Gay MArriage Amandment -- Don't Forget on Nov 7th!!

[tele_mark]

The whole issue here is the simple fact that if your legislator wants to put the vote off until after Nov. 7 it is because they know that their vote may be against that of those that would elect them... meaning they dont care what their voters want.

THAT is why it is important to send them a message. Those that voted "no" understand that their position is given to them by their voters and can be taken away by their voters.

This is not about gay marriage for me... I could care less who marries who... this is about the fact that the legilature doesnt care what the voters want... and that is the major issue with MA.

Well said.

 

[Lynne]

And should we get the chance to vote on this...what will happen?? We voted to lower the tax rate to 5%. Has it been lowered? Just because they give us our damn rights, that doesn't mean they have to follow our will.

Have I mentioned of late that I REALLY hate this state????

 

[JellyFish]

They don't fear the voters because most voters are stupid and keep reelecting the same asswipes.

We need to have one year where a whole bunch of them get sweeped out of office. Until this happens and the rest of them get scared, they will do what they always do...whatever they want.

And as far as the voters go, they could care less about us.

Sad and pathetic but true.

And should we get the chance to vote on this...what will happen?? We voted to lower the tax rate to 5%. Has it been lowered? Just because they give us our damn rights, that doesn't mean they have to follow our will.

Have I mentioned of late that I REALLY hate this state????

 

[Lynne]

They don't fear the voters because most voters are stupid and keep reelecting the same asswipes.

Jelly gets the cupie doll. That's exactly what the problem is.

 

[matt1956]

Years ago, I had a constitutional law professor that said, "The only way to ensure that government respects and follows the wishes of the pubic, is to continually vote out the incumbants."

 

[Homer]

Years ago, I had a constitutional law professor that said, "The only way to ensure that government respects and follows the wishes of the pubic, is to continually vote out the incumbants."

AMEN!
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On the question, I am angry about the tax rollback not going through. I was angry with the electorate when "clean elections" passed but even more angry when Tom Finneran distorted the issue and put back to the voters in a much more "favorable" (To Him) wording. The main difference I see with questions that deal with taxes, or elections, or geyhounds, or liquor in grocery stores versus one that deals with gay marriage is the first type is not of a "dicriminatory" nature on a human level. I am a Conservative, therefore I want government out of not only my, but everyone elses bedroom, livingroom etc. If two gay people want to marry, who does it hurt? Not Me, so therefore why should I try to stop it? Secondly, The Constitution (Local, State, Federal) is a document that should not be used for discrimination. It is a document that lays down rights for individuals, it is not suposed to be used to take them away. Using the government , be it through referendum or elected official to further discriminate against someone doing something that harms no one and is their private life is no better that activist judges interpretting law to suit their political agenda.

If he could see what has become of his movement today, I am sure Barry Goldwater is rolling over in his grave.

 

[JonJ]

Term limits.

 

[KMaurer]

Years ago, I had a constitutional law professor that said, "The only way to ensure that government respects and follows the wishes of the pubic, is to continually vote out the incumbants."

I disagree. If you automatically vote out all incombents, then what's the incentive for them to respect your rights and wishes while they're in office? After all, you're just going to vote them out any way, aren't you. Same thing goes for term limits. They only thing that will do any good is to pay attention to what they do while in office, reelect the good ones and dump the others. The problem is that that would be too much work for the average voter, so we get Ted Kennedy and a lot of BS "solutions" from people who should know better.

Ken

 

[SiameseRat]

Am I the only one who wishes, every now and then, that the government would just shut up and leave their fingers out of your pies?

I say less government, more personal liberty... If you want to have a legally binding contract with another person, (though maybe it's not a bad thing to limit it to people only ) then who the heck cares? It doesn't affect me. How much more of my total income do I have to pay for the "shut the hell up and leave me alone" tax?


(I can dream, can't I? )

 

[Martlet]

You know what really frosts my cookies? If you speak out in favor of a vote, regardless of you're reasoning, you're automatically called a homophobe. I have a troll on my blog that enjoys following me around with that nonsense.

Why can't people understand that I could give a crap who gets married and what their reasons are, as long as it was allowed for by the citizens of Masachusetts, not a panel of judges who tossed out the intent of the people who developed the marriage laws?

I've stated my views numerous times. Those would never become reality. If everything stays as it is now, I wouldn't be unhappy with the result, only the means used to achieve it. I would change the divorce laws, though. Divorce should be so damn hard and hurt so much, you really think about it before you marry. Everything has become so easy in our society. Too much debt? Go bankrupt. Too much house? Repossess. Wife get fat? Divorce. Too many kids? Welfare.

Make it hurt, baby.

 

[JellyFish]

If they say you're a homophobe, just tell them you and I dated in high school or college. We had a tempestuous affair but ultimately broke up.

That will perplex them.

You know what really frosts my cookies? If you speak out in favor of a vote, regardless of you're reasoning, you're automatically called a homophobe. I have a troll on my blog that enjoys following me around with that nonsense.

Why can't people understand that I could give a crap who gets married and what their reasons are, as long as it was allowed for by the citizens of Masachusetts, not a panel of judges who tossed out the intent of the people who developed the marriage laws?

I've stated my views numerous times. Those would never become reality. If everything stays as it is now, I wouldn't be unhappy with the result, only the means used to achieve it. I would change the divorce laws, though. Divorce should be so damn hard and hurt so much, you really think about it before you marry. Everything has become so easy in our society. Too much debt? Go bankrupt. Too much house? Repossess. Wife get fat? Divorce. Too many kids? Welfare.

Make it hurt, baby.

 

[JellyFish]

Polls undercount support for same-sex marriage ban

Polls undercount support for same-sex marriage ban
Measures on 5 state ballots likely to pass despite survey results
- Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, October 27, 2006

Proponents of measures to prohibit same-sex marriage say New Jersey's Supreme Court ruling that committed same-sex couples deserve the same rights as heterosexual couples will motivate voters to pass constitutional bans.

But most of the measures on the Nov. 7 ballot in eight other states already have strong voter support. In fact, they may be even farther ahead than they appear, because polling on the issue has been consistently and inexplicably inaccurate.

Same-sex marriage ban supporters and opponents agree that pre-election polls often undercount support for the measures.

Voters in 15 states have approved such bans since August 2004, and polls conducted before elections in seven of them underestimated the yes vote. (No polls were published in three of the states, and poll results in the other five were within the margin of error.)

Polls that underestimated support for the bans were off by as much as 19 percentage points in North Dakota and 7 to 16 percentage points in six other states.

"What it means is that if history is any guide, which I think it is, you have to subtract at least four percentage points from pre-election polls to get a more accurate reading of what the results are going to be on election day," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a gay rights group working in opposition to the amendments.

Bans are expected to pass Nov. 7 in Idaho, Virginia, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee. The races still appear close in Colorado, Arizona and Wisconsin.

Polls have been published on the proposed constitutional amendments in six of those states, and in all six, the most recent survey showed the bans passing -- in Arizona by a margin of 9 percentage points, and in Tennessee by 53 percentage points.

A poll of likely voters that gay-rights supporters in Arizona conducted for their internal use shows their state's measure failing 48 to 41 percent, with 11 percent of respondents undecided.

Marty Rouse, national field director of the Human Rights Campaign, another gay rights organization opposing the amendments, estimates most polls are off by five percentage points.

"On the undecided factor, they're not undecided," he said. "I put them in the 'anti' (same-sex marriage) column. People have very firm feelings of where they are on this issue."

Ban supporters also account for the consistent polling error in their strategies.

"We've seen it, I think, in every single case, that it is underpolled every single time," said Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs at the conservative Family Research Council. "I've seen higher, but normally we would add 5 to 10 percentage points to any polling."

Gay rights supporters blame people's unwillingness to express an anti-gay opinion to a pollster for the discrepancy between polls and the ballot box, and McClusky agrees. But public opinion experts who study the phenomenon of "social desirability," which leads people to lie to pollsters on issues like church attendance or whether they would vote for an African American candidate, think other factors may be more significant.

Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Center in Washington, said he doubts there is stigma about opposing same-sex marriage, because 19 states have passed bans by wide margins, and many Democrats who support gay rights also oppose same-sex marriage.

John Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who studies social desirability in public opinion polling, said how pollsters ask the question and decide who is a likely voter may skew the numbers.

"It is completely inappropriate just to assume that there is social-desirability bias or intentional lying in a survey," he said.

Another professor who studies political polls said anti-gay sentiments might affect them, though.

"People are more likely to say they support individual or group rights even when in some cases they don't," said Michael Traugott of the University of Michigan.

E-mail Wyatt Buchanan at [email protected].

 

[JellyFish]

BTW, one thing that doesn't get mentioned is that the MA decision has probably cost gay people in other parts of the country a shot at marriage or civil unions for a long, long time. I don't think that activists in the gay community that pushed for marriage instead of civil unions really understood that there might be a HUGE political backlash and I think that's what we're seeing happen now.

I think a civil unions strategy would have been better and might not have caused such a backlash.

Just my two cents, take it as you will.

 

[Emoto]

BTW, one thing that doesn't get mentioned is that the MA decision has probably cost gay people in other parts of the country a shot at marriage or civil unions for a long, long time. I don't think that activists in the gay community that pushed for marriage instead of civil unions really understood that there might be a HUGE political backlash and I think that's what we're seeing happen now.

I think a civil unions strategy would have been better and might not have caused such a backlash.

Just my two cents, take it as you will.

I have long held this exact opinion. The word "marriage" itself is the big problem. Had they pushed for "the same legal, financial, and medical considerations as marriage" instead of marriage itself, they would have had many of the very same people who oppose gay marriage saying "sure, why not".

 

[JellyFish]

Yep, Emoto. I dislike the idea of marriage personally. I have no desire to marry another guy. Which one of us is the wife? I find that sort of idea demeaning to both men. A relationship between two men is of a different sort than a man or woman so why try to glom the idea of "marriage" onto it?

Nor do I like the term "husband" in relation to another man either. We are not each other's husband. The word "partner" is probably much more accurate and is more comfortable for me personally. Partner preserves the masculine integrity of both men while still making it clear that the relationship goes beyond friendship into a more special bond. "Husband" implies a man/woman paradigm that just strikes me as strange to glom onto a relationship between two men.

There have always been men throughout history that fell in love and loved each other. Or simply were sexual partners. But nobody ever tried to label it marriage and pretend that it was the same thing. Marriage was always considered a way to unite two families for the production and raising of the next generation.

So what's the REAL reason why the push is for marriage? Partly because of benefits and partly...and here's a reason that I bet you probably will NEVER hear in the media...lesbians. Yup, who do you think is the driving force in the gay community for marriage? You guessed it...lesbians. Like most women, marriage is a big deal for them and they are the ones who have pushed the strongest for it.

Lesbians, like other women, see marriage as the holy grail. And like most other women they tend to be ruled by their emotions and are ready to pick out curtains 15 minutes after meeting each other. Think I'm kidding? Lesbian relationships are the ULTIMATE form of drama. Twice as much estrogen, twice as much sheer emotional insanity. I know straight guys have fantasies about lesbians but you couldn't pay me enough to get anywhere near em'!

I know some gay men who have gotten married and quite often it seems that the marriage is open-ended with both people able to have sex outside the marriage. I know there are some heteros that do that too and fine, whatever. But let's not kid ourselves and say it's for production and maintenance of a family per se because it's really not. It's more about benefits and a contract than anything else and I think you can get that with civil unions.

 

[JonJ]

My feelings on this issue as stated the last time we debated this:

I look at traditional marriage as a religious ceremony that is conducted as a blessing by Deity. It exists in all religious cultures and embraces the bonding of a man and a woman. That's how I justify marriage a religious issue.
Somewhere along the line, the government got involved and when a man and woman did not want a religious ceremony the government created civil unions. Civil unions as sanctioned by the government should have been extended to homosexuals to give them the same rights as a heterosexual couple. If a church wants to marry a homosexual couple so be it but the government has no standing in defining a religious issue.

 

[reinbeau]

So what's the REAL reason why the push is for marriage? Partly because of benefits and partly...and here's a reason that I bet you probably will NEVER hear in the media...lesbians. Yup, who do you think is the driving force in the gay community for marriage? You guessed it...lesbians. Like most women, marriage is a big deal for them and they are the ones who have pushed the strongest for it.

Lesbians, like other women, see marriage as the holy grail. And like most other women they tend to be ruled by their emotions and are ready to pick out curtains 15 minutes after meeting each other. Think I'm kidding? Lesbian relationships are the ULTIMATE form of drama. Twice as much estrogen, twice as much sheer emotional insanity. I know straight guys have fantasies about lesbians but you couldn't pay me enough to get anywhere near em'!

Ding, ding, ding - we have a winner! That's it exactly, it's the lebians who want the wedding and the dress and all the fru-fru. Wedding = marriage, so they push for the M word, instead of pushing for civil unions, with all the legal rights and privileges that go with it.

And you couldn't pay be enough to get near them, either!

 

[JellyFish]

All women are pretty much the same in that sense. They are essentially bundles of massively conflicting impulses given to wildly see-sawing emotional mood swings.

Ding, ding, ding - we have a winner! That's it exactly, it's the lebians who want the wedding and the dress and all the fru-fru. Wedding = marriage, so they push for the M word, instead of pushing for civil unions, with all the legal rights and privileges that go with it.

And you couldn't pay be enough to get near them, either!

 

[reinbeau]

All women are pretty much the same in that sense. They are essentially bundles of massively conflicting impulses given to wildly see-sawing emotional mood swings.

Now, now, now, watch it with those generalizations. There are some of us who are level headed, not given to wild flights of fancy - you're foruming (how about that for a word?) with one right now. I can think of several other female forum members who don't fit your mold. And I can think of some male forum members (present company included ) who can be pretty emotional at times.

As for the lesbian issue, there are level headed lesbies, too. The activists, however, for the most part seem to be the fru-fru types.

 

[KMaurer]

All women are pretty much the same in that sense. They are essentially bundles of massively conflicting impulses given to wildly see-sawing emotional mood swings.

Ding, ding, ding - we have a winner! That's it exactly, it's the lebians who want the wedding and the dress and all the fru-fru. Wedding = marriage, so they push for the M word, instead of pushing for civil unions, with all the legal rights and privileges that go with it.

And you couldn't pay be enough to get near them, either!

As with most such broad generalizations, there are a lot of exceptions. I'd cite statistics on this, but a larnge number of studies demonstrate that 96.5% of all statistics are made up on the spur of the moment. In this case though, I happen to know one fairly well. They've been together quite a while; when the SJC changed the rules they were happy to get married, but it's hardly the defining moment for their relationship.

Ken

 

[JellyFish]

WHAT????? ARE YOU SAYING THAT I'M EMO???? THAT'S BULLSHIT!!!! HOW DARE YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT!!!!!!!!

MODERATOR!!!! MODERATOR!!! HELP!!! I'M BEING OPPRESSED BY A CRAZED AMAZON!!!!!!

Now, now, now, watch it with those generalizations. There are some of us who are level headed, not given to wild flights of fancy - you're foruming (how about that for a word?) with one right now. I can think of several other female forum members who don't fit your mold. And I can think of some male forum members (present company included ) who can be pretty emotional at times.

As for the lesbian issue, there are level headed lesbies, too. The activists, however, for the most part seem to be the fru-fru types.

 

[Len-2A Training]

Moderator at your service!!

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Jim,

I think it's time for your pills!

Did you skip your meds again today?

 

[dreppucci007]

Jim,

I think it's time for your pills!

Did you skip your meds again today?