This is not what America stands for. It is simply prejudice against gay people. We need to grow up and vote for things that matter. Bashing gay people should not be top of the list. The “caveman” thinking of the Republican party has got to go.
Yabba “W” Doooooooo
Extinguish the CAVEMAN in 2008. Vote Democratic!!!! We the people means ALL the people.
http://www.valueALLfamilies.com

Google: Michigan gays lose health insurance
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&fkt=1344&q=michigan+gays+lose+health+insurance&btnG=Google+Search

Marriage relates courtship and spousal selection to reproduction precisely because the FACT of human reproduction implicates the political necessity that is the ORDERLY perpetuation of the nation and society.

Because reproduction is a FACT and will have important and inevitable consequences on society both good and bad, the mechanisms of marriage and family law seek to regulate the selection of spouses and stabilize the relationship once the selection is made because of the POTENTIAL OF MEN AND WOMEN TOGETHER TO CREATE SOCIAL DISORDER when they do reproduce.

From experience, it is taken as given that stable mother/father relationships are the most beneficial arrangement for raising children, and marriage seeks in an important way to assure children the support from the father responsible for their existence, which rationalizes the conferring of rights and benefits as an inducement for heterosexual couples to achieve this objective.

Same-sex relationships have NOTHING AT ALL to do with either the natural, biological purpose of spouse selection or the political purpose of it as well. Sexual relations between members of the same sex and the relationships that might derive from these have at best a NEUTRAL EFFECT on society in the best of times, and a negative effect when population declines menace a nation. Therefore, it would be IRRATIONAL to confer the status of marriage upon a relationship that is forever separated from the purpose for which it is intended.

The state purpose of marriage is to bring ORDER to the particular human activity that is procreation. It is not an obligation to reproduce.

People are already privileged based on skin color, eye color, hair color, height, weight, etc. Always have been.

Designer babies are already being created.

So I guess I’m not getting the point.

Is the point that this is ok for straight couples but not gay couples? That it isn’t ok at all?

You can’t stop it. As long as couples are willing to pay huge dollar amounts for a baby, there will be suppliers jockeying for the dollars.

A family is two or more people who are committed to each other and work toward the common good of the family unit.

Everyone has the right to form a family and to enjoy the benefits thereto.

FRANCIS: Why are you always on about women, Stan?
STAN: [pause] I want to be one.
REG: What?
STAN: I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me ‘Loretta’.
REG: What?!
STAN: It’s my right as a man.
JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
STAN: I want to have babies.
REG: You want to have babies?!
STAN: It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But… you can’t have babies.
STAN: Don’t you oppress me.
REG: I’m not oppressing you, Stan. You haven’t got a womb! Where’s the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
STAN: [crying]
JUDITH: Here! I– I’ve got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can’t actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans’, but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG: What’s the point?
FRANCIS: What?
REG: What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can’t have babies?!
FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
REG: [aside] Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Scene 7

Same-sex couples should have civil unions, and not have the right to attempt to conceive together.

Hey, as long as we don’t have to be as stupid as the breeders, that’s fine with me. Attempt to conceive… together. Snort.

Maybe you could explain to us what I’m doing wrong with the dildo, ’cause as good as it gets, I haven’t been able to get the damn thing to ejaculate.

Technology, my ass. You’re just looking for the slimmest of excuses to shore up your bigotry.

As for Gattaca. Sigh. Yes, I’ve seen it. It’s a horrible C-list movie, but I will concede that Ethan Hawke and Jude Law are quite handsome. It’s important to note, however, that it’s science-FICTION. The *fiction* means it’s not real. I’ve also seen Toy Story and I’m not afraid of children’s playthings coming to life.

But, just to humor your Gattaca concerns, John, I just find it very ironic that you are so concerned with the paranoid possibility of the segregation and differential treatment of future humans that have been scientifically constructed, and yet, fail to exert the same sort of concern over the discrimination which is currently occuring on this earth by people who have been born by your own preferred sperm and eggs method. Your advocacy that same sex unions should be limited to civil unions, and that same sex couples should not be allowed to conceive children, shows this prejudice. So, instead of rolling up a snowball of paranoia and tossing it down the slippery slope of an imagined future, why not live in today and try to ensure equal treatment now?

And Gattaca is scientifically proven to be a mavie about a possible future. Have you seen it?

Are you in favor of allowing labs to start creating people however they want, or do you think Congress should prohibit non-meiosis conception, and we should only allow it if it is proven safe and wise? If you’re in favor of allowing it, then you won’t care what it has to do with marriage. I’d agree, if we allow it, we should certainly allow same-sex marraige, and indeed we do allow it, so I don’t understand how there can be 49 states that don’t allow people to marry that are allowed to conceive together.

Same-sex couples should have civil unions, and not have the right to attempt to conceive together.

The reason being that you can’t inherit from yourself

If that were true, there would not BE inheritance laws regarding widows. If the wife “is” her husband after death, then the owner of the property did not die, any more than a business ceases to exist when a founder dies.

“Couverture” is not a verb, btw.

…you kind of went off the board there with the example of inheritance and pensions. A woman isn’t legally ‘covered’ by her husband if he’s dead, after all.

Under coverture a woman and her husband are the same legal person. So she didn’t pay inheritance tax on the husband’s death. Why? It’s already ‘her’ property (even though her husband controled it under their joint legal personality). A situation where a woman married, her property got covertured, her husband died, and she got taxed when her property got transfered back to her would be perverse. The reason being that you can’t inherit from yourself.

But post-coverture you’ve two legal people. Both own property seperately. And a widow does inherit. Why isn’t she taxed like everyone else?

If you want to understand the modern nature of marriage I think you should look here. Marriage went in a very interesting direction at this point. And for all the arguments between advocates of ‘traditional’ marriage and SSM they’re both totally orthodox and in complete agreement on the fundamentals.

Secondly, *pregnancy*and *child birth* have inherent risks in them by themselves. Invitro fertilization isn’t incredibly risky, especially not when compared to other medical procedures. I could get some stats on this, but I’m totally swamped with work and I cannot justify the added procrastination. I can say, however, that 4 of my close friends have had invitro fertilization, 3 of them are heterosexual, and they and their babies all came out fine. Oh, and none of them genetically modified their offspring to look like Ethan Hawke, or Uma Thurman, if that matters.

I mean, looked at in the right light, that’s freaking amazing.

Again, the “they can’t make babies” argument is nonsensical in a world where nobody has to make babies to marry, and “it’s Tradition” is equally nonsensical when we’ve jettisoned many other, seemingly ironclad traditions.

But to address the point you’d rather avoid, it has until quite recently been the case that in American marriage, the wife was (legally) subsumed into her husband

I can’t see why you would interpret my remarks like that when I was the one pointing out that *unmarried* women were able to work and own property. That wasn’t a point I was avoiding.

Coverture’s actually very interesting from the point of view I was talking about - i.e. marriage is just pork barrel politics. As you say a woman’s legal personality was subsumed with her husband’s during marriage. So things like women inheriting pensions and estates from their husbands without being taxed was very logical from this point of view - there wasn’t any change of ownership - legally speaking they were the same person.

But it’s very hard to justify these advantages when women can own property independently and look after themselves. Enormous amounts of property are inherited every year by women who outlive their husbands and aren’t touched by the tax system. It’s like the oppresive legal aspects of marriage have been stripped away, but the advantages have been ossified.