Prop 8 debate

[Chewie]

Pretty sure under common law there has to be proof that the two were "together", not just roommates.

In California I think it's 5 or 7 years.

[PyronIkari]

Pretty sure under common law there has to be proof that the two were "together", not just roommates.

In California I think it's 5 or 7 years.

In California, there is no common law marriage. ^^

[G.I.R]

Maybe not, but you can still sue for palimony.

[PyronIkari]

Maybe not, but you can still sue for palimony.

This has nothing to do with what we're even talking about, so why are you bringing it up?

[Chewie]

Pretty sure under common law there has to be proof that the two were "together", not just roommates.

In California I think it's 5 or 7 years.

In California, there is no common law marriage. ^^

Well there ya go.

Back on topic. >.>;;

[Steve.Young]

Maybe not, but you can still sue for palimony.

This has nothing to do with what we're even talking about, so why are you bringing it up?

Well if you argue that marriage is really about establishing property rights and things of that nature, then it is somewhat related.

[PyronIkari]

Maybe not, but you can still sue for palimony.

This has nothing to do with what we're even talking about, so why are you bringing it up?

Well if you argue that marriage is really about establishing property rights and things of that nature, then it is somewhat related.

No it's not, because this is dealing with divorce and owed dues. The entire conversation was about the benefits of marriage.

[Tony]

I'd love to reply more substantially, but it's time for work.

Very quickly, I had a number of reasons to vote against 8; one of the biggest is that it amended the state's constitution - recklessly. There are few things worth amending the core documents of the government, and marriage is, ideally, not one of them.

[Stormfalcon]

Unfortunately, it's all too easy to amend the state constitution, thus we get results like this.  So, not only do we have to see about fixing the Prop 8 issue, but we also need to fix the whole amendment process so that this doesn't happen again.

[K&K4ever]

Unfortunately, it's all too easy to amend the state constitution, thus we get results like this.  So, not only do we have to see about fixing the Prop 8 issue, but we also need to fix the whole amendment process so that this doesn't happen again.

Here Here!!

[Ninj4]

A very good video on this topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVUecPhQPqY

I did a little analysis of Prop 8 last week and I came up with this conclusion based upon statistics gathered from CNN.com.

To sum up what I've found, it seems that gender was close enough to not become a factor in this election. Though a good majority of people between the ages of 18-29 voted NO, the majority of everyone else over 30 voted YES. By race, the majority of White and Asian people were more likely to vote NO, while the majority of African-American and Latino people were more likely to vote YES. Lastly, people who have college degrees or higher were more likely to vote NO.

The way I see it, it's only a matter of time.  Though this election was a setback, it will only be a matter of time before the young will grow old enough to make their own decisions.  Until then, we must continue to fight for equality.

[deonchan]

The way I see it, it's only a matter of time.  Though this election was a setback, it will only be a matter of time before the young will grow old enough to make their own decisions.  Until then, we must continue to fight for equality.

Truth.

Case in point

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,450648,00.html

[Yukari Kaiba]

just to add in here from what my american politics class was talking about the other day:
If I'm not mistaken, amendments to the constitution can't be passed by voters - amendments to the constitution have to originate in the legislature. So, technically speaking, I believe this would make Proposition 8 invalid since it originated outside the legislature.
This will probably get brought up in the new court hearings as an argument to overturn Prop8, but I figured people here would be interested in the fact.

[Steve.Young]

Here is something my friend said to me, and everyone in the room busted up laughing so hard.


We were discussing prop 8, gay marriage, and marriage in general. He made a few points about how some of his students (who are like 17) are pregnant for the 4th time. Then he said this...

"If people really wanted to stop gay sex, they should let them get married!"

I nearly fell over in my chair. We were all at dinner and some of us shot our drinks through our noses. Great stuff.

[Stormfalcon]

just to add in here from what my american politics class was talking about the other day:
If I'm not mistaken, amendments to the constitution can't be passed by voters - amendments to the constitution have to originate in the legislature. So, technically speaking, I believe this would make Proposition 8 invalid since it originated outside the legislature.
This will probably get brought up in the new court hearings as an argument to overturn Prop8, but I figured people here would be interested in the fact.

You might want to double-check that.  Article 18, Section 3 of the state constitution states "The electors may amend the Constitution by initiative.".  Section 4 goes on to state "A proposed amendment or revision shall be submitted to the electors and if approved by a majority of votes thereon takes effect the day after the election unless the measure provides otherwise.  If provisions of 2 or more measures approved at the same election conflict, those of the measure receiving the highest affirmative vote shall prevail.", majority being 50% + 1 of course.

As for the initiative process itself, Article 2, section 8 covers that.

   (a) The initiative is the power of the electors to propose
statutes and amendments to the Constitution and to adopt or reject
them.
   (b) An initiative measure may be proposed by presenting to the
Secretary of State a petition that sets forth the text of the
proposed statute or amendment to the Constitution and is certified to
have been signed by electors equal in number to 5 percent in the
case of a statute, and 8 percent in the case of an amendment to the
Constitution, of the votes for all candidates for Governor at the
last gubernatorial election.
   (c) The Secretary of State shall then submit the measure at the
next general election held at least 131 days after it qualifies or at
any special statewide election held prior to that general election.
The Governor may call a special statewide election for the measure.

So yeah, amendments can be proposed by the electorate through the initiative process and approved with a simple majority.  Something that should be fixed as far as the simple majority part goes, IMO, but that's how it is.

[Nyxyin]

I felt that the TV commercials on both sides were disingenuous.
I agree that the commercials created fear and that the commercials were misleading.

Completely agreed.  The Yes-on-8 campaign was a brilliant piece of psychology, preying on people who just are too unsure of their own intelligence to actually read the proposition they're voting on.  They fabricated just the right fears.  They used a good mix of all the races in some of their ads.  They put warm, happy music at the right moments.  The No-on-8 ad campaign was an utter failure.  The commercials were all guilty-sounding denials of the Yes-on-8 campaign's fabrications.  They never once suggested to anybody to, you know, read the proposition so that people will know that Yes-on-8 is making stuff up.  They never bothered to tell people that the debates were about a mere fourteen words, and all that children stuff was just pulled from thin air.  No-on-8 mostly used white people in their ads, so they probably lost some of the minorities they were counting on.  They used scary images and music in the background when they described the "good" side.  The No-on-8 campaign should've hired someone better to make the TV ads.

That said, most people already made up their minds before the proposition was put on the ballot.

True.  Many of the older ones decided 8 years ago when Prop 22 passed.  If we extend the data points, it seems like we get 1% turnover per year, so gay marriage should be accepted in another four years.  It's only a matter of time.

There's a non-trivial portion of the population that chose to define marriage as between "a man and a woman," excluding all other forms.
So, again, I'll ask:  How do you guys define it?   Is marriage important at all?  Should it be?

It's a very good question, and I'd like to add, "What about your definition necessitates the government being involved?"

For all the people who say that people in love should have the right to get married, I have to ask you, "Why on earth are we legislating love!?"  Why should the government care whether two consenting adults love each other, have sex with each other, choose to do it with people of the same sex or the opposite sex, or even do it by themselves, with inanimate objects, or with multiple people at once?  It's nobody else's business, and especially not the government's.

I was against Prop 8, but now that it's passed, maybe we should take a good look at heterosexual marriage too.  Heterosexual marriage is a huge problem.  For the people who say that Prop 8 protects "traditional marriage, I have to reply that heterosexual divorces, remarriage, and unmarried parents have already destroyed the sanctity of "traditional marriage" a very long time ago.  In a legal sense, marriage is a joke.  It doesn't give any useful protections to the parties involved in cases of domestic violence, adultery, etc.  Divorces are messy, and lawyers are selling pre-nups and post-nups to make up for the failings of marriage as a government-recognized institution.

Especially now that marriage is defined in bigoted terms, why should government recognize marriage of any form at all?  Why should government be involved in love?  Why should it be involved in religion?  If people want to get married, that's fine.  Leave it up to the religious institutions, the entertainment industry, and the charities.  After all, they're the institutions that are supposed to deal with emotional things like love.  The government has no business legislating love.

Instead, the government should be concerned with legal contracts.  The government shouldn't recognize marriage, but it should recognize and enforce contracts like...

(1) declarations of financial co-dependence / co-mingling / shared resources,
(2) medical and financial power of attorney / proxy declarations,
(3) shared guardianship of minors,
(4) joint ownership of accounts, and
(5) estate and inheritance considerations / designation of beneficiaries.

These should be allowed between any legally competent parties (of sound mind) regardless of love or religion.  For example, I think single caretakers should be able to legally "marry" their siblings.  (I'm picking an incest situation just for the novelty of it, but it could be a friend, roommate, widowed parent, gay partner, boyfriend, etc.)  Life would probably be very difficult for a single mother trying to raise a child and make money at the same time.  It would work better if she could declare her sister as a "spouse" in terms of the five items above.  That way, in case one sister ends up incapacitated in the hospital, the remaining sister would automatically be able to visit, sign medical consent forms if necessary, inherit financial accounts in case of death, and be acknowledged as the child's guardian, etc.  Except for declaring financial co-dependence (I threw that in there to deal with the tax deduction stuff), I believe we already have ways of doing most of these things already.  It just isn't in a convenient package the way marriage is.  So, why not make it one and leave out all the messy undefined stuff that marriage involves?

This is basically what all the Yes-on-8 people are expecting gay people to do, so I think it's only fair that we make the heterosexual people do it too.  All Prop 8 did was make it very clear to me that "traditional marriage" should ideally have no place in the government whatsoever.

[Haruka]

At this point it's a matter of time before it gets overturned.  Prop. 8 is discrimination at its most blatant.  It violates so many Constitutional protections, it can't help but get overturned.  Either the CA state supreme does it or the Fed court steps in.  All it will take is enough lawsuits.

I agree, though. The No on 8 campaign was dismally run.  The Yes on 8 relied on fear, bigotry and ignorance to get their point across (gay people are scary).  No on 8 should ahve appealed to peoples' sense of cultural superiority, such as:
                             Vote NO on Prop.8
            Because this is California and we're better than that.

Personally, I voted no.  I am for love in whatever form and guise it chooses, so long as it's between two humans.  Besides, Heterosexuals ruined marriage a long time ago.  My father's been married three times (2x's divorced, 1x widowed) and is looking at #4!  My parents were married.  I didn't see it do them a whole hell of a lot of good.  Wanna get married, get married.  It doesn't hurt me any.  Just don't make me watch you get divorced!

[Nyxyin]

At this point it's a matter of time before it gets overturned.

Agreed.  Still, I think it's a great opportunity to get people to think about what marriage is, why it's broken, why it's messy, and why should government care about marriage at all.  Whether marriage-the-emotional-bond works for people or not, marriage-the-legal-parts is completely broken as a legal/financial entity.  Just like we separated church and state, I think it's a good idea to separate "love-marriage" and "state-contract-marriage".  I think we should also drop usage of the word "marriage" to refer to "state-contract-marriage" (and call it something like "DP Corp" -- see below).

I am for love in whatever form and guise it chooses

I completely agree with that.  And, I think people should be able to get church-married or Hawaii-married or Vegas-married, or whatever they want.  I don't even care that it's between two humans, and making sure it stays between "two humans" is actually one of the pro-8 arguments -- see next paragraph.  However, I just don't see why the government should care at all if anybody does any form of "love-marriage" (as opposed to "shared-children-contract" or "shared-power-of-attorney-contract" or "division-of-resources-contract").  The government should only care about protecting minors and about enforcing contracts.  When "spouses" make equivalent income and have no children, division-of-resources-marriage and shared-children-marriage is irrelevant.  The government shouldn't care.  I don't understand why people (and I'm talking about some No-on-8 types) are so hot to have the government legislate love.  I think it would clean up divorces a lot if the government only enforced contract situations and taxable entities.

so long as it's between two humans

Well, that's a pro-8 argument.  You see, when people allowed interracial marriages, they never thought that they'd pave the way for gays to get married.  This goes back to one of the aspects of "traditional marriage" is that it's a container for biologically breeding and raising children.  Homosexuals can't biologically reproduce.  That's why it breaks "traditional marriage".  By allowing homosexuals to marry, it does fundamentally break many people's perceived definition of marriage (which never existed as anything that's legally clean and enforceable).  It fundamentally breaks one of the main reasons why governments have previously had to recognize marriage (to assign responsibility for minors).  (Children born out of wedlock already broke marriage a long time ago.)  If the definition of marriage is going to merely be "love", well, humans have great capacity for love.  Why can't three people get married if they love each other?  What if we find that some people are genetically coded to "group-bond" rather than "pair-bond"?  If marriage is between only two humans, then it discriminates against people who are genetically disposed to group-bond.  Also, if a researcher manages to learn how to speak a dolphins' language and realize that dolphins (or elephants or humanoid alien or whatever) have as much intelligence and emotion (and legal competence) as humans, why can't the researcher marry a consenting dolphin if the two love each other very much?  The researcher and the dolphin can never have biological children without Sci-Fi levels of DNA splicing techniques, but homosexuals can never have biological children without more advanced technology either.  What if we do develop AI to a degree capable of love?  Why shouldn't people be allowed to marry robots?  And how do you define "human" anyways?  What if evolution takes the next step and some people just born mutatants?  Maybe some people will eventually just be born as "homo ex post sapiens"?  Are they going to be the next minority?  As long any form of "love-marriage" is part of the government, we're just going to have this problem over and over again.  The government has no business legislating love, and there will be problems as long as it tries.

So, I think we should get "marriage" and marriage-related words out of the government and establish something else, like the "DP Corp" (for domestic partnership corporation) for people who want to declare themselves to be financially codependent.  As with any other corporation, any number of people can join, and there are different tax implications for such corporations.  Any money can be paid directly to the DP Corp and get taxed at DP Corp rates, and any money that is supposed to be kept by the individual does not get paid into the DP Corp and gets taxed at individual rates.  This can clean up divorces and limit liability in case of debt problems and such.  People keep their own individual accounts, and the DP Corp assets are split evenly among members when the DP Corp dissolves.  While any member can run up huge debts against the corporation and against his personal account, the debt collectors can't touch the personal accounts of the other members.

Besides, Heterosexuals ruined marriage a long time ago.

Agreed, and so many other things conspire to break marriage too.  In addition to single parents breaking the shared-children definition of marriage, he financial co-dependence aspect was ruined when economics required many families to have dual incomes.  Actually, going further back, it was broken when people had slaves taking care of their children and when the bread-earning partner stopped properly valuing the home-keeping partner.  Let's say a college graduate decides to keep a home and raise a child instead of getting a job.  Even if they wait until the child goes to college before divorcing, that home-keeping partner does not build up a resume and does not have a salary history, so they've sacrificed a lot of their potential and future earnings for the family, while the bread-earning partner has 18 years of industry experience and probably a lot of industry contacts.  This makes divorces very messy.  If the partners establish ahead of time what that opportunity cost is worth and what the parties are responsible for, then the divorces wouldn't be so bad.

But, well, I think that's why people ran to Prop 22, and now to Prop 8.  They know marriage is very drastically broken and bankrupt on many levels.  But, people got used to running to the government for bailouts to patch things up when things are broken.  Unfortunately, government bailouts don't really fix much.  They relieve symptoms briefly, but unless the underlying reasons get fixed, the issues are going to keep coming up again and again.  The underlying problem is that, right now, there is no separation of the religious/emotional aspects of marriage from the legal/contractual/financial aspects.

It doesn't hurt me any.

Are you sure?  Divorces that get messy and go to court take up resources that come out of our tax dollars, and apparently, California law requires a minimum of six months to get divorced.  Also, any tax advantages and disadvantages of marriages affect the amount of money there is for public services.  Maybe some people who voted yes on 8 value families focused on biological children, and they didn't want to pay tax deductions for people who aren't producing biological children.  Of course, I believe that homosexual couples are more likely to end up with a marriage tax penalty than a marriage tax deduction.  Still, I think people should re-evaluate why people are so adamant about the government regulating love like that.

I think we should codify what needs to be incorporated into the legal system and then remove all the emotion-related bits from government.  I think marriage is broken, and I'm a bit aghast that more people want to be part of it now that we have better legal alternatives.  I would like to know if there are any benefits or protections of "traditional marriage" other than the five I listed above plus the purely emotional and religious ones.  The government shouldn't regulate emotions.  We've separated church and state a very long time ago (with questionable degrees of success), and the No-on-8 side seems to still think this separation is a good thing.  They just don't go far enough.

Mostly, I'm utterly appalled that, in this climate of economic uncertainty, people from other states have been contributing to both sides of the Prop 8 campaign.  California is in a very poor financial situation, and we spent $70M on this!?  If they cared so much about what our children might be learning, why aren't they spending money to help our schools instead?  That $70M was just irrational (especially if we believe that most people made up their minds eight years ago during Prop 22).  There are just too many emotions involved in this, and I think it would help everybody concerned if the emotions were separated out.

[Druix]

I'd love to reply more substantially, but it's time for work.

Very quickly, I had a number of reasons to vote against 8; one of the biggest is that it amended the state's constitution - recklessly.

Yet the passing of 8 clashes with our country's constitution. It interferes with peoples rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and even moreso, it interferes with our right to religious freedom. SO many of the arguments against same-sex marriage are based on peoples' religions. Now, I am not attacking anyone's religion here, but people need to understand that in America, we should NOT use our religion to write the laws. So by using relgious reasoning to pass Prop 8, they are taking away the religious freedoms of anyone whose religion does not disapprove of homosexuality.

This is a matter of equality. Not religion, not even actual 'marriage'....just equality. Equality under the law, a foundation upon which this country was built. The idea that "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..." Note; it does not specify who that creator is, it is a broad enough term to encompass any belief, so let's not refert back to the religious porton of this argument.

Anyway, as I was saying...this is a civil rights issue. This is a matter of bigotry and human cruelty. I don't think the yes voters really understood exactly what their votes did to thousands of people and their loved ones. I don't think they realized that by checking one thing on a ballot, they were crushing peoples' hearts and souls, taking away their right to be equal, deciding their lives for them. By supporting Proposition 8, they have told a rather large number of people that they are second-class citizens, undeserving of fair and equal treatment. They have told us that we are not worth as much as they are. If people would stop for a minute and take a look at what they've done, how it's affected people, I wonder if they'd change their minds at all?

I unfortunately don't have time to rea through all 7 pages of this thread at the moment so I apologize if this has been restated over and over but I had to say it. I also apologize if this link has already been posted, but I think it's something that needs to be shared. Her words are powerful, eloquent, and moving: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS2haAKBOEY

[Nyxyin]

Druix, I generally agree with most of what you said.  I agree that legislation against gay marriages destroy equality.

However, just as a thought exercise, I would like to ask why do people, no matter what their sexual preference is, need marriages to be recognized by the state in order to be happy?

Why isn't it enough for happiness for people to be married by their families, their communities, their churches, or maybe some other private, non-government, non-profit organization?  A lot of people say that marriage is about love.  Why do people want the government to regulate love at all?  Why should it make people happier to have the government involved in whether they love someone or not?  In an ideal world, I think the state should stop interfering with everybody's marriage equally and leave love up to the individual people and whatever spiritual and/or community organizations that they want to share their happiness with.

I think taking all marriage out of government entirely is theoretically the best way to give everybody equal pursuit of happiness.  As long as the government is involved in marriage, there will be discrimination.  Even if homosexuals are allowed to marry, what about the polyamorous?  Do we want to say that those who truly love multiple people equally don't have a right to what makes them happy?  What about situations and types of people we can't even conceive of yet?  Do we want to fight this battle every time we discover that the world is more complex than we thought?  I think the root problem that the government should not be involved in regulating love between consenting adults, and as long as the government tries to regulate such love at all, we're going to have problems with lack of equality in the pursuit of happiness.

It would make me happier to not have Uncle Sam, Big Brother, and millions of voters passing their whimsical judgment on whether they think my love for other consenting adults is somehow "legitimate" not.  I think the passage of Proposition 8 points out very drastically what problems happen when people make love subject to the whims of voters and the government at all.