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The Conservative Case for Gay MarriageFollow

#152 Jan 18 2010 at 3:17 PM Rating: Excellent
gbaji wrote:
The love between two people isn't created or prevented based on whether the government is involved. The fact that some people seem to think this is startling to me.


It absolutely is prevented when a same sex partner isn't allowed to see their partner in certain areas of a hospital or help make important decisions in their life because the law prohibits it. Love isn't just about some intangible feeling. It's about being with someone and caring for them and about them in times of need and not so much. The aforementioned prohibitions held against non-traditional "marriage"-based partnerships is a classic example of where your logic fails.
#153 Jan 18 2010 at 3:19 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
The issue is how much money the government should invest in trying to affect the outcomes.

But that's not the issue.
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#154 Jan 18 2010 at 3:26 PM Rating: Excellent
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Despite being largely irrelevant, I know you'll just ***** about me not answering this anyway...
gbaji wrote:
Do you agree that when two people form into a sexually active heterosexual relationship, that the potential cost increases dramatically more than any other pair of people in society? Everything else being equal that is?

"Dramatically"? No. On average? Perhaps. But then the average benefit cost of a coupling that doesn't have children (born, adopted, cabbage patch'd, whatever) will be less as well. If a childless couple get hit by a truck, no one gets their Social Security and the gummint seizes a chunk of their property for shits and giggles. If a couple with a kid are hit, the kid gets both their SS payments and keeps the government from taking the good china.

So, really, the answer isn't anywhere near as simple as "It's worth it for this couple and not for that couple!" because you're comparing different costs, benefits, etc.
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Belkira wrote:
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#155gbaji, Posted: Jan 18 2010 at 3:31 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Oh... And this:
#156 Jan 18 2010 at 3:35 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Seems like you're just proving my point. The 10k wasn't the filing costs. It was the cost to write up the contract. Something which could have been done decades ago, and then been available in some kind of standard boilerplate form for any gay couple to use. Think of all the pain and suffering which could have been avoided if only a more rational path had been chosen...


You mean like the Government allowing them to sign the marriage license?
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#157 Jan 18 2010 at 3:35 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Sure. Now tell me how we can determine this for everyone as quickly and cheaply as just checking the sex of the two partners.

I'd be willing to bet that, on the overwhelming average, the cost to check fertility of a couple will be far, far less than the cost of Social Security payouts over time and other government benefits. You can't possibly argue that cost is the primary factor in not requiring proof of fertility before marriage.


It's just one factor. The other is the disincentive effect. Couples may decide it's not worth bothering if they have to go in for tests first. We're already having problems getting heterosexual couples to marry. The rate of children born to single mothers has increased 10-fold over the last 50-60 years. Adding another obstacle to marriage would seem to be counter intuitive...


But hey! If that's really your argument, I'll go along with it. I'm reasonably certain that most of the gay marriage advocates will not though. Cause it's not about doing the right thing, it's about your "side" winning...
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#158 Jan 18 2010 at 3:38 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
So you agree that the gay rights movement could have spent a fraction of the cost they've spent on legal battles and political campaigns trying to change the state laws, if they'd just hired a few attorneys to write up a lock solid gay marriage contract?

It's almost as though you picked out one little passage and ignored all the other parts talking about how a $10,000 contract still didn't provide the same rights and benefits as a $40 marriage license.

I'm sure you wouldn't have done that intentionally. You must have gotten distracted early in.
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Belkira wrote:
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#159 Jan 18 2010 at 3:45 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
But hey! If that's really your argument

It's not. I was responding to a back and forth you were having with someone else. Point being that "It's too hard and difficult to test people as opposed to just waving every M/F pairing through the door" is an absurd argument if your actual desire is to lower the amount the government pays out "unnecessarily" to couples. A single month's SS payout would typically handle the cost of fertilization testing (if not twice or three times over). That's ignoring other common sense safeguards such as automatically assuming any woman over the age of 50 is infertile.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#160 Jan 18 2010 at 3:46 PM Rating: Default
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BrownDuck wrote:
gbaji wrote:
The love between two people isn't created or prevented based on whether the government is involved. The fact that some people seem to think this is startling to me.


It absolutely is prevented when a same sex partner isn't allowed to see their partner in certain areas of a hospital or help make important decisions in their life because the law prohibits it.


The law does not prohibit it. More specifically, the state benefits do not have anything at all to do with this. The power to visit in a hospital and make decisions about your partner is not granted by the state. The state has no authority to give one person power to make decisions over another.

That power is granted by your partner. It's part of the civil contract of marriage, and any two people can gain it. As Joph pointed out, it's possible to create a contract that provides all of those benefits. I've been saying fo years now that what gay rights folks should have done was just hire some contract attorneys to write up a contract that includes all those things.


But they didn't. That's why gay couples can't easily be able to do this. It's not about the government prohibiting it. It's about them not knowing (as you don't) that those things are granted by contract between two people and any two people can enter into it.

Quote:
Love isn't just about some intangible feeling. It's about being with someone and caring for them and about them in times of need and not so much. The aforementioned prohibitions held against non-traditional "marriage"-based partnerships is a classic example of where your logic fails.



Look. This is a BS argument. You think it's valid. You may even believe it is. However, a few threads on this subject ago, I proposed a "solution" to this issue in which the state laws were changed to include same sex couples qualifying for gay marriage, but at the same time the following things were restricted to only marriages consisting of one man and one woman:

Tax table filings
FHA loans programs for married couples
mandated inheritance of spouses social security benefits
mandated inheritance of spouses pension benefits
Military survivors benefits
pre-tax exemption for spouse on partners medical insurance



That's it. Nothing about visitation rights. Inheritance of property. Adoption and guardianship of children, etc. In other words every single thing that gay rights folks claim they want marriage for, they get, including the actual legal title of "married" from the state. The changes are made purely to other funded programs criteria.


This was soundly rejected. Can we stop pretending that this is "just" about the reasonable-sounding things you and everyone else spouts?
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#161 Jan 18 2010 at 3:50 PM Rating: Excellent
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I can't think of a good reason to restrict those items and can think of several reasons why they should be extended to all married couples regardless of sexuality or child status.
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#162gbaji, Posted: Jan 18 2010 at 3:51 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Which would require a legal change (a whole bunch of them) which is not only irrational, but undermines the reason for the status. Shocker that most people oppose that change. And how many millions of dollars have been spent?
#163 Jan 18 2010 at 3:52 PM Rating: Default
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Jophiel wrote:
I can't think of a good reason to restrict those items and can think of several reasons why they should be extended to all married couples regardless of sexuality or child status.


Good reasons from the point of view of the state?

Cause there's no end of good reasons why I think I should get something "free", Joph. That does not constitute a good reason for the rest of you to pay for it.


You do understand the difference, right?
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#164 Jan 18 2010 at 3:53 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
And no Joph. The contract presumably isn't missing anything.

"Presumably"? Maybe you should just read the article instead of presuming.
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Belkira wrote:
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#165 Jan 18 2010 at 3:55 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Good reasons from the point of view of the state?

Yup. Also good reasons from the point of view of society and from the point of view of the same rationales that they were extended to married couples in the first place.

Again, you keep pretending that the "state" came up with these benefits to "reward" people for getting married. You're dead wrong. So any argument you make from that premise is going to be wrong as well.
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Belkira wrote:
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#166 Jan 18 2010 at 3:56 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
but undermines the reason for the status that I made up
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#167 Jan 18 2010 at 3:58 PM Rating: Good
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I seriously doubt that gay marriage would be anything even remotely like a financial strain on the government. For one, I've seen plenty of studies stating the opposite. And, like Joph said, it is so ridiculously complicated to predict anyway.

But, either way, evaluating human rights based on costs vs. benefits is bullsh*t. Giving blacks equal rights certainly cost the South quite a bit of money (not to mention what the ban on slavery resulted in). The government would certainly have a bigger pool of money if they adopted a Communist structure.

I don't give a crap what something will cost the government. And, even if I did, the cost or benefit would be incredibly small anyway. It isn't like the non-heterosexual population is huge. And not all of them will want to get married.

When it comes down to it, this is about the inequality of rights. Either everyone can get married, or no one. Anything in between just means one group is being forcefully kept from one of their rights.
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#168REDACTED, Posted: Jan 18 2010 at 4:13 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) idiggory,
#169 Jan 18 2010 at 4:15 PM Rating: Excellent
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publiusvarus wrote:
any tax incentives for marrying should also be done away with.

What about everything else? Should spouses no longer be eligible to receive survivor's benefits for SS, military benefits, pensions, etc?
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Belkira wrote:
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#170 Jan 18 2010 at 4:20 PM Rating: Excellent
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Before my husband and I got married, we had our son. Two days later "the government" started trying to entice us into marriage with, um... benefits of some sort. Or maybe it was tax breaks. Who knows. They tried and tried and tried. Then they started pressuring us. I kept sitting down to breakfast and there was this marriage license on my plate.

Damn government and their ability to lure us into marriage!

If the above makes no sense, it's because I've been reading gbaji's reasons for hetero marriage.
#171 Jan 18 2010 at 4:33 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Oh... And this:

Jophiel wrote:

Also, semi-relevant article from today's paper is semi-relevant
The Chicago Tribune wrote:
If Howard Wax and Robert Pooley Jr. were a heterosexual couple, they could've gone to their nearest Cook County clerk's office, paid $40 for a marriage license and been wed.

That would have provided them an array of legal protections -- the right to make medical decisions for one another, the ability for one to inherit the other's property.

Instead, the couple paid $10,000 for an attorney to help them roughly simulate -- using wills, trusts and powers of attorney -- the protections that marriage affords. It was a price the men, parents of 3-year-old twins, were willing to pay for peace of mind, though they admit it's far from perfect.
[...]



So you agree that the gay rights movement could have spent a fraction of the cost they've spent on legal battles and political campaigns trying to change the state laws, if they'd just hired a few attorneys to write up a lock solid gay marriage contract?

Seems like you're just proving my point. The 10k wasn't the filing costs. It was the cost to write up the contract. Something which could have been done decades ago, and then been available in some kind of standard boilerplate form for any gay couple to use. Think of all the pain and suffering which could have been avoided if only a more rational path had been chosen...


Christ, you really don't get it, do you? There are a bunch of rights within the marriage license that cannot be emulated by a 3rd party contract. But the real kicker is that I shouldn't have to jump through legal hoops and write a billion page contract when the government already has a rubber stamp version that is better than anything I could make. By suggesting that we don't need gay marriage "because the gays can spend a ton of money to get marriage-lite" is downright offensive. You are blatantly perpetuating the social belief that gays are inferior. That is, of course, unless you think we should get rid of marriage entirely, and then let both heterosexual and homosexual couples use this contract you seem to be such a big fan of.
#172 Jan 18 2010 at 4:39 PM Rating: Excellent
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#173REDACTED, Posted: Jan 18 2010 at 4:45 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Bard,
#174 Jan 18 2010 at 4:55 PM Rating: Excellent
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publiusvarus wrote:
Bard,

Quote:
You are blatantly perpetuating the social belief that gays are inferior


How about perpetuating the fact that homosexual behaviour greatly increases the liklihood of one catching an std?

Do you know WHY being gay (for men) leads to an increase in STDs? No, it isn't God punishing us. When society treats you like a second class citizen, the natural reaction is to hide that which makes you different. This created the more secretive side of the gay community. It is near impossible to be in a healthy relationship when you are in the closet. As such, relationships don't go well and promiscuity increases. If however, gays were not treated any differently than their straight peers, they would be more apt to develop healthy relationships and decrease the promiscuity that leads to STDs.

Quote:
Do you think it's discriminating that homosexuals can't donate blood?

I do when the blood is already being tested prior to use, anyway.



Edited, Jan 18th 2010 5:04pm by Bardalicious

Edited, Jan 18th 2010 5:06pm by Bardalicious
#175 Jan 18 2010 at 4:56 PM Rating: Excellent
publiusvarus wrote:
How about perpetuating the fact that homosexual behaviour greatly increases the liklihood of one catching an std?


Not true. **** sex increases the liklihood of one catching AIDS. Any unprotected sex increases the liklihood of one catching an STD, and women are at a greater risk when having sex with a man.

Two women, however, can pretty much do whatever they want, protected or no. And, in case you missed it, "homosexual behavior" isn't limited to men.

Quote:
Do you think it's discriminating that homosexuals can't donate blood?


YES.

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If you desire a truly free society then marriage should not in any way be connected with the govn. And yes that means no extra benefits for being married for anyone.

What a concept, everyone being treated equally.


What a concept! One that has been brought up before, and I don't recall many people having much of a problem with it.

Oh, except that sort of hinder's gbaji's claim that marriage is an incentive for people to marry before having kids. Oops.
#176 Jan 18 2010 at 4:56 PM Rating: Default
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Bardalicious wrote:
Christ, you really don't get it, do you?


I do get it. Do you?

Quote:
There are a bunch of rights within the marriage license that cannot be emulated by a 3rd party contract.


Really? Name them.
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King Nobby wrote:
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