Dennis Smeth wrote:

Randy Jabsco wrote:

Hey, I thought you faggots said that people were "accepting" you now.
What's this all about? I thought you faggots said that "ignorance to old
beliefs are making way". Come on faggots, explain this... I don't
understand. If people love faggots so much, why would over two-thirds

otherwise?

All 50 states at one time had laws that banned blacks from marrying
whites. Then a black and a white couple walked into the Supreme
Court and with one ruling all the those laws were null.

Loving v Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967)

If a white can marry a white, then a black must have the same right
or their equal protection is violated. If a man can marry a woman
that same woman must have the same right as the man or her
equal protection rights have been violated.

Non sequitur

Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217, at 260-61 (1971)
"Public officials may not avoid a constitutional duty by bowing to
the effects of private prejudice, however widely or deeply held."

Irrelevant. Anyone can marry if they choose an appropriate spouse.

If they choose not to marry that is nobody else's problem

Randy Jabsco wrote:
Hey, I thought you faggots said that people were "accepting" you now.
What's this all about? I thought you faggots said that "ignorance to old
beliefs are making way".

Many cultures have gotten along for millennia with more than one woman.
There is no fundamental meaning of "marriage" that restricts it to one.
It must be xian religious tradition, rather than muslim or other
tradition.

Bob

This is so messed up, and listening to you twits (specifically Bob and
Randy) is giving me an excedrin headache... the only hatred I've seen is
coming from Randy and Bob and if I see "rumprider" one more time I'm
going have begin looking into why Bob has such profound affinty for the
phrase? Mayhaps he protesteth too much?

1. Marriage as an institution upon which to raise children. Clearly Bob,

This is so messed up, and listening to you twits (specifically Bob and
Randy) is giving me an excedrin headache... the only hatred I've seen is
coming from Randy and Bob and if I see "rumprider" one more time I'm
going have begin looking into why Bob has such profound affinty for the
phrase? Mayhaps he protesteth too much? If you could show just the
slightest modicum of respect, and actually read what people are writing
so that you could sanely reply in kind, I would be truly happy, and
deeply grateful.

So just to give you some background, I am a male to female transsexual.

Transsexuals are not gay men. Gay men for the most part are sexually
active. More than 90% of all male to female transsexuals are not
sexually active.

Gay men's life revolves around their penis.
Transsexuals despise their birth genitalia and ultimately get surgery
to find a body sense that is more compatible with their sense of self.

Gay men are for the most part about their sexual preference.
Transsexuals are for the most part about the gender with which they
function in society. I my own case, I prefer having relationships with
women, from a outward social context that makes me lesbian, but from you
narrow little world that probably means I straight. I am feminine. I
look feminine, I function as a normal woman in every aspect of my day to
day life. I have a brother and a sister who are fundamentalist
Christian, each is married and has a son. I love them all, especially
the boys, and have a fine relationship with them. I have no hatred,
dislike, distaste or discomfort with straight people, straight kids,
straight families, and I am a staunch defender of my siblings and their
families, so don't give me any of that straight hate crap it won't wash.
As well I know a number of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual folks. I've found
them decent, caring, and for the most part people of strong moral
character.

Without further delay...

There are two conversations going here and neither side is listening to
the other. The first conversation if Marriage as a societal structure
for raising chldren. The other is Marriage, a sociopolitical construct
for managing a long term relationship.

1. Marriage as an institution upon which to raise children. Clearly Bob,
you have raised uninformed to an artform.

So let's go through this by
the numbers. Marriage didn't occur till people had wealth.

That is, as
long as people were hunter gatherers, loose tribal affiliations held
clans together and mates freely traveled from partner to partner within
the confines of the tribe. We see this in virtually every early
tribal system on the planet (check out your precolumbian cultures Bob.)

Marriage was invented in agrarian cultures personal wealth and status
began to demand that issues of property, and yes children be addressed
by social commitments.

Remember too that from the beginning there were
also mechanisms for the dissolution of marriage except for those
societies that based marriage on choice b parent and spouses had no say
in their own betrothal (remember, in many cultures marriage has no basis
in romantic love.)

Even today Bob, in Hindu families, the parents match
children often promising them as babies. Dowry was a means of insuring a
good son for one's daughter (sons in these cultures were especially
prized because a good worker meant security.)

As societies grew more complex so did rituals and rules surrounding
marriage. There have always be homosexuals. It's demonstrably genetic,
that is, a gene has been found as well as a number of environmental
switches that may cause a child to be born with a mild to strong
disposition to being gay (sexual preference like everything else
falls along a continuum from absolutely hetero to bisexual to absolutely
homo.)

A recent survey from among over 2,000 psychologist in the U.S.
determined that sexual reference was one of the most unchanging aspects
of human nature (the only aspect more firmly set was gender, and once
that is determined it is virtually impossible to change.)

Different
cultures handled homosexuality differently. Asian, Native American, and
certain African cultures tended to be tolerant. Cultures decended of
the middle east tended to initially be less so. Though as Christianity
spread from the middle east throughout Europe, there is now substantial
evidence that marriage in one form or another was recogised and accepted
among homosexuals.

It was during the during the inquisitions that homosexuals were
demonized, as well the Jews, witches, and anybody else that got in the
way of the churches grab for power and wealth. The inquistions in Spain
were so severe that they ultimately lead to the collapse of the Spanish
merchant class and Spain has never recovered. Like wise, the
demonization of Jews during the German inquisitions lead ultimately to
the final solutions proposed by German Nazis for their "Jewish Problem".

Anybody who is even vaguely familiar with this history has heard the
term "Christ Killer" and knows where it comes from. The deep and
profound hatred of homosexuals that is now so pervassive in Christian
cultures spread with Catholacism throughout Europe and Russia. Sects of
Christianity that derrived from Catholacism inheritted the hatred.
This was especially interesting since Gay men and women had been central
religious figures in the church for centuries

(there are a number of
female saints from the middle ages who were masculinized by the church
when it went through a period in the 13th century when it was deciding
if women had souls.) So until the inquisitions there is ample evidence
of holy unions between men (call it what you will) and it was observed
and accepted by the church.

The nature of family and marriage has gone through many forms and
variations.

The type of cellular family that you are familiar Bob has
only been around since post WWII. The majority of families before that
were living in rural areas with three, sometimes more generations lived
under that same roof (so marriage actually took a back seat to the
extended family where the grand paren s often took over child rearing
chores while the parents managed the farm.)

Surprisingly it was the
advent of the novel and later the motion picture that created then
cemented the concept in American culture of marriage for sake of
romance... i.e. We marry because we love one another. Notice this basis
for marriage is distinctly different than marriage for family building,
and allows for a wide variety of unions including gay and lesbian.

The cellular family got it's start when millions of men returned from
WWII, married, and began starting families, most often moving to and
working in the city (the move to urbanize had begun.)

Families were
separated from grandparents and greatgrandparents and this lead to the
working Father, at home Mother paradigm.

At the same time, intense
homophobia, strict laws, and police violence kept the gay population
down to a tiny number... literally, the only place for gays to meet was
bars that paid the police to exist, and beatings by the police were
frequent and often severe. It wasn't until the spiritual awakenings of
the 60s and the social movements of the 70 that gays and lesbians
finally struck back against the beatings and murders. The stonewall riot
of the early 70s occurred when transsexuals and dragqueens were attack
by the police at the stonewall bar, and a riot ensued. Until this point
gays and lesbians had virtually no right. They could be fired without
cause, they could be beaten and robbed without recourse (often the
people beating and robbing them were policemen.) They could be denied
social services, and their children could be taken away (and still can
in places like Florida, though that is quick changing.)

This was particularly problematic. Hundreds of thousands of gays and
lesbians have children either through prior marriage,

insemination, or
adoption. Existing laws punish innocent children growing up in gay and
lesbian families.

It is essential that committed gay or lesbian partners
who are raising children be allowed to get married that they might
provide a more reliable and stable environment for those children.

2. The sociopolitical contract that marriage is. Besides the idea of
joining to build a family, there is a romantic, social, economic context
for marriage. It is the system by which two people who exist in a life
long committed partnership, must be able to receive the benefits
consistent with marriage.

These benefits include but aren't limited to
power of attorney, joint property, inheritance, custody of children,
social security, taxes breaks, insurance, legal partnership, and all the
multitude of rights and privileges bestowed upon two people who are
joined by this social contract.

Whether one calls it marriage or not, it is only fair that if a gay
couple decided to be joined in such a social contract,

that they receive
all the social benefits of this joining consistent with the act, and
that sexual preference is no cause to say you are entitled to more of
better. This goes against the very heart of what our constitution
states. Literally that all people must have equal benefit and protection
under the law.

This does not weaken heterosexual marriage, on the contrary, it codifies
the key benefits of the relationship and insures that all children will
be properly taken care of no matter the sexual prefence of the parent.