Marriage again
A lot of folks this morning yapping away over Perry and Marriage. Well, hell. I wouldn’t discount a good candidate because of disagreeing with him on non-national issues, but other people do, I don’t care. “I won’t vote for him because he’s one of those GOD GUYS!” is how we get into these messes in the first place. But voting isn’t gonna change any of this anyway.
Getting the FedGov out of the marriage business is a powerfully good idea. Nobody fucking knows why, either, but I’m going to tell you so you know.
Commitment is when people have strong feelings for one another and each makes an individual decision to follow a set of rules that regard their relationship with that person.
There is no church nor government agency nor governing body that can make that commitment for you, and the best they can do is recognize it legally. Nor does a priest saying “I now pronounce..” magically confer fealty where none exists before.
1: There should be no need to recognize that commitment legally. A person should be able to designate any partner he or she wants as the person responsible for/to them, and the .gov should mind it’s own business.
2: A church ceremony is as meaningless as a civil one except to the individuals involved. Attaching legal meaing to the one is as ignorant as attaching religious meaning to the other. Stop it.
Christ, people. Nobody gets it. I should just start slapping everyone.
29 comments Og | Uncategorized
The problem arises for two reasons: The income tax and the bennies the .gov gives away. Since the government changes different rates of taxes to married filing jointly than single living together, the government IS butting in. When it comes to benefits, the govt does not want to give money to families with a man (breadwinner) in the house, so it discourages marriage. Again, it has writen itself intot eh equation and it cannot be thrown out without combing through all of federal law rules and finding all those places where determining marital status is required and rooting them out.
Even something as simple as military service needs to be rethought. Single privates live in the barracks, married ones live in family housing. But what does “married” mean?
It used to be really simple when common words had a recognized single meaning. But lawyers have taught us that words can mean whatever they need them to mean and politicians have taught us that laws can be re-written with the stroke of a pen and little or no thought behind it.
On a side note, I just did a post the other day about the utter stupidity of people who buy into the “Well pass a constitutional amendment to…” make gay marriage illegal or legalize it nationwide.
Not going to happen folks. It’s all just bullshit posturing.
And slapping people sounds like an EXCELLENT idea.
“I won’t vote for him because he’s one of those GOD GUYS!”
I won’t vote for him because his willingness to make mouth noises supporting a hypothetical amendment that has about as much chance of passing as the ERA just to gain political ground on Bachmann shows a certain level of jelly-spined hucksterism that doesn’t sit well with me.
“I’ll bite the head off this chicken if you’ll vote for me!”
Seriously, going from “It’s a State’s Rights Issue!” to “Constitutional Amendment!” in… what? 30 days? 45? Depressing. I thought he could steer a steadier course than that.
We are already at the point of re-defineing words that have had a single accepted meaning for over 500 years. What chance would a Constitutional amendment (made up of those words) have against that?
So long as the greater majority is not willing to tell the 1% minority “you must be THIS tall to drive the policy train”, we get what we get.
“I won’t vote for him because his willingness to make mouth noises supporting a hypothetical amendment that has about as much chance of passing as the ERA just to gain political ground on Bachmann shows a certain level of jelly-spined hucksterism that doesn’t sit well with me.”
All I can hear is “I won’t vote for him” Everyone is anxious to be looking at reasons why this guy or that guy or this woman or that should NEVER BE ELECTED because XXXXXX.
We will never have that luxury, period. it will always be necesary to hold your nose and pull the lever, because the difficulty is not finding someone perfectly suitable (Who does not and will not ever exist, period) but in finding someone who can be elected who espouses enough of the important issues that it’s a net gain.
It is the most flimsy fantasy to think anything otherwise.
“We are already at the point of re-defineing words that have had a single accepted meaning for over 500 years.” Exactly, hale. “I won’t vote for X because he wants to make Marriage means something I don’t like, so I’ll vote for Ron Paul/someone else who will never be elected so Y can make Marriage mean something EVERYONE ELSE doesn’t like.
At this point I’ll vote for Romney over Obama, and I hate the fucker.
ANYONE is better than another 4 years of this shithead. The amount of damage he’s done in 4 years makes Carter look like a preschooler.
Arguing about the marriage thing now is like bitching back and forth about what color you want the drapes while the house is on fire and the roof is about to collapse on your head.
No politician exists who is not a jelly spined huckster. Our job is to find and elect the best jelly spined huckster.
Mmmmm, jelly.
If the GOP would drop all the social planks out of their platform, I’d be a lot happier.
Of course I first said that 25 or more years ago. And when I got into an argument during the first Reagan administration over whether or not the GOP ought to be even discussing abortion (I argue NO — it’s a losing argument, the other side always wins or makes it sound like they did), the other party to the argument — who a) is female and b) professed to be a small-l libertarian — said that of course abortion was a legitimate political subject and the GOP should continue to push for the overturn of Roe v. Wade etc. Blind spot big enough to drive a truck through…
I maintain that arguing over social policy in the middle of an economic nightmare is absolutely insane. Indeed, I argue that social policy has no place in a national discussion about who is best suited to lead a Constitutional republic, because most of the “social policy” of our national government is unConstitutional to begin with.
The GOP needs to focus like a laser beam on getting Øbama out of office, winning back the Senate, and what they’re going to do with that power once they’ve won to get the government out of people’s faces and pocketbooks and put the economic blender back on puree.
Oh, and no, I’m not expecting that to happen any time soon.
Yeah, not holding my breath either.
Part of me leans toward being a socially conservative Republican, and I think arguing social policy in this economic climate is more than just insane. It is immoral to argue social policy at times like these.
Our sole goal at times like these is to restoring fiscal sanity. Everything else is secondary. As I said in a post at my blog, our goal isn’t to get Obama out of office, that’s merely step one of the plan.
The major problem I have die hard social “conservatives” is that they are just fine and dandy with swinging the hammer of federal power around as long as it’s aimed at their preferred nails.
When we have a 4% or lower unemployment rate, my great grandkids won’t be paying interest to the ChiComs, we stop pretending becoming a service economy is fucking awesome (giving blowjobs in an alley is also a service economy: I prefer to pitch than to catch), and I don’t have to fill out 16 reams of EPA forms to throw away a goddamn lightbulb, THEN we can have a fight about this shit on the national stage.
Gah.
How would Romney be any better than Obama?
He’ll support the same crap-tastic freedom-eating legislation and policy…but he’ll do it the way Bush did; making “conservative” noises about “patriotism” and “safety” and “God.”
Meanwhile, the house and senate will have a “republican” to hide behind while they vote themselves more money, better benefits and more centralized power….
I prefer a little conflict if I’m going to have Satan for president. Obama with an overwhelming majority of both houses of congress fighting him tooth and nail, willing to defund everything he puts on the table for ideological and philosophical reasons (though most surely won’t understand why they’re voting the way they are) would be far better than Romney.
“It is immoral to argue social policy at times like these.”
Yeah, let’s overlook murder of infants until we’ve got some money in the bank.
Let’s let liberal progressives redefine marriage to be something they want it to be til the economy gets better.
That is what I heard.
Ed B: I think you need a new battery for your hearing aid, but that said, the simple fact is that the GOP has a ZERO chance of electing anyone rat-catcher in East Jesus, KS without the support, or at least, the lack of opposition of the evangelicals.
Politics means “making poor compromises” in almost every language except ours, where it means “making money off the suckers who keep voting us in”.
Suck it up, find something for the evangelicals to wet their beaks in, or we get another 4 years of O’Bummer (unless the Hildebeeste puts it together).
Ed: Those among us who are not Christians or are “Christmas and easter” Christians don’t get the moral imperative that Christians have to protect the innocent and reward morality.
Bottom line for me, if it came down to Perry and Obama… I ain’t votin’ for “I’ll get to it when I’m done on the golf course Obama”…
Dann in Ohio
“Nobody gets it.”
Hells, everybody gets it. Just like race-mongering, it’s a political tool to other purposes. People who spout on about “gay marriage” should be slapped repeatedly until they can at least complain about physical assault. Give ’em something real to consider.
Ed & Og, I am solidly pro-life. I just happen to think an unsaid part of being pro-life is having a country where people want to have babies, or at least they can afford to change plans when they are surprised by one.
All I can hear is “I won’t vote for him†Everyone is anxious to be looking at reasons why this guy or that guy or this woman or that should NEVER BE ELECTED because XXXXXX.
Actually, I’m looking for reasons to vote Perry. He’s the best balance right now of better-than-Obama and chance-in-hell-of-winning, and that appeals to me.
And I’m on board with most of your sentiments in the OP. I’m a polyamorous atheist in a secular plural marriage, so Perry’s Jesus-and-the-missionary-position streak isn’t my thing, but that’s irrelevant to whether he’ll make a good President. I don’t _care_ whether government recognizes my family, as long as it doesn’t actively work against us. The feds can keep their fucking “bennies”. Give me a God guy who respects the Constitution 55% of the time over a secularist who respects it 20% of the time.
But this idiotic thing Perry’s signed on for is a legitimate strike against the man. By supporting a “defense” of marriage amendment, he’s talking about getting the feds _more_ involved in marriage, which chafes both my marriage-equality and small-federal-government preferences.
It’s not a fatal strike, mind you. If the election was held tomorrow, I’d give the man my vote. But it’s a serious misstep that he’d better not compound between now and next November.
What amendment is Tam referring to? I missed something.
Tony: A bunch of folks (including perry) signed a pledge for the National Organization for Marriage. Part of the pledge is that he would send a marriage amendment to the constitution to the states. Apparently a tiny minority of gays strongarming states to do something most people find morally reprehensible is perfectly OK but letting the states decide if an amendment is in order is terrifying to the trruly freedom loving.
And you might as well send an amendment to the states to change the national anthem to “Ooo me so horny” for all the chance it has of passing.
And Perry knows that. So he’s just trying to siphon primary voters from Bachmaan.
It irritates me, but I’ll still vote for him over Obama. Then again, I’d vote for the guy who runs our local Pizza Hut chain over Obama: at least he knows how to balance a checkbook and make payroll.
I just had a mental image of everyone holding their hands over their hearts while a classically trained opera tenor belts out 2 Live Crew at a baseball game.
It made me chuckle :)
Voting will not fix our problems people. Only hard hearts will.
What’s funny is that I saw some liberal postings that “only evangelicals” would vote for Perry.
Talk about out of touch.