{"id":215,"date":"2006-12-15T07:37:11","date_gmt":"2006-12-15T13:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/2006\/12\/15\/not-the-end-of-the-world\/"},"modified":"2006-12-15T07:37:11","modified_gmt":"2006-12-15T13:37:11","slug":"not-the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=215","title":{"rendered":"Not The End Of The World"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Jersey legislators legalize Civil Unions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Personally, I don’t oppose civil unions; it’s a contract between two people that has conditions that need to be met, and (in theory) penalties for breaking.\u00a0 The courts, I think, are right; there’s no secular, legal <\/em>reason to bar people from having them in accordance with other laws.\u00a0 (The “Now a guy can have a contract with a Badger and a Moose” doesn’t hold up; relationships between gays and lesbians are legal; humans, badgers, moose and other fauna\u00a0 <\/em>are not.\u00a0 If you see a need to prevent them, by all means organize.\u00a0 I’m not especially worried).<\/p>\n

Of course, the reasoning of some on both sides irritates me:<\/p>\n

“Love counts,” Democratic Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, a chief sponsor of the bill, said as the debate opened. “The gender of whom one loves should not matter to the state.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, true as far as it goes, but could we drop the “Love Counts” BS?\u00a0 Marriage isn’t about love, and either are civil unions.\u00a0 Oh, one had best love one’s partner, to be sure – but marriage (and surrogate ideas) are about much more than just “loving someone”.<\/p>\n

So Mr. Caraballo’s bit about the “gender of whom one loves should not matter to the state” is true only in the sense that love is irrelevant.\u00a0 Marriage\u00a0 and\u00a0 <\/em>civil unions, to the state, are about obligation, duty, penalties and\u00a0 conditions.<\/p>\n

Nothing more.<\/p>\n

Love’s got nothing <\/em>to do with it.<\/p>\n

But Republican Assemblyman Ronald S. Dancer said: “It’s my personal belief, faith and religious practice that marriage has been defined in the Bible. And this is one time that I cannot compromise my personal beliefs and faiths.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except that the Bible has little to say about contracts.<\/p>\n

The social conservative argument is that “civil unions open the way for gay marriage!”.\u00a0 Perhaps that’s true – and I oppose gay marriage – but that is our problem.<\/em><\/p>\n

Gay marriage, like abortion, should be the job of the states to decide.\u00a0 If you want to hold the line agains gay marriage (or, for that matter, civil unions), then get organized – because your opponents certainly are.\u00a0 And in politics, victory generally goes to those who show up.<\/p>\n

For my part?\u00a0 Since civil unions are purely secular, and subject to secular laws, and there’s no secular <\/em>reason to deny gays the right to contract with each other (assuming homosexuality is legal), then I can accept civil unions – and then draw my line in the sand, and top it with barbed wire.\u00a0 Marriage is not <\/em>a civil, secular observance.\u00a0 It is a religious exercise.\u00a0 And I challenge anyone to find any religion that justifies gay marriage on religious grounds (real <\/em>religions, not McFaiths like the Unitarians).\u00a0 And it may be that you can <\/em>find such a faith; it’s a lock that I <\/em>will neither marry nor worship there.<\/p>\n

Gay rights advocates welcomed the legislation as a step forward but said they would continue to push for the right to marry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Er, yeah.\u00a0 Expect pushback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Jersey legislators legalize Civil Unions. Personally, I don’t oppose civil unions; it’s a contract between two people that has conditions that need to be met, and (in theory) penalties for breaking.\u00a0 The courts, I think, are right; there’s no secular, legal reason to bar people from having them in accordance with other laws.\u00a0 (The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}