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Side-step
This, or words similar to this, has been popping up all over LJ lately:
Copy this sentence into your LiveJournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.
It misses the point. Now, I don't happen to agree with the point, but it irks me that people on my side of the fence don't bother to know their enemies. The point is it hurts the institution of marriage. It doesn't harm any individual marriages. I thought about going into gory detail on why, but I frankly don't like these people enough to defend them that thoroughly.
Copy this sentence into your LiveJournal if you're in a heterosexual marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.
It misses the point. Now, I don't happen to agree with the point, but it irks me that people on my side of the fence don't bother to know their enemies. The point is it hurts the institution of marriage. It doesn't harm any individual marriages. I thought about going into gory detail on why, but I frankly don't like these people enough to defend them that thoroughly.
no subject
Logic has no place. Otherwise, we would not have Propositions in the first place.
When the opponents tell lies about children will be taught about gay marriage and such non-sense, I'll be damned to get swift-boated.
no subject
But you kind of make my point - gay marriage is taught in schools, it is required to be taught because social studies, current events and civics is required to be taught, and gay marriage has an integral role in all those subjects.
I'll bet real cash dollars that you agree with me that the gay pride movement, the history of anti-discrimination laws and gay marriage need to be taught about in our schools. The superintendent of public instruction getting on TV and saying otherwise is Just Plain Stupid™. He should be saying that gay marriage is a fact, not teaching about it would be as wrong as not teaching about evolution.
no subject
The proponents of Prop 8 don't want to not teach about gay marriage in schools. They want to ensure that schools teach about marriage, and teach that gay marriage is evil and wrong and the voters of California said so.
They don't want to acknowledge that the state recognizes marriages that their religion doesn't. It's a head-in-sand thing, though. It's already true, there are already many California marriages that different religious denominations don't recognize (Catholics and divorceés who remarry, for example), but they're invisible; they can be easily ignored. They can teach that all kinds of marriages are wrong, and their students will never realize that married people they know aren't recognized by their church.
no subject
Think of it as a scientific experiment, where you're testing for the existence of a condition which is invisible except for its effects on the real world. The only way you can prove it is to look for those effects. If those effects don't exist, chances are your hypothesis is wrong.
no subject
Proponents of Prop 8 believe adding gay marriage to the institution of marriage will mark a decline in the institution of marriage, but it will not affect the strong individual hetero marriages the proponents are part of.
no subject
They're welcome to believe that. Of course, I'm going to ask for evidence to support this belief.
Most folks' evidence is that the church told them so (or reinforced their existing belief). Belief isn't evidence.
Now for the folks who try to cite studies and data, they point to the decline in the number of marriages in countries that allow same-sex marriage and the increase in unmarried couples living together and having children. They fail to note that this is just a continuation of preexisting trends; allowing same-sex marriage had no effect on the numbers.
This shows me that they see marriage as a social control mechanism (and they like social control mechanisms), but extending it is at odds with the other social control mechanisms they want to see extended.
The institution of marriage is built on tradition, but it's a constantly evolving tradition. Modern western marriage dates back barely 150 years; before that love-matches were not the standard and wives were their husbands' property. 50 years ago divorces were rare. People made the same arguments that those changes created a decline in the institution of marriage.