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August 24, 2006
This is my "Gay Marriage" post. . .
NOTE: This post will be revised, revised again, and revised again, consider it my "position paper on Gay Marriage".
For the record: Gay Marriage, I'm strongly against it. However, I'm strongly supportive of civil unions.
I'm writing this post and creating an new category here because I think we've hit snag in the ongoing peace process that of late has been "gay marriage".
Here's the link "Straight woman seeks equality under gay-rights law: Unwed Redmond worker wants her male partner to receive health benefits".
Here's where the whole dealie-o which is the "gay marriage" debate will break down. Now for the record, I'm an unmarried heterosexual male atheist. I live in a committed relationship. I don't hold my opposition to gay marriage as proof of religious credentials, in fact, the religious aspect of marriage is completely immaterial to me. I could not care one whit about who buggers whom or how many penises or vaginas (or their ratios) are in a bedroom.
My arguments against gay marriage and for gay unions stem from purely sociological and economic concerns. It also speaks to the isolation of a sub-group of the body politic and grant them rights AS A SPECIFIC GROUP ONLY. Which I am strongly against, that is exactly what happened in the Washington case.
In Washington, employers were essentially forced to extend spousal benefits to homosexual couples, this benefit was DENIED to heterosexual couples. Now someone will come in and pop off and say that rights were extended to married couples, when this is simply NOT true.
What happened in this case is that an insurance company made a decision to sell their services to those that demonstrate an ability to enter into and live under a particular social construct. This social construct existed before the insurance company did and will probably exist after the insurance company is gone. Now the next thing that happend was that the employer bought said services on behalf of a subset of it's employees acting merely as an agent for said insurance company. All of this was extended as a benefit and a part of the employees compensation for labor delivered.
All of this is essentially part of the bargaining process you go into when you take a job with an employer.
NONE OF THE ABOVE CAN BE CONSIDERED A "RIGHT" IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.
Now what has happened in Washington state, is that "gay rights" activists have created and garnered support for and implemented a program where the government will interfere with the negotiations between employer and employee and force the employer to extend additional compensation to indivdiuals who have demonstrated to the company that the ONLY THING NECESSARY for them to receive this extra compensation is to engage in homosexual sex.
Yet, an employee who conversely has a heterosexual lifestyle, is not extended this particular "right" which is granted to those that engage in homosexual sex.
This is BEYOND ludicrous on so many levels.
So here's my take. Let homosexual couples enter into civil unions. In a few days I'm going to post a do-it-yourself kit for homosexual civil unions which will work in all 50 states. You'll get access to your loved ones if they agree to the civil union and they are hospitalized, you'll be able to show that you live a committed lifestyle to each other, and you'll get a nifty civil union certificate from my Church of Common Sense Interpretations.
What else exactly is it you want from society? NO, scratch that, what exactly is it you want from the government?
Do you want to file jointly? That's easy as pie, form yourself an LLC with your partner, dump all your wages into the LLC and all your partners wages into the LLC, then pay yourselves salaries and sell your labor to your employers via the LLC. BINGO, you're married as far as the IRS is concerned, in fact you get even better loopholes and deductions. So if it's a tax matter, stay tuned and I'll give you some more detailed instructions.
Do you want to have society "accept" your lifestyle? Sorry, but that's not the pervue of government, so stop with the hammering on the government to get it. The government does not dictate the whims of society, society dictates the whims of government and society isn't going to be legislated from the bench into accepting the gay lifestyle. That's something the gay lifestyle has to do, make friends with the rest of the world. Trying to do an end run and get the Government to tell churches what to do isn't going to fly. Granting yourself special rights is only going to make society reject you more. Getting the government into everyones bedroom is not the way to get the government OUT of yours.
So what is it that the "gay marriage" proponents really want from the government? It's pretty obvious that they want the government to do their social change for them, but that's not the function of a democracy. The people drive social change, it's not handed down from above.
I'm sure the keywords here will attract the trolls, and that's ok, because in their spitting anger they'll probably drop a few allusions to what it is they really want, and that's what I'm looking for. It's also why this post will evolve over time, for now, let's just poke the nest a bit.
--Jason
I'll come back to this post from time to time and ammend it as I put down my arguments supporting my position and defending arguments attacking it. I expect I'll use this post in the future as direction for readers seeking to find my absolute opinion on the matter. I'll use it to refute trolls or just send the link around as backup for my position on other forums, blogs, etc.
It's also the first post in a new category, so this will serve as the anchorpoint for keyword relevant searches.
Posted by JasonColeman at August 24, 2006 11:50 AM
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Comments
Great post Jason. I've also been a big fan of civil unions from the get go. I think I've said it a dozen times: why do we need gay marriage when civil unions and other appropriate legal actions (will, etc...) will give them every benefit that a married couple has.
Look forward to the civil unions made easy kit!
Posted by: jwookie at August 24, 2006 6:14 PM
