In case you had any doubts.....
In case you are of the homosexual persuasion and had any lingering doubts over the LDS Church's stand on "gay" marriage, the church has endorsed the efforts now going on to amend the US and state constitutions to reserve marriage for normal, heterosexual couples. To many of the Great State of Utah, this will come as no surprise since the church has on other occasions contributed money and volunteers to help pass other "pro-family" marriage proposals, such as California's marriage law. The Utah constitutional amendment states:
"Marriage consists only of the legal union between a man and a woman. No other domestic union, however denominated, may be recognized as a marriage or given the substantially equivalent effect."
This amendment will be on the November ballot and was already widely seen to pass, but with the LDS Church's position more clear, it will be a landslide. The US Constitutional amendment, which is now being debated in Congress states (HJ Res. 56/SJ Res. 26):
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.
Expect to see demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience by pro-gay groups in the coming days to protest the US Constitutional amendment. Gays will scream about how this is a civil rights issue, but the Prophet of the LDS Church, Gordon B. Hinckley, stated that the legalization of same-sex marriage was not a civil rights issue, but gays and lesbians are welcome in the church as long as they "follow the same God-given rules of conduct that apply to everyone else, whether single or married."
As has been pointed out many times, gays and lesbians don't want "equal" rights, they want "special" rights. An amendment to the US constitution is the only way to prevent the ultra-liberal, Democratic gay-marriage views of Massachusetts (guess which presidential candidate is from Massachusetts?) from trashing my state of Utah. This is a vertiable powder keg that gays and lesbians are playing with. The last civil war was fought over state's rights and slavery. Will the next be fought over gay marriage?
posted by The Great El-ahrairah @ 07:56
1 comments
1 Comments:
I doubt that the Prophet's words are going to convince (or, indeed, influence) anyone but Mormons, of course. And then only because he's Ordained As The Prophet. (Or whatever verb is appropriate for Prophethood.)
Simply stating "it is not a civil rights issue" isn't going to be very effective. Now, Hinckley might (I suppose) be right, but to convince anyone that he can't influence simply due to his position in the LDS church, he's going to have to actually come up with some sort of argument as to why it's not so.
(Personally, I think the Federal amendment goes too far, and I more or less subscribe to the version pushed by the WSJ; that same-sex marriages should not be required to be recognised by states that do not wish to, either internally or from other states. Federalism suits my temperament far more than centralised imposition. If gay marriage really is so terrible, well, let's watch Massachussets and see how badly it screws things up there. With the WSJ-style amendment, Utah can ban it with complete impunity, and the Federalist experimentation system will let us get some idea of how things will turn out without forcing the entire country to go one way or the other.)
(PS. Many gay-advocacy groups do seem to want "sepcial" rights (hate-crimes laws, etc.) ... but I'm not sure that marriage (or a civil union that has "substantially equivalent effect", but does not use the term that has religious meaning and connotation) is actually a "special" right. Certainly they aren't asking for heterosexuals to be denied that right. I don't see the "special right" nature involved here.
It may be socially unwise, destructive, or merely very risky to extend the concept of marriage to include homosexuals; I'm open to exploration of that essentially Conservative argument that the institution is ancient and fundamental and thus should not lightly be tampered with (I'm unsure that it's right, but I'm not sure it's wrong either.) ... but the basis for calling such a drive one for a "special" right eludes me. Care to explain in detail?)
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