The Vote
By Mitch Berg
It’s likely that Minnesota voters will be able to decide on a constitutional amendment defining “Marriage” as a dude and a chick.
Or, as every single leftyblogger and tweeter put it, “THE GOP APPEALS TO HATE”.
Not sure where “hate” comes from; if gay marriage supporters make their case, they’ll get their way.
Of course, they won’t; most Minnesotans oppose gay marriage. Which is why the DFL is appealing to really, really crude rhetoric.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk yesterday demanded that the GOP “focus on the budget” – notwithstanding the fact that the GOP caucuses got their budgets in weeks earlier than the DFL ever did in recent memory.
Look – I believe marriage is intended to be a mixed-gender thing, but a contract is a contract, so I’ve always supported civil unions. Gay marriage isn’t a major issue to me; gays’ per-capita income is reportedly higher than that of straights, and marriage will rectify that soon enough.
But the DFL’s habit – crutch – of calling everything they don’t like “hate” is getting comical…
April 27th, 2011 at 6:49 am
Gays are born gay, they can never be anything else. This is the view of the enlightened.
Jews are born Jews, they can never be anything else. This is vicious anti-semitism.
April 27th, 2011 at 7:57 am
This issue is not just about Tom and Steve getting to wear white lace. It is splitting Protestant denominations across the country. That’s why we now have the North American Lutheran Church. It split from the ELCA.
Hmm. Dividing the Christian church. Who would want to see that happen?
April 27th, 2011 at 8:14 am
Interesting article on the schisms of American Lutheranism here, Kermit.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-trials-of-american-lutheranism
A little too inside baseball for me, to be honest.
April 27th, 2011 at 8:20 am
Jews are born Jews, they can never be anything else. This is vicious anti-semitism.
???
It’s the truth, not anti-semitism. Am I missing something?
April 27th, 2011 at 8:20 am
Mitch, they absolutely hate it when you talk like that.
Terry – brilliant!
April 27th, 2011 at 8:34 am
Overheard at shopping mall:
Parent: “Buying that isn’t appropriate. We can’t afford it.”
Child: “Why do you hate me?”
Sound familiar?
April 27th, 2011 at 8:38 am
JPA, A person born a Jew can change their religion, or can choose not to identify in any way with their ethnicity (not that there is anything wrong with it!). The Left is so hot on this “They were all born that way” idea about gays they don’t see the bigotry involved in saying that a set of behaviors is congenital and unchangeable.
April 27th, 2011 at 9:24 am
Yup. And Trig Palin should have been sucked out of the womb and tossed in the trash. I guess there’s only so much compassion to go around on the left side.
April 27th, 2011 at 9:41 am
The statistical evidence seems to say gay relationships last no longer than straight. But they have more money to spend on the breakup, and no pesky kids to fight over.
Could be a divorce lawyer’s full-employment act. What’s AC doing these days?
April 27th, 2011 at 10:17 am
I’m thinking Tom Bakk is scared to death it goes to a popular vote as a constitutional amendment.
April 27th, 2011 at 10:37 am
I’m thinking that government has the right and duty to incentivize those things which preserve societal norms and which result in the continuation of the society, principally the birth and rearing of children in two-parent homes. Therefore, gay couples should be denied those government benefits, as well as the recognition that goes with them. What gays do in the privacy of their own homes is not my business. If two gays want to make a lifelong commitment in a church, let them find a church which will do that for them and leave the rest of us out of it. If they want to make contracts between themselves, again, none of my business. When you want to take the benefits government offers, you need to live with the government restrictions. A gay guy can, right now, marry any woman who will have him, not a problem, not an infringement of his right to marry. it’s just like a driver’s license or fishing license, you can get one if you meet the qualifications. Let’s leave it that way.
April 27th, 2011 at 11:09 am
Whether you are homo or hetro, we all have the same rights.
April 27th, 2011 at 11:52 am
let them find a church which will do that for them and leave the rest of us out of it
Or subvert existing churches by getting them to sacrifice their Bible-based theology for one based on “social justice”. Why build when you can steal?
April 27th, 2011 at 11:58 am
“Why build when you can steal?”
The Socialist Mantra!
April 27th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Personally, I don’t give a whit what two consenting adults do behind closed doors (even though I don’t want to always picture the possibilities). However, you can bet once gay activists win the battle of “legitimacy” they’ll be knocking on the schoolhouse door saying “we’re legal now! We want to help your conflicted students.
The problem s teenagers are, by definition, conflicted. How many parents will be willing to have gay counselors available to (otherwise) straight kids who are sexually conflicted/confused/heartbroken?
April 27th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Too late, BS. Cooper High School has the “Gay/Straight Alliance” as an extra curricular club. Any guess on how much emphasis they place on “straight”?
April 27th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
The “gay marriage” movement does turn the “stay out of my bedroom” argument on it’s head. Now they want to drag you into the house, through the bedroom door, and then tell you to approve of whatever is going on there. If you don’t, I guess you are a “h8r”. Ask them, they’ll tell you.
April 27th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
I hate the idea of this Constitutional Amendment more than the Brokeback Cowboys, although for a different reason.
Somehow, it’s an insult to my intelligence to think we have to codify the fact there is a difference between men and women…but then I realize there will probably come a time when we’ll have to do the same for humans and animals, and beyond; plants.
April 27th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
FWIW: I’m in favor of putting this up for a vote even though I know it’s not going to pass, now. As I’ve said — and will happily argue (Mitch, I’d really love to do NARN sometime to talk about stuff not related to guns), I think recognition of SSM is good public policy. If we can — and I think we collectively eventually will, but don’t now — come to some sort of consensus that it’s good public policy, we don’t have to implicate rights. (Something is not a right if you can only do it when it’s good for everybody; something is a right when you get to do it whether or not it is.) And I think this is a step toward having a good, solid, public discussion of the public policy around SSM.
April 27th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
J Ewing wrote-
“I’m thinking that government has the right and duty to incentivize those things which preserve societal norms and which result in the continuation of the society, principally the birth and rearing of children in two-parent homes.”
This kind of thinking is what made me switch from libertarianism to conservatism many years ago.
You will search history in vain for an actual nation state that did not think of itself as having a right and a duty to enforce moral norms. The Greeks did it, the romans did it, the Chinese did it. It is not a monotheistic religious invention.
The capital-L Libertarian philosophy of government is not conservative. It is as revolutionary and as unsuited to human governance as marxism-leninism.
April 28th, 2011 at 10:20 am
Swiftee, the U.N. is already pushing to give “mother nature” (animals and plants) the same human rights that humans supposedly are given. If that happens, you can watch the global economy shut down overnight. For how could you DARE to harm a blade of grass with the same human rights as a man, in order to build a new road or factory?
April 28th, 2011 at 10:22 am
Regarding the whole SSM thing and homosexuality being nature vs nurture or genetic or not, I refuse to believe it is genetic or nature for one very simple reason: nature is not in the business of creating fauna that cannot procreate and perpetuate their species.
April 28th, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Not to nitpik Bill but I’m thinking nature messed up with the Mule for one.