I must admit I was acting on the heels of an angry moment (brought about solely by seeing/reading your gay marriage commentary, it should be noted), when I wrote my comment. It’s not exactly smart of me to jump at you on your religious/whatever blog, but I felt compelled to action of some sort and I didn’t have the option of commenting on EMFMV.

I will admit you don’t add content on contested issues (nobody is taking the tree sitters seriously…seriously), and so this was an isolated event. Still, it was one that really stuck in my craw (no pun intended…or maybe I should say it’s a gay pun in jest).

Despite your sticking to the legal aspects of the court’s decision, your perspective and underlying opinions and feelings were transparent. Many of the points you brought up while dissecting the issue were circuitous ways of laying out your opinion as well, so the post read like a soapbox diatribe to me.

I’ve always thought it insanely stupid to criticize bloggers for their content. I mean, if you don’t like it, don’t read it, right? Well, kind of. I go to EMFMV to read about football. If something a little out of place shows up every once in awhile, it’s no big deal. When a long post is dedicated exclusively to something waaaay not related to Cal football, and waaaay out-of-sync with my own beliefs, it incenses me and apparently (thank goodness) many of your other readers. It’s your blog and you can do whatever you want with it (that’s obvioulsy part of the beauty of the blogosphere), but I still feel it was in poor taste for you to use your reach in the world of Cal football to express a personal opinion about sexuality, legal framework or not.

I was curious to see how you’d react to my restrained flaming, and I think you chose the right approach. That said, I will keep reading EMFMV because although I think your outlook on gay marriage is totally ridiculous, you’re outlook on Cal football is great. Please just do your readership a favor and in the future keep Bears-unrelated topics to yourself.

1. I never do it. (and I made it clear that this was a rare exception, not a new trend)
2. I steared clear of moral/religion issues and stuck to an underlying legal issue.

If you feel the need to avoid EMFMV because of that SINGLE post, a post that I believe to be very reasonable, I both respect you for sticking to your principles and could care less that you won’t be reading.

If on the other hand you’ll accept a post that you strongly disagree with every couple YEARS, I both welcome your rational comments/disagreements and am thankful for you tolerating my infrequent asides.

p.s. I am not a super blogger so I dont mean to ignore you if I only come by once a month or so.

p.p.s. especially with that “solve this math problem in order to leave a reply” thing! Go Bears!

Reason? Marriage is a church institution. The legal and political institution is called “civil unions.”

Separation of church and state is interpreted today as simply churches not being allowed to dominate the state. People forget that it also originally meant that the state is not allowed to dominate the churches. That is why the government should not be allowed to administer marriages, just civil unions.

I wasn’t saying the two were explicitly linked. I was saying that if “the people” have a preference, why isn’t it expressed in the tax code?

So you’ve never heard of surrogates, implantations, adoption? Plenty of gay couples are seeking to become parents through these means. You don’t have to be straight to want to be a parent.

But yeah. I missed the point. No prize for me.

I just like the gay people I’ve met so much better than the straight people.

Moving to the tax deductions for gay parents, you’re mixing two different incentives as if they are only one. The government has two:

1. Marriage to incent people to raise their own children.
2. Dependent benefits for those who raise children whether or not they are their own.

The two are not explicitely linked.

Said another way, the government recognizes that the desireable state of a permanent marriage in which a child is raised by their biological parents doesn’t always occur and therefore gives separate/additional benefits to those who raise children, irrelevant of their marital status.

Finally, regarding the “Driver’s test for parents”, it’s ironic you phrase it “seeking to become parents” and then exclude genitalia from the question. Last time I checked it was a pre-requisite for having children that the appropriate genitalia is involved.

But to bring this post back to it’s original point, we’re talking about the constitutionality of restricting marriage to heterosexual couples, not whether it is a wise restriction. To argue your point successfully in this post, you’ll have to stick to why it would be a violation of the constitution.

You can debate the wiseness of the restriction when I post on it another time. That topic deserves its own post.

If you want good parents, something like a driver’s test for parenting and proof that you are actively seeking to become a parent seems more in order. And before you start crying eugenics, people wouldn’t need a license to have children any more than they do today. They’d only need the license for the legal benefits of marriage. Genitalia don’t even enter into it.