Dead horse, dead horse, dead horse!

I had a feeling I’d receive the cricket treatment. Let’s just face it that this legislation is dead this year, focus on the other “important issues” (not saying SJR-7 isn’t important) and feel free to bring this back in 2009 when the Republicans will most likely win the House back. This issue is a lost cause this year.

But life isn’t like the idyllic world of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. That needs to be understood. The lost causes (one might put Greg Ballard in that column before November) are few and far between and take a revolution to get them accomplished.

I’m not saying it shouldn’t be pursued. I’m saying, if it is pursued, it should be at a later time. That’s all. I’ll probably question my support for it then too, but I do strongly believe that we should be allowed to vote it up or down at the statewide level.

It may be all my years working in and around government and politics since I graduated college that’s made me a little jaded over the years, but it’s also opened my eyes to the horrible realism of politics and government at the Federal, State and Local levels. This isn’t the Founders world. This is a 21st century world with 21st Century problems.

Grant it this isn’t the ideal world pictured in films, but the principle still stands that some causes are just worth standing for even when realpolitick would dictate otherwise.

21st Century problems don’t neccessarily require some revolution of principle. They merely require the application of old principles to the new problems.

There is such a thing as absolute principles and these principles ring true in every generation and every culture. If it were not for these principles we wouldn’t have freedom.

The 1860’s and the decades preceeding and succeeding that time were filled with a problem largely acknowledged but glossed over in the era of the founding: salvery. The problem was not resolved by the abstract development of new principles. The problem was resolved by the bold application of old principles that were more fully realized.

Jacob, no I’m not married…yet.

My definition of “traditional marriage” comprises of one man and one woman united for life.

I am under no impression that marriage is a perfect situation in which there is no conflict or struggle. There are struggles in marriage and in families and it is the character developed in overcoming these struggles and learning to cope with individuals within your family that provide the foundation for strong citizens.

A point I failed to mention in the main post was that I am under no utopian impression that the state of marriages accross our state and our nation are perfect. I wish we wouldn’t have so much divorce and so many maritial and family difficulties but these difficulties don’t mean that we should fail to do whatever we can to prevent the further erosion of the family.

Chris,

I ask you not to lump all homeschoolers into one giant box. My wife was homeschooled, went to Princeton, debated intellectually with liberal minds like Peter Singer (she was in more than one of his classes) and others, worked as a counter-terrorism analyst for the FBI and now seeks to homeschool our children. The vast majority of the kids at my church are homeschooled and I find them to be very capable to deal with and knowledgeable of the outside world. The webmaster of this site his homeschooled and how a graduate of IUPUI. What you do my lumping Brian and other homeschoolers into the same box is no different than the box that you feel Brian is lumping all gays into.

While I may side with you on the marriage amendment, albeit for some similar and some different issues, your failure to treat Brian or others who have differing beliefs than you as you would have them treat you is dis-serving to your cause. Just as it is to ours. I make no claim to be a saint or free from sin, but it seems as if we battle each other by using the same patters, but different logic.

I think we all need to re-think how we approach the topics in which we disagree. But please think about what you’re writing and consider how you would feel if what you were writing was directed at you.

I don’t think that the bill is dead just yet.

Oh, sure, Pat Bauer and the House have wanted to kill it. They’ve wanted that all along, and they think that they have an excuse to do so.

What remains to be seen is whether they can get away with it, and whether the Senate might push on this. If Long is pushed, they just might.

There is a level of silliness and immaturity to this post that clearly belies the inexperience and lack of breadth of knowledge of the author. The writing is formulaic and the talking points are old, rehashed, and horribly inaccurate.

If marriage is the only foundation of the family, then families have been threatened for an all mighty long time. Divorce threatens more families than any other single issue. Gay marriage strengthens families because families like mine, which do not get the cohesion and benefits of marriage now, would be stronger if marriage were allowed.

Young man, you need to get out an experience the world and see what life is really like. Go visit some miserable women at the women’s shelter who’ve been beaten by their husband and tell me how marriage is saving them. Go talk with some kids who’ve grown up in homes where the marriage is in tatters and ask them if they felt loved and secure in their home growing up. Even better, talk to kids of divorce and tell me how that family implosion affected their lives.

Now, go find the children of gay people and tell me those kids are any worse off. Go talk to them and see if, even though we can’t marry or share in the benefits bestowed by the government, those kids aren’t just as well-balanced, healthy and loving people as the kids of straight people.

Love and commitment are the foundation of the family. If you’d ever been in love, you’d know that. Marriage is the solidification of that commitment - it is NOT the commitment. That happened long before marriage ever came into the picture.

Without love and commitment, no marriage will survive. Without love and commitment no family structure can survive. Marriage is an ancillary part of the process.

As for activist judges, that meme only proves that you are a fool. How is it activism to uphold the Constitution of the United States or the state of Indiana? Both documents guarantee equality in ALL government interactions. It’s called the Equal Protection Clause. It guarantees that one class of people cannot be singled out for different treatment, which is exactly what you see here.

In fact, why do you think it requires a Constitutional amendment? Because our Constitution, which has been in place nationally since 1789 and in Indiana since the early 1800’s has always contained this clause. It’s not activism to uphold a 200+ year old law.

It is a judge’s sworn duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the state in which they are sworn in. Any judge who doesn’t strike down a gay marriage ban is not executing their duty faithfully.

Further, the same “activist judges” language was used to suppress women and African-Americans when they “didn’t keep their place” with the white heteropatriarchy. So, am I to assume you also believe that women and blacks need to get back into their “rightful places”? I guess we should go back and overturn Marbury v. Madison since that was the first case in which “judicial activism” reared its head.

Maybe you don’t like any of these decisions that were all called “judicial activism” but shaped the very fabric of our country:
Marbury v. Madison - judicial review
Dred Scott - African-American vote
Brown v. Board of Education - desgregation
Bush v. Gore - stolen election
Roe v. Wade - abortion
Lawrence v. Texas - sodomy

Of course, that Bush v. Gore one probably makes you all warm and fuzzy inside. Regardless, the point of that exercise was to prove two things: 1) this idea of “judicial activism” is an old and tired piece of bellicosity. Let it go. And 2) that more often than not, the screams of “judicial activism” come from those opposed to social equality and particularly those who have power and don’t want to share it or have it reduced.

Finally, your history of Rome is severely warped. Every college history course I ever took blames the fall of Rome on many factors, but “a weak military” grossly simplifies the reasons Rome fell. Rome fell because of the increased influx of barbarian tribes, practices, and customs into the empire. When Rome started allowing non-citizen, non-Roman barbarians to serve in the military and even serve as officers, it was over for them.

Let’s remember, there were many falls of Rome. There was the fall of the Roman Empire, which was a split into the East and West. The East became the Byzantine Empire and the West eventually became the Holy Roman Empire. So let’s keep in mind which part of the empire fell first - The Holy Roman Empire, which would be the Christian-pushing, forced conversion, mass-killing version of the Empire. Charlemagne was the first non-Italian, non-Roman to rule as Emperor.

The Empire’s fall was built-in from its creation. Succession by coup is what killed the empire as much as anything else. It was never stable from its inception. Throughout the history of Rome, the few attempts at setting up a civilized succession of power failed miserably. This, more than anything, allowed fools, crooks, and idiots to become emperor. Without clear succession and since assassination, murder, and suicide pretty much guaranteed no long-term government servants, institutional knowledge was lost.

By the time of the fall of Rome, all the emperor knew was he needed to continue expansion to feed his army. He couldn’t continue expansion without more troops. That meant that the requirement that you had to be a citizen went out the window first. Quickly, non-loyal, non-Roman, barbarians filled the ranks. At first, it was just for the pay and privilege, but it quickly became about power.

Most of the Roman Emperors were incompetent. They seized power by killing or trickery and spent their entire reign in fear of the same. They had internal and external enemies. They were stupid enough to think that they could assuage their external enemies by making them part of the empire. They only succeeded in guaranteeing their doom. It had little to do with immorality and more to do with inherent flaws and incompetent leadership.

I’m sorry you were home schooled and have to get your education from a bunch of folks on the Internet, but you really should expand your horizons before you start weighing in on things you’ve been sheltered from. Just because mommy told you it was true doesn’t mean it is. The world is harsh to ignorance. The Internet is even harsher. Your ignorance is profoundly obvious.

Jerame,

Perhaps I’m not as cloistered as you might think. Some of my friends come from families where the parents are divorced. I’ve also had the chance to work with kids that come from less than desirable circumstances so I am under no impression that all heterosexual marriages are perfect.

However, it is erroneous on your part to assume that our collective failure to live up to our ideal means that our ideal is a collective failure.

As for Rome, I never stated that Rome fell because it had a weak military. The fall of Rome was the result of numerous social, economic, and moral factors. The truth is, Rome as a civilization was morally bankrupt and it gave way to more vibrant, disciplined, and energetic peoples.

Interesting discussions from all. Josh, don’t bail so early, you are cheating both yourself and the rest of us who are interested in your viewpoint.

Brian, with respect, you are absolutely killing me. It’s one thing for a 19 year old kid to call another, older, more educated and vastly more experienced man a “Fake Republican” (not sure who made you the judge and jury in that regard), but now this same 19 year old, while clearly highly intelligent, articulate and ambitious, is now telling the rest of us what marriage is.

Frankly, after 10 years of marriage, I’m still not sure precisely what the actual definition of marriage is. However, one thing I know for sure is that I don’t need you, nor Josh, nor Chris, Jerame or Bil to define it for my wife and I either. I also don’t need the state to define it for me.

Where Republican’s are killing themselves, whether it’s supporting a fraud candidate like “The Huckster”, who’s base was created solely due to his claims of being a Christian; is this hypocrisy that they believe in limited government, then wanting to use government power to force their definitions of social right and wrong on the rest of us.

Brian, you are clearly an impressive young man, one destined to make an impact on this world. I only hope to have a good seat from which to view it from.

But I’d caution you in one area. There’s education, and there’s education. While your family clearly has provided you with an excellent foundation, you are sorely lacking in the education that is only provided by life itself. Frankly, the more I live, the more I’m shocked by just how little I know, and I’m considerably older that you (well, old enough that if we were both from Kentucky, you could be my son). Even Mr. Douglas, extremely well-educated with degrees from two Ivy League schools (and a service record of distinction in the Air Force) and fluent in Mandarin (I think; maybe it’s Cantonese) would likely agree that his true education started only after he stepped off the campus. I’d suggest the same for you as well.

I didn’t get the impression that either Bil or Chris were attempting to state that Brian wasn’t articulate. The way I read it was that they were challenging his viewpoints, which seem to be more of the “regurgitated” variety then ones developed from observation or experience.

Or perhaps they were trying to state something completely different and I missed their points entirely. There’s always that possibility, I suppose.

Josh, I graduated from Princeton in 1988 (having attended on an Air Force Scholarship for Chinese Language Study…. It’s Mandarin that I speak, Jacob.)

And I would agree that education never ends. My parents are the most decent people in the world, and among the most educated in a world sadly lacking it. They would never have trusted themselves to educate me alone… for they educated me every day of my youth anyway… Dad in particular believed (and believes) in an exposure to all arguments.

To echo Jacob, and to quote the great Hoosier Kin Hubbard, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

Marriage matters because gender matters. Mothers and fathers matter by virtue of their differences to contribute to the development of children. Over 10,000 studies have shown the benefit to children of mothers and fathers together.

Likewise marriage is not merely a carbon copy attempt to unite two people of the same gender, that creates nothing new or unique to society. . . as does traditional marriage.

Where marriage declines, crime poverty, the growing welfare state (big Govt.) and a host of social problem increase.

When marriage loses its meaning, society suffers. Its not about tolerance or the individual desires of adults, (very few homosexuals who can, even bother to get married in states and countries that allow it). Its about what is best for children and the future. If marriage is merely anything some extreme groups want, like homosexuals, polygamists, first cousins, etc. then it really means very little, because its like silly putty in the hands of activists or liberal judges. . . with no stopping point.

Moreover, when a state like Massachusetts allows same-sex marriage it has huge ramifications in schools where kids are then taught that homosexuality is ok . . that’s different than tolerance when your talking about health risks and elementary aged kids. . . its indoctrination.

The Marriage amendment is important for those and many other reasons. Its why most states in the US already have amendments, but Indiana always lags behind on good policies. (I think we were the 36th state to allow charter schools. . . and the 49th to embrace daylight savings time.)

Besides, I am not sure why Chris is so upset, he can’t marry his boyfriend now under Indiana law, SJR 7 won’t change that or how he choses to live. He’s free to do whatever he wants under the law now . . with or without the marriage amendment. . . and he must be doing OK because he has the time to post on blogs all over the place. . . (must have bankers hours at work. . . or no life .. maybe I shouldn’t have assumed that he has a companion.)

Anyway, live and let live is fine, but when it starts to impact children, the line needs to be drawn at least at keeping our existing law as it has been for centuries.

This measure will pass the Senate overwhelmingly with majority support from both Dems and Repubs for a good reason. . . marriage is worth protecting.

The Bill of Rights exists to protect citizens from the Tyranny of the Majority. Justices who apply its provisions to gays are doing their job, just as the Justices who failed to apply those provisions to blacks in Dred Scott did not. Dred Scott was indeed an example of activism… Justices that allowed their own prejudices about blacks to over-ride the call of the Bill of Rights to protect them. I don’t want judicial activism… to the contrary.. I want judges who will do their job and enforce the Constitution as they are sworn to.

My first effort at posting failed, so here it is again. Sorry for any confusion.

*** Brian, after reviewing your bio, I have come to understand you better, to understand why you are so badly out of touch with your generation, and in contrast to your generation, so incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong. Homeschooled… separated from your generation in school… exposed only carefully to information consistent with your beliefs… you presume to imagine what is best for a culture you don’t understand, and with which you may never be connected, probably to your great relief. *** Chris Douglass

Mr. Douglass, as someone who knows Brian, I can say without a doubt you don’t “understand” Brian at all. He is light years ahead of your kind of thinking. And, do I understand you correctly to assert that Brian cannot distinguish “between right and wrong”? Such an assertion is so ridiculous it doesn’t deserve a response. You, sir, are the one “out of touch”.
Then, you fully reveal your ignorance with your statements about home schooling. The research, and the real life examples I have seen, including Brian, don’t support your warped thinking at all.

You, sir, are the one that doesn’t “understand the culture”. The “culture” is destroying us, and we need more young people like Brian who understand what President Theodore Roosevelt understood when he said, “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”

Who appointed you judge on what and whose opinions should be respected?

*** What has been done to you is a crime. You are a shadow of what you might have been as a human being, idealistic… but for inhuman and intolerant ideals. You believe you are doing good, and I believe you are a fundamentally good person. That is why your situation is so very sad. Good luck to you as a human being. *** Chris Douglass

No, Douglass, what has been done to you is a crime! You are the one who needs to get an education. I love it when people want to talk about being “intolerant” and they are pointing the finger at others all the while they are being “intolerant”. Give me a break!

*** And as for your understanding of gays, like whites in a segregated south, you have no idea who you attack or what the impact of your inhumanity is on others. *** Chris Douglass

It is not “inhuman” to state the truth. Marriage was ordained by God and it was His idea. Our society has been built on this model and has been largely successful because of our past support for following God’s pattern for marriage, i.e., one man and one woman. Government has long recognized the societal benefits of marriage. To desire to protect that is not to be “inhuman”. And, just because some people have lousy marriages, or have even gotten divorced, is not a reflection on the institution of marriage, but is a reflection on the type of thinking of people like you, Mr. Douglass.

*** The intolerance of the social conservative has made social conservatives impossible to accommodate unless they can grow up and keep their prejudices to themselves about their fellow Americans. *** Chris Douglass

Is this the classic case of the pot calling the kettle black or what? How about you keep your “prejudices” to yourself about your “fellow Americans”? Your intolerance of Brian, his education, etc is so obvious while at the same time you attack others for what you perceive as intolerance. Give me a break!

*** But I’ve got another challenge. Too many young Republicans in this Party of Lincoln have stood aside silent while social conservatives in the party have prosecuted an agenda with which you are uncomfortable. When are you going to stand up for the rights of your fellow Americans, rather than remain silently complicit? What separates you from cowardly Germans who because of personal distaste stood aside leaving Jews to try to defend themselves? What separates you from southern whites who though uncomfortable with the more extreme of racist campaigns, instead spoke disapprovingly of blacks trying to gain their rights? *** Chris Douglass

In this paragraph, your lack of understanding just jumps off the page and smacks me in the face. To compare people who want to maintain the sanctity of marriage with Germans who killed Jews is to be disingenuous in the least and outright dishonest in the worse. No comparison, a failed analogy, and it is such a ludicrous argument, I shouldn’t even have responded to it. The “Marriage Amendment” doesn’t even change the existing law, let alone advocate killing anyone. Please spare us and put forth a serious argument.

*** Josh, so far as I can tell from his Bio, Brian has had no further exposure beyond his home-schooling, while your wife has. My comments about his lack of empathy for his fellow human beings, which I trace to his limited contact and limited education, stand. Were he, as did your wife, to choose to attend a liberal arts school where what seems to be a very limiting perspective might be put to four years of test, I have no doubt he would profit greatly. *** Chris Douglass

“…. which I trace ….” Again, I ask you Mr. Douglass, you want to talk about tolerance and people judging other people, etc., but you have the right to take limited information you have about somebody and jump to conclusions, and then when it is revealed to you, you still cannot see your folly. Why should we listen to you or give your comments any serious consideration when you show such disregard.

Then, you have set yourself up as the judge of what constitutes a good “education”. I won’t bother to quote some of your other statements, but where do you get off judging a man’s character based on his age, his particular schooling methodology, or where he went to school? Some of these places you probably think provide a good “education” I would submit are cesspools dominated by intolerant liberal brainwashed people.

*** What the right wing of the Republican Party has been engaged in, and has finally been called on, has been a profoundly uncivil action, a betrayal of our contract with each other as Americans to allow each other freedom of conscience so long as we don’t trespass upon the rights of others. As the targets of this insult, it is impossible not to react with profound indignation, to consider that the perpetrators are entitle to no respect, certainly no more respect than they have offered. For my failure to respect you… or my lumping home schoolers into a box… threatens to result at most in your hurt feelings. Your failure to respect me threatens to result in the loss of my Constitutional privileges and immunities. And you think your position is reasonable and that I should be more polite to you. *** Chris Douglass

“…., it is impossible not to react with profound indignation….” This is the classic, “my argument cannot stand on its merits, so all I can respond with is emotion, and no substance to support my position.”
Mr. Douglass, would you please enlighten the rest of us what “Constitutional privileges and immunities” are clearly outlined and delineated in the Constitution that you speak of? Please tell us what in the Constitution, or even just the statutes would be altered in any way by the proposed Marriage Amendment? Please do tell us! And, while you are telling us, please leave the emotional hype out and give us some substance to consider.

*** There is a level of silliness and immaturity to this post that clearly belies the inexperience and lack of breadth of knowledge of the author. The writing is formulaic and the talking points are old, rehashed, and horribly inaccurate. *** Jerame Davis

Oh, please do spare us of the same “old, rehashed, and horribly inaccurate” argument that Mr. Douglass has shared with us. Ditto my comments to Mr. Douglass’ posts for you Mr. Davis.

*** As for activist judges, that meme only proves that you are a fool. How is it activism to uphold the Constitution of the United States or the state of Indiana? Both documents guarantee equality in ALL government interactions. It’s called the Equal Protection Clause. It guarantees that one class of people cannot be singled out for different treatment, which is exactly what you see here. *** Jerame Davis

What you fail to understand is that the very definition of an “activist judge” is he/she is one that doesn’t “uphold the Constitution of the United States or the state of Indiana”. I would recommend the book, “Men in Black” for your consideration. Your ignorance is revealing indeed.

Your ignorance on the “Equal Protection Clause” and what it means is even more revealing. Nowhere, and I repeat, nowhere, does it guarantee “one class of people cannot be singled out for different treatment” in the context you are presenting it. We single out different classes of people for different treatment all the time, and it is in perfect alignment with the Constitution, e.g., we bar minors from purchasing and consuming alcohol, etc. The list is almost endless.

*** I realized after I saved my comment that I misidentified Dred Scott as African-American vote. It was actually a vote to ensure anyone of African decent could not be citizens. It is a truly harmful incidence of what is termed judicial activism. I apologize for the mistake. *** Jerame Davis

You just hung yourself so we don’t have to point it out to you, but I will do so anyway in case you don’t understand. You stated, in referring to Dred Scott, “It is a truly harmful incidence of what is termed judicial activism.” So, based on your statement, why should we leave the definition of marriage in the hands of judges? Could doing that not leave marriage at the peril of becoming as you say, “a truly harmful incidence”? I say it could so we need to let the people of Indiana vote on this.

Greg, you wrote:

“Would you please enlighten the rest of us what “Constitutional privileges and immunities” are clearly outlined and delineated in the Constitution that you speak of? Please tell us what in the Constitution, or even just the statutes would be altered in any way by the proposed Marriage Amendment?

The following appears in the Indiana Constitution:

Section 23. The General Assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens.

Every privilege and immunity granted any class of citizen must be granted to all classes of citizens equally. The contract of civil marriage provides and distributes a extensive net of such privileges and immunities to straights not available to gays.

I refer you to the conversation in the previous post on the murky future of the amendment, but re-post some of the more relevant here:

“The importance of religious marriage obviously should be left to each religion and the conscience of congregations as the Constitution guarantees.

The importance of civil marriage, however, is that it established highways and biways through a complex network of laws and regulations affecting two people who… now man and woman… who have committed themselves to building lives together. The institution of civil marriage provides the traffic lights regulating life for married couples.

Gay couples, on the other hand, have none of the traffic lights available to them, and our roads are full of chaos. For example the majority of Americans have no Will/Last testament in place. Married and living together? One spouse dies and the other gets the house without either legal challenge or a requirement to pay taxes. Same sex couple without a marriage certificate? Then depending on how the house is titled (in the name of the deceased, Tenants in Common, or Joint Tenants with rights of survivorship)the survivor either loses the house entirely, loses to the relatives of the deceased half of the house, or must pay a substantial tax to retain the house.

Justices who have ruled against the bans do so as matters of conscience, for it is difficult to review the complex web of laws and conclude that gay citizens , though tax paying, law abiding, and guaranteed, enjoy the privileges and immunities to which the Constitution entitles them. ”

But there is also the religious freedom/establishment clause:

Section 3. No law shall, in any case whatever, control the free exercise and enjoyment of religious opinions, or interfere with the rights of conscience.

Section 4. No preference shall be given, by law, to any creed, religious society, or mode of worship; and no person shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support, any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry, against his consent.

Greg, the Amendment is necessary for supporters of the legislative bans on gay marriage because sections 23, 3, and 4 all are very clear in their imperatives. If the legislative bans were not in conflict with these clauses, then the amendment would not be necessary.