family forms occurred at exactly the same rate in countries that did not adopt same-sex partner laws as in countries that did.

 

"In the end, the Scandinavian and Dutch experience suggests that there is little reason to worry that heterosexual people will flee marriage if gay and lesbian couples get the same rights," concludes Professor Badgett.

 

Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education at CCF and a historian of marriage, says that her research leads to similar conclusions. "Most of the changes in marriage that we see today were initiated by heterosexuals, and they have been in the works for 50 years. Demands for recognition of same-sex partnership are more result than cause of the changes in the role of marriage in society."

 

 

http://www.proudparenting.com/page.cfm?Sec...&snippetset=yes

_________________

[movieguy47]

Let me add this

 

when about 50% of marriage end in divorce in the u.s.a.

is that a success?

 

my mom when she died at 48 was marriage 4 times

 

my brother is marriage to his 4th wife and he is 56

 

my southern baptist sister been marriage to her old

man twice!

 

i got a brother on my dad side that gonna get marry

a 6th times? (do that mean he is a pain in the yes he has)

 

Remember this, Adam & Eve in god eyes was married

he didn't say will you take this man to be

or do you take this woman to be

 

Marriage law is man law

 

to collect money for license, and divorce

 

and most marriage are done by the Justice of the Peace

not church

if we had that to compare it would be stunning

 

many men and woman marry for the wrong reasons

 

many men i know do it to hide what they really are

a man lover

 

if it the other way around, maybe we could stop the

divorce rate in away

 

make guys and gals stop marrying for the wrong reasons

 

Myr signature say it best

 

I want to keep the liberals out of my wallet and the conservatives out of my bedroom.

 

i say also, get the goverment off of the our back and let everyone be

 

maybe they would stop being so mad all the time

 

think about it, how mad is people?

 

not since the end of Reagan era and Bush Number 1. in 1988 election with 57%

have we elected anyone with over 50% of the vote!

 

the country is too angry

 

and after the senate had a vote where even churches didn't raise the dicken

like Frist thought they would, it let them down (gee thought Frist

where was the noise? where was the protest? ....did they put us

between a rock and a hard place?)

yes they did, the member of the church could not care less

Frist and Bush thought the issues was culture

it blew up in their faces

 

i am a american

and i am a right to middle of the road guy on issues

but even Bob Novak a right wing said this this week in a footnote

 

*A footnote: Moderate Republican senators grumble that some longtime contributors are refusing their usual contribution to the Republican presidential campaign. Their biggest grievance: Bush's endorsement of the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment.*

 

i recall that a guy told me once, that a local mayor race in the early

60's a candidate the day before the election after heavy ad

pointing his bad point came out with a ads saying the day before

the election

 

they are picking on me!

 

the guy told me, nobody like to be pick on

and they didn't like the fact that he was pick on

and he won re-election easy

 

the moral of this is, don't pick on gay!

if you do, no matter if i'm straight, will i be next?

 

there are some common sense people out there, trust them

it more than the poll show

 

i mean, how many Gay and Bi gonna admit to a telephone poll

call that he or she is gay or bi?

 

they would be afraid that the info will get out

and they would be outed, that the call can be trace?

 

Rock Hudson in his bio said

the world don't want to know how many of us there are!

[ethan thorn]

you know the pres. and the vicepres. are really pussing this but i just heard the the vp's very own little girl is gay well you know what i mean yes dicks owwn daughter is lesbian who knew right.

[Myr]

Dick's daughter has been out for years. And Dick has only recently switched his view on this matter.

[rainbow]

Heya All

 

Being a Brit living in the UK, I cant really comment what goes on the USA, but i do share some your concern about Bush.

 

Here in the UK, there is a bill going though our Parliament legalising Civv Cem or if you like Same sex marrages. If all goes well and its not certain yet, because the bill be talked out. It will lagel next Aut 2005. My Partner and I are keeping zare fingers cross.

 

Rainbow

[Gentim]

I know that this is probably preaching to the choir, but I think that when people have some they know come out of the closet, and they find out the person is not acting any different then he or she did before, their views on gays tend to undergo a change. Certainly this appears to be the case with VP Dick Chaney. While he has not changed his view 180 degrees, they have certainly moderated.