May 03, 2005

Comments (4)

1. Rebekah Kassell on 03 May 2005

   Rally at the State Capitol!!!
   
   What: Rally with Basic Rights Oregon in Support of Senate Bill 1000

   When: Wednesday, May 4th, 4 p.m. Stick around afterward for the hearing on Senate Bill 1000, beginning at 5 p.m.

   Where: Oregon State Capitol, West Steps

   Why: Demand that the Legislature pass civil unions and ban anti-gay, anti-trans discrimination!

   On Wednesday, May 4, Oregon Lawmakers will hear testimony on Senate Bill 1000, which would create civil unions for same-sex couples and ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

2. ron ledbury on 04 May 2005

   Be sure to separate civil right from special privilege. The analytical tool to achieve this is to flip the facts over such that gays, and gays only, get special benefits while straights get nothing. What could a straight demand as a civil right for the public announcement of their sexual activities? They could demand little to nothing as a reward for sex, other than to guard their privacy right.

   Remember too that the state is not the center of life, as if it were a stand in for God. It is just a secular thing and we needed not have God ot the State-Stand-In-For-God proclaim that sex is to be rewarded with public dollars for that sex.

   Now, it two people wish to have their personal finances merged for their commercial transactions then surely the state can accommodate this by maintaining a registry for commercial interests to reference when need be.

   What you may call a civil rights bill has components that have nothing to do with civil rights but rather public rewards for sex. In this sense it is just as obscene as the a straight couple demanding money to fuck, but only in a particular way. The remedy to the extension of public fuck money is not to expand the fucking options but to remove the fuck money from the current recipients.

   The civil right is to be free from state interference and to have the state protect you from the interference of others. Too wrongs do not make a right, unless by extending a a special privilege to one group then (in many other contexts too) we must extend the same to all variants. Here, the only common element is a reward to fuck, regardless of the chosen partner and method and only if (and here is the real kicker for me) one's privacy right has been voluntarily abandoned as a condition for getting the reward.

3. Bob R. on 04 May 2005

   Ron -

   Please itemize current "special benefits" available to gays which straights may not receive.

   Currently, opposite-sex couples may enter into a state marriage. Same-sex couples may not.

   Contrary to your assertion that any benefits for gay couples are somehow based on types of "fucking" and on doling out "fuck money" is incorrect. Sexual relations, though overwhelmingly a component of marriage and relationships, are not necessarily a component. Opposite-sex couples are not asked by the state if they have sex, or which kind of sex they have.

   If you want to exclude gays from state marriage because you do not approve of how they "fuck", then you must require opposite-sex couples to swear that they will only engage in penile-vaginal intercourse during their marriage, and provide enforcement mechanisms to back that up. Anything less would be a complete hipocracy.

   - Bob R.
   

4. ron ledbury on 05 May 2005

   As I have said to b!X . . . look to the things that straights could compel of the government, via the courts, where the majority (theoretically) refused to grant any benefits whatsoever (to straights or gays), even the registry of a civil union. The outer limit of what a court could order, as an accommodation to religious belief in a union of two individuals, is to acknowledge the relationship, but only in a form of an incorporation such that the unit can enter into commercial transactions as a unit.

   Nearly every thing beyond that level of accommodation on religious grounds is a legislative extension of a privilege. The reliance upon the equal privileges and immunities clause based legal arguments presupposes that those extensions are not a right but only a legislatively extended privilege . . . a fortiori, a special benefit. This position is not rebutted by the Defense of Marriage folks (the special benefits all around point) but they necessarily attempted to also distinguish such a special privilege characterization (a legislative whim) such that the legislature's words would have been superfluous for purposes of construing marriage benefits as directly mandated under some possible constitutional analysis alone.

   The equal privilege violation claims for the extension of benefits, if that were the sole basis for a claim of a right would largely dictate that the only power available to the court would be to strike the legislatively granted special rights to straights, as they would be contrary to the equal privileges clause. The remedy of voiding the marriage statute would have removed the legislative civil union benefits now accorded only to straights.

   A proper one size fits all approach might look much like the proposal offered by Rep. Dennis Richardson (reciprocal benefits following the Hawaii example) but with the additional feature that the only benefits available to straights must also be found exclusively within that very reciprocal benefits law itself. It would be the sole replacement law for the previously voided law (under a different and proper procedural context of the denial of marriages and the benefits that accompany that denial, and then application of the proper remedy).

   Mr. Richardson's bill does not ask how and who one fucks. Let him eat his own words and make straights live by that very same bill. The only thing that is conclusive from M36, and the varied and conflicting legislative history of that enactment, is that the mere word "marriage" cannot be used by the legislature to describe a gay union. M36 does not require that a civil union between straights must be named a marriage. Marriage can be stripped out of statutes entirely, as far as M36 is concerned, and so too all the benefits of civil union that are extended by the legislature to straights. A judge still has the same power today, as before M36, to simply void the statutes that Mr. Richardson wants to leave on the books today as a parallel set of laws to that of the reciprocal benefits law.

   While the reciprocal benefits bill is couched in non-sex related activity, or the more colorful term fucking, the retention of the set of laws particular to straights is based on sex and yes fucking by straights.

   Mr. Richardson's approach is still significantly guided by the need to use marriage as a club . . not for the money but for the morality issues. The gay opponents still want to retain the morality leadership by at least ignoring the word gay, and gay sex. If any sex references can be excluded from his legislation then it should also be good enough for all straight civil unions, even if they might be called marriages.

   The goal of BRO and the ACLU is the remove just such a morality club. Support for SB 1000, however has its' own analytical confusion, protecting gays from attack on one hand and extending special rights on the other. It does not remove the club, even if only a lingering morality-club, that is represented by the perpetuation of marriage statutes and the one man one woman stuff.

   In a more legal theory kind of analysis, the one man one woman thing is not really law but a factual assumption sort of like setting .08 percent blood alcohol as a fact test to prove what . . to prove impairment of driving skills by reason of intoxication. When the legislature says that the pairing of one woman and one man, or one man and one man, or one woman and one woman, is some sort of useful evidentiary fact I cannot help but ask "useful for what particular public purpose?" Such pairing descriptors mean absolutely nothing alone without reference to some public purpose, that other thing is the reward and punishment system based solely on the morality of sexual conduct.

   I still hear the voice of someone asking if the Bowers case would have been decided differently if the parties had been an opposite gender couple engaged in a particular proscribed sex act? Would you be satisfied with Mr. Richardson's Reciprocal Benefits law if it was also the only basis for straights to obtain any benefits, thus being absolutely equal across the board and thus not in violation to any equal privileges and immunities based claims? Will that bill also be the default law, for all, in the event that a judge tosses out special rights for one man and one woman stuff? Would it's very existence offer a judge a slight bit more leeway when contemplating the significance of the consequences of a proper order to void those portions of the statutes that still offer rewards based on one man one woman. I'm am not sure whether Mr. Richardson is contemplating how his bill might influence a choice of remedies by a judge in a follow up case, but that is no reason for the gays to ignore it. It is an opportunity that can be exploited.

   [I hope that this is not too long and that someone may nevertheless glean a positive argument or two from it.]