My point is simply that the gay community griped about certain restrictions to things that married couples took for granted.
When those items were offered up, they balked because it wasn't called "marriage".

The government is involved in marriages for tax purposes.
Why do you think a married couple (man and woman)get a tax advantage? Because the hope is that a marriage will promote a healthy family and the values/morals that will potentially result.

Why is poligamy outlawed? It's not like incest where you could argue that it's genetically dangerous to procreate.
But poligamy is specifically designated as illegal because of the moral implications.

Our government doesn't want to tell us how to live. But they do "promote" family values by using laws and tax incentives.

How much longer before three men want to "be married".
And by what justification will be able to deny it?

tailgater

the term "family values" is a recent cliché invented by the christian right. it has no meaning.

my kids and their wives and toby and i are very together. if i used that phrase, they would wonder what the hell i was talking about.

Does a marriage have to be "consumated" to be legally binding? I assume not as impotent prople probably can get married. If that's the case can my son in the Navy marry all his friends so they can be on Navy health plans?

CanyonDVM

specious response.

i expect better from you based on your past posts.

Sorry Rick, I'll try not to let you down in the future 🙂 For the record I don't think it's any of the governments business who I may want to marry or sleep with for that matter. However, if irresponsible behavior leads to pregnancy or disease, I think the prople that created the problem are the first one's that are responsible for solving it.

Soon as Bush started building those Walmarts everything went downhill.

CanyonDVM

i knew you wouldn't, and you didn't.

help yourself to a cigar in one of the humidors, and grab a beer, and we'll go outside and watch the smog.

no Rick, you're wrong.
"family values" is something that has been around in America for years.
Well before my time, and even before yours.

The problem is, in our efforts to be all inclusive we have forgotten what true values are.

There once was a time when we celebrated the family. Now we attempt to redefine it.
My daughter couldn't make Mothers' Day cards in class this past year. It seems that one of her classmates was being raised by a same sex couple.
I blame the school for being so short-sighted, but I blame the current liberal notion in society that brought them to that decision.

tailgater

why couldn't she make mother's day cards? what was the school's illogical, make that stupid, rationale.

your daughter doesn't need to deal with that, she should be dealing with her educaion.

Rick, great idea. AF Hemingway and Red Hook Ale. I'll enjoy.

The school felt that the act of making mother's day cards (in kindergarten, no less) would somehow "offend" or otherwise hurt the feelings of those children who may not have a mother.

I would have raised holy hell had it not been for the fact that my wife had just started working for the school.

And by the way, my same daughter's teacher was a jehovahs witness, and while the rest of the school decorated their rooms with holiday themes (halloween, thanksgiving, Christmas, etc) hers did nothing.

This is what we've become.
A society with no identity for fear of offending someone.

If George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al hadn't been such right-wing Christian fundamentalist nuts, they would have written homosexual marriage rights into the constitution.

eleltea

well they had no problem with miscegenation.