Hawaii Governor Vetoes Civil Unions
Posted by admin | Posted in Anti-Religion | Posted on 07-07-2010
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Lately, in large part due to this post, I’ve heard from a couple different Christians who insist that while they may believe that homosexuality is a sin, they do love gay people and they think gay people deserve to be treated equally — the includes the right to marry even if their own church wouldn’t marry them.
While it’s not perfect, I don’t mind it. If you’re for equal rights for all people, I don’t really care what you personally believe about homosexuality. It’s a secondary issue, anyway.
But here’s a clear case of bigotry.
In Hawaii, the state legislature had approved same-sex civil unions back in April. Not marriage. Just equal rights. Yesterday, Republican Governor Linda Lingle vetoed that bill.
She explains how she came to her decision in the video below.
There was one part in there that disgusted me the most:
After listening to those both for and against House Bill 444, I have gained a new appreciation for just how deeply people of all ages and backgrounds feel on this matter and how significantly they believe the issues will affect their lives.
Few could be unmoved by the poignant story told to me in my office by a young big island man who recounted the journey he had taken to bring himself to tell his very traditional parents that he was gay. I was similarly touched by the mother who in the same office expressed anguish at the prospect of the public schools teaching her children that a same-gender marriage was equivalent to their mother and father’s marriage.
So this man’s coming out to his parents — and perhaps ultimately wanting to be in a legal marriage with someone he loves — carried the same weight as some mother who couldn’t handle her daughter knowing that straight people and gay people can all get married.
Oh, cry me a river.
Lingle is saying she doesn’t want to give gay people equal rights because some irrational mother is too afraid to teach her child to love and respect other people? Ugh…
She goes on to explain why she vetoed this particular bill when it wasn’t even about gay marriage (which she had openly opposed):
“It is essentially marriage by another name… because it has the same rights, benefits, responsibilities and protections.”
Which of those four things is she against gay people having…?
All this from a woman who loves marriage so much, she got married (and divorced) twice.
The alternative newspaper, Maui Time, had two covers prepared to run based on what Lingle decided:
Take a wild guess which one they’re going with now.
Joe. My. God. has a lot more information about all this, including the fact that the ACLU and Lambda Legal are planning to sue.
I want to see any Christian who finds this despicable to say so. Blog about it. Tell your Facebook friends. Tell your church members. Call out anyone who disagrees.
If you don’t, you’re part of the problem.
Don’t tell me you love gay people and think this was the wrong decision… and then sit back and say/do nothing in response. I don’t care for your apologies if you’re not backing it up with action.
View full post on Friendly Atheist by @hemantsblog
A few days ago some idiotic gay christian was actually trying to tell me Atheists hate gays just as much, or even more so, than Christians. He even had made up statistics to prove it. I got him to run away from the thread by posting a gallup poll demonstrating that atheists support gay marriage about 20% less than gay people do.
Next time I think I’ll just link him to a thread like this on any atheist website ever were if anyone claiming to be an atheist says something ludicrous and offensive about gay people they’re immediately jumped on by every single other commenter next to a link to a religious site where bigotry is defended by everyone, including the ‘supportive’ ones who still call gay people ‘sinners’ *AKA: wicked, bad, evil people* and compare them to alcoholics.
While I don’t appreciate her tendency to disparage atheists who dare to criticize religious dogma, Martha Nussbaum has written a whole book about how just about all opposition to gay rights stems from the “ick” factor. She analyzes how feelings of revulsion and disgust actually form the basis for a good deal of public policy. She posits (I’m paraphrasing liberally here) that the feeling of disgust and revulsion many people have at the idea of gay sex is actually an expression of fear—fear of contamination, and fear that the acts of others might somehow “infect” one’s own identity. It’s a smart book, one that weaves together the philosophical case and the constitutional case for same-sex marriage. I found her analysis of homophobia fascinating.
Same thing happened back when Spain legalized gay marriage. At the time the Catholic Church organized massive protests but the legalization already had majority support. Since then I’ve heard literally nothing about it in Spanish press. Even the conservative party, which initially pledged to repeal the law, now has its mouth shut, probably detecting that many young people (myself included) will refuse to vote for them if we think they’d repeal.
A gay Spanish soldier can marry another gay Spanish soldier and they can adopt kids and no one cares.
Someday, people like Lingle will be like all those who have to uncomfortably explain and profusely apologize for their previous support of segregation. The next generations will be aghast at the unfeeling cruelty of the thing.
VXbinaca, I’ll admit that I’ve read several of your comments and I still have no earthly clue what you actually have against gay relationships. You’re my first atheist homophobe. You call men having gay relationships a betrayal, but I simply don’t understand what that means. Betrayal requires the breaking of an agreement. Its no more betrayal if a gay male friend of mine sleeps with another gay male frient than if a straight female friend sleeps with a straight male friend. Being gay, like being straight, is a biological orientation. I assume you understand that. So gay men are not in the same pool as straight men from the getgo. Likewise lesbian women.
Mind you, I think its great that you support full marriage equality. To me its what counts, but I’m totally mystified with your position. I would understand it better if you simply stated that the idea of gay sex was “icky” to you. That’s fine, I don’t much relish the idea of lesbians having sex and I don’t really suppose they have a hankering for gay male sex either. You can have a visceral reaction of that kind, as long as you recognize it as irrational and not seek to justify it by other means.
Richard P. wrote:
Great point. The other day, someone asked me if anything ‘had changed’ since same-sex marriage became legal here……I said it was amazing how quickly it ceased to be an ‘issue’; which was almost immediately after it became legal. Truly, it came and went with barely a ripple.
This blows me away.
On July 20, 2005, Canada legalized same-sex marriage nationwide with the enactment of the Civil Marriage Act.
Other than those whining about it, and those whining about those whining about it, you wouldn’t even know it happened. Their has been no break down of our society, No mass decrease in child bearing. Even different sex partners still get married and have the same 50% divorce rate they had before. Homosexuality has not become rampant. In fact as a country were fairly happy all around.
Why isn’t this ever mentioned? Why are these facts not thrown into the face of every bigot out there?
Never mind what one groups believes or another. The simple facts of the matter is this. It makes no fucking difference at all, and I mean that literally.
@Moxie:
I phrased myself poorly. I was attempting to indicate that what s/he construed as intolerance and resistance was (mostly, and admittedly only to me that I can speak for) more curiosity about what that particular statement *meant* since on its own (and even with his/her initial attempt at explanation) it doesn’t make any sort of inherent sense. S/He has failed to indicate why exactly s/he construes gay men as betraying him/her/nature–whoa, nature. I think I just figured out what s/he was getting at. I thought s/he meant they were betraying him/her personally but possibly this was the intended meaning?
In which case, we will have to agree to fundamentally disagree, but at least I can make sense of and understand his/her viewpoint now
Steve, your comment about a biblical marriage was not directed to the legal institution. It was a dig on the scared place that the Bible holds the marriage relationship between a man and a women. Ephesians talks directly to that point on how a man must love his wife as much as Jesus loved the Church. The bible holds that marriage relationship that sacred.
And you are simply wrong that God and the church was not involved in marriage until the 11th century. Marriage was a large part of the Jewish faith in the earliest days of the Bible and continued to be so during the early days of Christianity.
The Christian church correctly views marriage far more then a property contract wrapped in ceremony. It may have been devalued in our society to not much more then that, but that is not Biblical in any sense.
@Nicole:
Here is the statement VXbinaca made in the 12:38pm comment, quoted verbatim:
My emphasis. I don’t think any of us needed to do any “wrangling”.
Karen,
“If there were a god, he wouldn’t care where you put your genitalia, he would care about where your heart is.”
Although God does care where your heart is, to say that God doesn’t care how or where you engage in sex is a terribly unfortunate misstatement of the Bible and its teachings.
The bible teaches against all sorts of sexual immorality in all forms.
Robert:
The bible has nothing whatsoever to do with marriage as a legal institution. No matter if we are talking about secular or ecclesiastical law.
Since when have people ever followed what’s actually in the bible? We are talking about different societies with different customs in different times here. Ephesians is NT. Marriage is way older than that and things like bride price, dowries and polygamy existed for centuries after it. The first two far longer than the latter. And all still exist in many non-western countries.
The exact details of course vary between different cultures, but very generally, at first marriage was a private matter between the involved parties and their families. Then the church (or other religious institutions got involved) – not just for the ceremony, but also the administrative and legal side. That part was later taken over by the state, leaving the church for the ceremonies.
At the core it still remains a property contract to this day. The church wraps it in ceremony (which is no longer even a legal requirement) and the state guarantees various rights to both parties (traditionally less to the women, who were initially property themselves).
But if you look at the rights marriage entails, so many of them are about legal security in case something goes wrong, or monetary benefits such as taxes. And that’s a big part of what gay people seek. Security. The social recognition of the institution is another. It’s simply far easier to say “We’re married” than explaining what civil unions or domestic partnerships are.