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March 15, 2004
More On Gay Marriage

Two articles have caught my eye over the intervening days since my last post.

The first was in the LA Times over the weekend. I'm pretty sure I saw this on The Volokh Conspiracy (link to the right). Dr. Volokh said it gave a pretty balanced account of the arguments against gay marriage and this is certainly the first piece that shook my confidence enough to make me honestly consider the other side of the argument. That said, I don't like polygamy but that is first blush. I'm not so sure it really hurts anyone, but that is the one grounds that may make polygamy distinguishable from gay marriage as there may be something to the inherent difficulties of balancing power in personal relationships with more than two people.

The second article was an interesting theory about the state of the argument about gay marriage. Donald Sensing makes an interesting point that marriage was doomed the moment technology made birth control reliable.

I'm still very comfortable that the right thing to do now on gay marriage is to abrogate it to the states and let some states try it. I still think the global right thing to do is to allow it to become commonplace but I admit that the LA Times piece makes me think about that position more. Part of this has to do with the fact that I think its easy to make a case that Lawrence v. Texas means that the law of the land will not be able to discriminate based on sexual preference and that may already spell the doom on the bans on gay marriage and polygamy. No matter on one level - I do know that way too much of the opposition to gay marriage comes down to bigotry.

Posted by hoffmang at 07:30 PM

March 07, 2004
What Really is the Argument Against Homosexuality

The argument against homosexuality comes down to an "axiom" masked in a debate about whether Homosexuality is a choice. My personal feeling on the choice debate is that there is a continuum of sexual orientation and different people are placed by "nature", in the nature v. nurture sense, on the homosexual end of that spectrum. My experience with my homosexual friends is that they have no more power over their sexual orientation than I do over mine. In fact I've watched a few of them suffer until they accepted how they truly felt.

For the sake of exposing the argument a bit I will however accept that homosexual orientation is 100% personal choice. If we work from this thesis, then homosexual orientation is no different than religious orientation in the framework of legal rights and discrimination. Both are choices. Jews can become christians, muslims jews, etc...

In the religious context, wouldn't everyone have a problem with statements like, "all fundamentalist christians should not dishonor marriage with speaking in tongues and thus should not be allowed to marry" or, "all muslims are adulterous and thus don't deserve a full legal right to marry?" I can not see any difference in the current arguments used to justify separate but equal treatment for homosexuals at best and plain old discrimination at worst from these sorts of tenets about religious discrimination. In the old south, where I'm from, I know that the feeling about Catholics used to be that they were one step up from snake charmers. Do Catholics really want precedent that personal choice should be grounds for oppression? I know I'm ignoring the First Amendment here, but people are talking about amending the constitution.

If we all still wanted non intrusive behavior to be legislated by government, then I want to pass a law that denies marriage to sanctimonious religion folks. If people are legislating morality, where is the do unto others part?

Posted by hoffmang at 10:06 AM

March 02, 2004
RFIDs in New $20 Bills

This strikes me as a little bit underhanded. Cash is no longer anonymous.

Posted by hoffmang at 07:48 AM
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