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A Costly Anti-marriage Policy
Ask any newlywed, even the most scaled-down wedding tends to be pricy. From catering to attire to the honeymoon, the marriage industry is big business.
Recently, a group of researchers examined what impact same-sex marriages had on Iowa’s economy, crediting it with a $12 million boost.
UCLA’s Williams Institute, which advances sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy, looked at wedding arrangements and tourism by same-sex couples in the first year since Iowa’s Supreme Court overturned a law banning same-sex marriage in 2009.
The study also concluded that Iowa received $850,000 to $930,000 tax revenue boost. Much of the boost came through tourism dollars from out-of-state couples looking to marry.
These numbers aren’t likely to persuade Minnesota’s conservative policymakers from retreating on their equal rights assault. Also, these estimates are likely a one-time boost from pent up demand that will level off in future years. Furthermore, the study does not examine the impact of dispersing wedding tourism dollars from other Midwest state’s passing same-sex marriage laws.
However, the study is critical in showing economic potential when public policies are focused on inclusion. When we encourage people—from those in the GLBT community to immigrants—to move to our state, we signal that Minnesota is a great place to live, raise a family, work and invest.
Many of our Fortune 500 companies already realize this, extending health and other benefits to domestic partners.
Passing Minnesota’s anti-marriage amendment will make us less competitive with our neighbor to the south in attracting talented workers and citizens. As the study shows, same-sex couples from Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and as far as Texas are going to Iowa to get married. Perhaps many of them will decide that Iowa’s environment of inclusion is worth making it their home.
As we look for ways to move Minnesota forward, let’s not take options off the table that have the potential to produce economic gains.
Posted in Economic Development | Related Topics: Economic Growth Minority Issues
46 Comments
January 3, 2012 at 7:30 pm
The question I ask was clear; “why is this minorities more important than the education of our children, (30 some % of our society), or the employment of our under and unemployed, (again 30+% of society)”? Why has it consistantly been more important for at least 3 decades now? Yes it has been by the DFL’s ruling core for all this time. Who is this ruling core? Teachers Unions, homosexuals, and white collar public employee’s, (the anti-God coalition), or about 6-7% of society holding consistantly more than 50% of the parties delegates at state convention time. This long standing disconnect with reality and it’s misplaced priorities has led us into the present disasterously disconnected party that no longer connects with a large enough segment of society to remain realavent.
January 3, 2012 at 7:03 pm
Right you are Dan. Protection of minorities is why we have a Constitution, which protects the rights of minorities of any kind. The majority must be restrained from trampling the minorities into the dust.
It’s in the Constitution. Look it up.
January 3, 2012 at 7:00 pm
Or how if a minority of the population get the same rights you have, how it invalidates yours.
January 3, 2012 at 6:20 pm
Bill, you have to explain how the right of a small portion of our poulation to hove the rights you have is somehow connected to education or healthcare, you cant. You have lost the argument & spinning off on tangents doesnt help. You get the working poor a better salary by getting them in a union to negotiate as a group. Healthcare in 1964? Talk to the medical industry, they raise their prices too fast. Doctors averaged a 16% increase in pay last year, did you. When the CEO of Healtheast retired a few years ago he got a 1.6 Billion dollar severance package. Just a note on public employees in MN. They all make less then the heads of each department(DNR, MPCA, etc). Our dept heads rank 50th in pay against all the other states. You talked about white collar state employees. These are highly educated people & against equal jobs in the private sector, they make much less. Govt. costing too much? Tax collections are the lowest amount in 2011 since 1950. Yours and mine didnt go down, ask the top 1%.
January 3, 2012 at 5:51 pm
WD Billy, on top of the fact you make absolutely no sense, it isn’t right or just to deny people human rights simply because they are in a minority. If someone made a decision that you were expendable because you live in an underpopulated area, run a hobby as a business out of your home, and have far right views, are in an exceptionally small percentage of the population, and therefore don’t need any of the rights other people have is that right? How about if you had green eyes?
Just because someone is in a small group doesn’t make them less needed or valuable. Dr. Sauk was only one person, but he invented the polio vacine. Steve Jobs was only one, but he built a company into the biggest company in America.
I think you need to get over the “the smaller the group the more expendable you are” mentality. We all have our contributions to make. You certainly have not been annointed with the authority to determine worth and how needs to be helped. If fact, I suggest you be careful, because one day others might make that decision about you.
Human rights are human rights whether they be 100,000,000 people or just one. We don’t pardon accidental execution of one person because it was only one. Injustice is injustice whether it be one or many.
January 3, 2012 at 2:49 pm
To add some new figures, census figure tell us that 1% of couples living together are gay. Assuming couples to be 50% of the population (could’t find that figure), than homosexual interested in marrige would make up to 0.5% of society. The question still remains, why are the rights of this minority so much greater than the rights of our children to a quality education? Or the rights of the working poor to be able to feed their families off the fruits of their labor. Prior to 1964 my father was the sole bread winner in our family and we had quality health care. By the 1978 depression it already took two workers in the family to support the growing quality of life of the white collar public employees. It is now 2012 and not even two jobs feeds the bueracratic bloat any more.
January 3, 2012 at 1:49 pm
I stand corrected, the WEB Master did contact me and the posts did appear. Free speech still lives.
January 3, 2012 at 1:41 pm
This is an incredibly shallow analysis. What about social security, medicare, disability, estate, and death benefits? This would cost the government a fortune. Marriage tourism a drop in the bucket compared to this.
January 3, 2012 at 1:03 pm
Contacting the webmaster for a list of posting rules might be in order.
January 3, 2012 at 10:30 am
While I would love to continue this discussion, the long arm of the censor has already undermined my opinion. So much for free speech.
January 3, 2012 at 9:29 am
I agree with you Ginny, just not your reference to what you quote the Constitution as saying. I don’t think it means freedom FROM religion, as it means freedom OF religion. And atheists are included in that. Religions are by their nature discriminatory. It’s because they all believe they have the exclusively right answers. It is the disagreements between the thousands of religions that lead to wars and unfair treatment.
I don’t know what we will learn from history, but I would like someone to take a macro-view of religions and determine if they have been a net asset or liability. What good is it, if we all end up killing each other over it? You know, the “Golden Rule” could be established as a basic value without interjecting some supreme being.
I think religion is corrupted like anything else. It seems to get diverted into a quest for power over people.
January 3, 2012 at 9:15 am
Ginny - PS
I think the Constitution means more freedom of religion than freedom from religion.
January 3, 2012 at 9:09 am
Ginny, I am not quarreling with you. Actually, I’m responding to WD Billy, who said the Constitution stated “freedon of religion.” The Constitution never said that. To repeat, it said, ““...but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office of public Trust under the United States.” In the first Amendment to the Constitution is says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The above reference from the Constitution does not mean what the quote says. In fact, it doesn’t meant our political system can’t have religion in it. To mean, the Constitution only means there cannot be any “religious litmus” test to run for office and that no law can be made to begin, enhance or promote a religion, or to stop anyone from worshipping as they want. In other words, the Constitution allows for all sorts of religiosity, just not a State version of such. It strikes me that the references highlight religious tolerance more than anything else.
Today, all sorts of faux-christian zealots seem to want to turn our country into a theocracy, which I believe is intended to be the “opium of the masses” to distract us from the looting of our country by the rich monied interests.
January 2, 2012 at 11:13 pm
My point is simple here Danny, atheism is just as much of a religious belief system as any other belief system. As such you have no more right to use our schools to promote your belief system than does any other belief system. I would remind you that atheists can no more prove their belief system than those they oppose. As for Atheist death tole let’s start with Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Edi Ammine, Pol Pot, and a half dozen more totaling over 100 million dead civilians plus soldiers in 100 years, deny that. Shall we talk about their SOCIALIST roots also?
January 2, 2012 at 8:13 pm
Who says? And what are the numbers? And in which eras? The only one I can think of offhand is Stalin.
Provide some facts.
January 2, 2012 at 8:11 pm
Dan, I’m not quarreling with you. I just misread one of your sentences, but what I said is true in any case.
January 2, 2012 at 8:10 pm
Dan
I know that the words “freedom from religion” do not appear in the Constitution. Neither does separation of church and state. But if I do not need to adhere to, say, Episcopaliansim in my country or state, I am free to not claim any religion. And I am free to claim no religion. If I want to call myself a gnostic (after a group of early church followers), that’s up to me. So is the Church of staying home reading the NYTimes on Sunday.
The people behind the Freedom from Religion are probably atheists, as I think I said before. Logic tells me that if I am not a Protestant or an Episcopalian or a Lutheran, I do not have to choose ANY religion. So I am free from religion of any kind.
January 2, 2012 at 5:42 pm
I think some on this website need to be better informed. One who repeatedly refers to the Constitution, but doesn’t know wha’s in it,is ignorant. The last paragraph of Article VI of the Constitution says, “...but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office of public Trust under the United States.” In the first Amendment to the Constitution is says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
There is no such statement in the Constitution that stipulates “freedom from religion. It is not atheists who pedal religiosity in schools. It’s the Christian faiths.
As far as “atheist dictators” causing more deaths than all of the religious wars, I think he needs to furnsih facts, not a warped perspective.
The Constitution is very clear about not mixing religion and politics. Some might try reading it.
January 2, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Actually Ginny what I said was hurray for the concept of citizen controled education that gave us the ability to interpret all written knowledge, (not just religion), from our own point of view. Hurray for the education system that brought on the age of technology by increasing individula access to knoledge. What I am standing against here is the horendously failed socialist, top down, union employee controled, garbage that has replaced it in the last 30+ years
January 2, 2012 at 12:11 pm
That’s an interesting twist and a total lie Danny. No where have I advocated for anything less than equal rights for atheists. Nor have I advocated for anything more. No special rights for any special interest group Danny.
January 2, 2012 at 11:58 am
Back to the Middle Ages, when religion ruled, thought and ignorance were commanded with threats of death (burning alive, anyone?) as was curiosity and questioning Authority.
Hooray for the Middle Ages. Bring out your dead.
January 2, 2012 at 11:06 am
As for the Constitution Ginny, we both know it reads “freedom of religion”. Atheist seem to think they do not belong to a religious belief, so it is alright for them to use our public schools to promote their belief system. As an agnostic I tend to stand with people of religion as I have seen far too much atheist arrogance and self serving butchery for one lifetime. Some even say that those killed by atheistic dictators in the last 100 years exceeds deaths in all the religious wars in recorded history. Atheists should never have any special standing in our education system, it must stand on it’s own two feet like everything else of human conception.
January 2, 2012 at 10:53 am
Thats quite a tangent Ginny. Public education in this country and Europe grew out of the right of religious people to read and interpret, privately, religious text. Along with that came an explosion of knowledge and invention. Never until Bloom’s disiples invaded our schools was there any organized effort to undermine what children learned from parents and churches. It was enough to assume that it would happen naturally as a result of internal exploration. With Bloom and the atheistic, anti-religion, feminazi element in the Teachers union, came this direct challenge to parents and families, a disconnect that is now at it’s worst point ever. It is exactly what Dr. Shirley McCune spoke of when she said in 1991; “What we are about is the total restructuring of society”. This is exactly what our schools have been used for since then. The addicting of children, the zero tolerance socialism, Diversity training, and DARE are all invasive examples of how our schools became training grounds for your activists and proving ground for your socialist indoctrination and training. No stronger example exists of propagandizing students and undermining society than your INSTITUTIONS of education that are more like prisons than the community schools we attended as children that actually connected with our parents. You now make parents the enemy and scapegoat them for everthing wrong with education, but you demand more cooperation. Who died and made you GOD??? We own the system and until that power is returned to us, the above ignorance will continue.
January 2, 2012 at 10:41 am
What garbage! While one writes about the intrusion of the “elitist” atheists wanting to restrict freedoms of whoever, I read a poorly thought our screed from one who wants to restrict speech rights of “elitist” atheists.
There is something very deficient in the thinking of one who proposes to take away speech freedoms from people because they allege that group restricts the freedoms of others.
First, there was no offer of ANY objective evidence to to establish “elitist” atheists have threatened anyone’s freedom. Second, to make a poorly thought-out statement for protecting “hate-speech,” but then to threaten speech rights of atheists is hypocritical on its face, not to mention poorly reasoned.
January 1, 2012 at 6:56 pm
Who needs permission to challenge established beliefs of state, church, and parents? And who would give it?
If we never challenged our beliefs, we’d never have Martin Luther and all that followed. Our science would be stuck in the dark ages when the pope decided that the sun had to go around the earth, etc. etc.
What is arrogant is to assume that standard, existing beliefs and behaviors are correct and everyone must follow them.
“An elitist atheist core at the center of this education reform garbage,” is pure garbage, another of your sweeping statements of some scapegoats and pinning all the blame on them—atheism, unions, civil service employees, taxes, Obama, the Democrats (who are really socialists and communists), and on and on.
In my book, Eve’s eating of the apple was a sacred act—the act of opening up humanity’s eyes. I suppose we’d all be living in some Garden of Eden, otherwise, but try to envision the population of today all crammed into that garden. Yewww!
Thank god for iconoclasts and thinkers and those of us who keep pushing the boundaries, looking around the corner, and trying to understand our world and ourselves.
Yay for challenging authority!
And Yay for the “Freedom from Religion” people, who are merely echoing our Constitution.
December 30, 2011 at 9:17 pm
Actually Tony I have never advocated for hate speech but rather against idiots banning or restricting it. Only what is in the open can you honestly deal with. Whatever you ban or make illegal is only driven underground and then you lose all positive control of. Some would love to undermine freedom of speech and cripple religion with the same blow. I still haven’t forgotten the “Freedom from Religion” banner and who flew it at the state DFL convention in Minnesota. It’s a Foundation in Wisconsin yet. Then there is “Blooms Taxonomy” where challenging a students fixed beliefs are held in highest esteem. It sounds so clinical until one realizes that the fixed beliefs that he speaks of challenging are those learned from the students parents and church. We have never given permision for this arrogant atrosity to civilization by an elitist atheist core at the center of this education reform garbage. Many of us understand how our schools have been used to undermine religion, family, and even the fabric of our society, public involvement.
December 30, 2011 at 2:36 pm
By the way, the Scopes trial was about evolution. No connection to gay and lesbian rights.
December 30, 2011 at 1:47 pm
WD Billy, your argument is incoherent and without a point. Fision/fusion? What’s your point. The rest, reading about Canada is from outter space.
December 30, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Hey Bill, time to take off the tin-foil helmet. You start with advocating for hate speech, then you bring in Canadian laws. We have a Constitution which protects religious freedom. As to fusion, the timeline was a guesstimate. On the UN, you are dealing with many countries including ones that for thousands of years had sex with women for making babies & had sex with young men for fun cuz they dont get pregnant & have children that may grow up & make a claim on you kingdom. The romans did this as well as Alexander the Great. That is not homosexuality in todays context, we call that pedophilia & nearly all pedophiliacs are heterosexuals. Diversity training does not include pedophilia. Bob the neighbor whowants the right to see his partner George in the hospital after he has knee surgery, has nothing to do with your need to involve Canada & nuclear fusion. You have lost the argument & now your just ranting…
December 30, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I stand properly corrected Ginny, it was O’Hair that I had in mind. When I speak of free speach and the bullying issue, I am clearly reffering to repeated attempts to restrict hate speach. We see your effort here attempting to duplicate the Canadian law that forbids preachers from reading certian bible passages during their sermons. This push has been rabidly oppertunistic for more than 2 decades now. In 1968 I sent 2 letters out for more information. The first went to the Atomic energy commision, the question I posed was when they were going to solve the fision fusion thing? The answer I got back was within 10-15 years, I had 100% faith that it would happen. The second letter went to the UN asking about their policies on birth control. It of course went into all the standard common birth control methods, but added one more. The paperwork I got back identified promoting homosexuality as a viable method of future birth control. Exacly what some of us suspect your precious diversity training is actually all about. Something we never were allowed input on.
December 30, 2011 at 11:43 am
Excellent post Ginny. There seems to be so much ignornace and fear on the right. They might try to get informed. That might reduce their fears.
December 30, 2011 at 10:33 am
The Scopes trial took place in 1925 in Tennessee. The suit was not brought by the atheist woman “who died recently in Texas.” You’re probably referring to Madeleine Murray O’Hair, who disappeared in 1999 (I think) and that case has never been solved satisfactorily. Some people seem to think O’Hair represents all atheists, but that’s another falsehood, which I won’t go into right now.
You outdo yourself in this one: “As for you attempts to use the age old problem of bullying to further restrict free speach, I do not stand with such socialist sewage.” That sentence is meaningless. I don’t know where anyone would start to to discuss it.
Why in the world would gays and lesbians recruit others into their “lifestyle,” as you call it. What a campaign: Join us for a lifetime of harassment, pain, possible death, legal restrictions, discrimination in jobs, and other daily insults and injuries? What in the world would a person possibly gain in any way—status, wealth, serenity, you name it—by being gay or lesbian? You seem not to know that being gay or lesbian is not a choice of a lifestyle—it’s a genetic thing.
When you base your views on “facts” such as you have used, no wonder you’re in a muddle.
December 30, 2011 at 10:06 am
What is the connection between bullying and gay marriage? I think it is silly and paranoid for straight people to feel threatened in their marriage because two gay people got married. These are the same people that probably felt threatened by interracial marriages, or even other races getting married.
There is nothing I have heard of that gay, or any other marriage for that matter, threatens heterosexual marriage. However, it is a convenient fabrication of the right used to deprive others of their RIGHTS.
Seems hypocritical for the party of small governemnt to now want to be marriage police doesn’ it?
December 30, 2011 at 5:57 am
6-8% Tony, where do you live? That is the number commonly being pushed by the left and I have seen it before. Saying its so don’t make it so. I’m rural not a burb guy, and as for gay bullying at that school, how involved were the jocks? Traditionally jocks have the most attitude problems around this issue, couldn’t have anything to do with those coaches and assistants could it? As for suicides of suspected gay students, I don’t think all the facts are on the table yet and they need to be before we pass political judgement here. Bullying of all kinds is directly related to school size and lack of connection to students by instructors and staff. The same kind of dissasociation issues you see in other institutions such as prisons and mental health institutions. Seems to have something to do with bueracracies, the larger they get, and the Peter Principle.
December 30, 2011 at 4:04 am
Actually Tony the 2.4% comes from the Census 10 years ago. I havn’t seen the new numbers from the last census yet, but if we are now at 6-8% than diversity training is actually working to promote homosexuality among our children. As for the 10% figure, it was more aligned with male not female homosexuals and I have yet to see such figures on females. The Scope monkey trials were in 1968 in North Carolina, the atheist woman who brought the suit just died recently in Texas. As for the school bullying issue, that goes back to school consolidation, and was one of the reasons so many of us spoke out against these mega schools. If you double the number of kids at a facility you more than quadruple such problems. Your educator friends knew this and forced consolodation anyway. As for you attempts to use the age old problem of bullying to further restrict free speach, I do not stand with such socialist sewage. As for gays being bullied in school, perhaps if your teachers were a little less egar to encourage these children to out themselves, and make themselves targets, we could tone this thing down. Is the goal here to get them through school safely, or to use them to promote homosexuality and undermine our constitution.
December 30, 2011 at 12:00 am
@ Mike C
“Marriage is an act given to us by God for the procreation of the human race.”
Actually, marriage is a partnership recognized by and subject to laws of the state. It affects legal rights and tax status. As far as the law is concerned, marriage need not have anything to do with God or any religion.
“Sex is a gift of Marriage…”
Sex is an act between consenting adults, for whatever reason.
“I for one wish to protect marriage for our children.”
If same-sex marriage threatens your own marriage, I feel sorry for you.
If you want to teach your children that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, you are welcome to do that. Same as if you want to teach your children that some people are sub-human or that they should believe in ghosts.
To deny someone legal rights or tax status simply because they love someone of the same sex is discrimination.
December 29, 2011 at 5:55 pm
Actually the number I have seen for percentage who are gay is commonly accepted as 6-8%. As far as 10%, show me the scientific journal you pulled it from. For diversity training, I thinks it’s is proper to teach children to accept their schoolmates as their equals, whether they are of a different color, gender or gay. I assume you live in the Anoka Hennepin school district that still endorses bullying gays which caused 8 of them to commit suicide last year. Talk about anti-God. “whatever you do to the least of my children, you do to me”, it’s in the Book. Still haven’t shown me the studies showing that acceptance of gays leads to low math scores. Anoka Hennepins are just as low. I believe the “scopes” monkey trial was in the 20’s & that was about evolution. Many gays end up as accountants, lawyers & doctors & educators. How’s their reading & math scores?
December 29, 2011 at 3:12 pm
Well Tony, you didn’t argue with the 2.4% so I assume that is still a valid figure. As for the 10%, show me any other figure backed by science. As for the connection to math and reading, “Diversity Training”, a covert training system was slipped into ever public school in this country without any public input. It was an arrangement made between teachers unions and their gay allies that arose out of the anti-god coalition born of the 1968 scope trial. Teachers, white collar public employees, and the homosexual coalition have successfully used our schools to change the perception of more than a generation of our children during the same time frame that math and reading scores dropped. It is pretty clear to me what was most important to the coalition.
December 29, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Wow, Bill can take an issue in more obscure points than anybody. First, where did you get the number of only 10% of gays wanting to be married? Maybe you need to find a more enlightened gay bar to hang around. Second, where in your doctoral thesis on education did you come up with the idea that the drop in math scores has any connection to acceptance of your neighbor being gay? On a side note, won’t the “equal protection clause” in the Constitution dictate that civil unions be available to everyone?
December 29, 2011 at 12:02 pm
I must disagree with this viewpoint. When it comes to Minnesota, Marriage is not a gift from God, but a statute of the state. You are free to believe whatever you like in America. You are welcome to believe that marriage itself is a gift from God. This does not give you personally the right to put that view on anyone else. That being said, another point to be made is that marriage is indeed not about having children. Otherwise, there would be a law that stated that marriages became null and void if children were not born within a certain timeframe. We also would not permit people beyond child-bearing age to marry at all. Marriage is about personal relationships between people. If people wish to bring God into it, that is their American right. It is also their American right to keep God out of it entirely. I trust that as an American, you support our right to freedom of expression and freedom to practice whatever religion we choose. I also trust that if you have a problem with promiscuity, you would see people who want to dedicate themselves to one-another as the opposite of the problem that you see, and a solution to this problem.
December 29, 2011 at 11:16 am
It sure feels like we are headed for a solution like they have in France where everyone who wishes to “marry” has a civil ceremony. Then those who choose to do so can have a religious wedding ceremony. The religious concept of marriage between a man and a woman then does not conflict with the legal concept of a union between two adults to form a family unit.
The framers of the US Constitution were careful not to use a lot of specifics so that the embodied concepts would be more flexible in an unknowable future. Modifying the state constitution in a very narrow, specific, and discriminatory way doesn’t seem like a good idea.
December 29, 2011 at 10:59 am
Let’s see if we can get our facts straight here Will. First, a boost was expected being the first midwest state to accept this, $12 million in a Billion dollar economy begins to point at the truth. Secondly, homosexuals make up 2.4% of our population with less than 10% of them being monogamous and interested in gay marrige. For you mathameticians that’s 0.24% of our population benifieting from this masive generation long effort. For some of you this reality is far more important than educating our children who outnumber this group by 100 to 1. The proof is in the one thing you have succeeded in, flipping the under thirty crowds attitude on this issue. They have slipped in reading and math but they are the most homosexually aware and sensitive group in history. My question is, how is this going to feed their children?
December 29, 2011 at 9:47 am
Minnesota is not against Marriage - In Minnesota any Man can wed a Woman without any problem. (of course there are some stipulations)
“Marriage is an act given to us by God for the procreation of the human race.”
No one is advocating forcing any church to marry any couple if it is counter to church doctrine. If your church chooses not to marry gay couples, so be it. But this does not give you the right to impose your religious views on others, ever.
“We now run around and have sex with who ever we want and wonder why there are so many STD’s and why we have so many abortions.”
Last time I checked, marriage was about monogamy, whether it was same sex, or heterosexual. Monogamy does NOT cause STD’s and same sex marriages will not lead to abortions…ever. It sounds like promiscuity is your real enemy, not same sex marriage.
“Sin can never be made legal and wrong can never be made right.”
And those who live in glass houses…
December 29, 2011 at 9:04 am
Minnesota is not against Marriage - In Minnesota any Man can wed a Woman without any problem. (of course there are some stipulations)
What is not legal is same sex marriages and with good reason. Marriage is an act given to us by God for the procreation of the human race.
Sex is a gift of Marriage and the children that go with them. We now run around and have sex with who ever we want and wonder why there are so many STD’s and why we have so many abortions.
I for one wish to protect marriage for our children. Sometimes the money is just not worth it. Sin can never be made legal and wrong can never be made right.
December 29, 2011 at 8:42 am
As a married individual, for almost 25 years, I think it is high time to allow all in our communities to be treated equally. When did government find it necessary to legislate “love”? My marriage is in less danger from same sex couples than it is from heterosexual couples and divorce.
Marriage is a commitment that if twio individuals can work together, can be a beautiful life long experience. And why should those who spend their lives together in a committed relationship, be excluded from live ending decisions just because they are a same sex couple? Or not that long ago, individuals could not marry outside of their racial heritage. We were able to get around that, and our society survived. It is time we but this issue to rest permanently.
Too often it becomes our societys twisted views on sexual behavior that determines where one stands on this issue. It is time to get our minds out of what someone does in their bedrooms, and allow people to spend their time on this earth with whomever they choose.
Dan Conner says:
January 8, 2012 at 6:44 pm
Start making sense. Educating students and sgay rights are not competing principle and have nothing to do with each other. If you think they do, then I think that allowing far right-wing Tea Party disruptors to post on this sight is giving the far-right more attention than education for our children. Stop the right-wing and we can then educate our children.
The end of the above paragraph makes about as much sense as gay rights competing with education for children.