“The way you’re reacting indicates you don’t understand my motivations, so I’m offering to clarify them.”

I understand your motivations perfectly well. And they are rationalizations for bigotry, whether you choose to see them that way or not. I’m saying they are not a good excuse for what is fundamentally a hateful and terrible act. And I feel sorry for you that you think the awful, bigoted act you intend to perform will benefit your children in any way. It certainly doesn’t benefit my child, who deserves to live in a world where everyone has the right to marry the person whom they love, or the children in the families whose legal existence you feel compelled to wipe out.

I find your willingness to do so appalling. That you seem convinced that you do it from a standpoint of moral obligation I find, frankly, tragic.

It’s not a rationalization to say it’s about children, because my religion is all about children. The sole purpose of God is raising his children. If you think that’s a confusing thing for me to say, let me know, and I’ll continue writing my post.

So yes, I’m for this proposition for religious reasons—because of the children. Same-sex marriage in California won’t affect my own marriage at all. Almost the only thing I’m concerned about is how this will affect the next generation and the next after that.

loath though I am to leave unanswered the contempt toward my beliefs that has been posted here

The religious meaning of marriage is entirely beside the point, because we are discussing the legal construct of marriage, not the religious sacrament. It is fundamentally unequal to deny gay couples the protections that straight couples are permitted. You mentioned gay civil unions that have all the same features of marriage, that are literally marriages in all but name. If they’re fundamentally the same entity, then I see no reason not to use the same name for them under the law.

If you think this shows contempt for your beliefs, well, I find them contemptible. But you’re entitled to believe whatever you want, and your sect is entitled to marry or not marry whomever it wishes. What it is NOT entitled to do is codify its beliefs into law in defiance of fairness and equal protection and all the ideals we as a nation are supposed to stand for in front of the rest of the world.

“I thought I was pretty clear that I think homosexuals should not marry same-sex partners, and that ‘my God’ believes that too. But that’s not the point.”

Well, no, actually, it is the point, and no, you attempted to rationalize your position by putting children in front of you and suggesting it was for their benefit. Be that as it may, rationalizing a hateful act — in this case depriving people of their rights — doesn’t make the act less hateful, and your excuses will matter very little to the people whose marriages you intend to void with your vote.

Beyond that, I feel very sorry for you that you think your morality requires you to strip the marriage rights of other people, and that very likely as a consequence, thousands of legal marriages will be destroyed. I suspect that if you are a person of good conscience, you’ll one day come to regret that position. At least I hope you will.

John: “If you want to vote for Proposition 8 because you think the queers just shouldn’t marry, and your God believes that too, just own up to it.”

I thought I was pretty clear that I think homosexuals should not marry same-sex partners, and that “my God” believes that too. But that’s not the point. There are a lot of things I believe in that I don’t even begin to think it’s worth trying to make laws about. And there are many people who are personally against homosexual sex who still think it’s not something any laws should be made about. So what makes this particular belief is so central to my belief system, and to those who think similarly, that I do think it’s something worth putting in the constitution?

I also gather that most people in this thread would have great difficulty imagining how I could possibly be for this proposition and yet believe strongly in the individual exercise of free will—which I do. I think the resolution of that dichotomy is something worth trying to describe to someone who does not have access to a shared background and mindset with me. So I’ve spent a couple hours typing up an explanation as a response to the three replies to my post, trying to give the necessary background to how I can possibly believe this, and I’m probably less than half done. But if even the idea of attempting to explain this concept is something you find worthy of contempt, then it’s probably a poor use of my time to finish it and post it.

If you’re at all interested in hearing my response, and will read it with as open a mind as I’m sure you’d like me to have—not that I imagine I’d come close to convincing you, but perhaps you’d at least see where I’m coming from—then I’ll keep writing it up. But if you’re not, I won’t, loath though I am to leave unanswered the contempt toward my beliefs that has been posted here.

What I was talking about was the lie that churches would be forced to conduct same sex ceremonies.

As for all the gay people you know, I know racists who know black people, but still believe that black people are intrinsically more criminal or less smart. Heck, Andrew Sullivan, gay conservative, still believes that the book, The Bell Curve wasn’t racist, and was right. He’s supporting Obama now.

Just because you know gay people dosen’t mean you’re not being a bigot by supporting proposition 8. It’s a bigoted law.

But really, here’s where you fall down:

Children have a right to be born into a family with a loving mother and father. Passing proposition 8 would go only a very, very small way toward protecting that right for all children;

In case you haven’t noticed, same sex couples do this thing called adoption. And also, as I’m guessing you’re not interested in seeing, same sex couples raising kids do just as good a job as two opposite parents.

Your faith in gay sex being a sin does not change that. And your implication that same sex couples raising children puts those children in danger is not only stupid, it’s insulting.

And here’s the question I always ask when someone bring up inheritance and visitation – But even though I am all for things like hospital visitation rights and inheritance rights, I must vote on this issue according to my beliefs about what is best for this culture and this country.

Can you, right now, without going and looking it up, give me an EXACT list of all of the rights that same sex couples would be allowed to get under your view of what they deserve, and what rights should be reserved only to married, heterosexual couples?

You can’t. Can you? I don’t even know all of the legal rights involved in marriage. Professional lawyers need to look this stuff up. So what it comes down to is a word. Just a name. That’s it.

You’re offended that gay people get to use the name “marriage” , not that they get duplicate rights.

Well, that one’s easy. The guy’s bisexual. So ?

I want the world to be a place where it’s easier, not harder, for my daughter (and anyone else I don’t happen to be related to) to live a moral life.

Fine*, so raise your daughter in whatever moral system you and your wife decide upon. But where in the hell do you get off trying to use the power of gov’t to decide what’s “moral” for me, my family, and our friends and neighbors in this arena ? Keeping your religion and your moral philosophy to yourself in a case like this is equivalent to the old saying about “your freedom to swing your fists wildly around ends at my nose.” This is America, dammit – Back Off.

*(One wishes the religious morality police would realize that the only appropriate response to their feeling “I don’t like the idea of gay marriage” is to not marry someone of the same sex as yourself. Period.)

I am, however, dead sure about three things:

1. The tide of equal marriage rights is irreversible at this point. It may take another decade or three, but sooner or later, this sort of state-sanctioned discrimination will be dead and gone, just like the miscegenation laws. The opponents of equal marriage rights are fighting a rear guard action in a war they’ve already lost.

2. In fifty or a hundred years, “One Man, one Woman” marriage laws and amendments are going to be regarded like miscegenation laws are regarded today, as the moral outrage they are.

3. The same people who oppose equal marriage rights are the kids and grandkids of the people who opposed interracial marriages. They use the same arguments (“Activist courts! States’ Rights!”), the same reasoning (or lack thereof), and the same methods. Yet, when people discuss gay marriage in fifty years, their children and grandchildren are going to claim their parents were not only never in opposition of gay marriage, but that they were actually instrumental in defeating the bigoted marriage laws of fifty years ago. (By then, the Zealotry Brigade will have a new enemy to rally against–perhaps clones, or some other abomination that’s obviously a mockery of God’s plan–and the cycle will be in full swing once more.)

“Children have a right to be born into a family with a loving mother and father. Passing proposition 8 would go only a very, very small way toward protecting that right for all children; it’s a right that society has been eroding for decades, and it will take decades to restore, if its restoration is possible.”

Peter, I would like you to point out where, in the entire legislative history of the United States, there has ever been an enumerated a “right” such as you describe — i.e., that an unborn child has the right not only to opposite sex parents, but that they must also be “loving.” I’m curious to see how “loving” was defined, and also what enforcement process was implemented to ensure such a constant state.

Also, as you are for this “right” and are willing to cast your vote to destroy an existing legal right to marriage to protect it, one also wonders if, in principle, you would also be for forcing pregnant widows to remarry before their child is born, in order to protect such a right of the child. After all, if this right of the unborn child is so critical that you are willing to take away other people’s existing rights to protect it, surely this is not too onerous, and if it is, I’m curious to hear why.

Alternately, instead of engaging in what will almost certainly be an act of moral pretzel-making to explain why taking marriage rights from same-sex couples is fine, but requiring loving re-marriage from pregnant widows is not, you might also entertain the notion that such a “right” has never existed, not only in the history of the United States but in the history of the world, that attempting to legislate such a right would radically redefine marriage and trample the existing rights of others, whether they be gay or straight, and that this “right” you enumerate, which does not exist nor ever has, is largely the thin quasi-moral salve that people such as yourself have for justifying a vote that is nothing more than bigotry — and won’t work anyway, because so long as there are turkey basters, willing men providing baby batter and willing women with wombs, there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop gays and lesbians from having children in an unmarried state. I mean, unless you’re under the impression that gays and lesbians will stop having the kids they’re already having.

Look, Peter. If you want to vote for Proposition 8 because you think the queers just shouldn’t marry, and your God believes that too, just own up to it. Don’t hide behind “the children,” and in particular don’t rationalize the act through a silly “right” that doesn’t exist now nor ever has. It just makes your intended act that much more contemptuous.