perfidy

While you are certainly right that future Americans will have to deal with the aftermath of the FMA (assuming that it passes, which is unlikely) I think you are misrepresenting the views of those who support the measure. They do not view it as an appeal to discrimination, but rather an appeal to traditional morality. They believe that homosexuality is a sin, that the practice is morally wrong. All but the most rabid fundamentalists have given up on making homosexuality a crime, and would not support housing, employment or other discrimination against gays. What they want is to preserve some semblance of traditional mores, and to protect the institution of marriage from further dilution.

Of course, as Donald Sensing pointed out, that battle was lost decades ago with the introduction of the pill and relaxed divorce laws. Gay marriage is the result, not the cause of the decline of marriage.

The conservative half of this country is not motivated by anger and frustration, blame or hatred. Attachment to tradition, religion, and morality is behind the move to prevent gay marriage. I haven't seen anyone who supports the FMA say that we should impose new restrictions on gays - just that we keep marriage as it is.

As I've said, I think the marriage amendment is a very bad idea. But we should realize that not everything we disagree with comes from malicious or evil motives.

What I just don't understand is how this amendment protects marriage. Does it bar gay people from being in contact with homophobic sexually-borderline straight people who might unwittingly be converted to the dark side?

This is the part I don't get. How does this affect existing straight marriages, or new straight marriages, in any way?

Well, it doesn't, exactly. But you're coming at it from the wrong direction. The people who are trying to defend marriage are trying to preserve the existing definition of marriage. They are not afraid of people being converted or any of that horseshit. Imagining these people as blinkered bigots misses the point.

What they fear is the undermining of the institutions and morality that underpin our soceity. If you allow gays to marry, you are diluting the concept of marriage, which properly is between a man and a woman. The ancient Greeks were certainly not afraid of homosexuality, but recognized that marriage had an essential cultural function, and did not allow men to marry each other.

So gay marriage is part of a package of liberal assaults on traditional culture, each of which seeks to undermine and destroy institutions that maintain order and civility. By forbidding gay marriage, it makes a symbolic statement that at least one (and arguably the central) of these institutions is still held to be important and inviolable.

Parlor psychology about repressed sexuality will blind you to what they are after. If you are going to oppose what they're doing, oppose it for the right reasons.

Like I do. heh.

Nobody asked for my opinion on the matter, but I figure you guys are all asleep, so I can say whatever I want.

I'm no gen-xer, and not really much of a present day liberal either, but I originally failed to see why the federal government should get involved in this issue. Not that I agree with the involvement, but at least I understand it now.

At its heart, it's an attempt to ensure that local rulings (at the state level) don't acquire national standing, as the present constitution would require. James Taranto proposed an alternative yesterday, essentially a wording for the amendment which allowed for states to make up their own minds, but to avoid those decisions becoming national law, in this one instance. The problem is, the Constitution's a shitty place to be dealing with "just one instance".

My fear of the passage of the amendment, as presently semi-proposed, is twofold: First, it promotes the tyranny of the majority, which is contrary to a properly functioning federal republic. More importantly, and perhaps paradoxically, given my slight rightward bent, I fail to see why the state is involved in sanctioning marriage at all, at any level. It's not a religious matter, because if it were, the state would be sued out of any position on it. It's not really a procreation matter, because otherwise sterile and frigid people would be prohibited from marrying.

I disagree with this issue being used as a Trojan horse to assail traditional culture, but am otherwise truly apathetic when asked for an opinion on such an amendment. I just don't care what gay people want to do, and surely don't want to keep them from doing it, whatever it is.

Oh, and the amendment will never, ever pass anyway.

I do believe that the amendment might pass. But what I find really interesting is an opinion expressed by a staunchly conservative Catholic Republican friend of mine. Mind you, this guy almost became a priest... He said to me, as we get older we get more liberal and more conservative. We want to pay less taxes, but we care less about what people want to do with their personal lives. I was completely stunned to find that as a practicing Catholic, he is indifferent about gays getting married. Go figure. Some people need to chill the fuck out. After all, why do two gay people making a marriage threaten someone else's marriage? It doesn't. It only cheapens one's own marriage if you let it, or else it's the same reaffirmation of values. If it really did cheapen the institution, then adultery would be recriminalized and things like open marriages would not exist.

Marriage is often a sham because romantic love is a relatively new concept for marriage. I'm digressing... Open marriage makes it even more of a sham if you ask me. But to each his own, you know?

There is no status quo. Things change all the time. The world moves. Just roll with it.

I'm sure your friend would be upset if a Catholic priest tried to marry someone. That gets to the heart of Sensing's sensible proposal that Ross linked to a while back. Religious groups should have the right to marry, or not marry whomever they choose. And the government could have a plan that grants certain rights in a package to anyone who chooses to take advantage of them.

The amendment will never pass. Though a majority of americans are against gay marriage, I don't think they will cotton to changing the constitution.

In addition to not changing the constitution for such a matter of non-national import, I agree with Buckethead, for another reason.

The closer we got as a nation to completing such a thing, the more obvious it would be that we were just picking on people who generally want to be simply left to go their own way.

Gay marriage might devalue the institution of marriage for some small subset of the US - young guys who get married because all their married friends tell them it's so great.

In fact, it's been great for me, as has been having a daughter, but early on in each experience, I remember wondering whether all my friends had recommended both so heavily just so they'd have friends with whom to suffer.

I'm wiser now, I hope, but back then, gay marriage might have been enough to convince me just to pass, as it would have meant marriage included a lot of things I wasn't into.

As I said, I'm wiser now, and don't care what my fellow citizens want to do on this issue, so long as it doesn't affect me. I'll not be voting for such an amendment.