[CoffeeSaint]

Quote by: Dirty Name First of all, the restrictions apply EQUALLY to ALL individuals. And for many states: Individuals seeking legal recognition of their marriage must: 1) Be 18 years of age (or have some parental consent, I think) 2) Not be closely related 3) Of the opposite sex With the possible exception of Massachussetts, no state recognizes the "right" to marry anyone they wish, or more specifically, "the person they are sexually attracted to."

Do you see how these three restrictions do not have equal impact on heterosexual individuals and on homosexual individuals? For the heterosexual, this does not preclude the one he loves; for the homosexual, it does preclude the one he loves. It does not guarantee that either group will marry the one they love, but it does prevent one group from marrying the one they love. You are preventing a group of Americans from pursuing their happiness, and you have no rational reason for doing so. This is illegal, under the fourteenth Amendment.

If I added a fourth,
4) Must be of same race
Wouldn't that be just as valid, in your view? Are you proposing we allow miscegenation? If you have your way, we're heading down a slippery slope. The next thing you know, they won't allow young people to marry older people, or pretty people to marry ugly people. And then what have you got?

Quote by: Dirty Name I go back to my analogy regarding farm subsidies. You may have grown up on a corn farm your entire life. You may be a world renowned expert at growing corn and corn might be the only thing your soil is suited for. But if the federal government decides to offer a subsidy for all soybean farmers, and you don't want to grow soybeans, it doesn't mean you are being discriminated against, and it CERTAINLY doesn't mean that soybean farmers are allowed to grow the crop they are experts at. There really isn't ANY difference here between my analogy and the same-sex marriage debate, EXCEPT people tend to get a lot more emotional about love, sex and marriage than they do about soybeans and corn.

But as a corn farmer, you could ask for a corn subsidy for your farm, and if the situation with corn were similar to the situation with soybean (similar supply and demand, similar market price, etc.), the government would not be justified in denying your corn subsidy. Would they? They might do it, sure, but it would be wrong. It would not be fair, and it would be discriminatory against corn farmers. So if you want to just say, "Tough shit, there's no gay marriage," sure, that's fine. Just stop arguing that gay marriage SHOULD be banned; that position is unjustified, unfair, and discriminatory; really, you are doing yourself a disservice.

And by the way, you said this:

Quote by: Dirty Name You are full of crap. What precisely are you accusing me of making up? I essentially posted the same thing that italiangm posted with regard to the history of the "Married Filing Jointly" tax status.

So I went back and checked.

Quote by: italiangm For the record, the Revenue Act of 1916 taxed the “entire net income received by every individual.” Some states had community property laws allowing some married couples to lower their taxes by “splitting” assets which decreased joint tax liability. So Congress was pressured to establish joint taxation allowing for “income splitting” and creating one of our nation’s first tax shelters. Single folk got upset and pressured Congress to lessen the benefits of income splitting in 1969. It's interesting to note that 13 countries changed from joint or family taxation to individual taxation since 1970. None have changed in the opposite direction.

And you said this:

Quote by: Dirty Name Your convenient mischaracterization of my statement doesn't surprise me either. So let me refocus your misplaced energy on the correct interpretation: You cannot deny that throughout American history, upon getting married, men and women traditionally had children ( in many some cases, lots of them). In our agrarian economy, children were almost like a crop of their own! The benefits that are primarily in dispute in this discussion - tax breaks and social security survivor benefits, were both inventions of the 20th century. The married-filing-jointly tax break was made law so that married couples did not incur a penalty when one spouse remained at home. In a same-sex union, there is no chance that a child could be conceived within that relationship - and therefore no expectation of a stay-at-home spouse. Could they acquire a child? Certainly. But doing so is a decision that is made consciously - and this is not always the case in a traditional marriage. We are talking about LEGAL RECOGNITION OF MARRIAGE, not the institution itself. Your post attempts to take me task about the history of marriage, a subject I'm not really talking about. My general thrust was in relation to the general recognition of marital unions by the state.

These are not the same. He said the law was put in place to recognize the laws of some states about marriage. You said it was put in place specifically to encourage one stay-at-home spouse, i.e., a parent.