November 3rd, 2004
Andrew Sullivan early this morning: “I’m a big believer in the deep wisdom of the American people. They voted in huge numbers, and they made a judgment. Not a huge and decisive victory by any means. But at least a victory that is unlikely to be challenged. The president and his aides deserve congratulations.”
Andrew Sullivan a few hours later: “Karl Rove understood the American psyche better than I did. By demonizing gay couples, the Republicans were able to bring in whole swathes of new anti-gay believers into their party. With new senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, two of the most anti-gay politicians in America, we can only brace ourselves for what is now coming.”
That was fast.
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What is Sullivan smoking? How myopic. This race was not about “demonizing” gay people or courting “anti-gay” believers. The American people spoke decisively about the issue of gay marriage, which is not the same thing as being anti-gay people. But that was hardly the reason the Dems lost. If anything, Bush didn’t play up the gay marriage issue as much as he could have, given the overwhelming margins on the gay marriage issue at the polls. Will Sullivan swing back to being a sharp political observer or is he going to see every issue through the gay lens from now on? I guess we should brace ourselves for that. Or just avoid AndrewSullivan.com, which would be a shame.
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Gay activists have nobody to blame but themselves. By forcing the issue through the courts and renegade elected officials, they handed the Republicans a great get out the vote issue. It’s Sullivan and his fellow activists for gay marriage who ensured that Evangelicals and other social conservatives would not stay home this election.Michigan had a marriage related ballot proposal to define marriage as heterosexual. Frankly I’m ambivalent on the issue but I voted against same-sex marriage because the gay activists who promote it are cultural revolutionaries who don’t really endorse the institution of marriage anyway.
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Gay activists have no one to blame but the millions of bigots in america who think that their religion is infused into our government and that government officials have teh power to bestow gods blessing on a union of two people, but only if they are man and woman.Activists cannot be blamed for trying to have their rights recognized. There are already churches that will recognize a union between homosexuals, but apparently they’re just not the RIGHT churches, or popular enough in the countrysides of america.THere is no way to argue against this successfully: All people who think that gay marriages should not be recognized by the state are either woefully ignorant of the nature of separation of church and state, or flat-out bigots voting to have their bigotry recognized by the state.Marriage, if done by a JOP, IS a civil union and is not a religious status.There is simply no counter argument, I read and read and read and it’s always the same rehashed statements with no explanation.Millions of americans are wrong on this one. Who can blame them, history has upheld them. Thousands of years of human history have been filled with terrible things and this is just one more of them. I guess not everyone wants the world to be a better place.
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Me thinks bizarro jack needs to make an argument. That would be the first step in an effort to convince others. Opining that those others are wrong and biggoted is merely your assumption. A rather tenuous foundation upon which to lay your claim.A marriage performed by a JOP is a marriage conducted under the authority of the state. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Look it up in a dictionary. A simple explanation is that words have a fixed and consistent usage and definition. Voters prefer it that way. Like it or lump it, as they say.I suggest you’re living in an alternative universe–one where you decide definitions and usage.
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Just because one is against gay marriage does NOT mean one wants to lynch gay people. Marriage is the centre and base of our civilization. The man and woman concerned – with the children they engender and nurture – are of central importance to our society – and therefore, the state. In fact, given the position of marriage in ALL societies at ALL times in history, I think it is gay marriage proponents who have an obligation to explain why gay marriage will NOT hurt our society as a whole.Anyway, you Americans are very lucky: you have been able to register your opinion in the ballot box. We in Canada are not allowed to do so – our judiciary is too strong, and our democracy is now too weak.
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I didn’t give a clear argument here because I figured everyone’s heard them all before. You’d have to be living in a cave (or a red state?) not to have heard the reasons.Believing that you are entitled to something, and arbitrarily deciding that another group of people are not entitled to it, because they don’t do things your way, with no causal relationship makes you a bigot. It doesnt make you murderous, or evil, just a bigot. Straight people, strictly by merit of loving each other, have done nothing more to earn privileged status than gay people, unless you somehow count the fact that there are more of them; I cannot disregard the fact that producing offspring is important but producing offspring is NOT the legal pre-requisite for marital privilege. Being straight is. There are thousands of non-breeding, or even sterile heterosexual couples enjoying marriage, and they are no less deserving than homosexuals or breeding heterosexuals.If I can’t spam this blog fast enough for you, Use google, you’ll find pages and pages, thousands and thousands of words, giving good logical reasons why homosexuals are no less deserving than straight people, but you’ll just hear the same three dead-end “because I/jesus said so” reasoning from the anti-gay-rights side.I can keep going on this subject for a long time. The counter argument always seems to stop with “morals” that aren’t explained in any way, as to how they actually make anyones life any better.
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A dictionary is not where law comes from. English dictionaries describe common usage, they do not proscribe and constrain it. You can’t begin and end an argument there.Marriage has been defined and redefined by the legal frameworks built around it, and nowhere except in the minds of bigots (and consequently, the law, which must be changed) is there anything preventing homosexuals from getting married. They can love each other, they can live together, they can adopt and raise children, and all of these things that married people do.It’s just being recalcitrant to deny them recognition.
miklos rosza November 3, 2004 at 4:40 pm
Andrew overstates and overemotionalizes his case, as usual. It seems the only language he knows is that of hyperbole.He fails to note,, also, that the same percentage of gay voters went for Bush in this election as in 2000.Andrew has too much invested in the gay marriage issue, which he first introduced in his book “Virtually Normal” in 1994. Perhaps because of his HIV status it seems like an emergency to him now, but intellectual vanity may also play some unacknowledged role.