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It is funny and clever, but on the basis that it is making a serious point I will play it straight, you should excuse the expression.

Proposition 8 did not ban gay marriages. It only made the sense of existing marriage legislation explicit. It would be accurate to say that defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman bans bestiality but does not ban incest, but that would be a digression. In fact, gays may marry each other any day of the week; print invitations and certificates, hold ceremonies, throw bouquets and rice, buy anniversary cards etc. They merely cannot get 52.3% of the population whose opinion they don’t care about anyway to take it seriously, and would have to write their contractual obligations privately. Big deal. I’m sure that LegalZoom is up to the task.

If Jewish marriage or kosher slaughter and ritual circumcision were banned or externally regulated, Jews could work with it or against it to the point of civil disobediance if necessary. Happens all the time, historically speaking. If we had to hold our breath to get the laws the way we like them, we’d all be blue and dead long ago.

Furthermore, Proposition 8 serves to implement Article 16 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, practically the founding document of the United Nations and celebrating its 60th anniversary on December 10, 2008 (Human Rights Day)

Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

I wouldn’t count on the Declaration being amended anytime soon. Wouldn’t want any riots in Indonesia or anything, would we?

Comment by Ben Plonie on 11/12/08 at 12:34 pm

Actually, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says “men and women of full age… shall have the right to marry without any limitation” it does not say “A man and A woman have the right to marry” or as prop 8 suggests, “A marriage is only valid between a man and a woman.” The intent of the language in not to limit marriage except to humans of legal age (men and women of full age). I believe this has already been interpreted thus by international courts. You forget that Europe and other countries are far more progressive than the US and many have legalized gay marriages for years.

Comment by Pete Davis on 11/12/08 at 6:58 pm

I don’t doubt that Europe and other countries have implemented a more liberal interpretation of this than the language warrents. By the way, are you one of those who made fun of Sarah Palin for supposedly saying that Africa was a country instead of a continent?

Anyway, I considered your interpretation for a moment, but I dropped the idea by realizing that if the intent was to include all of the permutations of the right to marry it would have simply stated ‘People’ rather than ‘Men and Women’. Furthermore, if two men or two women were to marry, what would be the meaning of “They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution”? Are we afraid of, let’s say ‘Sonny’ insisting on more rights than, oh, call him ‘Fredo’?

Comment by Ben Plonie on 11/12/08 at 7:54 pm

One hears much whining about the passage of Prop 8, and how it is an attack on freedom.A reality today is that a program is afoot to rid Western Civilization of all Judeo-Christian morality, and in its place install a “new” morality.  The “new” morality is the morality devised by our new masters.  Thomas Sowell calls our masters, “The anointed.” Typically the anointed are lawyers, professors, judges, politicians, and powerful political appointees.  The attempt to destroy Prop 8 is really an attack by the anointed on 1. the family and 2. religion, and 3.the 10 Commandments.  Morality based on The Commandments is to be replaced by the morality of FDR, Russell, Mead, Freud, Rorty, Kinsey, and Weber.

The following is a section taken from ‘Bye-Bye Sweet Liberty,’ a new on-line book.

“Family, we were told back in the 50s, was no longer relevant.  This was an archaic idea that had to be discarded.  We (students in sociology classes) were not told how they arrived at this grand theory nor whether it had been tested and proven, but the grand-wizard-of- sociology had said it was true, so the sociologists all went out and spread the message.  We were not told that other societies, going back to the start of recorded time, had tested this hypothesis and had reaped negative results each time.  We were not told that Mssrs.  A. Hitler and J. Stalin pushed this same concept with the full power of the state behind them.  Both of these very powerful gentlemen had to give up too.  Even various Israeli kibbutzes were set up in a way that the children were to be raised by the kibbutz (It takes a village to raise a child.) and not by their parents.  The kibbutz has almost wholly been abandoned.

Currently we are being told that family is important, but that there is more than one way of defining a family.  (Here we go again.)

When a theory of true science fails, it makes the front page of every newspaper in the world.  Remember cold fusion?(Cold fusion was a hoax originated at the University of Utah in the late 1980s.  It stated that energy as generated by the sun could be generated here on earth, at room temperature in simple, cheap equipment.  The perpetrators, Fleishmann and Pons were physicists and professors at the university.  In the way of true science, their claims were tested and found impossible to duplicate.  They were quickly denounced (as they deserved to be), and for all I know, Mssrs F & P are now occupied as chefs in the French Foreign Legion.  Such denouncements are totally unheard of in the social “sciences” When a theory of sociology fails, you never hear about it.  No press conference was ever called by the-grand-wizard-of-sociology to announce that all his previous statements against the family
were untrue and that a new dogma, the all-depends-on-how-you-define-it family, was being brought into the game instead.

Comment by El Gringo, aka J.W.Thinkwright on 1/11/09 at 8:50 pm

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