Should there be Marriage Equality? Ten reasons against it. Say what?

"Marriage" is a legal contract binding two people together under the law.

It has nothing to do with religion and/or politics.

This is strictly an issue of equal rights.

Trying to mandate what some people see as morality versus reality is just plain wrong under our constitution.

Those who oppose equality for everyone need to look at their own prejudices and ask who they think they are, to try to limit equal rights to their own kind of bigotry.

Recently published in the New York News, was an editorial by Theodore B. Olson (former U.S. Solicitor General) & New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman.

The term "civil rights (1721)" defined by constitution is:

the non-political rights of a citizen, especially the rights of personal liberty guaranteed, to the United States citizens by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the constitution and by acts of congress.

The civil union 'bait and switch' compromise, as discussed in their editorial, is a far cry from true marriage eqaulity in any sense of the word.

The offering of 'Civil unions" as a compromise, demonstrate that there are conscious and deliberate exceptions being made by the government to exclude certain American citizens from their civil rights, based on discriminatory reasons, of a 'personal nature', by some members of congress.

These "personal" reasons are based solely on the indelible religious brainwashing they received from their childhood; as a moral issue - and far removed from the civil 'law of the constitution'.

When civil unions are based on state legislation, it cheats the residents of those states out of enjoying their civil rights under the constitution, for the exact same reasons.

By allowing individual states to put their own slants on the constitution it weakens, corrupts, and nullifies the original intent of 'all' American citizens enjoying the sames rights 'equally' under the law.

To allow individual states and even the Federal government to twist and re-interpret the original constitutional intent is certainly "un-American", at the very least.

A civil union is NOT a marriage, nor is it an adequate substitute for one. To suggest other wise is irrational and has no basis in fact. Separating "marriage" and "civil unions" and attempting to justify this discrimination by moral judgments is also "un-American" and uncivilized.

It is based solely on the ludicrous teachings of religious beliefs and does not belong in any governmental decisions.

It does, only accomplish the degradation and diminishing of the status of a particular group of U.S. citizens, to the status of sub human, second class citizens, who are fundamentally "different", "unequal", "inferior", "less worthy" and somehow deemed incapable, or undeserving of enjoying the same loving relationships as the majority.

And God knows, the 'majority' is not always correct.

{For the less than intelligent who will read and comment that this will open the door to other 'perverse' people to claim equality as well - i will just say that this kind of comment, or reasoning, is not only ignorant, it is judgmental and only shows the lack of logic that is lost from being brainwashed into believing falsities by their dubious religious teachings}.

There is a saying: ignoratio elenchi. ( a fallacy in logic of supporting a point proved, or disapproved, by an argument proving, or disproving, something not at issue). It is used often by the right, the conservatives, and the religious to justify they misguided beliefs.

The supreme court has held, on several occasions, that marriage is one of the most fundamental rights that we enjoy as U.S. citizens under our very constitution.

This fundamental right is older than the Bill of Rights and older than any political party.

It is the foundation of our society.

[Again, for the bigots reading: you may argue that your "God" has made man and woman alone to enjoy the "sanctity of marriage" and to procreate. Get real. With this reasoning, you would have to exclude sterile heterosexual couples from this 'sanctity' as well; and anyone else who is incapable of procreation - by choice or not.]

Back when I was young, interracial marriages were also against the law.

Truth, justice and equality will always prevail in the end, in spite of all the feeble, misguided protests and hatred for anything that one does not understand, or that their religion deems to be "diminished in value" in the eyes of their particular God.

The only thing that is being accomplished, by all this 'protesting' is the slowing of the inevitable, at the expense of promulgating hatred, bigotry, and unhappiness of those who deserve the same equality as everyone else.

Personal "opinions" have no relevance, and religious "beliefs" have no rightful place in politics.

This is truly a sad commentary on the general principles of equal rights under the United States Constitution.

The following is a quote from the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 regarding equality:

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."

The "Wall of Separation between the Church and State":

The modern concept of a wholly secular government is sometimes credited to the writings of English philosopher John Locke, but the phrase "separation of church and state" in this context is generally traced to a January 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson, addressed to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist Organization.

Echoing the language of the founder of the first Baptist church in America, Roger Williams, who had written in 1644 of "a hedge, or wall, of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world" Jefferson wrote,

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that the act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting and establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State".

Jefferson rejected the orthodox Christianity of his day and was especially hostile to the Catholic Church as he saw it operate in France. Throughout his life he was intensely interested in theology, biblical study, and morality.

As a landowner he played a role in governing his local Episcopal Church; in terms of belief he was inclined toward Unitarianism and the religious philosophy of Deism. Under the influence of several of his college professors, he converted to the deist philosophy.

Jefferson was a deist because he believed in one God, in divine providence, in the divine moral law, and in rewards and punishments after death, but did not believe in supernatural revelation.

He was a [Christian deist] because he saw Christianity as the highest expression of natural religion and Jesus as an incomparably great moral teacher.

He was not an orthodox Christian because he rejected, among other things, the doctrines that Jesus was the promised Messiah and the incarnate Son of God.

Jefferson believed in the moral teachings of Christ and edited a compilation of Christ's teachings leaving out the miracles.

Jefferson was firmly anticlerical saying that:

".....in every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.

He is always in alliance with the despot..

they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes".

Jefferson told Adams he had doubts on the existence of invisible beings such as God, angels, and the soul writing, "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings."

In conclusion, looking at the intentions of the Declaration of Independence, and the expounded clarifications of the meaning of the "wall of separation between church and state" it is incongruous to assert that there is any legal basis for this discrimination today; against the legality of the 'sanctity of marriage' between same sex couples.

Love is love, commitment is commitment, just is just, and equality is equality.

I can not see any distinctions between these rights in reference to all individuals alike.

If these differences are unilaterally religious in nature, then the logical conclusion would be to discard the input of religion in the interpretations of the law of the land.

Religion has no legal rights in establishing, or creating, laws that are discriminatory against any group of people, based on their biased belief systems.

This debate should be a "no-brainer" even for those politicians who are managing to function without the full use of their brains anyway, and definitely without any semblances of logic based on any type of reality.

d.william 05/17/2011