The wokes, a few on this board, have been screaming for years that there is no *slippery slope* with same sex marriage rights, but here we are.

I'd say the slippery slope started long before there. Homosexuals got marriage rights when most heterosexuals decided they weren't worth anything.

10:37 EST (14:37 UTC), 11 OCT 2020

What Ben said is correct.

I can't believe the NYT has sunk to this level. There seems to be no bottom to which the news media will sink in their hatred of and disdain for a civilized society.

Jane Ward is stuck in the past. Or in college:

"extortions of capitalism, the misogyny of violence against women, the racist and xenophobic erasure of nonwhite families, and the homophobic hatreds that pervade so much of everyday life."

vs. Headlines:

"More women are now outearning their husbands – and emotions can be big"
USA Today. March 3, 2020

"Domestic Violence and the LGBTQ Community" (equal or higher risk)
NCADV June 6, 2018

"Steep Rise In Interracial Marriages Among Newlyweds 50 Years After They Became Legal"
NPR May 18, 2017

"What Is Rejection Sensitivity?"
verywellmind. April 19, 2020

Jane Ward believes regular heterosexual couples have an indecent emotional life. But her explorations are sandbox piddlings, shallow and nearly incoherent. And she was trained that way.

Isab & Ben, if I recall correctly, you’re both opposed to same-sex marriage, right?

Amending what Ben said:

Heterosexuals decided marriage wasn't worth anything when the Sexual Revolution emptied it of meaning - culminating in the fiction of "gay marriage".

It's a mistake to think this "just happened". The Left was gunning for the family since Marx.

The Left was gunning for the family since Marx. ~ Ben David at October 11, 2020 10:30 AM

Even before that. According to a 1994 paper written by Richard Weikart, emeritus professor of history at CSU Stanislaus and specialist in European Intellectual History:

By the mid- to late-nineteenth century it was clear to advocates and opponents alike that many socialists shared a propensity to reject the institution of the family in favour of 'free love', if not in practice, at least as an ideal.

[...]

Although Marx and Engels were not the instigators of the anti-family trend among socialists, they—especially Engels—contributed mightily to it.

[...]

Although there were no doubts in the minds of Marx's and Engels' contemporaries that socialism was a threat not only to the state, but also to the family, some recent commentators on Marx's and Engel's view of the family cast doubt on their radicalism. Some construe their attacks on the family as a call for reform, as an expression of a desire to sweep away abuses, while retaining the basic family structure intact. Others discover in Engels' writings on the family naturalistic elements that allegedly vitiate his radical pronouncements on the abolition of the family.

[...]

Whichever side of Marx and Engels one stresses, however, it is clear that they subordinated in a significant way their critique of the family to their critique of economics. This distinguished Marx's and Engels' view of the family from that of Fourier and Owen. Marx and Engels believed that the abolition of private property and the introduction of socialism would bring in its wake a dissolution of the family. Fourier and Owen, on the other hand, saw the abolition of the family as part and parcel of their socialist proposals to ameliorate society

[...]

Whatever Engels may have conjectured about the natural affinity of humans toward stable amorous relationships in communist society, he envisioned a society in which no compulsion would interfere with relationships. Thus, theoretically, any sexual relationship between mutually consenting persons would be possible. What would not be possible would be the security of a life-long marriage.

Laura Preble published a novel called "Out." It's about a society in which homosexuality is normal and it's illegal to be heterosexual. It almost feels like someone wants to create that society.

While it may be that homosexuals find hetero-sex disgusting, that doesn't make it disgusting. There is nothing in heterosexuality that causes racism (last I checked, POC have sex also) or any of that other drivel. This is the "everything about our existing culture is evil" mentality, without proof and without any comparison culture that is better. It is clear that this (the US) is about as good as has ever existed in history.

While it may be that homosexuals find hetero-sex disgusting, that doesn't make it disgusting. There is nothing in heterosexuality that causes racism (last I checked, POC have sex also) or any of that other drivel. This is the "everything about our existing culture is evil" mentality, without proof and without any comparison culture that is better. It is clear that this (the US) is about as good as has ever existed in history.

"It's about a society in which homosexuality is normal and it's illegal to be heterosexual.

Well, Soros, Obama, Hillary and their liberal elite satanic cronies will eventually get around to that but, for right now, they're too busy being child sex predators and eating babies. Priorities, you know.

While it may be that homosexuals find hetero-sex disgusting, that doesn't make it disgusting. There is nothing in heterosexuality that causes racism (last I checked, POC have sex also) or any of that other drivel. This is the "everything about our existing culture is evil" mentality, without proof and without any comparison culture that is better. It is clear that this (the US) is about as good as has ever existed in history.

...for right now, they're too busy being child sex predators and eating babies. Priorities, you know. ~ JD at October 11, 2020 2:31 PM

Let's not be fatuous, JD.

Conan, you did notice what it was in response to, right?

“While it may be that homosexuals find hetero-sex disgusting, that doesn't make it disgusting.”

• • • • •

I don’t think gays and lesbians spend much, if any, time thinking about straight people having sex.

In contrast, there are quite a few straight people — especially, although not exclusively, religious conservatives — who think about, and are disgusted, by the idea of gays and lesbians having sex.

You are absolutely correct in the general point that is contained in your comment: a person’s subjective opinion about something — sex, food, music, art, etc. — does not equate to an objective reality.

Isab & Ben, if I recall correctly, you’re both opposed to same-sex marriage, right?

JD at October 11, 2020 10:20 AM

I’m opposed to government sanctioning marriage at all. They should be registering civil unions, and adjudicating break ups of those unions when they involve property disputes, or child custody and support. The government should not be getting involved in a deeply personal religious ceremony.

" The government should not be getting involved in a deeply personal religious ceremony. "

Like when the cops busted that Louisiana priest for banging two dominatrixes on the church altar. WTH, people. That's sanctified ground. You can't have the government in there

Isab, that's remarkably similar to what Katha Pollitt wrote in Dec. 2003 - the whole essay is on the pages 142-144 in her essay collection, Virginity or Death!:

"Gay marriage - it's not about sex, it's about separation of church and state."

In the meantime, on the one hand, Camille Paglia certainly had a point when she said in 1993 or earlier: "We painfully discovered that a just society cannot…function if everyone does his own thing….Everyone of my generation who preached free love is responsible for AIDS."

But, on the other hand, in a world where children are simply not the automatic economic asset to the individual family the way they were two centuries ago or so, people HAVE to be free to do their own thing - including choosing the childfree lifestyle - if they hope to have even a modest version of the middle-class lifestyle without feeling guilty about wanting security over children. (Back in the 1950s, even men weren't really socially free to choose the unmarried life; IIRC, such men weren't likely to get promoted at work. Not exactly fair to those men who WANTED to marry and have families but couldn't afford to just yet!)

My point is that, yes, we could all do with less hostility in our political parties' ideologies. But...the gay movement HELPED heterosexuals by allowing gays to say, post-Stonewall, "no, we are no longer going to conform and create sham marriages that would just cause great unhappiness to the innocent people we would deceive - and to the children we were forced to have." In the same vein, the people who openly opposed marriage and preached free love, even in the 19th century, paved the way, for better or worse, in the 20th century, for birth control, the right to be childfree, AND the right to pursue happiness, even when it wasn't quite the kind one wanted.

(That is, plenty of CF women want to marry, but a lot of men still don't see the point in marrying if the men don't want kids. So, IF a CF woman can't find a husband, at least she now has the right to pursue the consolation prize - premarital sex. Imagine how unhappy she'd be if even THAT were still taboo! Also, it might be hard for a CF man to find a truly CF woman - especially a woman under 25. But, even if he wants to marry, he no longer has to do so long before age 25. That's something.)

JD, even if every STD were eradicated, the human mouth alone would still seethe with nasty bacteria. So, maybe children and preteens are merely reacting with common sense when they go "ewww, gross!" whenever they're forced to witness kissing, whether in a Disney movie or in real life, regardless of anyone's gender. (The same theory may apply to asexual adults.)

Btw, Gog, guess what happened to the altar?

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article246381335.html

"I’m opposed to government sanctioning marriage at all. They should be registering civil unions, and adjudicating break ups of those unions when they involve property disputes, or child custody and support. The government should not be getting involved in a deeply personal religious ceremony."

I wonder if you and others have even noticed how many ways you can BE married: Justice of the Peace, ship's captain, judge, even notary publics, in addition to anyone who wants to be ordained by 50 states and several territories: these people merely check that you are there, intend what you profess, and fill out two lines on a license at most.

So this can be deeply religious or completely casual. Have you really not heard of Britney's patronage of the drive-up chapel in Vegas?

-----

Now to be serious: you depend on the state - yes, you do, don't lie to me! - to provide an umbrella of legal protection to shelter you and your assets from your and others' bad decisions and misfortune. If you do NOT have an official record with the State (and often those assets are interstate and international), your offspring can starve as your assets are spread to the four winds, sometimes by a probate court when they cannot find someone definitive to take custody of those assets.

In fact, this was the whole POINT of gay marriage: sheltering loved ones from the predation of "family" who just plain hate gays.

So don't be foolish. You get what you ask for, you're more likely to lose, and lose big, when those you've trusted turn on you.

In fact, this was the whole POINT of gay marriage: sheltering loved ones from the predation of "family" who just plain hate gays.

So don't be foolish. You get what you ask for, you're more likely to lose, and lose big, when those you've trusted turn on you.

Radwaste at October 12, 2020 4:42 AM

If you live in a community property state, you may find that “marriage” does the exact opposite of what you believe it protects.

A legal series of protections for contracting cohabiting domestic partners doesn’t need to be called marriage, as most countries in Europe have decided.

JD, I'm not opposed to homosexual marriage. I am opposed to judicial overreach. Such a change should have been decided by congress. I am also realistic about the consequences of current marriage laws. You cannot separate rights and responsibilities. When you try to push all the bad stuff off onto one guy while someone else gets all the good stuff it shouldn't be surprising when bad stuff guy decides to not participate.

And Rad is wrong about gay marriage being about protecting gay couples from their families. In no state does marriage do that. As for the property rights stuff you can get most of that through a will. The part you miss out on is the tax reduction spouses get. Instead gay marriage was about normalizing gay relationships. It doesn't do that. But that was the intent by activists working on it.

> In fact, this was the whole POINT
> of gay marriage: sheltering loved
> ones from the predation of "family"
> who just plain hate gays.

Naw. It was about a socially detached but comfortable middle class desperate to feel self-righteous in the wake of their own intimate incompetence, and to be seen as compassionate within a nebulous peer group.

Divorce and familial ineptitude exploded across our culture. With enormous propulsion from liberal & intrusive government, fatherlessness in particular ravaged the most vulnerable populations; the black, the poor and the simple-minded. Straights had seen the stoic discipline and emotional meaning of marriage drained away by their own interpersonal failure and neediness… So they were eager to strike a pose of brotherly tolerance and personal acceptance, one for which they found no occasion in their private conduct, and which cost them nothing to feign.

Straights:

Here you go, Gays… *We* know it's bullshit, but perhaps you can squeeze a little more pretense of affection and warmth from this desiccated husk of intimate tradition. We'll hand it off to you like a big brother passing down a broken, now-unstylish toy to a younger sibling who's still eager to sate the envy from its unwrapping last Christmas morning; Besides, the girls in my peer group don't like boys who play with such childish things anymore.

Thanks, Straights! It will make us feel special to pretend that through our shared government, those around us take an personal interest in our interior lives and care about us enough to certify the righteousness of our idiot bonding. And long-term, we promise to sully the institution just as you did.

Such a change should have been decided by congress. ~ Ben at October 12, 2020 8:16 AM

On this, Ben and I agree. This should not have been a Court-ordered change, but a legislated one. However, our representatives in Congress have abdicated their responsibility to take a stand on an issue lest they anger constituents who do not re-elect them.

With the general abdication of legislative duties, you see why Dems are so anxious to pack the Court. With an overwhelmingly leftist SCOTUS, they can get their social justice agenda implemented and keep their hands clean for the re-election campaign.

Conan, you did notice what it was in response to, right? ~ JD at October 11, 2020 5:34 PM

Yes. Fayd brought up a book, Out, by Laura Preble, in which the author asks straight people to consider what it would be like if their sexuality were outlawed and demonized by society at large.

I haven't read it, but the reviews on Amazon are mostly positive.

Rad, about ships' captains...not exactly.

From 2014:

"A Marriage at Sea? Get Me Rewrite."

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/fashion/weddings/a-marriage-at-sea-get-me-rewrite.html

And yes, Star Trek gets mentioned.

"guess what happened to the altar?"

Nuns?

I wish I'd been invited just to see the spirits of the naughty rise from the flames.

"Woooo. Woooooo! I've been a bad priest woooooooo!".

"It's about a society in which homosexuality is normal and it's illegal to be heterosexual."

Hey, someone mentioned Star Trek: ST:TNG had an episode about this - and the chick who thought Riker was hot got medically corrected.

Don't miss the point that you can, right now, be married a hunnert differnt ways today - and that the legal protection of a spouse across state lines was and is definitely a prime issue. Want to roll those dice traveling across the country or around the world? Go ahead, it's your choice - but don't be surprised when an immensely powerful State doesn't care about your exceptions to their standard practices.

I must admit I can't make much sense out of what you've written Rad. There are no standard practices for marriage around the world. Every state had different rules. Even across the US there is not a uniform definition for marriage or what rights/responsibilities it involves. And around the US people have overwhelmingly decided to not participate. The marriage rate is already under 50% and looks to stabilize in a generation or two at 20%.