State Rep. Chuck DeVore is always railing against the unintended impact of allowing gay marriage in California citing polygamist marriage, mother/son or father/daughter marriages (to avoid paying estate taxes), and even marriages of Middle Eastern men with multiple wives. Pure silliness I say that would change if Chuck had any close friends who are gay and out.
The LA Times Tim Rutten has a different take on unintended consequences of opposing gay marriage in California. Read it here.
Tim writes: The Field poll found that 68% of voters aged 18 to 29 approve of same-sex marriage. The Times/KTLA survey also found that support for same-sex unions increases with education. If Barack Obama is on the presidential ballot in November, younger, well-educated voters are expected to turn out for him in unprecedented numbers, which could be decisive in the marriage amendment vote.
The supporters (of banning gay marriage) listed also include all but one of California’s Republican state senators and more than half of GOP Assembly members. That’s where those unexpected consequences come in. In 1994, California Republicans thought they had a winning issue with Proposition 187, which would have denied all social services — including healthcare and education — to illegal immigrants. Gov. Pete Wilson was one of its leading advocates.
Proposition 187 easily passed, but it ultimately was overturned by a federal court. Since then, only one Republican candidate has won a statewide election for president, governor or U.S. senator in California. That lone GOP exception is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which may be why he categorically opposes the Marriage Protection Amendment.
And Rutten isn’t alone; Newsweek’s Anna Quindlen weighs in on ther Gay Marriage debate.ÂÂ
Gay men and lesbians have prospered because they’ve refused to acquiesce to the notion that they should hide their lives from public view. Two by two they’ve adopted children, bought homes, volunteered in their communities and slogged through life together just the way hetero couples do, except without preferential tax codes, inheritance rights and the automatic assumption that they can make decisions for one another in emergency situations. Too often, without legal protection, they have found themselves dependent on the kindness of those who were not kind, like the man in Indiana who became severely disabled and whose parents prohibited his partner of 25 years from visiting him in their home.
Someday soon the fracas surrounding all this will seem like a historical artifact, like the notion that women were once prohibited from voting and a black individual from marrying a white one. Our children will attend the marriages of their friends, will chatter about whether they will last, will whisper to one another, “Love him, don’t like him so much.” The California Supreme Court called gay marriage a “basic civil right.” In hindsight, it will merely be called ordinary life.
Now with the June primary election behind us and the Democratic nomination process done, we need to mobilize to protect the rights for all citizens to marry the person they love most. Proponents of the amendment banning gay marriage need to be exposed for their bigotry and hypocrisy (as they are often the same conservatives who toss words like “freedon” and “liberty” as they they own the concepts exclusively.”
ÂÂ
Dan,
How about we have a civil discourse concerning gay marriage ? Let’s all commit to no name calling – such as “bigot” and “hypocrit”.
Name calling does not advance your cause.
from a conservative
I don’t see how denying gays and lesbians the same right to marry the person they love that you and I enjoy to be anything less than bigotry and hypocrisy.
Dan,
What the heck, throw in homophobe, nazi & whatever else against those who do not believe the way you do.
Does that leave me open to throw perverted, abnormal behavior, etc. right back at you? Is that what you want? Perhaps that is what you want.
Those are not terms I would use, I am pointing out the uselessness of name calling.
If you will not pledge to refrain from pejorative discriptions of those who disagree with your point of view – I will declare a unilateral disarmament.
I pledge to not use disparaging terms to describe those who disagree with the conservative view that marriage should be only between a man and a woman.
from a conservative
The first one to use Nazi loses. Homosexuality is not perverted or abnormal behavior. Homosexuality exists in the animal kingdom as well as in human beings.
I argue gay marriage from a platform of equal rights and equal protection; you are free to argue a religious/moral point of view, and I will take the secular approach.
Dan, your hyperventilating on this issue isn’t buttressing your arguments, as gently stated by “from a conservative.â€Â
As one piece of evidence in my defense, allow me to cite the closing paragraph of column by the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters, hardly a pillar of social conservatism. It appeared on May 18: “Finally, declaring that one is free to marry whomever one chooses makes it at least conceivable that plural marriages – polygamy – could be equally valid. How’s that for a can of worms?†(See: http://www.sacbee.com/walters/story/947180.html.)
Interesting that it makes my point, precisely and succinctly.
No one denies that same sex couples can love each other. Further, one should love gays as people since all humans are deserving of dignity. However, loving someone does imply a blank check to give them all they ask for – including overturning the rightly proven and historic traditional definition of marriage as between one eligible man and one eligible woman.
All the best,
Chuck DeVore
California State Assemblyman, 70th District
http://www.ChuckDeVore.com
(My previous reply omitted a “not” as in “loving someone does not imply a blank check…” My apologies. It should read…)
Dan, your hyperventilating on this issue isn’t buttressing your arguments, as gently stated by “from a conservative.â€Â
As one piece of evidence in my defense, allow me to cite the closing paragraph of column by the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters, hardly a pillar of social conservatism. It appeared on May 18: “Finally, declaring that one is free to marry whomever one chooses makes it at least conceivable that plural marriages – polygamy – could be equally valid. How’s that for a can of worms?†(See: http://www.sacbee.com/walters/story/947180.html.)
Interesting that it makes my point, precisely and succinctly.
No one denies that same sex couples can love each other. Further, one should love gays as people since all humans are deserving of dignity. However, loving someone does not imply a blank check to give them all they ask for – including overturning the rightly proven and historic traditional definition of marriage as between one eligible man and one eligible woman.
All the best,
Chuck DeVore
California State Assemblyman, 70th District
http://www.ChuckDeVore.com
So, Mr. DeVore.
When do I have my opportunity to vote on which rights, as a taxpaying citizen, you’re entitled to?
Fair enough, right?
to the “anti”,
You have the right to promote your own initiative – go for it.
The same Walters column was actually very pro-gay marriage Chuck; but who am I to stop you from cherry picking?
Your previous comments on father-daughter/mother-son nupitals is an endless source of amusement for my friends who aren’t straight.
They came up with that same argument with interracial marriages. Unfortunately there will always be bigots in the world. Marriage is a basic civil right that should be attainable by all Americans if they choose. For those who are uncomfortable with gay marriage check out our short produced to educate & defuse the controversy. It has a way of opening closed minds & provides some sanity on the issue: http://www.OUTTAKEonline.com