Iowa's Supreme Court understands what the real stuff is when it comes to gay marriage, and the Court clearly understands the US Constitution. Read the ruling here. One of my Facebook buds -- you will know the Hip Unhip one as Don -- showed me this link. Also, over on the NorthPuffiner's blog, there's a bit of talk about the focus on gay marriage.
Regardless to say, I agree with the Iowa SC's ruling. I disagree with those who make the specious claim that marriage is only about children and the natural bearing of same, or that it has some bearing on "morality." Marriage as a church sacrament was about church approval of contractual bonds between land owning families (read noblemen) in order to ensure that the acknowledged offspring of those unions (whether or not the children actually came from either of the married pair) inherited the properties.
Marriage today is about forming a family unit for a broad array of civil and legal conveniences, entitlements, and rights. It is, by its own nature, a moral thing. It may be between one man and one woman who either can not or refuse to procreate. It may be between one man and one woman each of whom have several children by other means (prior marriages or children born out of wedlock). It may be as it was with my own parents -- a marriage into which children were adopted, and a marriage that broke apart as my father went from one lover to the next.
In some cultures legal and sanctified marriage may be between one man and many women. So it was in Jesus' time and culture, and so it continues to be in many cultures today.
There are cultures today where marriage may be between one woman and many men.
And in sub-cultures today, marriage may be between many people of any of the three sexes.
Sticking your head in the hoary muck of "God Intended One Man & One Woman When It Comes To Marriage Cuz That's How Genesis Defined It" is utter nonsense. Even the people who wrote the Adam & Eve fable believed in multiple wives and concubines, for goodness' sake! God intended men and women to create children. He intended them to be raised in a stable society with stable family resources from which to draw. In the days when the Man was the sole breadwinner, it made sense for there to be a man in that family unit, but today, that's hogwash.
As Iowa's Justice Cady wrote: If gay and lesbian people must submit to different treatment without an exceedingly persuasive justification, they are deprived of the benefits of the principle of equal protection upon which the rule of law is founded.
God Bless Justice Cady, and God Bless America -- here's hoping the rest of the country stops fearing their own rectums, pulls their heads out of it, steps OUT of the nation's bedrooms and moves ahead.
About the Iowa way to treat you,
When we treat you
Which we may not do at all.
There's an Iowa kind of special
Chip-on-the-shoulder attitude.
We've never been without.
That we recall.
We can be cold
As our falling thermometers in December
If you ask about our weather in July.
And we're so by God stubborn
We could stand touchin' noses
For a week at a time
And never see eye-to-eye.
You liberals have really stepped in it this time.
> Marriage *today* is about
> forming a family unit for a
> broad perspective of civil
> and legal issues. It is, by
> its own nature, a moral
> thing.
Now, see, that's where we go off track. Marriage today, like marriage centuries ago, is a contract that governs transfer of property from one generation to the next.
Once upon a time, the transfer was guaranteed by the guy with the big stick which, while interesting from an anthropological (and even evolutionary) standpoint, has nothing to do with procreation in this sense.
Now that we have governing bodies in the form of states, the transfer is guaranteed by the guy with the judicial robes and the state gets its cut. Usually in cash rather than flesh.
Understand this. The state sanctions marriage. A church, any church, sanctifies it. It is perfectly legal to have a civil marriage without the presence of God. OTOH, the opposite is not true.
But my point had nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with keeping our elected representatives busy so they could not screw up anything else.
You saw my comment on the No'Puffin blog.
My question remains: what is the financial impact (Federal, state and local budgets, as well as on private enterprise) of making this change in the laws regarding marriage?
Does anyone freaking KNOW? I sincerely doubt it.
Which means if we find in a couple of years that it sux hugely, then we will damned well (and I use the term advisedly) deserve it.
;-)
Bob
Took me a while to get back to this.
Wondering about what it will cost if boys can legally marry boys and girls can legally marry girls is a bit of a strawman argument.
You're right that no one likely knows -- one might speculate using percentages of people who are gay who would want to "marry", but we already have a percentage of heterosexual people who marry just for the benefits. My brother married the mother of his child so he could qualify for her dental coverage.
It doesn't matter what the financial burden is. We are either set up to pay it, or we should do away with it altogether. The fact of the matter is that any loving people who wish to form a family unit -- the core of any vibrant society -- should be able to do that and society should be structured so as to encourage the strength and durability of such a union.
I suspect the money circling the bottom of that porcelain bowl is hemorrhaging more from illegal immigrants, marriages for convenience, and outright fraud than will EVER be lost because some boys want to set up house together.
Posty posted
> My question remains: what is
> the financial impact (Federal,
> state and local budgets, as
> well as on private enterprise)
> of making this change ...?
Well, let's see. Gays as a taxpaying class pay marginally higher income taxes than straights. OTOH, married couples pay marginally lower income taxes
than couples who file separately. That's a wash.
Benefits are more interesting. I don't think I'm going out on much of a limb to say that more than half of gay couples want to marry for the health care.
I gotta ask my Conservative friends this: do you want to hope a gay person's health care ends up on a private/commercial insurance plan or do you want them to remain uninsured and push up the numbers to justify the Liberal single payor agenda?