Hi everybody
I am currently working on a news piece about Prop 8 for my school's podcast, and I'm looking for opinions from both sides of the spectrum to quote as part of my interview segment.
If anyone here would be willing to answer a few questions regarding your views on Prop 8, I would be eternally grateful.
1. (Optional) Age, gender, ethnicity, political party, and/or religious affiliation
2. What effect does Prop 8 have on you, directly or indirectly?
3. If you believe that gay marriage violates the sanctity of traditional marriage, in what way?
4. Do you believe marriage to be an inalienable right, and if so, why for some and not for others?
5. What do you think about the commonly expressed opinion that marriage vs. civil union is a form of "separate but equal"?
-Make sure that your answers are logically thought out and arguable. Feel free to reference the Bible, but make sure that your argument would hold up in a secular debate.
-If your opinion is used in the report, I will ensure that it is with nothing but the utmost respect for any political and religious views expressed.
Thank you
Okay Mr. Hades (or I suppose it could be Miss Hades), I'm going to assume that you are being honest about this being for a history project. I wish you the best of luck, but I hope you are polling multiple sites because you most likely will not get enough responses here to draw any real conclusions, especially since I think this site tends to be skewed a bit towards the 40's-ish male.
1. 24, Female, Caucasian, Republican, Orthodox Christian
2. I live in California, so the amendment was passed for my state's constitution.
My greatest concern regarding the legalization of Homosexual marriage is the effect that it could very potentially have on A) churches and B) Personal choices reflecting views on homosexuality.
While opponents to Proposition 8 insist that no church would be forced to perform homosexual weddings, I believe that lawsuits would arise fairly quickly claiming discrimination, thus jeopardizing the tax exempt status of churches. As an example, I present Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574, where Bob Jones University lost their tax exempt status because they forbade interracial dating. In this case, the Supreme Court stated that tax-exempt status cannot be maintained when practices run against "established public policy." If homosexual marriage were legalized, it could easily be argued that homosexual marriage is established public policy. While I see a huge difference between interracial marriage and homosexual marriage, homosexual activists have continually called homosexual marriage a civil rights issue, so they obviously do not see any difference between the two. There has also been a law suit in New Jersey where a church lost part of its tax exempt status for refusing to rent a piece of its property for use during a homosexual wedding. There have been a variety of law suits, ranging from photography to artificial insemination, where courts have ruled that individuals do not have the right to refuse service because they disagree with homosexuality, and the momentum for these lawsuits would only increase if homosexual marriage were legalized.
There was also a case, fairly recently, where a homosexual couple sued a Catholic adoption service because they refused to allow them to adopt a child, and the courts ruled in the couple's favor. The adoption service shut down because they refused to compromise their religious beliefs.
In addition in the legal ramification, there are education concerns. California already struggles with how to address homosexuality during sex education classes. I do not have children yet, but I believe that moral issues, such as views on homosexual behavior, are best taught by parents, not by teachers. If homosexual marriage were legalized, then homosexual behavior would be legitimized by the state, and I would have little recourse, short of pulling my child from class and/or homeschooling, if I were to object to a teacher discussing homosexuality in the classroom. If you live in California, you probably read about the kindergarten classroom that went to their teacher's lesbian wedding. That shows that if it homosexuality were legitimized, then children exposure to it in the classroom would almost certainly increase over time.
3. I believe the marriage is primarily a religious institution. The government role in marriage is to help support marriage while marriage supports society. Marriage provides a steady support for children. Studies have consistently shown that children from families with both a mother and a father tend to do better than single parent families, and well adjusted children are of course better for society in general. Mind you, I realize that there are children from single parent families who excel, and that some situations where both parents are present are far from ideal. I'm talking in generalities, and I certainly don't mean to denigrate single parent families in any way; I'm just pointing out statistics.
Homosexual couples cannot biologically reproduce, therefore they fail to fulfill the most basic traditional goal of marriage. While they can become parents in other ways, studies show that both the father and the mother play important roles in a child's development, so ideally children should have both a mother and father.
4. Absolutely not. The government has a variety or rules regarding who can be married to whom. They have already instituted age requirements, which by the way do not always correspond to the age of consent in particular states, they have decided how distantly related one must be to be married, and they have decided how many spouses one may have, and the gender of one's spouse. An inalienable right is a right that the government may not restrict. For example, the government may not place any restrictions on a person's faith, excepting where another is being actively harmed (human sacrifice, child abuse, etc.). The government has placed restriction of marriage well beyond the point of another's harm, and therefore it has obviously never been an inalienable right.
5. I think it is hogwash. Marriage has been defined as being between a man a woman for a very, very long time. Now, homosexual activist wish to redefine what marriage is, and when people object, they pull out "separate but equal". Quite simply, civil unions grant the same rights to homosexual couples. The key point is what is the strength of the word "marriage". A homosexual couple could go to a number of religious institutions and have a religious wedding, but what they want is for society to validate their behavior. However, a majority of Californians have spoken out and said that no, we don't believe that homosexuals have the right to redefine the word marriage, or to force us to accept their behavior.
A key point in the "separate but equal" court ruling (Brown vs. Board of Education) was that the schools were not equal, and that the substandard conditions in the schools for black students denied them educational opportunities. Civil Unions do not deprive homosexual couples anything except the word marriage, and the forced acceptance of their behavior.
