Oiii.. would be good to know too.

This series might actually prove to be good idea and be stickied to one of your side bars.

Maybe below contact us. Or in the ‘Featured Reports’ section.

Divorce also meets the criteria for an issue that many churches regard as wrong/sinful but they seen quite capable of distinguishing religious and civil law there. It makes me even more confused than usual about just what the grounding for their objections is.

There was also the suggestion that kids will have to learn about Gay Marriage in Schools. I thought that was actually a bigger factor. —occono

It was. The Yes on 8 campaign tested that particular message on focus groups and found it provoked one of the strongest reactions. That is why they kept hammering on it. The irony is of course that this is a kind of free speech issue: shouldn’t children hear about the other “valid” relationships that two individuals can form? Technically, it’s not “sex-ed”, so there may be some opt-out stuff that may not apply. Thus, children might “hear” of gay marriage, and that might accelerate the process of making homosexuality acceptable to mainstream society.

This is a classical pattern of the right: create fear that a right will be lost to their supporters but deny that right to their opponents in the process.

The religious right and others that are stridently against the advancement of gay rights don’t want to see homosexuality become accepted by society for the reasons pointed out by gordo and Richard Rush: the RR would not only look bad but would need to find another cash cow. They certainly would have lost a major objective in the Culture Wars. So, they lie and cheat to stay in the game, including trotting out this 1st Amendment scam.

The pro-prop 8 crowd used the false threat of abridgment of 1st amendment rights with great success because most Americans just don’t know what the Constitution of the United States actually says. Most anti-gay campaigns work because of ignorance, either about the law (which few actually understand) or gay people. Anti-gay fanatics realize this, and create the scariest boogeymen they can to spook their easily frightened and uncritically thinking followers into doing their bidding.

Fortunately, this is one of the easiest anti-gay arguments to refute.

The absurdity comes with people’s ability to take these arguments at face value….never questioning whether or not these arguments were true or whether or not there was a counter-argument.

Also, I’d like to say that I’ve really enjoyed these discussions. I think there have been a lot of good counter arguments.

If gays become completely accepted by society, the Religious Right organizations will need to find another enemy in order to fire up their gullible followers to send cash. I guess there is always abortion, but that issue is getting old and tired. They can’t go after the Jews anymore, and they probably won’t go after the Mormons at least as long as their alliance against the homos holds together. Then there is pornography, but that doesn’t really work either because they need an enemy with a face. Enemies work best when they are an identifiable minority, as opposed to just an issue. If your enemy has a face, you can hate them as well as characterize them as being out to persecute you.

If any of you regularly read the comments on articles at the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website, you will see that the anti-homo articles generate, by far, the most comments. These people thrive on hate and delusions of persecution. In the Religious Right world the right to religious freedom literally includes their right to control every aspect of my life, and if I resist, then I am persecuting them.

I think because of the important of legal marriage as a symbol. We pro-gays often forget, ignore, or just don’t know how important the symbol is. I think the heterosexists understand it better. UIf only 3% of CA voters had voted differently on Prop 8, CA would have symbolically become entirely pro-gay, even with 49% of voters against it. Heterosexism thrives and survives on being the majority view (their central belief being that homosexuality is wrong because 96% are heterosexual). If marriage equality, is legal, it will symbolize than anything else not acceptable. Maybe they’ll finally start seeing the parallels with the sexism and racism that all have the same social and legal pattern.

I’m also guessing that because hetersexist Americans tend to be extremely patriotic, they’ll feel they cannot morally attack homosexuality if the US supports it. Being against a US law is, in part, being against the US.

If legalized gay marriage made opposing it illegal, it would make the Prop 8 campaign impossible.