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TOP6NEWS - September 21, 2004 1-NEWS: OH Appeals Court won’t stop verifying signatures process 2-NEWS: OH poll shows 64 percent for m amendment 3-NEWS: GA lawmakers file motion to intervene 4-NEWS: Country club cases in NY Times 5-OP-ED: The deceit of ssm 6-OP-ED: 'Pick Your Shibboleths Wisely' ________________________________________________________ 1-NEWS: OH Appeals Court won’t stop verifying signatures process Appeals court denies request to throw out petitions on gay marriage ban The two-sentence judgment from a three-judge panel in Franklin County said opponents of the proposal did not "demonstrate their right" to get a court order throwing out the petitions. The judges did not outline their reasoning, but had questioned amendment backers in a morning hearing on why they were suing in appeals court and if they had waited too long. "There is no right to require the secretary of state to reject the petitions for lack of a summary," said Donald Brey, special counsel to Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. "You don't throw out all these petitions at this point on a technicality that has already been ruled upon four or five months ago." ... ________________________________________________________ 2-NEWS: OH poll shows 64 percent for m amendment Ban on gay marriages looking like a sure bet A Cleveland retiree worries that gay marriages will lead to more gay adoptions and insists that children fare better in households with "normal" parents. A customer service representative from Westlake fears that gay marriage will pave the way for polygamy. Commissioned by The Plain Dealer and Conducted Sept. 10-14, the poll found that 64 percent of the 1,500 people surveyed favored the proposed ban, 30 percent opposed it and 6 percent were undecided. The measure enjoyed strong support from all ages, races and geographic regions of Ohio ... ________________________________________________________ 3-NEWS: GA lawmakers file motion to intervene Six Georgia lawmakers ask to join legal fight in ACLU court challenge to proposed amendment By SONJI JACOBS Last week, the Georgia American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit against the state in Fulton County Superior Court seeking to stop a Nov. 2 referendum on whether a ban on same-sex marriage should be added to the Georgia Constitution. On Monday, Crotts (R-Conyers) and five other legislators who support the amendment filed a court motion seeking permission to step in as defendants. The legislators will be represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization that represented other legislators in last month's unsuccessful challenge to Louisiana's gay marriage ballot question. ... ________________________________________________________ 4-NEWS: Country club cases in NY Times At Country Clubs, Gay Members Want All Privileges for Partners Now challenges are being raised against rules that are another obstacle to full membership rights at golf clubs. The hot topic at many clubs is one few members could have dreamed of talking about a decade ago: should the partners of gay members be given the privileges of family membership and greater access to the golf course? In San Diego, Birgit Koebke and her partner, Kendall French, filed a lawsuit against Koebke's golf club in state court, contending that it discriminated against them because the club would not give French the access and the privileges granted to the spouses of heterosexual club members. While spouses can play golf free, French is permitted to play only with Koebke and only six times a year, and she must pay a $70 guest fee each time. The case, the first of its kind in the country, is pending before the California Supreme Court. And in Massachusetts, the only state where gay marriage is legal, more than half the state's 160 private golf and country clubs are redefining their policies on marriage, according to Tom Landry, the executive director of the Massachusetts Golf Association. "If a gay couple is married in Boston or Provincetown or Great Barrington, and they already have been accepted by the club and produce their marriage license, what we are hearing is that they will be able to join as family members," Landry said. Some Massachusetts clubs, including the Country Club in Brookline, one of the oldest and most exclusive in the nation, say their existing policies put them in compliance. "It has been an evolutionary process, a changed thinking following the way society has evolved,'' said David Chag, the club's general manager and chief operating officer. "If you are married, you are married. If you are not, then you are in the guest category. Now that the state of Massachusetts is allowing gay marriage, fine. It doesn't matter to us if you are homosexual or heterosexual." While marriage is the social bedrock on which country club policies have been built, over the last 15 years some clubs have begun to afford companions of heterosexual members who are single, divorced or widowed the same privileges granted spouses of members. The impetus for this change has come principally from older, longtime club members, typically widowers who do not choose to remarry but have a live-in partner. ... ________________________________________________________ 5-OP-ED: The deceit of ssm The Deceit of Gay Marriage Three years on, supporters of same sex marriage are closer than ever to victory. If there was ever a time to discuss gay marriage, that time is now. ... On reflection, it’s amazing that supporters of gay marriage have gotten this far. Set aside the hype with which the issue is usually presented and one is left with a surprisingly feeble argument for an imaginary right. The standard argument for gay marriage goes something like this: Heterosexual marriage is legal (true). In most states, homosexual marriage is not (also true). Therefore, gay marriage advocates conclude, the civil rights of gay Americans are being violated (false!). Where to start? In the first place, homosexuals are not denied the right to marry — they are denied a right to marry other homosexuals, which is something else altogether. Next, the argument trades on the idea — superficially appealing but practically empty — that discrimination is by definition a bad and evil thing. Denying legal status to gay marriage does indeed involve discrimination — but it is discrimination of a perfectly legitimate kind. Finally and most crucially, the argument assumes what it is meant to prove: the rights of gays are being violated only if you already agree that one of their rights is to get married to a person of the same sex as themselves. But that, of course, is precisely what is at issue. It’s as if proponents of gay marriage believe that saying you have a right, loud enough and often enough, gives you one. While this tactic may succeed in silencing some of their opponents, it falls miserably short of making the sort of case that needs to be made if a specifically “gay right” to marriage is to be recognized. If gays hope to show that they have a right to marry one another, they will have to prove that they meet the same conditions that give heterosexual couples this right. There’s no way around it: any discussion of gay marriage must begin with a discussion of marriage in general. In other words, the right of marriage is inseparable from a public interest in the well-being of the family. By extending legal recognition and benefits to married heterosexuals, the government is merely seeking to protect and encourage that institution which, more so than any other, is responsible for the welfare of our nation’s young. For advocates of gay marriage, this is all very inconvenient. After all, homosexual couples don’t typically do any of these things. They don’t have children; they don’t raise children; they don’t, as such, constitute a family unit with legitimate claims on legal recognition or public funds. In short, the case for a right to gay marriage fails the test. For all the reasons that heterosexual couples enjoy a right to marry, homosexual couples do not. Yes, yes, I know. Some married couples don’t have children. Some lesbians do. A few homosexuals — a very few — adopt. The law, however, aims at the general case, which in this instance means that it aims to encourage marriage as that institution best suited for child rearing. While it is unfortunate that many children are not raised in traditional settings, that fact does not in the least diminish the case for privileging the two-parent heterosexual family. Much less is it a reason to encourage the multiplication of “alternative” family structures. Quite the contrary. ... This may all be very well for radical activists intent on bringing about their chosen utopia of boundless choice and unfettered promiscuity. But it raises one very worrisome question: in a world where couples are freed from the expectations and traditions of community, what happens to the family? No doubt we shall all be much freer under the new dispensation. Indeed, that’s just what worries me. Freedom can be a terrible thing. ________________________________________________________ 6-OP-ED: 'Pick Your Shibboleths Wisely' Pick Your Shibboleths Wisely —Editors A shibboleth is a single issue by which a political candidate or party is judged. The word comes from the biblical story of Jephthah and the Gileadites in Judges 12:4-6. Jephthah had routed Israel's foes from Ephraim and was determined to cut them down to the last man. The Ephraimites weren't obviously distinguishable from the Gileadites by physical appearance, and some tried to sneak through Jephthah's lines. So Jephthah devised a clever test: Any man trying to ford the Jordan was required to say the Hebrew word shibboleth, which means "a torrent of water." Since the Ephraimites mispronounced the word as sibboleth, they were easily identified and slaughtered. When it comes to politics, we evangelicals love our shibboleths. There is a certain convenience in evaluating political candidates, organizations, and movements by their stand on some discrete social issue—think abortion, creationism, and Prohibition. Though reductionist, the shibboleth approach isn't necessarily irrational. If the shibboleth follows closely from a particular worldview, then it may be a reliable predictor about how the candidate, organization, or movement will react to other issues that people haven't had time to think or ask about. But, before using a shibboleth, we had better be certain that it accurately encapsulates our worldview. The costs of choosing an improper shibboleth are high. Since the purpose of shibboleths is to create a broad rule of action by generalizing from a narrow assumption, error on the assumption means multiplication of the error many times over. ... The example of divorce suggests that Christians have already lost much ground on marriage and the family by failing to distinguish secular family law clearly from God's perfect plan for man and woman. This is why it is alarming to see many Christians insist that defeating legal recognition of same-sex marriage is necessary to preserving the institution of marriage. If that is true, it must be because marriage owes its definition and legitimacy to the state—a proposition that Jesus squarely denied and that should frighten anyone who takes seriously the Genesis prescription. ... If the government can't get out of the marriage business altogether, then perhaps we, as Christians, ought to take the lead in reconceiving the notion of civil marriage as distinct from holy matrimony. Perhaps we should abolish the word marriage altogether when speaking of the license granted by the state and instead appropriate the civil union terminology that has been created to deal with the same-sex issue. When asking about the definition of marriage or civil unions for legal purposes, perhaps we should take a functional, rather than normative, view. If a legal definition of marriage is necessary because we need to know who should be included in a health insurance plan or how we should assess potential adoptive parents, then the definitional question should be asked with respect to the objects of the legislation, not based on a transcendent conception of marriage. ... None of this should be taken as an argument that the law should recognize same-sex civil unions. There may be important functional (as opposed to moral) reasons why such recognition would be unwise. Nor should a separation of civil and religious marriage lessen our concern over the recent conduct of activist judges and mayors who have tried to impose their own political vision by judicial or executive fiat, contrary to the clear rules established by state legislatures. But neither should we escalate the culture war by making this debate into a battle for the heart and soul of marriage. If we do that, we concede that the state owns marriage and that the church's function in blessing unions is subservient to the government's. Far better to lose the battle over the legal definition of marriage than to win it and find that the government now owns one of our most sacred institutions. |
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