The other part that he debate hinges on is this: what is marriage? Why has society decided to establish this institution? After all, relationships are private things, why has society decided to legislate on them? What’s the rationale behind it originally? How has that changed or should it change if at all?

I tend to think that marriage has an anthropological origin in making sure that the social order is structured around the ability for societies to protect and foster children and to regulate wealth distribution somehow. Or something like that. Provide a nucleus to these fundamental anthropological bases that are production of goods and production of new human beings to keep the whole thing up. You have, I think, to accept that the notion of Gay marriage is a radical departure from this, which many people are still attached to.

The idea that marriage is about love between two people is a very recent view. Frankly, if that’s what it is, then I don’t see what society, through its government, has to do with it, but that’s just me.

However, as I think I made clear somewhere in this thread, I’m not against nor for Gay marriage. I don’t really care one way or another myself, but I do find the issue itself interesting for the above reasons, which I think should frame the debate.

So I’d say that beyond claiming an abstract ‘equality’ principle, it would be a good idea for the pro-Gay-marriage thinkers to envangelise on what they think the role of marriage in society should be. It’s only by defining that point that the rest can be vindicated.

However, and again for the sake of clarity, I do think that if it is the case that marriage affords demonstrable protection or civil rights of some kind that is not available by other means, and that this protection is not related to things that concern procreation, then I agree, that it’s a case of discrimination. Also, I’d say that it’s pretty hard and unfair on the people who are already married. I would also have voted against prop 8 simply on the grounds that it’s a constitutional amendment that will remove something from people who already have it de facto, and that it definitely advocates issues that are playing to an anti-progressive agenda an represent forces in society that I don’t like.

But regardless, it’s a constitutional right that these people have to propose it, and people will vote on it. So at some point, you have to make the effort, if you don’t want to be voted down, to understand your opponent’s grounds for voting against what you think is right. You have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not all Gay-haters, that they have legitimate concerns about this problem, and you have to elaborate some kind of argument that makes them want to support your cause.

If you keep calling everybody who disagrees with you like this a Gay-hater, then they will end up voting against you. Oh, that’s what actually happened. Is California filled with 52% of people who hate Gays? I don’t think so. If the opponents to prop 8 had convinced only 3% more people, these people who don’t hate gays, but well, on balance, they are sensitive to this traditional marriage thing, and if they hear that just because of that they are called gay-haters and caricatured as morons, well, they’ll get pissed off and ignore the side of them that would be glad to be empathetic, then prop 8 would have been defeated.

Contrary to popular belief, democracy is not about what’s right, it’s about what people care about. If the other side is better than you at making people care about them, then you lose. Ask McCain.

Calling the opponents (52% of the voters) ‘haters’, implying they are the same as pro-slavery people, and that it’s legitimate that one of them should be outed as a bigot and forced to renounce their job and life-long dedication to the arts, well, frankly, if you don’t realize how this completely defeats your argument for tolerance and empathy, you are completely deluded and entrenched in a self-righteous view of the world.

To deride me as ‘the intolerant who calls other people intolerant’, also, well…

Anyone remember Jimmy The Greek? His departure from public life was about his publicly revealed bigotry affecting the ability of the institution employing him to continue to perform effectively. Exactly the same thing.

If a Jewish-owned company with a largely Jewish customer-base discovered they were employing a committed skinhead, would they be expected to continue employing him, even if his continued presence impacted employee morale and customer traffic? If this is different, then how & why? And remember, they didn’t fire him, he quit.

Your administrative characterization of gay marriage deliberately fails to understand the problem with Prop 8 & this guy’s support of it. You say this has no bearing on civil liberties and I assert exactly the opposite. State recognition of gay marriage is about extending the protection of law to those commitments. Anyone who would advocate against it is a hater (whether they think they are or not) because that position is explicitly that gay people don’t have a right to the same legal protections as straight people. The point is not to force religions to recognize gay marriages, just that the state will do so. Again, if you say this shouldn’t happen — why?

So, again, this guy didn’t lose his job. He left his job. He left his job because public knowledge of his socio-political views rendered him ineffective.

Funny how people who aren’t tolerant like to get high-and-mighty about someone else who is intolerant OF INTOLERANCE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5qdOQ-yzFU
I don’t see anything hateful there, simply understandable (albeit conceivably misguided) concern. The thing is I don’t have a clue whether how it characterizes prop 8 is accurate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..&NR=1
This one is clearly framing the issue in fairly classical religious terms, basically gays are sinners but we love them as such. The main problem with this from my point of view is the question of whether religion is proper grounds for policy-making. Well, if the huge majority of citizens are religious llike they are in the U.S., there’s no way to avoid religious sentiment driving policy. Separation of Church and State is about removing institutional power from the hands of Churches, not removing the vote from religious people.
So there is in this one a clear disaproving of Gays as not being good Christians according to what they think being Christian means, but no hate that I can see. Just bigotry.
As a side note, you’ll see also that all this “Gay-haters” language being use by adversaries of Prop 8 (like it is here) is playing right into their hands, as half of the ad is them presenting themselves as victims of unfair labelling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..&NR=1
This one is mostly making the point that it’s about religious freedom. It’s a completely stupid argument, but I don’t see any hateful rhetoric in there.
A good point made in this one though, is that this is not about rights, it’s about how marriage is defined in society. That rings pretty true and this is what the debate should be about. To pretend that this is about Gay-hating is missing the point, and, ultimately, losing the argument.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko2-EQss0V4
This one is actually pretty funny. The end is completely counter-climactic, as it negates the point that the fiction makes (that you can’t use Bride and Groom – it’s in fact optional).
So these people want to keep the tradition of marriage. No Gay-bashing here that I can see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Q4V8WNF6k
This one is Newt Gingrich reminding people that same-sex marriage is not an established right until the people actually vote for it. What’s wrong with that?

Ok, I’ll do only one more, if you can point me to a few that actually are what you call vicious or hate-filled, that would help. So far I’ve only found stupid, bigoted, traditionalist or constitutionalist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17au_6mBM_8
This one is weird, plays on pretty vile things in some of the imagery, but I can’t even tell the point it’s making – is it for or against prop 8?

I couldn’t help but continue the seach for the vicious and hateful scum that you say is flooding the campaign.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gDze9YBVxU
I stumbled upon this one, but it’s actually against prop8. It’s the only one I found so far that is actually playing on stereotypes and is rather insulting on its adversaries. It’s funny though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdH1ZEbnIms
This one seems also to be a spoof of pro-prop8 people. It’s pretty damn stupid and spiteful, it seems to me. The only two examples of prop8 adversaries campainging I’ve found so far are a far cry from anything that would convince people who are not already convinced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4oGKm8Upp8
This one is the best I’ve found against prop8.

What springs to mind looking at all this, is that surely, just as it’s pretty fair to blame Democrats for Bush’s re-election in 2004 at least, or McCain’s choices of VP and campaigning style and themes for his defeat, it would probably not go amiss for the “no on Prop 8″ campaigners to wonder about what THEY did wrong in that campaign to fail to convince voters. They had more money, and from what I’ve seen (admittedly extremely limited and not necessarily representative), they seemed to campaign more negatively on caricaturing prop 8 advocates rather than making their points and creating positive empathy in Californian voters. Just a thought.

Regardless, I’m saying this also because of the behavior of many people on this thread who think it’s OK for a guy to lose his job because he supported a ballot (the fact that his view actually won the vote makes this even weirder, especially reading people here who talk about civil rights or constitutionality).

newtonusr: can you point me to hateful clips for prop 8?

If you think that it’s not right that this guy should lose his job over it, why don’t you respond also to the hordes of people who say it is? It felt like a semiotically reasonable assumption, sorry if I mischaracterized your view.

I’ll take a look at the Youtube vids, I didn’t follow the campaign ads.

As for the hate thing, that’s a good question: I indeed don’t think that questioning the accessibility of certain categories of citizens to a special kind of voluntary administrative status (marriage) that has no bearing whatsoever on any civil liberties qualifies as hate. I don’t think either that believing that marriage is a by nature traditional and religious (read anthropological) institution designed to foster procreation (whether under the auspices of God or not) qualifies as hateful.

If that’s your definition of hate, then how do you distinguish the above from burning ******* on a cross, or bludgeoning ******** with a baseball bat that you subsequently rape them with?

Equating the trivial with the fundamental is not going to help further any cause. Like SomeGuy@45 says: “This kind of thing confuses people about who the bad guy is”.

Just to be clear again: I don’t think that people who believe that marriage is and should be a right for Gays are idiots, or hateful, or that they’re wrong. All I’m saying is that it’s dangerous to start thinking that it’s right for someone who doesn’t to lose their job over it.

~~~ModNote: Edited for content.~~~

Please describe why an action taken by anyone in furtherance of stripping enumerated rights from someone else because the church told you to, isn’t hate.

And you saying that having an issue with Gay marriage is wanting Gays “to be scorned and driven from the public square” plays right into my previous comment (in which there is no joke, I’m sorry to say) : it’s a mindless caricature that blithely refuses to look earnestly at an opinion you don’t understand and stigmatises it as only possibly emanating from an enemy of democracy or freedom or something like that. Actually I think there would be nothing wrong with that as long as you kept it on an argumentative level. When you use this to justify that it’s right that this guy should lose his job because he holds that view, that’s when it becomes scary.

What’s your limit? Would you have agreed with the war in Irak if the purpose had been to defend gay rights over there? What’s the line where you stop harming others because they disagree with you?

To clarify about tolerance: being tolerant about something means that you are not damning someone to oblivion just because they hold a view you don’t like or understand. It doesn’t mean that you can’t oppose what they do or say through normal political means, such as voting, talking, arguing, campaigning and the like. But you are still recognising the right of that person to hold this view without losing their job and being blacklisted from their industry.

I can’t believe how something so obvious has to be said here, on FDL of all places. The mind boggles.

There is no difference.

Tolerance, which most of you seem to proclaim to be a core value, is about accepting the variety of the human experience, and refraining from ramming down the throats of people who hold a view you don’t understand, or that goes against your own vested interests, that they are despicable and deserve all the hurt they can get.

When I read some of the stuff here, I’m ashamed at the defense of the american left and liberals that I repeatedly undertake over here in France when people call Americans a bigoted and bellicose people.

Thank god also for Larue and SomeGuy who bring a bit of human(e) balance to this sorry thread.

Your suggestion that this should be tolerated, and is in itself an act of tolerance…

I’m looking for the joke. I can’t find it. I am hopelessly snark-impaired, though.