Now to begin step two: Outlaw straight marriage.
muaaahahahaha!
The chances are effectively zero. If it were up to a majority vote of NY residents, gay marriage would have passed the first time they tried to do it in 2009. The challenge has been getting it through the legislature. And while the vote was close, consider that our Senate currently has a Republican majority. Several Republicans broke ranks to vote for the bill, though. A lot of credit goes to governor Cuomo, who made this bill his top priority, and has been pushing it hard.
So anyway: Yay, New York!
Straight married couples are being bused into Times Square for their mandatory divorces as we speak. Right?
You think they care when they’re getting free busing? Have you seen bus prices lately?
No, mandatory gender reassignment does not start until July 30.
Newt is divorcing his wife right now. In protest.
Or because he cheated on another wife because of ‘the gays’. Who knows.
Seriously tho, good work NY Senate.
Gay men made me cheat on my girlfriends!!
Safe in New York. Sadly, not safe in Maine, as same sex marriage passed by the legislature was recalled by voter referendum. Sigh.
Anyway, CONGRATULATIONS TO THE PEOPLE OF NEW YORK!
I’d hope so, but I doubt it. New York and California may be populous, but they’re not always the bellwethers for the rest of the states. Take abortion, for example. There are currently two states threatening to make abortion illegal if a medical doctor can detect a heartbeat in a fetus (ie. six weeks into the pregnancy - many women don’t even know they’re pregnant at that time), long after RvW “settled” the debate. And there are certainly federal judges who will be inclined to uphold bills passed by state legislatures, especially those voted in by the citizens. Eventually one of these cases will wind up in front of the Supremes, and I’d say it’s far from “effectively over” once that bunch get their hands on it.
Sure, anything is possible. I just think it’s going to be very hard to show a compelling state interest, going forward, and there’s no “victim” here with standing to claim they’re injured by gay marriage.
So, for those of you from New York, how likely is it that a Prop 8-style ballot initiative would happen there? Or is gay marriage pretty safe in NY?
Probably quite safe. According to the New York Times, the primary donors to the campaign were conservative and Republican donors with libertarian attitudes on social issues. It signals that there is probably not a large contingent of voters waiting in the wings to demand repeal.
Good news, hopefully now the tide will turn against mainstream bigotry. I don’t doubt that it will linger under the surface, but having the state not support it is clearly a huge step forward.
What most astonishes me is the number of well-meaning conservatives that spin frankly ridiculous arguments against gay marriage. On the surface, this opposition appears to be related to a broader fear that the “battle” over gay marriage is really one small engagement in a culture war between a Christian America that provides citizens with sound moral structure and some kind of morally dissolute, socially oppressive nanny state that outlaws the practice of Christianity because the Bible speaks in absolutes. The number of Christians who believe in this narrative appears to be quite large.
First, you have the people who look at marriage as a concept and insist that it is necessarily religious, and did not exist prior to the Old Testament. They use this lineage to claim Christian “ownership” of marriage, and thereby insist that any attempt to extend the explicit right of marriage to gay couples is tantamount to government intrusion in Church affairs. People who take this perspective often allow that they would gladly support civil unions or some other purely administrative arrangement that extends economic benefits to same-sex couples, but insist that any legislation trying to affect marriage constitutes either blatant thievery of Christian intellectual property, or a first step on the road to “sanitizing” the Bible and regulating what can be said from the pulpit. Frankly, the whole idea that a particular religious group “owns” marriage is ludicrous. So too the idea that the government intends to regulate Christian teaching.
Second, there are those who argue that legislation explicitly allowing gay marriage is an unwise attempt on the part of the LGBT community to “legislate acceptance.” This sentiment sometimes dismisses the value of legal protections, and almost always ignores the potential value of norms to break down prejudice.
Third, there are those who insist that any attempt to tinker with the “established” definition of marriage sets a dangerous legal precedent that will pave the way for social deviants to claim the same kinds of rights. This perceive gay marriage as a precursor to polygamy, polyandry, legalized incest, relationships between adults and minors, and bestiality. Leaving aside questions of social justice, the extremely small size of those advocating the legalization of any of these things suggests that they are already non-issues.
I think that opponents of gay marriage who also happen to be Christians (apparently the majority) are rarely confronted with the weakness of their own arguments. I also think that liberals in general make too few efforts to address the core concerns of conservatives, who seem to be grasping for a kind of new communal ethos at the same time that they circle the wagons and cry siege. We aren’t even speaking the same languages politically anymore. And let’s not forget that liberals are often guilty of tarring conservatives with a broad brush: how many of those ranting about bigoted conservatives were aware that it was the political Right that bankrolled the pro-gay marriage push in New York these past few months?
What? What in the world would lead you to believe this?
He isn’t wrong, because a lot of – even most – socially-conservative Christians of the type that are stridently anti-gay marriage live in an echo chamber where they never engage meaningfully with arguments that challenge their world view.
Damnit. How am I supposed to despise him when he keeps on being reasonable?
The Tea Party types fucking hate Frum, even more than they hate people on the left. “RINO” gets tossed around a lot. Apparently if you have an even slightly nuanced view of how the right might be a little more reasonable, you are worse than Hitler.
At least, that’s what I’ve gathered from my Tea Party friend’s Facebook wall.
The key thing with Frum is that he’s not avowedly anti-reality in his opinions, which is to say he is willing to apply the scientific method to his principles when push comes to shove. Sometimes that push takes a while, but there you go.