It’s difficult to make an argument for same sex civil rights without opponents or defenders of so-called traditional values letting slip that lesbians and gays have some sort of nasty hidden agenda. One of the ironies about one of the two initiative petitions circulating in California at the moment for a referendum on entrenching the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman in the State Constitution is that its proponents both claim to be fighting off a non-existent agenda and are suing the State Attorney-General to keep their own agenda hidden. The proposed amendment prohibits the abolition of straight marriage, something no one wants or is ever likely to want. But initiative petitions are required by California law to contain an impact statement, so that voters, in making up their own minds as to whether to sign them, have an objective picture of what would change. VoteYesMarriage.Com don’t want California voters to know that the amendment would strip same sex attracted Californians of existing rights which are akin to those that defactos enjoy in Australian law. Indeed, the amendment would prevent employers from according health plan and pension rights to same sex partners, a common practice:
On July 11, the Legislative Analyst’s Office described the major points of the Voters’ Right to Protect Marriage Initiative as follows:
“Major Provisions: This measure amends the State Constitution to recognize marriage only between a man and a woman. In addition, the measure prohibits the Legislature, courts, and state and local government agencies from granting the rights of marriage to any unmarried persons. The measure also prohibits government agencies from requiring private entities to extend the rights of marriage to unmarried persons.�
Readers are invited to have a look at the “marriage protection organisation”’s website to get a sense of the sort of rhetoric used to deny Californian citizens who are same sex attracted their fundamental rights, and to take away those that they already have. You might also like to visit that den of iniquity and sin of the interwebs, Suicide Girls for more on this, and some interesting comments on the thread.
It’s hard to conclude anything other than that the folks with the hidden agenda here are the “marriage protection” crowd.
I’m disappointed that the wording did not use the wisdom of the Governator who was supposed to have said “I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.”
I don’t get the procreation argument. As I understand it, if we allows homosexuals to marry their population will suddenly exponentially increase (through what means I am not sure as they can’t breed according to the argument), wiping out heterosexual marriages and leading to the decline of the human race due to no-one one procreating via heterosexual marriage. Apparently somewhere during all of this non-married procreation is mysteriously sabotaged as well.
Fluoride in the water supply, perhaps?
Everyone knows all lesbians are witches - and witches in the middle ages were often accused of inducing sterility among good god fearing men. It’s the hex, baby!
The gay agenda now includes moving to a base-16 number system? It is worse than we thought!
Hocus pocus, Kim. All hubble and bubble!
First of all, the ‘Homosexual manifesto’ clearly isn’t a hidden agenda!
VoteYesMarriage.com just seems to be a lobby group showing people how to organise for a vote for marriage. Nothing particularly hidden there.
Yep, their desire to hide from the voters the impact of the legislation clearly denotes a hidden agenda, CF.
Conservative Fun, you really should read the coverage at Suicide Girls. The amendment is about denying existing spousal rights, as well as the “defence of marriage” and the reason you won’t find that spelled out clearly on their website? They want people to vote for something innocuous, while the actual text of the constitutional amendment strips Californian same sex attracted folks of existing rights they have.
So this http://www.voteyesmarriage.com/wst_page7.html is hidden?
And these words of the actual ammendment are hidden?
‘Only marriage between one man and one woman is valid or recognized in California, whether contracted in this state or elsewhere. Neither the Legislature nor any court, government institution, government agency, initiative statute, local government, or government official shall abolish the civil institution of marriage between one man and one woman, or require private entities to offer or provide rights, incidents, or benefits of marriage to unmarried individuals, or bestow statutory rights, incidents, or employee benefits of marriage on unmarried individuals. Any public act, record, or judicial proceeding, from within this state or another jurisdiction, that violates this section is void and unenforceable.’
If someone stuck that under your nose on a door to door petition drive, it would read like legal gibberish, CF. If they’re so open, why are they suing the State over the wording of the impact statement?
When they argue about why it’s needed they don’t have any justification whatsoever for stripping away existing civil rights, except to say in passing that such rights “diminish” marriage”.
I hope you don’t support that.
They do have a lot of emotive rhetoric:
I do feel compelled to point out at least one untruth:
I can assure you from personal experience that ain’t so!
More seriously, their press releases contain lies about the impact of the amendment on legislation.
Kim,
This is just standard lobbyist propaganda. Whether I would support it or not isn’t relevant.
The point I make is that IT ISN’T HIDDEN AGENDA.
‘If someone stuck that under your nose on a door to door petition drive, it would read like legal gibberish’
Well it wouldn’t really. It looks like a standard right wing Christian push for marriage to represent a covenant between a man and a woman, with few qualifying clauses to cover eventualities unknown to me.
It probably goes over the top for some when it says it shouldn’t ‘require private entities to offer or provide rights, incidents, or benefits of marriage to unmarried individuals’, but this could be interpreted as an option for private entities, which might include NGO’s which don’t want to endorse de facto relationships, and don’t want to be forced to by law. Without knowing the legal position of NGO’s in California on this aspect I can’t speculate.
As this thread progresses I become more convinced of the DIY argument. Just have a ceremony, and insist everafter and referring to your partner as your husband or wife. It’ll make you feel great, and annoy conservatives no end.
Win-Win!
Or, just go to the UK and get hitched, where its legal. Honestly, I just dont see it as a mattere in which he state has any legitimate say, so defy away.
I’d be inclined to agree, Lefty E, except that you don’t get all the legal rights and social recognition that married straight couples do. I really do see this as a civil rights issue.
A private entity could be a company, CF, which might be required by state law to offer benefits such as access to a partner’s health insurance or pension. Or it might be a hospital which might be required to recognise a partner as next of kin, or a funeral parlour.
You’ve obviously never had friends whose parents denied their partner access to visiting rights after they’d lost consciousness, or who refused to respect their wishes regarding funeral arrangements. It’s happened to an awful lot of gay folks living and dying with HIV/AIDS. I wish you’d show some of your Christianity in practice and actually think about the impact of these things on real people’s lives. Sometimes an extremely adverse impact.
The fact that you’ve misunderstood and misconstrued the section goes to show that its language is deliberately obscure.
There’s a well known drill with these anti-gay amendments in the US - they’re often centrally coordinated by Christian lobby groups and Republican Party factions, and they use the same rhetoric and the same “happy families/defence of marriage” shtick to actually take away existing rights that gay and lesbian people have.
It’s deceptive, and it’s bloody wrong.
I’d suggest that anyone who’s interested in what’s actually at stake in these American debates have a look at the excellent coverage of the issue at Ampersand’s blog.
What are these “rights of marriage” then? And how are the courts to deal with cases where the rights of a marriage come into conflict with the individual rights of the two people married? This is one big can of glowing green radioactive mutant worms as far as I can see.
Kim, when it comes to sympathy for the dying, I empathise with you.
Yes we’ve been through similar things. One MS patient we’d looked after as a Christian group for years, as volunteers, including calls in the middle of the night when he fell in his mess, stuck in the toilet and unable to move, was mysteriously taken out of our circle when we, on religious grounds, were denied access because he was now, at the end of his life, receiving ‘attention’ from ‘professional’ carers, even though he was a long standing member of our church. It was later revealed that one of the carers was attempting to ‘convert’ him to Buddhism, and another was helping ‘cure’ him throughy supplying him with cannibis. Even his wife, who was from PNG, and a little senile, was denied access. Scary, eh!
Mediating with relatives over a dying person’s wishes is a job Christian leaders are well suited to, which is why the bereaved turn often to spiritual leaders at these times. I don’t deny that everyone, regardless of their political, social or religious affiliations to be very sensitive when death approaches anyone.
I hope that answers your question.
Happily, the ‘ProtectMarriage’ people (the *other* California group that is seeking to delegitimize same-sex partnerships) have given up, at least for the time being.
Maybe they couldn’t find enough paid signature-gatherers. The U.S. economy is in the midst of a gigantic expansion (at least if you believe the usual propagandists), and illegal immigrants aren’t allowed to solicit (at least in theory), which may explain why they fell 200,000 signatures short of the required number to get it on the spring ballot.
Bummer, dudes.
(…but not enough to actually change my bigoted views.)
It’s time to ‘fess up. I did have The Gay Agenda but I forgot to check my pockets pre-wash when it was folded up in my Levi 501’s. Sadly, it disintegrated and Our Plans For World Domination ended up as those irritating specks in the drier lint filter. I can’t remember which came first…was it mass recruitment via media showcasing of our seductively alluring lifestyle or was it compulsory heavy transport licences and k.d. haircuts for all chicks?
Bill posters congratulations on reaching blairite standards so soon although post-modernists do tolerate the intolerable
There are many reasons for not recognising homosexual ‘marriages which have been broached elsewhere although I note no-one has taken up yet the area that great ‘moral ethicist’ Peter Singer has gone with regard to ‘consensual’ sex between humans and animals!
does that mean that the lefties here are bigots when it comes to this issue? Put me down as a bigot of the highest order!
501’s are sooo 2005
Homosexual-Recruitment Drive Nearing Goal
“SAN FRANCISCO—Spokespersons for the National Gay & Lesbian Recruitment Task Force announced Monday that more than 288,000 straights have been converted to homosexuality since Jan. 1, 1998, putting the group well on pace to reach its goal of 350,000 conversions by the end of the year.
“Thanks to the tireless efforts of our missionaries nationwide, in the first seven months of 1998, nearly 300,000 heterosexuals were ensnared in the Pink Triangle,” said NGLRTF co-director Patricia Emmonds. “Clearly, the activist homosexual lobby is winning.”
Emmonds credited much of the recruiting success to the gay lobby’s infiltration of America’s public schools, where programs promoting the homosexual lifestyle are regularly presented to children as young as 5.”
Picture: Lansing, MI, fifth-grade teacher Margaret Gerhardt. Gerhardt’s is one of countless elementary-school classes across the U.S. in which the homosexual agenda and lifestyle are actively promoted.
Rest of article
“501’s are sooo 2005″
Just like The Gay Agenda, Francois!
Kim,
‘The fact that you’ve misunderstood and misconstrued the section goes to show that its language is deliberately obscure.’
No. It just shows that I don’t know California law. As an American you have an advantage. I expect Californians would have a reasonable grasp of their own legal system and the way private entities operate. You seem to be saying that no private entities would be sympathetic to the needs of HIV or AIDS sufferers. I think the clause merely protects private entities from being sued for any number of reasons in a litigation hungry nation.
I haven’t heard of a single Christian agency which would turn away or not try to help a dying homosexual with AIDs. If I heard of one I’d do what I could to expose their uncaring attitude. You must have a really wierd understanding of what Christian volunteer welfare organisations actually do.
The subject, I thought, was marriage, not welfare. The accusation was a hidden agenda, which I have shown to be incorrect.
Bill Posters,
Get real, man! There’s a difference between being bigotted and having an opinion. You actually sound bigotted towards Christians, but I may be wrong.
Oh Ron, you rascal you.
Some of them are gonna think it’s for real, you know. Or is that why you did it?
CF (I preferred FaceLift btw…) - you’ve missed my point. It’s not about turning away anyone.
If you are hospitalised, or die, your next of kin has effective guardianship rights over you - and the right to organise your funeral. Remember - this amendment is about spousal rights.
Now, if I was dying in hospital (let’s make the assumption that my conservative father hadn’t spoken to me for ten years before my sexuality), my same sex partner could be denied access to me, and so could my friends, if I were unconscious, and my father could organise a funeral which excluded her and didn’t represent my beliefs. If the law said that my de facto partner was my next of kin, my wishes, and her standing in my life, could be respected.
I’m sorry to tell you this happens all the time - in Australia too.
Kim,
If those people were part of our church group, I’d go round and slap them!
These things do happen. We were nearly shut out of the funeral of a friend who was also a member of our church (again by ‘professional’ carers), until we kicked up such a stink they had to let us be involved, and in the end it was great send off. We were frankly shocked that it could happen. As we speak a Christian woman we know has told me she is fighting to gain access to her dying sister. The carers don’t want her to go to her in case she disturbs her by trying to pray for her. Whacky.
I’d like to see some kind of inquiry into this so that it doesn’t happen. Obviously everyone can’t go in a see a dying person, but I don’t think it’s right to deny an obviously close associate, whether they’re in a gay relationship or not.
I can’t read that into what this ‘agenda’ is saying, but I’ll bow to your more knowledgeable assertion. Maybe it isn’t gaining the support they want because of this clause, which would indicate that it has beeen understood.
But is it a ‘hidden’ agenda? No!
Wow, FaceLift - you really aren’t getting it are you?
It’s not about visitation rights in hospitals. It’s about who is recognised as the next of kin. Imagine if your wife’s parents were deemed to be her next of kin and were given the authority to make decisions on her behalf. Would you be satisfied with being “allowed” to visit occasionally.
My point, FaceLift, is they happen consistently to gay and lesbian folks because their spouses aren’t recognised. No doubt there’s some pain in the incidents you describe, but imagine how you would personally feel if the law didn’t protect your right to have the person you hold most close at your side on your deathbed, and a combination of institutional bureaucracy or bias and parental hatred prevented this. It happens all too often.
My point really is - this amendment is not about “protecting” marriage - as if it needs protecting - but about denying basic human rights which currently exist in law to people on the grounds of their sexuality. There’s the deception, there’s the hidden agenda.
Ladies, I apologise for not seeing your point here. I’ll lay claim that my obtuseness actually reveals that it just wouldn’t occur to the average Christian to be that calouse, any more I guess, and hope, than the average ‘gay’ would agree with the Homosexual Manifesto.
The point, FaceLift, is that it should never come down to how generous or callous someone is. A person’s right to be recognised as someone’s most significant other, or to have their significant other recognised, should just exist.
I think it was Rawls who said that justice is for when things like fairness and kindness and love are missing - because when those things exist there’s rarely a need for laws.
A question for Facelift, who said:
> any more I guess, and hope, than the average ‘gay’ would agree with the Homosexual Manifesto.
From your particular Christian perspective, what do you think the “homosexual manifesto” actually is? And how do you think it differs from relationship recognition?
Morgan,
I think in fairness you’d better check the so-called ‘manifesto’ before we go any further with this. Go to the top of the page and click onto ‘hidden agenda’ in Kim’s opening paragraph. Brace yourself!
what in heaven’s name is relationship recognition when it is at home?
Ah, got it. Apologies for reading stuff in the wrong order. I’m surprised that you’re really insisting on the veracity of the text. Seems to me even on a casual read that it’s up there with the pronouncements of that well known Christian, Pat Robertson, on the meaning of Hurrican Katrina and what should be done with Hugo Chavez.
In the news today, Two, sixteen year old girls are sueing a Lutheran High School in Riverside, California after they were expelled because they were suspected of being lesbians.
Morgan,
As already stated elsewhere http://larvatusprodeo.net/2005/12/27/are-we-pissed-with-uncle-sam/#comment-44986, Robertson incurred the wrath of thousands of Christians who wrote to him about his comments, which he subsequently retracted and apologised for. I made the point that there doesn’t seem to be a similar reaction from gays about the ‘manifesto’, which does exist, and is an affront to Christians everywhere.
I put it up as a possible obstacle which could be removed if gays made an effort to assure Christians they do NOT agree with it. Frankly, I only recently heard about it, and it’s intentions are made reasonably clear in the first paragraph, but the language is vile and confrontational.
FaceLift, have you only recently changed your mind on gay marriage as well? Did you support it until you read this Manifesto? Or does the Manifesto in fact have nothing to do with your view?
I think I’ve stated my case on marriage on the other thread.
The ‘manifesto’ has not influenced my perspective, but it troubles me that it exists and is not being refuted.
http://www.hetemeel.com/einstein/45650.jpg
I refute it… thus!
[Smacks palm against forehead, Bishop Berkeley spins in grave]
Thanks, liam. I fell better now!
Perhaps that’s because 99.99% of gays have never heard of it! Its dissemination seems only to have occurred because of a Republican congressman and the Christian press in the USA.
It’s obviously satire, FaceLift, though not very good satire, and patterned after the notorious anti-Semitic forgery of the late 19th Century, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It seems that its reception in some Christian circles as a serious document must have been a result of pre-existing attitudes, which is a worry in my book.
“99.99% of gays have never heard of it”
You beat me to it, Mark.
And the fact that it’s in the Library of Congress means bugger-all (no pun intended). If Sen Fielding or some like-minded individual stood up in the Australian Parliament on a quiet day and read the ‘manifesto’ out, it would then be in the official Hansard record of parliamentary proceedings.
It’s piffle, Facelift, and has no more credence than the send-up from The Onion that I posted above. And, as Pavlov’s Cat mentioned in the next post after that one, I hope some fool doesn’t starting quoting that sendup as evidence of the ‘homosexual agenda’.
Here’s the story about the two girls in Boston: