Arguments against the Federal Marriage Amendment:

[rickrok66]

Arguments against the Federal Marriage Amendment:

From the Human Rights Campaign (http://www.hrc.org)

"Federal Marriage Amendment

The Federal Marriage Amendment is discriminatory.
It is wrong to single out a group of Americans for second-class status.

The Federal Marriage Amendment undermines the Constitution.
The Constitution should expand freedoms for Americans, not limit them.

The Federal Marriage Amendment is not what Congress should be focusing on.
Between the war in Iraq, rising health care costs and the continuing threat of terrorism, Congress has much more important things that it should be dealing with other than a constitutional amendment banning marriage between same-sex couples."

My arguments:

1. Due Process. Yes, individual states can pass law on marriage. It is a state issue. If one state passes a law allowing same sex marriage and that couple wants to be recognized in another state, then the court system is the mechanism in place to mitigate this process.

2. God and Marriage. The institution of marriage changes every fifty years or so. God didn’t ordain marriage as an institution 6,000 years ago when the world was created. Romantic love wasn’t a factor in marriage until the renaissance and that was only with the nobility. It spread as a factor in the decision to marry until later on with the lower classes. One hundred years ago, marriages were still arranged. A forty year old man could marry a teenager and no one cared – I think Edgar Allen Poe is a good example. Husbands were allowed to rape their wives – this was in some states in the 1970s. The “rule of thumb” term comes from the old British law that said that a man could beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb.

3. Hypocrisy. It is okay to quote a so-called 6,000 year old institution, but the FISA Law of 1978 is ancient and out of date.

4. Cynical Statistics. If every gay person in the United States (5-10%) of 270 million – say 27 million and every one of them was in the consenting age to marry – say 18-50 – say half – 14 million. Now, how many of them would want to get married? Let’s be generous and say half – 7 million. So, if 7 million people got married and created 3.5 million couples – who would really notice or care?

5. God and Marriage 2: If the state wants to legislate that any two consenting adults can be married than it should be able to without coercion of any religion. In the same argument, the state should not coerce a religion to allow same sex marriages. There is a difference between a marriage license and a sacrament.

6. Cynicism. Heterosexuals ruined the institution of marriage a long time ago. Homosexuals are at least trying to preserve it.

7. Time and Money. If the FMA passes then every state legislature will to vote on it, like the ERA in the 1970s. So, instead of funding for schools and repairing your roads, you state legislature will spend all of it’s time in session debating over whether gays can be married.

8. Last minute pandering. Religious conservatives should recognize at this point that the GOP is pulling out the tried and true nonsense which gets its base mobilized: gay bashing, flag burning, and English as the official language legislation.

9. Not knowing the consequences of their actions. This kind of legislation failed in some states because of wording that would have hurt families and other types of partnerships in the areas of hospital visitation, insurance beneficiaries. Etc.