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Posted on January 30, 2007
| | buzz-it! | Huff it!

Comment from John Edwards’ site
from member, “neverlosehope”

I think at least for the period of my own lifetime - and certainly the lifetime of this election cycle bantering the word ‘marriage’ about is a losing prospect when it is joined up with the word ‘gay’- an unfortunate term in itself.

The actual and implied understanding of ‘marriage’ defaulted into the civic/legal sphere from the religious one it seems to me - or [more likely] just developed in parallel - but the point is that ‘gay marriage’ is [still] anathema to too many to be workable and is not even a sufficient and suitable container to describe a legal relationship of co-dependency [heck, or even ‘multi-dependency’ for that matter].

At the same time the term ‘marriage’ is legally ubiquitous and so pretty difficult to replace with a new term and understanding that emcompasses a wider range of LEGAL relationships and obligations. It would mean simultaneously purging ‘marriage’ from the legal/civil lexicon with the result that it would necessarily be restricted to describing religious sanctions and approbations as any particular sect could individually define.

So, creating a broader framework is the strategy I would suggest. It would handle declarations of co-dependency and agreements of legal rights and obligations between more possible classes of people whether of same or different gender, of other non-related individuals, or siblings, or extended family members, or perhaps even groups of people and place it outside of the traditional implied determination of a marriage to procreate alone.

I imagine an approach that acknowledges the necessity of such a framework in civil establishments and having compliance with our understanding of the separation of church and state.

The MSM presentation of ‘Gay’ activism has created a stereotype of hedonism that gets conflated into this issue and just compounds the problems. I do think this is partly the fault of gay activism itself though - you don’t really see the brazen carnival atmosphere of let’s say straight hedonistic ’swingers’ for instance in SINGULAR events like the Stonewall parade event in NYC or Southern Decadence in New Orleans — and events in San Franciso etc…which creates a visceral opposition of gay culture generally and is then specifically applied as opposition to other efforts like this that would otherwise be a legitimate libertarian agenda.

God didn’t create capitalism.

by neverlosehope
on 1/27/2007 at 3:03 EST

I’d provide a link, but because the “blog” doesn’t follow the customs of blogging, I don’t know whether anyone without my login could see it.

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