Just to add, the owner of the trolley company that decided to stop providing transportation to/from weddings did so of their own volition because they did not want to provide the same service to same sex couples, as the law would have forced them to do. They were not pushed out of this business, they willingly decided not to provide the service anymore.

They are not martyrs.

On a better note – congrats to all who are able to celebrate their marriages together and thanks to those who provided support and needed votes!

I object to redefining the world “marriage” to include gay unions. Whether or not they threaten marriages, they are offensive to many of those who are married.

No one’s redefining “marriage” — it still means what it always did: the community’s recognition of the establishment of a new household and a new status within the community for the married couple.

I think we are. Throughout history a “marriage” has been a union of a man and a woman. The gender of the partners was the defining attribute and now that’s being changed.

Joe, you need to learn a little more of actual history. Marriage between 1 man and 1 woman as a church sacrament didn’t start to about the 1100s to 1200s. Innocent IV in 1208/09 is considered to have included marriage as a sacrament. It really wasn’t until the Council of Trent in 1547/8 that it became part of Canon Law.

So prior to that for what, over 1,000 years, marriage wasn’t defined as such in our “Western Abrahamic” religions (Jewish, Christian, Muslim), and in many Biblical marriages included multiple wives and women passed on as property.

This is what is sad about those people who keep saying that a marriage between 1 man and 1 woman is somehow “eternal”.. it’s a relatively modern construct that continues to evolve with our knowledge. They also used to think that there was a limited amount of semen in a man’s body and so masturbation was bad because it “used up” his essence without procreation. We know now that is false and people aren’t killed or put in prison for masturbating. If you really want to follow “God’s law” on marriage, you should be working to have adulterer’s put to death and ban divorce. Until you actively do that, you are worse than a hypocrite.

And I am hoping you aren’t a hypocrite, and genuinely care.

As recently as the late 19th century, a “defining attribute” of marriage in Britain and the US was that the women stopped being a legal person and was completely subordinate to her husband. She couldn’t own property or even her own money anymore unless that was specifically agreed to. She couldn’t even defend herself in court, because it was assumed that she always acted under her husband’s direction and supervision. That was called “coverture”. The doctrine had existed for centuries. When those laws were changed, people predicted the end of marriage and the entire society, much as they do now about same-sex couples.

You can object to expanding the word marriage to covering same sex couples. There are plenty of other heterosexual couples, married or not, who have no problem with it at all.

I will not stand by though while someone tells me that “domestic partnerships” or “civic unions” would mean the same thing as marriage. That is called separate but equal, which does not hold true. Giving legal recognition of same sex marriages another title opens the door to discrimination.

In response to Joe Steel’s concern that same sex marriages are “offensive to many of those who are married” — so what? Many people are actually still offended that a person of color can marry a white person. As a man that lost my husband this year I assure you that I am offended by anyone that does not recognize what I lost. The difference is, I don’t think that I have the right to make you feel a certain way or to be protected from being offended. Somehow you think the law should protect you from hurt feelings? Why?

Humans are emotional beings. We react unfavorably to forcible compliance. Right now we are experience a backlash to Obamacare because it intrudes on obligations and practices some feel are not the province of government. Forcing traditionalists to accept homosexual unions as marriages alienates them.

Again, so the fuck what? Fuck their hurt feelings.

Interesting but not particularly relevant. The couple still were of different genders and never would have experienced the injustices you mentioned if they weren’t.

That sentiment goes both ways and the traditionalists still have a good deal of political power.

OK, then, let’s put it this way. Throughout American history, a marriage was understood to be a union of one man and one woman. When a religious group, the Mormons, tried to redefine it, their definition was rejected. In American culture, the genders of the partners define the concept.

And I am hoping you aren’t a hypocrite, and genuinely care.

Quite the opposite. I don’t care one way or the other about what gays do. If they wish to live together or not, it’s none of my concern. I do care about being forced to approve their choice with a change in my behavior.

Why then the soluytion ofr you is quite simple:

Don’t want a gay marriage? Don’t have one.

And by the way, stay out of my marriage and I’ll do you the same courtesy.

You aren’t forced to approve anything or change anything you narcissistic, self-absorbed little shit. The world doesn’t revolve around you.

You aren’t forced to approve anything or change anything you narcissistic, self-absorbed little shit. The world doesn’t revolve around you.

That’s kind of narrow position for a public policy debate, don’t you think?

And by the way, stay out of my marriage and I’ll do you the same courtesy.

If you and your partner are of the same gender, you’re not really “married” in the traditional sense. Do you have another word for the relationship?

Not a word, but a phrase:

Just as good, just as much of a citizen, and just fully deserving of full equality rights as you.

You don’t have to like it, and you don’t get to decide it either.

Again, Joe, I am reminded of the line: since when is giving me a right you already have considered a “special right?” When you point out that the mormon concept of plural marriage was rejected by American culture you actually harm your argument against gay marriage because — if we are really going to say that a majority of people who are simply “polled” get to define rights, which I would personally reject — the fact is that a majority of Americans are accepting gay marriage. Remember, when Loving v. Virginia allowed miscegenation, by looking at the constitution, rather than polls, people were outraged. Now that polls favor gay marriage, a minority remains outraged. Sometimes you have to accept that we live in a secular society, and your sincerely held religious beliefs, which you have a right to hold, do NOT give you the right to dictate how others live their lives, or even how society as a whole recognizes certain people or their relationships.

You are, of course, aware that through history and numerous cultures, including Mitt Romney’s own personal grandparents, marriage was defined as taking place between one man and one woman … and another woman … and another woman.

You are, of course, also aware that in many states of the United States, particularly the former slave states of the Confederacy, monogamous straight relationships between people of the “wrong” races were not legally valid. And even today there are justices of the peace who refuse to perform inter-racial marriages (and get disbarred as a result).

No one has ever explained to me — and for years, I have been asking — how the marriage of people whom they don’t even know has any impact on their own marriages. And nobody is asking you to “approve” — that’s entirely your business. (For all you know, maybe I wouldn’t approve of YOUR marriage — but I don’t have to; it’s none of my business.)

Best wishes for the New Year.