Gays can't marry in Cali or whatever.

[viewerfromnihil]

Your two cents have been drastically reduced over the course of 14 pages to the point where they don't even make any sense if you consider yourself a smart human being/citizen of the US.

bit harsh

 

[zabu of nΩd]

id vote for that
~gR~

Yes, Ms. Palin and I would have some sweet lovin' in the White House.

 

[genocide roach]

Yes, Ms. Palin and I would have some sweet lovin' in the White House.

eeexcellent
~gR~

 

[genocide roach]

And Gays are not blacks or women. They have the same rights. Marriage is a man and a woman. Gays can do something else.

oh, i think i forgot to address this. they DIDNT always have the same rights as the average white man. they had to fight for em, despite the "majority" disapproving.
~gR~

 

[Matt]

Single, kids: tax credit for first kid, penalty for more than one

What about divorces etc? You would have make countless exceptions. That system wouldn't work.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

What about divorces etc? You would have make countless exceptions. That system wouldn't work.

Okay, how about this: Dick and Jane get married, have two kids, then divorce. Jane keeps both of the kids. Jane also gets to keep both of the tax credits for those kids. If Jane has any more kids, she will incur tax penalties. If Dick has a kid with a new wife, they get a tax credit for the first kid, but any more will incur penalties. That way it's like a one credit per person deal.

 

[Matt]

Maybe, but I don't know if encouraging people to have kids is such a good idea anymore anyway, as overpopulation is already a looming problem.

But w/e, not a bad idea.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

It's not really to encourage people to have kids, just to discourage them from divorcing and thus hurting their kids. Of course, it's highly questionable whether a couple will really stay together for financial reasons alone...

And if the idea is really to keep couples together, then there probably shouldn't be any tax credit for single parents.

 

[cookiecutter]

IIRC, population growth in the United States is almost entirely though immigration at this point, so worrying about overpopulation through having kids is not really a valid concern.

I just checked wikipedia and the birth rate is 2.1 which is the replacement rate for industrialized nations.

 

[AchrisK]

^Yeah, I didn't think the USA was really suffering from overpopulation. But we ghotta get that huge electric fence up on the Canadian border ASAP!

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

 

[skeptik]

After the Gay-Marriage Debacle, Activists Rethink Tactics


By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER Michael A. Lindenberger – 1 hr 15 mins ago

The fight over gay marriage is not over in California, or anywhere else in the U.S. Street protests dragged into the weekend in Los Angeles and other Golden State cities, and legal challenges are already asking the California Supreme Court to overturn the Nov. 4 statewide vote that made same-sex marriage in California not only illegal but unconstitutional. On Sunday, gay-marriage supporters got an unexpected boost from Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The term-limited governor had always opposed the amendment but had not campaigned against it or come out in support of gay marriage. "They should never give up," he said on CNN, referring to proponents of gay marriage. "They should be on it and on it until they get it done." He called the Election Day vote against same-sex marriage "unfortunate, obviously, but it's not the end. I think that we will again maybe undo that, if the court is willing to do that, and then move forward from there and again lead in that area."

The legal challenge endorsed by the governor is a suit filed by the ACLU and other groups who allege that the referendum that won on Nov. 4 with nearly 53% of the vote is invalid. "It would constitute a constitutional revision, not a constitutional amendment and, as such, the California Constitution provides that it may not be enacted by initiative," reads the request for an immediate stay to stop the proposition from becoming law. In plainer language, what the suit says is that because the gay-marriage ban so fundamentally alters the state constitution by taking away a fundamental right from some citizens, the change should be viewed as a revision instead of an amendment. The California Constitution requires that so-called revisions be passed by both houses of the legislature before being submitted to voters.

The request is directed at the same court that in May issued one of the most sweeping declarations of fundamental gay rights in U.S. legal history, making same-sex marriage legal by a 4-3 vote. The Republican-dominated court could decide by the end of this week whether to rule on the request for a stay or send it to a lower court first. But whatever the merits of the legal challenge, the court will face enormous pressure as it deliberates.

"If the California Supreme Court were to issue a ruling that would invalidate the will of the people, the consequences for the court would be momentous," the Rev. Albert Mohler told TIME over the weekend. Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and one of the nation's leading Evangelical voices, called such a "usurpation" hard to fathom. Imagine, he said, how much more controversial Roe v. Wade would be now had the court issued the decision after more than half the states had held statewide elections on the issue. "Tuesday's rulings have made it much more costly for any court to reach a conclusion in favor of gay marriage," he said.

The results on Nov. 4 were negative for advocates of gay marriage not only in California: citizens in Florida and Arizona also voted to make gay marriage unconstitutional. The vote was overwhelming in Florida, which favored Barack Obama in the presidential race but still decided 63% to 37% to make marriage available only to heterosexual couples. And in John McCain's home state of Arizona, voters reversed course just two years after defeating a similar, if more sweeping, ban on gay marriage.
California's vote was closer but not that close. Large numbers of those who voted Democratic chose to limit marriage to straight couples. They did so after a long campaign dominated by heavy spending from gay rights advocates. The vote was also the first to come in a state where gay marriage had already been legalized. Some 18,000 couples wed before Election Day, and public-opinion polls had shown support for the amendment trailing badly just days before the vote.

In a teleconference last week among more than 100 gay legal scholars and others who support gay marriage, the mood was dour. "This has cast a pall" over what had otherwise been a historic election on Nov. 4, said D'Arcy Kemnitz, executive director of the National Lesbian Gay Law Association. Longtime gay rights advocate Dean Trantalis of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and others on the conference call expressed concern that the gay rights movement had become too focused on marriage, and is now paying the price in other more critical areas. "Marriage was never our issue," Trantalis said. "It was thrust upon us by the other side, and they've done a very good job of beating us up over it."

The concern is that conservatives will use those same tactics - statewide referendums aimed at overruling court decisions or rebuffing reluctant legislators - to restrict other rights. In Arkansas, for example, voters easily passed an initiative that did what state legislators had refused to do: ban adoptions or even foster-parent roles for unmarried couples, including gays. Now the state joins Utah, Florida and Mississippi as places where gay couples cannot adopt. Trantalis and others are worried that even as the gay rights movement continues to win court victories, those very victories may prompt stronger and stronger backlashes, jeopardizing other hard-won rights, from adoption to antidiscrimination measures by local governments and in the workplace.

On the Evangelical side, Mohler told TIME that religious conservatives see the threat from the gay rights' agenda as much broader than just an affront to traditional notions of marriage. "Full normalization of homosexuality would eventually mean the end to all morals legislation of any kind," he says, echoing the line of reasoning made famous by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent in the high court's 2003 decision striking down state laws that made gay sex a crime.

Advocates like Trantalis say gays should focus less on marriage and more on simply building coalitions with straight politicians and others who can be allies in the political process. "We have to really blend in and show others that the LGBT people are no different than real, ordinary, commonplace people," he said. "We go to the same jobs, the same schools, and have the same God."

But such calls for joining the mainstream won't please everyone in the gay community, many of whom feel that they should not have to look and act like everyone else just to enjoy rights that an increasing number of courts are saying are inherently theirs. And for gays in California, who have had full marriage rights for the past six months, giving up on marriage seems a lot like going backward.

Gay rights activists look at the newly elected Democratic majorities in states like New York and see hope for expanding gay marriage, despite the setbacks on Election Day. New York governor David Paterson has been an outspoken defender of gay marriage, and some hope to press the legislature there to pass laws allowing full gay marriage - though conservative Democrats could well block such an effort. And while momentum may ultimately be on the side of advancing gay rights, Mohler says the fight is moving from courthouses to living rooms. "Both sides recognize this is now a battle for the hearts and minds of our neighbors," he says.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/200811...hinktactics;_ylt=AseNiWX4wbnOlEZPk3Bipmqs0NUE

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

I applaud America for electing Barack Obama, but it truly is sad how much we can fucking backpedal just because some people are too callous, stupid, and selfish.

 

[AchrisK]

AZ only passed our "definition of marriage" initiative (Prop 102) by a 56% majority. They say we reversed course, but the former initiative (Prop 107) also said that "no legal status would exist for unmarried persons, even if the relationship is similar to marriage". I think that is why that one was defeated. It doesn't mean the people here changed their mind, but that they did not like how far 107 went.

This whole thing in CA is pretty crazy. I know there was some vote in California where the majority said they were against same-sex marriage, and this was before the court's decision to overturn the states ban on said marriages. It's like, voters say no, court says yes, voters say no...what's next?

 

[skeptik]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same_sex_marriage_in_California

You know NOT EVERYTHING is up to voters to determine, right? Also, note the name of this act: Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry Act.

 

[NinjaGeek]

Marriage is a religious institution that was wrongfully adopted by the government. The solution is not to legalize Gay marriage, but take marriage away from the government all together, and have civil unions for everyone. This way everyone has equal rights financially, and the church can continue to deny Gays the title of marriage for so long as they choose.


(sorry if something like this has already been posted, but I'm not reading through the whole thread)

 

[skeptik]

religious marriage =/= legal marriage

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/10/keith-olbermanns-prop-8-s_n_142862.html

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

NinjaGeek, you fail. That is not the solution, and won't ever be adopted because it hurts the entire thing for everyone. Is there any reason you hate the idea of marriage so much? Then again, it seems you don't comprehend that idea of legal vs. religious marriage as Nec just pointed out. Watch that extremely dramatic yet no less effective Olbermann thing.

 

[NinjaGeek]

I realize that legal marriage doesn't mean they're married under the church. But the religious people still get pissed off about it because it's their thing that they invented, that the government took and used for their own purposes.

I'm not against marriage, I just think it should be returned to being a religious institution like it originally was, and that the legal rights that normally go along with it would be more available to everyone.

I realize this is just making a fuss over a word, I don't think the idea of Gays having equal financial benefits is the reason the religious people are so against this, but rather the whole "Preserving the Sanctity of Marriage" thing. I think if you don't call it marriage then it won't be nearly as difficult to get equal rights for Gays, and thats the main issue here.

 

[skeptik]

Marriage was not originally a religious institution, so sorry. There really is no argument for this that can even be entertained in an intellectual discourse.