Why isn't gay marriage legal?

[BiGuy8705]

With the legalization of gay marriage in CA and various other places, why are we so sure that in our lifetime we wont see gay marriage legalized in the rest of the US? It may take a while, but I truely do think in 10-15 or even 20 years we will see legalized gay marriages.... until then.... go to California!

We had a discussion about marriage laws in sociology class yesterday... and will be having an in-depth conversation on gay marriage in particular tomorrow. Yesterday we talked about how the rules on mariage got shifted from being in the family, to the church wanting a piece (eliminating gay marriage) in the very early days, then eventually the individual states took control of marriage regulations, and kept tradition against gay marriage.

 

[Roland00]

According to one survey I read, 70% of heterosexual American men think sex between two men is "just wrong" and over 50% think it's "disgusting." So we have a lot of people to convince.

For polls of everything gay related through the decades (the AEI collected past survey information, and putt the percents so you can track changes in opinion over time in one easy to read survey) Note its extremly long for it covers pretty much every gay issue.
http://www.aei.org/research/politicalCorner/publications/pubID.20867,projectID.14/pub_detail.asp

 

[RationalLunacy]

look at his gallery
http://justusboys.com/forum/view.php?photos=144200&title=evanjds-homepage

metta wins the RationalLunacy Good Find prize of the day!

 

[Roland00]

look at his gallery
http://justusboys.com/forum/view.php?photos=144200&title=evanjds-homepage

Boring, yes those guys are pretty, they just seem fake and lifeless like dolls

 

[metta]

Boring, yes those guys are pretty, they just seem fake and lifeless like dolls

I think that you missed the point. lol

 

[luckotheirish]

1. If Americans truly want "traditional" marriage. Then let them go back to what traditional marriage was about - a financial and property transaction. Women were property owned by their father until transferred to the groom/husband. Picture the bride on the arm of her father standing before their preacher and the groom. The preacher says, "Who gives this woman to this man?" People don't seem to understand what that means/meant.

2. Parallels are sometimes drawn between the Black Civil Rights Movement of the 20th Century and the Gay Civil Rights Movement of the 21st Century. To put it in those terms, we are in our Plessy v. Ferguson phase. That's the Supreme Court Case from 1896 that set the precedent that "separate but equal" was constitutional. Laws that currently exist in states where civil unions and domestic partnerships are allowed have "separate but equal" status.

We have not reached our Brown v. Board of Education phase yet. That case reversed Plessy v. Ferguson and said that "separate but equal" was NOT ok. It essentially ordered the end of segregation in schools in America.

3. Finally, we, as gay people, can and should continue pushing for acceptance and equal civil rights. But we are missing one VERY key ingredient that I believe will be necessary for our collective success. In the Black Civil Rights Movement there were white affluent people who supported the cause, albeit in comparatively small numbers. I believe the most important of these people was JFK. I posted this once before in another thread but I feel it's so important it's worth repeating here.

Kennedy gave a seminal speech on 11 June 1963:

speech from John F Kennedy
'... We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free ...'

It would make a great deal of difference to have a politically relevant heterosexual leader give a similar speech and ask the question, "Who among us would be content to have his sexuality changed?