Vote on the Gay Marriage Amendment
by Ross Catrow
Jim Bacon has a great post with some great comments on the proposed Gay Marriage Amendment to the Virginia Constitution. And OMG Jim is a republican and wants to “uphold the institution of marriage” but still finds the language of the amendment disturbing.
So even if you don’t care about voting for your local and regional officials this November you should still come out and vote on this amendment.
[Removed my personal opinion from the post. -- Max]
Technorati Tags: politics
I can’t wait for the days of “gay” states and “free” states, perhaps leading to a 3/5 compromise (a gay marriage is 3/5 of a marriage) and even some secession.
Can’t wait!
Didn’t you know, secession is unconstitutional.
That is, until we pass the “Defense of Secession” amendment.
http://www.republicofnh.org/
Heh.
OR, you can vote FOR the amendment? right? or will we be expelled from haduken forever as questionable-language-loving bigots?
that article looked at practically no issues. we might lose some business bc maybe 5% of the population is gay? ok? what about the people who would love to do more business with a state that upholds it’s principles in the wake of the gay rights trend?
Max, you linked to the entire text as “questionable language.” are you only referring to bacon’s little quote, or is there something more that i should be so afraid of? i’m not saying it’s not there, i’m saying if you’re going to call it that, let’s see it.
i thought haduken was about information and discussion, and not being a pandering political billboard. sorry, it just bothers me to have “VOTE FOR SUCH-AND-SUCH” in my face with no backup. i get that everywhere- i don’t need it here. at least give me a reasonable explanation as to why i should “Vote No.”
Yeah I just linked to the entire text of the amendment so you could read it for yourself and make your own call. I mean the text is overly broad in a lot of ways. It isn’t really a anti-gay marriage amendment, it is really a anti-civil union amendment. It would prevent heteros from getting a civil union just as much as “homos.”
I mean if you are into preventing gay people from getting married, just strike the entire second half of the amendment, and Bob’s your uncle. There is no need to include such general language to accomplish that.
Plus you know how I am about amending constitutions. I don’t really feel like that is the place for discouraging gay people from getting married. Not that it is any of my business if they get married or not.
Plus “against” was in parenthesis so you can feel free to not read it ; ). Either way you vote, you should still go out and vote as the amendment is likely to be more interesting than any candidates on the ballot.
Wolf: Find me one fortune 500 company that would love to do more business in a state that doesn’t allow them to provide benefits to significant others of gay people.
I mean, if you find one, I’ll believe that they exist.
rmszero, it’s not as though companies publish their gay benefits preferences anywhere. even if it was part of their official policy, let’s be honest, many f500 “owners” are old rich white guys who hate gay people. i think you’re missing my point… you can argue all you want over 5% of the market; but my point was that the argument presented for ‘voting no’ was almost non-existent and what argument there was was questionable. you find me 1 f500 company actively pursuing gay benefit loving states. does it matter? this is barely even relavent to the issue at hand, and it surely shouldn’t be the entire argument one way or the other.
max, thanks for clarifying a little. i guess for me “(against)” doesn’t exactly make up for the Title of the article? i agree that people should read the documents (thanks for linking to them), but linking to the entire document doesn’t exactly back up “this law is broad and stupid.”
really, i don’t even care to argue the issue at hand bc it’s been done before here. my point was to say if you are going to throw political opinion in my face, i’d at least like to see some reasoning with it. maybe that’s just me.
I will amend the title, apologies.
hahaha, you didn’t have to do that. thanks, though. have you sold free press for gay rights, max? you’ll never get out of this moral quagmire.
“rmszero, it’s not as though companies publish their gay benefits preferences anywhere.”
This is completely and 100% untrue. In fact, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong. I guess now I understand why you didn’t understand the argument.
We know that 51% of Fortune 500 companies provide health benefits to same sex partners of employees, because those companies publish their gay benefits preferences. 86% explicitly prohibit discrimination against gays in their employee manual. (source)
In fact, Capital One (a huge Virginia company) is one of the most gay-friendly workplaces around, and they have no problem making that known. Keep in mind that Capital One was started by rich white guys with wives and children in Virginia. The decision to include gays was economic: if you want the best people working for you, you don’t want to exclude even the smallest population of your workforce for no reason.
So yeah, I think it’s pretty telling that companies run by white guys who “hate gay people” are inclusive of them. That tells me that if our state were to exclude them, it would be bad for business. But I guess you’d need the context I posted above to really get it.
rms, you love to pull stats out of context to explain points that you seem to think you have some mystical knowledge of that escapes the rest of us. and, as is usual, you’re making huge assumptions. first, i’m surprised 100% of companies don’t ‘prohibit discrimination against gays in their manual. were you expecting some to say “we discriminate against gays?” wow: pertinent. also, you’re excluding the fact that some companies give benefits to gay people simply bc they are required to by law or bc they are trying to avoid conflict/lawsuits, not bc it’s out of the goodness of their hearts or bc it makes good business sense (other than the fact that it makes good business sense not to get sued). subtract that out of your magic 51% and you’re in the minority of companies that actually want to give these benefits right now. you’re also ignoring every company not in the top 500, which is most companies.
whatever you said doesn’t equal a published preference for whether or not to locate in a particular state based on gay laws. it has to do with how they are reacting to the laws they already have. again, whether or not they’d like to change the laws or base themselves in a place with certain laws is not published infomation like i said. you can pretend it is published by misinterpreting stats, but you don’t really have a clue as to their true intentions bc you are trying to oversimplify the situation and look at a stat or 2 out of context. you really picture a company saying “we’re moving; let’s find a gay friendly state so we can give out a lot of free money to 5% of our employees?” why aren’t all of the f500 companies right in downtown san fran?
again, argue all you want about this and it doesn’t scratch the surface of a thorough discussion on the law, which is what i was saying to begin with- justifying your entire position with nothing but assumptions that businesses will also take your position just doesn’t fly.
Maybe something to do would be to look up campaign donations by fortune500 companies to known anti-gay legislators and elected officials? Like Rick Santorm or some such.
Of course there are many other reasons to influence campaign finance, but it might give us a larger picture?
“it’s” should be “its.”
true, midas, thanks
also, midas, you’re pulling my quotes out of context.
i’m saying it’s safe to assume that *some* people/businesses will go in each direction, which is why there’s a vote in the first place (everyone does not agree). but to argue to “vote no” bc our economy is going to be significantly hurt is to assume enough business are on one side to ruin our economy. i’m not arguing that people should “vote yes” bc i think anti-gay business will suddenly flood virginia, boosting it’s economy. i’m not arguing “vote yes” at all. i’m arguing that i think people are divided, which is what probably makes the economy issue rather small in the big picture.
i think that biznises in general will follow economic incentives much more than they will follow “moral” incentives. successful ones will, anyways. if they can make more money by moving to a state that doesn’t discriminate against 5% of its population, or if they think they can, then they will do so, even if some people in that company have personal feelings that that 5% is deserving of discrimination. welcome to capitalism.
so from a purely economic perspective, i don’t think the idea is completely without merit. but i agree that it’s probably not a huge issue – if you really want to encourage biznises to move here, follow DE’s lead and eliminate taxes on them. or follow CA’s (and VA’s) lead and educate your populace to make yourself more attractive to companies.
to me though, there are certainly more compelling reasons to vote against writing discrimination into our constitution for transient political gain, so it’s kind of a non-issue anyways.
i agree with the idea that *some* companies wouldn’t like the law. sure. i agree that that idea has some merit. never denied it (i don’t think?).
i think saying that the law discriminates against 5% of employees or discriminates at all (negatively) is questionable. why not open up benefits for BFFs and long lost cousins and pets, too? you have to ‘discriminate’ and you have to draw the line somewhere.
it’s not as though it bans gay people from working or something.
i’m saying the idea is a trivial way to try to argue that this amendment shouldn’t be passed. in using the idea for that, i don’t really think it has much merit.
i agree that the author of the linked to article seems to be grasping at straws.
if a company decided to stop offering health benefits to the spouses of hetero marriage, would they be discriminating against the other 95% of the population? what if they offered health care to the spouses of gay marriage but not the spouses of hetero marriage?
yes, it would be. and it is discrimination with homos. that’s what i said. the only way not to discriminate would be to not offer spouse benefits to anyone or to offer it to anyone an employee wanted (regardless of relation). so, either don’t give spouse benefits or discriminate. remember, discriminate just means to distinguish between- it didn’t always have its (it’s!) negative connotation.
i’m not sure about this 5% thing? was there a link to that? is that supposed to be percent of gay people in america? i wouldn’t think that 5% of employees are asking for gay spouse benefits? i think we’re talking about a tiny percent of people. or maybe the world is gayer than i thought? i guess you’ll say even if it’s 1 person, that’s 1 too many to discriminate against.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality
i mean, if we are going to make this a line drawing question, what stops us from drawing the line where black people don’t get spousal benefits? maybe methodists don’t. what if 51% of people hated left-handed people, so we decided to draw it there? are any of those things discrimination with a negative connotation?
i’m not trying to strawman it up here, but what is the criteria that makes us move the slider 5% over to the left, and what is the justification for it, just in case those 14,950,000 people come asking?
i said this a long time ago:
“i don’t think we’re talking about rights. the benefits of marriage are a privilege that the government grants a man and a woman. the government can take those benefits away. we’re not talking free speech. the government cannot take free speech. bc of this, i don’t think your reasoning about infringing on someone else’s rights applies. it doesn’t put anyone out when 6yo consents to having sex with a 30yo. they might turn out fine. what if that’s what they’re into?? why not be able to marry a 6yo? bc society says it’s not good for the kids to have sex and it’s not good for society. i (and a lot of research and a majority of america) would say that gay marriage is similar- not good for the participants and not good for society. being as such, we do not have to grant the privilege of the benefits of marriage to kids or 2 men or women.”
and then we ended up agreeing to disagree. again, this is not a right, this is a privilege that should be and will be decided by the people. it’s what lets the people decide only those over 16 can drive. i think that’s what this vote is about.
haha yeah i forgot we have had this conversation before.
cheers!