Bay Windows is blogging the state constitutional convention, at which opponents of same-sex marriage will take another shot at discriminating against gay and lesbian couples.
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Anonymous
Yep. There’s a real non-partisan post for you.
Dan Kennedy
Absolutely! Senate Republican Leader Brian Lees has been terrific on this issue. Thank you for acknowledging the nonpartisan nature of Media Nation.
Dan Kennedy
Bay Windows editor Susan Ryan-Vollmar has a response to Anon 5:11:I’m not sure what the point of anon’s post was. Is he/she unaware that Democrats (Phil Travis and Emile Gogeun) are the lawmakers leading the effort to amend the state constitution to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying? And that Republicans, like Brian Lees, have been leaders in the fight to protect civil marriage rights? For the record, Bay Windows (I am the editor) is not a politically partisan newspaper. But it is a paper with a point of view: We like politicians who don’t discriminate against lesbian and gay people. In the United States at this particular juncture, that means that most of the pols we like are Democrats.Dan, thanks for linking to our ConCon blog.
Anonymous
Good for the gay community on this one. These ballot questions are a nasty habit to break. We elect lawmakers to do just that–make laws. You want a law changed? Vote for someone who will vote to change it. This week just keeps getting better. Somebody pinch me.
Don
Because marriage is strictly a religious concept, what would Jesus say?
Brigid
From my reading of the gospels, Jesus would probably say, “Let’s have dinner.” He made a habit of hanging out with those on whom the rest of society looked down. (And have you noticed how much the local Catholic bishops are resembling the scribes and the Pharisees these days?)As for “marriage is strictly a religious concept,” we wouldn’t be having this whole conversation if that were true. In this country we tend to treat civil and religious marriage as if they were the same thing, but they’re not. In Europe, most couples get married twice, once at the church, once at the town hall.Being a believer in the Constitution and all that, I don’t think the state has the right to dictate religious marriage, but civil marriage is a state matter, and therefore, there should be no discrimination. Perhaps it’s time we separated the two so we could have some clarity on this issue.
CCFK
Marriage is a religious concept? That’s funny, I had always figured that people had gotten married well before the start of the Christian church and that even today marriage is a civil contract that can have a religious component if one wishes it to. I didn’t realize that the Catholic church, the Episcoplians, the Baptists, or insert a religion here were the ones granting marriage licenses. That being said, some religions do embrace marriage equality, like the Unitarians.If people want to go to church and oppose same sex marriage that’s fine, but civil society, at least as expressed by the Massachusetts constituion, requires equality under the law. It really isn’t that difficult to understand.
Anonymous
Marriage is, indeed, a religious concept. The state, strictly speaking, is involved in … yes … civil unions, even between heterosexuals. That is, the state’s oversight is limited to property rights and legal/criminal matters (questions of child custody, allegations of abuse and abandonment). The other stuff (adultery, the role of each partner within the union) is no longer the state’s concern. That being said, vis-a-vis Jesus, if he were concerned about homosexuality, you think he might have mentioned it once? He doesn’t, however he has plenty to say on divorce, hypocrisy, the likelihood of rich people getting to heaven, and how the poor should be treated. But homosexuality? Well, perhaps it just slipped his mind. But don’t try telling that to Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell or Joe Ratzinger.