The Massachusetts House of Representatives voted yesterday to repeal the 1913 law that prevents out-of-state couples from getting married in Massachusetts if their home state would bar the marriage. The state senate passed the law a couple of weeks ago, and the governor plans to sign it. Under existing law, same-sex couples can get married in Massachusetts only if same-sex marriage is legal in their home state. Many people think the law was originally passed to prevent interracial marriages. The repeal will allow many more same-sex couples to come to Massachusetts and get married.
Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said that this House vote is “eroding the people’s right to define marriage.”
It’s funny:
When a court rules that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the court is apparently infringing on the legislature’s job — even though the court is doing its job under the constitution.
When a legislature votes to allow same-sex marriage, this somehow infringes on the right of the people — even though legislators are the people’s duly-elected representatives.
When the actual people vote down a marriage amendment, as happened in Arizona two years ago, somehow that’s not legitimate and there needs to be a revote.
These people don’t care about “the people’s right” at all. All they care about is getting rid of icky homosexuals. And somehow they think banning same-sex marriage is going to do that.
Because, you know, homosexuals didn’t exist until same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts in 2004.
You’re right, no matter how much they try couch their opposition by saying they have nothing against gay people, it comes down to the same thing: they don’t believe gays and lesbians are entitled to the same civil rights as other American citizens. Their arguments are basically the same ones people used to justify segregation.
Do these people actually think about what they say before they say it?
The people are eroding their own right to define marriage by defining marriage???
Just as “judicial activism” is nothing but judges making decisions a conservative doesn’t like, “redefining marriage” is nothing but defining marriage in a way conservatives don’t like.
I think there are several motivating factors. And no, they aren’t putting a lot of rational thought into this. A vast portion of the Republican Party has been taken over by a uniquely American brand of fundamentalist Christian that has forsaken the Gospels for a bizarro-land reading of Revelation and believes that not only are we presently in the “End Times,” but that America has a pre-destined, divinely-appointed role to play in the coming cataclysm, from which they will be mercifully “raptured” away by Jesus just before everything goes to Hell (rather literally). They have a very “Old Testament” view of God, and very clearly see the US as the “new” Israel, the new “chosen people of God.” And they believe that, as the Old Testament relates, when the chosen people fall away from God’s will, He withdraws his protection and calamities ensue. Hence, the now predictable phenomenon of televangelists blaming disasters on the gays and the abortionists and the Communists and what all. They also have this messed up idea that America was founded by fundamentalists to be an evangelical nation — McCain’s ex-endorser Rod Parsley went so far as to say that we were founded in part to eradicate Islam. So they believe the federal government needs to be a righteous entity (as defined by Leviticus). And if the government begins embracing the kinds of behaviors that led to the destruction of Sodom (in their misreading of the text, at any rate), then that is what will surely happen to us. And if we become like Sodom and Gomorrah where not one righteous person was found, then God will destroy us all and no one gets raptured, and they all have to stay here in America with the antichrist in charge and get gay-married and watch Tinky-Winky.
I love the fact that these people are self-absorbed enough to believe that the Rapture is going to occur during their lifetime.
I hate the fact that people are idiots.
But America needs to become like Sodom and Gomorrah in the Last Days. It’s part of the Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist End Times Checklist!
I just don’t get it. They want to use Israel to trigger a world war in the Middle East to make Jesus come back, but they want to prevent the Great Apostasy at home.
I find it so depressing. End Times theology is truly a scam, and a dangerous one. It is largely why we are in Iraq and it is largely the cause of our hostility toward Iran. (Not that Ahmedinejad isn’t a bona fide nutcase, mind you.) None of it makes any sense, but that’s the Catch-22 the believers are in; for them, faith isn’t belief in the unseen or unprovable, it’s insistence in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary. They regard their kneejerk rejection of science and common sense as a virtue, so you can’t even begin to reason with them. Oh well; at least Jesus taught that we will be measured according to the measure we used against others. Hope they can live up to their own standards.
This came back to bite Schwarzenegger in the ass. He vetoed the same sex marriage bills passed by the state legislature saying it was up to the courts (the opposite of what most Republicans say). So when the courts voted in favor, and the anti-gay forces put an anti-same sex marriage initiative on the ballot, he had no choice but to come out against the initiative.
I agree with Esther, the opposition is going to say anything, no matter how tortured or non-existent the logic in order to deny LGBT people rights.