I used the previous argument in the hope that it would smoke out someone like you Margaret. I realize that you do not speak for the LGBT community, but you revealed that the true
nature of your discontent does not lie with the benifits you’re denied by an inability to marry your girlfreind, you’re unhappy because the government won’t erase perceived past discriminations with the purely symbolic gesture of recognizing a marriage between two people of the same sex. What’s the point?

If the government were to decree tomorrow that LGBT people crapped diamonds and pissed wine, do you think that the folks who have a negative opinion about LGBT’s will miraculously change their ways and revere them? I think the opposite will happen, as it is happening now, you’re only pissing them off more.

I’ve tried to be as objective as I can on most subjects, including this one, and when I view it from a detatched position it appears to me to be another attempt by the LGBT community to poke the majority (as evidenced by the prop 8 vote) in the eye. The mindset of vitriol and revenge will simply backfire, regardless of the validity or hope of the argument.

I don’t blame them for their anger or their activism, just their tactics.

Now, the need to get back at Obama supporters for anything we can is tainting this discussion. As is the need of liberals to be oh so pc when it comes to gay rights.

The point of the article is not being punished for your political views. If you believe in this, you have to defend some people whose positions you may not agree with.

In an election where we were called racist for any and all criticism of Obama, we’re all wee bit defensive and projecting all over the place. We need to calm down a little and stick to the point.

Yes, gays should have the right to marry. Yes it is ironic that enough Obama supporters voted for prop 8 to get it passed and implies that many of his supporters are hypocrites or worse. And no, people’s livelihood should not be jeopardized for their political activism unless they break the law or otherwise go beyond the limits of societal boundaries.

If that happens, most of us here are in deep shit.

Since the main argument for extending the right to marry to same sex couples always seems to be the acquisition of the perks married people have, ( for the sake of this argument let’s not muddy the water by debating the profound wisdom behind the creation of those perks) why not simply push for laws that prevent any distinction, in any circumstance, beteen married and single people. The LGBT would get all the goodies that they currently insist can only be obtained through marriage, so the argument about same sex marriage will be moot.

Then, it won’t really matter whether you call your relationship a marriage, civil union, duprass, threesome, foursome, or princes telephone, your rights will be the same.

There was also segregation within these compulsory marriages. Most states require that couples who seemed to be of color had to file certificates of racial origin, and of course the same statutes requiring those certificates also prohibited marriages between people who were not both of sufficient ‘racialized’ origin. Also, many states had separate marriage registry offices, registration forms, and registry books, so that there was no intermingling of documentation (remember the purity of blood donation rules too?).

As a matter of legal possibility, however, it was never likely that the scenario you are speculating about (a separate registration of cohabitation system for freed slaves or for inter-racial couples post-Loving v Virginia), because the same rules requiring freed people to marry turned cohabitation into a crime, and then, when anti-miscegenation statutes came into effect (many were there from the get-go), they not only criminalized inter-racial marriages but also inter-racial cohabitation. So with longstanding bans on recognized cohabitation, it was not within the scope of legal imagination to suddenly say ‘ok you guys can register non-married cohabitation.’

The reason for some of these directions in legal policy?

Continued criminalization of slave classes. Anything that could be done to create criminal liability after emancipation (vagrancy laws, ban on unmarried cohabitation, movement without sheriff’s permission)could be used to put a freed slave back under the control of the state, which would then auction off the freed person’s labor in a de facto reinstatement of master-slave relations.

Marriage = social control.

Civil unions without marriage = social control without the full protections of marriage. [I have never seen a civil union statute that is 100% as comprehensive as marriage -- including Vermont, which comes the closest. And that was Deaniac's nightmare for queers there.]

The greatness of a parent comes from the parent’s character and relationship with the child, not from apparent enactment of some artificial ‘ideal.’

And don’t forget that long before prop 8, AAs — including many religious leaders in AA communities — were in the forefront of the anti-queer civil rights and anti-queer marriage rights debates. This did not just erupt earlier this month. Its been there a really long time, and is a serious problem.