Federal Marriage Amendment

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For or against the FMA?

Poll ended at 2004-11-02 02:35pm

No, I support equal rights for all Americans.
75
95%
Yes, I believe that marriage is only between a man and a woman.
4
5%
 
Total votes: 79

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The Duchess of Zeon
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Post by The Duchess of Zeon »

Cairber wrote:My apoligies, kinda lost track on the thread topic. About the amendment...its complete idiocracy. I cant imagine teaching the amendments, reading the civil war amendments and following that with this one. I think back to my con law class...and I can just see the arguments now. Marriage is no where in the constitution. I guess people could argue that it falls as a "zone of privacy"...but then that would completely destroy the argument for the amendment. I was at the national constitution center a few weeks back..there is an area where you can vote about propositions via post-it notes on the issue board. For this one, almost all of them said NO to the amendment. There were so many notes you could hardly see the board. One of the people working the area told me that they just put it up the day before and they've had to change the board twice already.
Look at it this way. Banning homosexual marriage is against both the principle of the equality of the sexes which is mandated in federal statute, and against the constitutionally granted right of women to vote--IE, the placing of women as full equals without exception under the law of our Republic.

The FMA is a dangerous in the fact that it enshrines inequality into the law. It says, essentially, that "there are differences between the sexes large enough to warrant special legislation to define them." I ask you--do you really want a "fact" like that enshrined in our constitutional law? Have you thought of the implications of what it means? If the differences between men and women are so great that they must be constitutionally defined, what sort of ammo is that for misogynists who'd like to roll back numerous gains of the past fifty years or even more?

A law which is based on the principle of discriminating by sex--by saying what biological combinations of legally recognized couples can exist--is ultimately saying that "Yes, there are differences between the sexes that matter enough for us to put into law." Obviously there are differences, nobody is trying to deny that. But when you legally define difference in constitutional law, you are essentially going against the Supreme Court ruling of Brown Vs. Board of Education--you're saying that it's possible to have one set of laws for men and one set of laws for women. Once you start defining legal contracts based on sex, you're opening up a very dangerous box of worms.
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Post by Alyrium Denryle »

Rogue 9 wrote:Before anyone goes apeshit, the fourth vote for it is me, voting just because I always, always, always vote against the weighted option on a weighted poll just to piss off the idiot who thought he could sway my opinion by spinning his questions. :P
Then what is your ACTUAL opinion?
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Post by Einhander Sn0m4n »

Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Rogue 9 wrote:Before anyone goes apeshit, the fourth vote for it is me, voting just because I always, always, always vote against the weighted option on a weighted poll just to piss off the idiot who thought he could sway my opinion by spinning his questions. :P
Then what is your ACTUAL opinion?
That's mealymouth noballsese for "I don't have one. I do what I am told." :P
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Post by Rogue 9 »

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:
Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Rogue 9 wrote:Before anyone goes apeshit, the fourth vote for it is me, voting just because I always, always, always vote against the weighted option on a weighted poll just to piss off the idiot who thought he could sway my opinion by spinning his questions. :P
Then what is your ACTUAL opinion?
That's mealymouth noballsese for "I don't have one. I do what I am told." :P
No, it means "I don't do what I'm told because I'm obstinant." If I merely did as I was told or manipulated, I'd have gone with the weighted answer because it was weighted, instead of against it because it was weighted. :P And come on Alyrium, you know me better than that.
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Post by Alyrium Denryle »

Rogue 9 wrote:
Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:
Alyrium Denryle wrote: Then what is your ACTUAL opinion?
That's mealymouth noballsese for "I don't have one. I do what I am told." :P
No, it means "I don't do what I'm told because I'm obstinant." If I merely did as I was told or manipulated, I'd have gone with the weighted answer because it was weighted, instead of against it because it was weighted. :P And come on Alyrium, you know me better than that.
WHich is why you havent been nuked. You are a methodist as well, 90% probability I know what your opinion is just based on that :)
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Post by Einhander Sn0m4n »

Rogue 9 wrote:
Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:
Alyrium Denryle wrote: Then what is your ACTUAL opinion?
That's mealymouth noballsese for "I don't have one. I do what I am told." :P
No, it means "I don't do what I'm told because I'm obstinant." If I merely did as I was told or manipulated, I'd have gone with the weighted answer because it was weighted, instead of against it because it was weighted. :P And come on Alyrium, you know me better than that.
But you're supposed to be ABOVE getting swayed by weights on a poll, no matter which way the weight swings you. Congratulations, you just played into the pollster's hands. Now where did I put that Golden Sheep Award trophy?
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Post by Stormbringer »

Please knock it of with this pointless hijack of the thread.
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Post by Rogue 9 »

On the contrary, I played out of the pollster's hands. Your average dishonest pollster doesn't go into elaborate conspiracy theories and weight the option he doesn't want just to ensnare people like me, because too many other people are too stupid to go for it and therefore will vote as said pollster does not want them to.
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Post by Knife »

Darth Wong wrote:Cairber, Keevan is being extremely aggressive about this, but he does bring up the valid point that bringing it up in this thread is a red-herring because the subject of the thread is the Constitutional amendment.
Actually, and you know me by now, I actually respect Caiber in this. She fullfilled the OP in that she decided on a course of action. That being the case, she went into opinion or side tracked in that she was still some what uncomfortable with the actual lifestyle.

Call me crazy, but tolerence isn't lockstep, kum-by-ya, rather the concept that even if we are uncomfortable with an ideal, we are still able to acquiesce to the reality of the situation even if we are still uncomfortable with the ideal.

I, while I am reluctent of being dropped into the likes of the 'queer eye for the straight eye' group, am still for gay marrage just off of fairness, and a healthy does of not wanting the goverment to restrict the people overly much rather than restricting goverment.

Keeven will probably still get his hackles up over it, but imo, being tolerent isn't being metrosexual, rather admitting that homosexuals deserve a place on this earth and that place should be equal. Even if I don't want to see and know every detail.
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Post by General Zod »

Knife wrote:
Actually, and you know me by now, I actually respect Caiber in this. She fullfilled the OP in that she decided on a course of action. That being the case, she went into opinion or side tracked in that she was still some what uncomfortable with the actual lifestyle.
lifestyle? calling it a 'lifestyle' assumes that people actually choose to be gay, which opens up a major can of worms for the argument. it's not exactly as though someone chooses their sexual orientation after all.
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Post by Knife »

Darth_Zod wrote:
Knife wrote:
Actually, and you know me by now, I actually respect Caiber in this. She fullfilled the OP in that she decided on a course of action. That being the case, she went into opinion or side tracked in that she was still some what uncomfortable with the actual lifestyle.
lifestyle? calling it a 'lifestyle' assumes that people actually choose to be gay, which opens up a major can of worms for the argument. it's not exactly as though someone chooses their sexual orientation after all.
:roll: Not what I meant, and put in context, I don't think it convayed that. I don't think everyone needs to be apart of FLAG or some other group to be unbiased against gays. And I don't think they have to be super donkey cool with it, just that they understand that they have no right to oppress another group over something that is none of their bussiness.
They say, "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." I suppose it never occurred to them that they are the tyrants, not the patriots. Those weapons are not being used to fight some kind of tyranny; they are bringing them to an event where people are getting together to talk. -Mike Wong

But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
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Post by Ender »

Wait, people are actually trying to make this an ammendment? As in, it has been written and there is a campaign behind it? Because last time I heard it hadn't progressed beyond vague talk about it and Bush stating his pro discrimination platform when he announced he would support such an ammendment.
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Post by Gil Hamilton »

Ender wrote:Wait, people are actually trying to make this an ammendment? As in, it has been written and there is a campaign behind it? Because last time I heard it hadn't progressed beyond vague talk about it and Bush stating his pro discrimination platform when he announced he would support such an ammendment.
It failed in the Senate, barely, and I think the House as well. Something that suprised me a bit was that of all the Republicans in the Senate, only six of them voted against it and only one of them (John McCain) because he thought it was actually immoral. The rest thought the language was too vague.
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Post by Alyrium Denryle »

Gil Hamilton wrote:
Ender wrote:Wait, people are actually trying to make this an ammendment? As in, it has been written and there is a campaign behind it? Because last time I heard it hadn't progressed beyond vague talk about it and Bush stating his pro discrimination platform when he announced he would support such an ammendment.
It failed in the Senate, barely, and I think the House as well. Something that suprised me a bit was that of all the Republicans in the Senate, only six of them voted against it and only one of them (John McCain) because he thought it was actually immoral. The rest thought the language was too vague.
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Post by Rye »

Rogue 9 wrote: No, it means "I don't do what I'm told because I'm obstinant." If I merely did as I was told or manipulated, I'd have gone with the weighted answer because it was weighted, instead of against it because it was weighted. :P And come on Alyrium, you know me better than that.
You did what you felt would be unpopular for the sheer sake of being unpopular, as opposed to anything meaningful, just as bad as a sycophant being manipulated into saying "yes".

So, 2 guys who live near you want to get married, do you think they should be able to, or not?
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Post by Master of Ossus »

I seriously think that the best thing that the gay community can do, right now, is to come up with an equally positive term that means the same thing as marriage but doesn't hold the emotional baggage for straight people. Yeah, I know that many gays want to "marry," but there's a lot more opposition to marriage than there would be for an identical concept but a different term--plus, that way they can easily dodge all the stupid laws around the country that work to exclude them by defining marriage as between a man and a woman and whatnot.
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Post by Einhander Sn0m4n »

Master of Ossus wrote:I seriously think that the best thing that the gay community can do, right now, is to come up with an equally positive term that means the same thing as marriage but doesn't hold the emotional baggage for straight people. Yeah, I know that many gays want to "marry," but there's a lot more opposition to marriage than there would be for an identical concept but a different term--plus, that way they can easily dodge all the stupid laws around the country that work to exclude them by defining marriage as between a man and a woman and whatnot.
Good idea in theory, but Olde Southern Segregation proved quite painfully that Separate but Equal is intrinsically not Equal. Worse: the Fundies and 'A. Wyatt Mann's of this country who made it that way back then can bullshit-argue "You have a CHOICE whether to be gay or not" which is something they didn't have available against blacks. Despite its being patently and blatantly untrue, the fucking yokels here buy it every fucking time, giving the Fundies and Oppressionists (the people who wanted Jim Crow and masturbate to the Drug War) undeserved legitimacy. Thanks, but no thanks: No Deal :)
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Post by Ender »

Gil Hamilton wrote:
Ender wrote:Wait, people are actually trying to make this an ammendment? As in, it has been written and there is a campaign behind it? Because last time I heard it hadn't progressed beyond vague talk about it and Bush stating his pro discrimination platform when he announced he would support such an ammendment.
It failed in the Senate, barely, and I think the House as well. Something that suprised me a bit was that of all the Republicans in the Senate, only six of them voted against it and only one of them (John McCain) because he thought it was actually immoral. The rest thought the language was too vague.
God bless that man. Maybe he will run again in 2008.
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Post by RedImperator »

Gil Hamilton wrote:
Ender wrote:Wait, people are actually trying to make this an ammendment? As in, it has been written and there is a campaign behind it? Because last time I heard it hadn't progressed beyond vague talk about it and Bush stating his pro discrimination platform when he announced he would support such an ammendment.
It failed in the Senate, barely, and I think the House as well. Something that suprised me a bit was that of all the Republicans in the Senate, only six of them voted against it and only one of them (John McCain) because he thought it was actually immoral. The rest thought the language was too vague.
It got crushed in the Senate, actually. They needed 60 votes just to break the filibuster and only got 46.
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