I'm really impressed!

[emmagrant01]

Check it out: http://www.afa.net/petitions/SummarizePoll.asp

When I first took this poll, the results were something like 98% against gay marriage. At the moment, the tally is 28.25% FOR. I've seen this poll listed on most of the lists I'm on, and it almost seems like it's been a grassroots campaign to make a point to the small-minded people at the AFA. Go us!

(Thank you, lauramcewan, if you were indeed the first person to post this!)

ETA: Apparently AFA suspected sometampering with their results yesterday and removed some duplicate votes. But they seem to have skewed back. I'm wondering what's going on? If nothing else, maybe they'll realize it was a bad idea in the first place. If you want to do a statistically valid survey of people's opinions, you sure as hell don't do it like that. *snort*

ETA again: Checked at 11:30 CST, and now it's 32% for and 62% against. WTF?

Comments

[helens78]

I still wish they had an entry for "I favor the complete removal of all government legislation of relationships, whether straight, gay, or poly" -- but that's my snarky libertarian side acting up. (I would be so much happier if marriage were the domain of the church and private contract -- in which case any number of people of whatever gender could enter into whatever arrangments they wanted, dammit.) So in the meantime, I finally added in my own vote for legalization of gay marraige. :)

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

A few hundred years ago, that's the way it was, I understand. I used to know more about the history of marriage, but my memory is that governments got interested in making marriage a legal contract because of things like property inheritance, taxes, and so forth. In fact, priests and nuns in the Catholic church were permitted to marry until some time in the middle ages (I may be off a few hundred years), at which time the Church realized it was losing valuable potential church property (the land and wealth of the clergy) to inheritance. Hence, celibacy for those folks became part of the deal.

Marriage has historically been used in a discriminatory way in the US. For example, slaves weren't allowed to marry (not even to marry free people without a special court order), and many states had laws prohibiting inter-racial marriage well into the last century. Marriage has, unfortunately been used as a device to oppress people, and it continues.

My opinion is that if we're going to have laws regulating such things, then they should apply to everyone fairly. (I doubt many people here would disagree with me! ;^)

[helens78]

I know atanvarne_lj just wrote (or is just finishing) a paper that argues in favor of gay marriage rights partly using an argument about interracial marriage, which it turns out was still illegal in many states until the 1960s. I think she said 1968, which absolutely stuns me, given that my parents got married in 1973. No wonder they had their doubts about whether to have children, even in 1978.

And I agree: if laws are going to be on the books about marriage, they should definitely apply to everyone equally (although I would also add an argument that polygamy is not a danger to society and as such, consenting adults should be allowed to enter into such agreements). What surprises me is that while the advent of legalized, government-controlled marriage as a vehicle for inheritance makes sense (in that "it's government" sort of way that makes me wrinkle my nose ;) ), government-controlled inheritance and primogeniture were two of the first things that got wiped off the books in the reforming of the US after the Revolutionary War (until then, you had to have a specific court order to will your property to anyone but your firstborn son), and yet people didn't make the leap of thought to marriage.

Then again, that almost doesn't surprise me. Sometimes it seems like people aren't so much in favor of government itself as they are in favor of the status quo (and hence government).

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

...government-controlled inheritance and primogeniture were two of the first things that got wiped off the books in the reforming of the US after the Revolutionary War...

You mean *gasp*, the (hallowed) "Founding Fathers" were inconsistent? *grin*

I do have a serious question, though, related to your earlier comment: I would be so much happier if marriage were the domain of the church and private contract -- in which case any number of people of whatever gender could enter into whatever arrangments they wanted, dammit.

How would that work, legally? In order to put someone on your health insurance, or to ensure that the house would go to them if you die, or all of the other legal rights that spouses have are consistently available (and that's really what the pro-gay marriage battle is about), it seems that you'd have to have some universally accepted, legally binding document. That seems fraught with opportunities for confusion at the very least, and massive legal problems at worst. In a court of law, who would decide whether plaintiff A's claim that he was married to plaintiff B and thus deserves alimony after being dumped for plaintiff C? How is it possible to avoid having some sort of government-overseen system (whatever that means)?

(Of course, I'm assuming that the legal benefits of marriage would remain without government intervention, which may be the wrong way to think about it.)

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

If you want to do a statistically valid survey of people's opinions, you sure as hell don't do it like that. *snort*

Very much true. I was rather shocked when they said they were going to give the results to congresspeople. It's one thing to present a petition, which you know as self-selecting, but given how much confidence our society places in polls, to offer such a completely invalid poll as this one is particularly unethical.

History of marriage and the church. Priests were allowed to marry up until around the 11th cen. In Eastern Orthodox churches, they are still allowed to marry. In the RCC it was outlawed because priests were basically founding church dynasties. (A practice which continued even after the celibacy thing. It's alarming to learn how many powerful bishops and cardinals were the illegitmate sons of popes, appointed to their position by their fathers.)

Marriage was a completely secular event up until around the same time-period, and were not performed in churches. As you said, property and inheritance issues fueled the need for public records of marriages, and since often the priest was the only person in the community who could write, the priest often recorded those marriages. But the marriage itself still took place outside the church, and then the couple would go to the priest to have the marriage registered. It was a couple more centuries before marriage became a church-centered event and a sacrament in the Catholic Church.

My problem as a minister is that I don't like doing the government's business. Government does have some stake in recognizing marriage as a legal contract, so I can't really see gov't getting out of the marriage business entirely. But I think the church's role and the govt's role should be separated. All people, whether gay or straight, should be required to register their marriage in a civil ceremony, as they do in many European countries. Then if they want a religious ceremony, it's completely separate. I don't think people should just be able to go to the church and have the minister fill out the marriage certificate.

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

Was I really? I got it from The Gray Side mailing list. the AFA are a bunch of conservatives who, I don't think, expected to see such a showing of non-members voting. ;)

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

14th Amendment gets conveniently ignored, eh?

This is a good speech, I felt.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/chapel_of_words/56668.html#cutid1

[helens78]

You mean *gasp*, the (hallowed) "Founding Fathers" were inconsistent? *grin*

Dude. They were creating a government. I would say that calls into question their consistency, sanity, and rational purpose on Earth. ;)

How would that work, legally?

This assumes that having a set of specific legal rights as a result of being in a particular sort of relationship is a good thing. ;) I would much rather see those rights taken on one at a time volitionally, on purpose, rather than simply afforded to people through virtue of their saying in front of any random judge or priest "Yeah, I want to be with this person for the rest of my life, or until we decide we can't stand the way the other person chews his or her food."

This said, what I think we'd have instead of an automatic set of legal rights that come along with marriage is a variety of marriage contracts, and chances are that one of them would, over time, become the standard.

In a court of law, who would decide whether plaintiff A's claim that he was married to plaintiff B and thus deserves alimony after being dumped for plaintiff C?

OK, here we run out of my area of expertise, as I am not an attorney of any sort and don't play one on TV. But why wouldn't it work the same way courts of law currently preside over contract disputes?

How is it possible to avoid having some sort of government-overseen system (whatever that means)?

Well, in a sense, private contracts mediated by a court of law are a government-overseen system, just a terribly minimalist one (this being the difference between a libertarian and an anarcho-capitalist).

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Thanks for updating the history! All of that was coming from my memory of having an undergraduate class that discussed these issues about ten *gulp* years ago.

On the topic of civil vs. religious ceremonies, in many countries (Mexico and Argentina are two that come to mind) there are actually two distinct marriage ceremonies. The civil ceremony is presided over by a representative of the government and the marriage license is signed. This cermony seems to take place the day before the religious ceremony does. (This first baffled and then intrigued me when I went to a wedding in Mexico!) In the US, these are usually combined, as you know.

I suppose that our ceremony was a civil one, since we're not religious. We wrote it ourselves, and there wasn't any religion involved. The hard part was finding a person who could legally preside. We went to a wonderful wedding last fall in which two lawyers got married. One of their friends, a judge, married them. Their dog was "best animal". The judge carried a copy of a Dr. Suess book in her arms, as a minister would a Bible. It was great!

Have you ever perfoemed a commitment ceremony for a couple who couldn't make it "legal"?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

You were the first person I knew who posted it, and then shortly after, it was everywhere. And yeah, I think the AFA was surprised! Of course, they automatically think it's a "homosexual conspiracy" and not an honest reflection of what people think.

[jedirita.livejournal.com]

Oh, hell yeah. I've done lots of weddings for lesbian couples, but have yet to do a wedding between two men.

I performed the ceremony for both my sisters: one as a state-recognized traditional Christian ceremony, and the other as a non-state-recognized non-traditional, non-Christian ceremony.

Laws vary from state to state, but in Texas, all that is required for a (straight) couple to be married is that they both agree on the person to witness it. It doesn't even have to be a minister, actually. So two people could agree to have their next door neighbor perform the ceremony, and that's legal according to Texas. At least, that's how I understand it. In Illinois it had to be a minister and two witnesses.

[nike-victory.livejournal.com]

Since they messed around with the results, does that mean I should go vote again, just to make sure I get heard?