GETTING WARMER … BUT NOT QUITE THERE
By FITSNEWS || We applaud U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) for being unafraid to challenge conventional “Republican” wisdom on the issue of marriage.
“I don’t want my guns registered in Washington or my marriage,” Paul told CNN’s Peter Hamby during a recent trip to early-voting South Carolina. “Founding Fathers all got married by going down to the local courthouse. It is a local issue and always has been.”
Well …
That may be historically accurate, but it’s not right … as in it’s not the correct position to take on this issue.
Paul needs to look to his father, former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who unapologetically argued in opposition to any government involvement in marriage – federal, state or local. Which is the correct position.
Supporting the right of local governments to deny – or compel – the issuance of marriage licenses is every bit as bad as letting state governments or (perish the thought) Washington, D.C. make such determinations. In our view, such a policy would still lead to unconstitutional discrimination – as well as the sort of politically correct assault on religion we’re seeing the left attempt in Hawaii.
Anti-gay discrimination is wrong. And so is the imposition of government morality on individual churches.
No individual congregation should be banned from marrying couples according to its beliefs – and no individual congregation should be compelled to marry couples in contravention of its beliefs.
Rand Paul needs to rethink this one …
57 comments
Hard for government to “butt out” of marriage when it has to enforce laws on divorce, child custody, welfare, taxes, death, military benefits, etc.
The whole point of “government involvement” is to get the legal rights entitled to married persons and to have equal protection, benefits, and representation under the law. The only way government could be entirely left out of the marriage equation is if you lived in some libertarian utopia where everything is carried out in binding contracts and enforced by private arbitration corporations. (I’m sure some libertarians find this more romantic.)
What Rand Paul needs to do is pull the stick out of his ass and realize that the government is a secular entity that only cares about records keeping and enforcing basic laws. It’s just fricking paperwork sitting in a file in some courthouse, dude, it isn’t going to threaten your marriage or anyone else’s for that matter. As Mark Sanford showed us, the biggest threat to the sanctity of marriage isn’t same sex spouses, it’s shitty spouses, and those come in every sexual preference you can imagine, buddy.
The funny thing is if it were left up to local governments, it would basically encourage segregation. “Those people” would have to move somewhere else with “their kind” in order to get married. Maybe some rural areas in the South will start banning interracial marriages again. Maybe they’ll use religion to justify it. Nah, that’s never happened before, right Rand?
Enough with the mental gymnastics. Marriage is an individual right. Religion is entirely optional. The only role government plays is to make a note of it and enforce the laws it has on its books. Let consenting adults consent and butt the hell out.
But what are we going to do to ensure the protection of holy matrimony?
Signed,
R. Limbaugh
Yes, Mr. Limbaugh is such a supporter of “traditional marriage,” why, HE’S been “traditionally married” four times!
And yet no kids. Makes ya wonder.
“And yet no kids. Makes ya wonder”
Makes me thankful!
He does spend a lot of time talking about all the sex young women are having, doesn’t he?
Envy is one of the seven deadly sins.
Gayness isn’t mentioned, for some reason.
;)
It’s rather sad, really. If he had children, it just might mellow him out a bit.
” Let consenting adults consent and butt the hell out”
The entire Republican Platform is about butting in . . .
Rand Paul, in an attempt to avoid flip flopping, will now attempt to take such vague positions on difficult subjects to keep everyone scratching their heads.
Rand Paul is Wiliard Romney 2.0.
He holds no principles dear and has no guiding philosophy. That might make him electable, but it won’t make him a leader.
What’s next? What if some debased individual elects to marry the flock of geese in his neighbor’s pond, his 2 year old granddaughter, and his 10 year old nephew. Opposed to such deviance? Who are you to JUDGE? Love is love, right? If our decadent society is going to torch 4,000 years of Mosaic law and embrace godless perversions, where shall we draw the line?
How many geese are in the flock?
Pix of the geese,please!
Apparently Tom Ervin would support such. Actually he could marry that individual and the flock of geese while videotaping a new ad with Kathryn narrating.
That damn, slippery slope.
” If our decadent society is going to torch 4,000 years of Mosaic law and embrace godless perversions, where shall we draw the line?”
I’ve never heard of anyone advocating marriage between a human being and a flock of geese – regardless if said flock is in the neighbor’s pond or not in the neighbor’s pond. Never heard of anyone wanting to marry their two year old granddaughter or ten year old nephew either. Why does your mind even go there? Seriously.
He’s a Right Wing kook who is going to be voting a straight Republican ticket in November.
Unlike humans, geese are monogamous. I like geese.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goose
We draw the line at consenting adults. Period.
Siblings who want to marry are a problem, but a very very small one, since 99.9999999999999999999% of siblings will never want to marry.
Anybody who makes the “Well, why can’t you marry an animal?” argument is, by definition, a moron. You can’t marry an animal because an animal cannot give informed consent to marriage, and neither can your comatose fiance of the opposite gender, and you can never ever marry that person unless he or she wakes up, because marriage requires the ability to know you are getting married. A flock of geese can’t possibly know that.
Btw, ‘Mosaic Law’ included this, apparently–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagar
Those 4,000 years included a whole lot of perversion and exploitation–and btw, the Bible repeatedly condemns many things I’m sure you enjoy frequently, but it never condemns lesbians–or mentions them. So I guess women marrying each other is fine?
You love to cherrypick, don’t you? Do you even know what the Old Testament taught about marriage? Did you know it allowed polygamy? Do you favor the death penalty for adulterous wives?
https://bible.org/article/summary-old-testament-teaching-divorce-remarriage
:)
Keep reading. The New Testament might help you understand a little more about marriage, polygamy and the death penalty for adulterous wives.
Actually it doesn’t. Marriage to one woman at a time was Roman Law, not Jewish law. Jewish law continued to allow multiple wives, and occasionally required it.
Quite so–mind you, polygamy was no longer accepted PRACTICE in Jesus’ time. There’s the law, and there’s how you interpret and practice it. No doubt Muslim and Mormon texts support polygamy, but polygamy in practice is frowned upon by most Muslims, and only a few extreme splinter sects of Mormonism still (famously) have ‘sister wives’.
But as far as the Old Testament is concerned, it’s perfectly kosher, if you’ll excuse the term.
Jesus never said anything about polygamy or monogamy–what he said was that it was wrong for men to put their wives aside–the Jewish divorce laws, in practice, were allowing men to divorce their wives who had worked for them so many years, and marry younger women, and leave the first wife destitute.
If society had been arranged differently, so that women did not end up begging in the streets because of divorce, Jesus might not have taken such a strong stance. It was a stance taken out of compassion, not dogma. Jesus thought a great deal more of women than most men of his time. And the early church had more equality between the sexes that had been seen in most other religions.
But the patriarchs found their way back in, once that was where the power was, of course.
Everyone should marry their hand or fingers, only way to be sure !
Madame Palm and her Five Dancing Daughters….
During preseason training, a Clemson football lineman married one of the team’s cheerleaders.
The coach was a bit surprised and remarked to his star football player, “You are such a big, burly guy. Why in the world did you marry such a tiny, petite woman? She is no bigger than your hand.”
“That’s right, Coach,” replied the lineman. “But, she’s much
better!”
A little hypocritical denouncing government-sanctioned marriage while you’re enjoying(presumably)the benefits of one…marriages and weddings are not synonymous.
You can marry a goat for all I care, as long as it doesn’t raise my taxes.
You can’t marry a goat, because a goat is inherently incapable of understanding what marriage is, and therefore cannot give informed consent to the union.
And you better pay your taxes, whatever they are, or you are going to jail. No free ride for you, goat-lover. ;)
“You can’t marry a goat, because a goat is inherently incapable of understanding what marriage is, …”
That would also include too many politicians, so I won’t be marrying any of them, either.
As for paying my legal taxes, I do so, willingly, but with malus of thought. But when g’ment, no matter what form, insists that I pay more than my legal share, then I will object, loudly and strongly, up to and including cleaning and oiling up my Second Amendment Rights.
Please note the use of the word “you” in the original statement. I did not mean me, I all ready have a wife, thank you.
HEY YOU women’s rights advocates – marriage between a man and a women was meant to protect you! Back in the day, you ladies were not allowed or expected to make equal pay for equal wages. Now, you ladies can do that, but mostly choose not to because you want to squeeze out a couple of kids and have a pseudo career with a husband being the bread winner. Should your husband die young, social security sends a check to cover you and each of your kids. Wake up ladies – Marriage between a man and a woman benefits women.
Um . . . never mind.
Marriage to men who are only pretending to want them hardly benefits women.
Marriage is a lot like buying a used car: It looks good in the lot, but you have buyer’s remorse once you get it home.
You know, sometimes I get a bit peeved at women for the way they talk about us.
Then I read posts like yours, and I totally get it.
;)
You do know that women talk behind your back.
Any man who claims that marriage is a fifty-fifty proposition doesn’t know the first thing about women or fractions..!!
In many cases, marriage heavily favors the male. If you don’t know that, you don’t know anything about reality.
Yes, it can benefit women in some instances, but how does it not benefit men to have free housekeeping, to be able to go off and do their thing while their children are taken care of, and of course today most women ALSO hold down jobs and add substantially to the family income.
Marriage does not INHERENTLY favor women. Nor does it inherently oppress them. It’s about how things are arranged, and to argue that men have no power to make these arrangements favorable to themselves is to prate nonsense. There are laws now to protect women’s rights in marriage–it is perfectly true that some women abuse these rights. It is also true that some men abuse their rights, or just flat-out ignore the laws, and get away with it.
I think marriage tends to favor whichever partner is stronger, and that can be the man or the woman.
i think you are right, but divorce usually favors the woman….call it even??? lol
It only favors the woman if there are children from the marriage–so really, it’s favoring the kids.
Guys have gotten alimony from their wives, you know. More common all the time.
Unless a male is ready to settle down and raise a family, marriage is of little benefit to him. Marriage basically provides a male a consistent companion, a consistent sex partner, and a mother for his children. But many males look for greener pastures after a while.
The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
———-
Sex when you’re married is like going to a Seven-Eleven. There’s not as much variety, but at three in the morning, it’s always there.
———-
Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman
who’ll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you’re in the wrong house, that’s what it means.
———-
The trouble with marrying your mistress is that you create a job vacancy.
Nobody believes you’ve ever had sex in your life, man. You spend too much time thinking up all these bon mots. Which ain’t so bon, hate to tell ya.
:D
I, like most Americans, support the right of gay people to get married, and don’t think it threatens heterosexual marriage or the ‘traditional’ family in any way.
However, I’m truly baffled that you guys are just accepting this twaddle Rand Paul pulled out of his ass as historically accurate. Why do you take this guy seriously?
ALL the Founding Fathers got married in courthouses?
Name ONE.
I’ll name four–George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. I looked it up. They all got married at family homes, by clergymen–usually a relative of either the bride or groom.
These were important successful men. Their wives all came from prosperous respected families. Their marriages were important social events. Why on earth would they go down to some dinky courthouse and register like this was some civil union? It was MARRIAGE. It was a life-altering rite of passage. If one of them had said to his intended “My love, let us go down to the courthouse and be joined by Judge Whatsit, because this is only a legal contract for the production of legitimate offspring”, he’d have been roundly slapped and possibly sued for breach of promise.
And btw, that’s why gay people wouldn’t accept civil unions in place of marriage. It’s not the same damn thing. We may want big public weddings, or small private ones–but very few people opt to just go to a government office and sign some papers. It’s inherently unequal, and America is about giving everyone the same basic rights, or it’s not about anything at all.
We want the ritual. We want it to mean something. Gay people just as much as straight people. Even DRUNK people who fly to Vegas and get hitched by Elvis are still going for ritual significance. And of course none of you ever had any problem with THOSE marriages, or thought they undermined the sanctity of the institution.
Btw, Washington’s marriage was childless, probably because he had smallpox early in life. If marriage is about children, but he could never produce any issue, was he really married? Were our Founding Parents living in sin?
:)
Obviously a spoilsport genealogist!
No, I just have internet access. It took me like ten minutes on Google to dig this up. There were a lot of ‘Founding Fathers’, and obviously most of them would be harder to research, but I seriously doubt any of the Founders had civil marriage ceremonies. Daniel Carroll, to name one example, was presumably married by a Catholic priest, probably at somebody’s house. But you’d need more than just Google to research that, because he’s less famous.
It seems like pretty much all marriages back then were officiated over by clergymen. I assume many of these people had judges in their families, but they rarely if ever opted to have them perform marriage ceremonies.
It was apparently the fashion back then to get married at a home belonging to family of the bride or groom. Maybe some Founding Father or other got married at a courthouse, but I can’t find a single example, and Rand Paul said they ALL did. He probably heard this somewhere from one of his Libertarian friends, and just assumed it was true. He does this a lot.
James Monroe was married at Trinity Church in New York City, but he isn’t considered a Founding Father, per se.
One small point, Rand Paul may have Libertarian friends, but he’s neither a Libertarian, or libertarian.
He draws heavily on libertarian ideas, and the reason he’s not a Libertarian is that he knows he can’t hold high office as one. He’s just a mass of ambition and ego and (as I’ve just proven) ignorance.
“He draws heavily on libertarian ideas”
So I assume you mean the Libertarian Party, since your capitalizing it.
So what ideas are specific to Rand & the LP that makes you think he’d normally be a LP candidate?
My contention is that he has no guiding principle, only ambition, so in that regard we might be in agreement.
??? Your own quote shows I did not capitalize that.
I capitalized the second use of the word, to indicate he’s not a member of the party. Following your lead, actually.
While I agree he’s a complete and total opportunist who would sell out any principle for power, I do not think it follows from there that he’s never been influenced by Libertarianism (or libertarianism, whichever). Look whose son he is. He’s a devout Ayn Rand reader, as is Paul Ryan (but only one of them got NAMED after her). Of course it’s an influence. But it’s one he will use or abandon as it suits him.
The notion that government is bad, and we should have the smallest amount of regulation possible is clearly part of that influence. And a lot of people are sympathetic to that–until it impacts them negatively.
“??? Your own quote shows I did not capitalize that.
I capitalized the second use of the word, to indicate he’s not a member of the party. Following your lead, actually.”
That’s whole thing is confusing to me, but let me correct my intention in that I’m trying to clarify which (L?)libertarian you mean.
You used both, so I was looking for clarity.
” I do not think it follows from there that he’s never been influenced by Libertarianism (or libertarianism, whichever)”
Ok, there is a big difference between Libertarian, and libertarian. You might want to spend some time researching it a little because the difference makes your message confused.
“Look whose son he is. He’s a devout Ayn Rand reader”
Ok, another thing here. Rand has come out and stated his NOT a libertarian(and is obviously not a Libertarian either). In fact, he’s gone so far to clearly state several times he and his father have different opinions, which is clearly evident on foreign policy, taxes and a host of other major philosophical viewpoints.
If Rand Paul is a “devout Ayn Rand” follower, that would make him an “Objectivist”, which is vastly different from libertarians(though, with some similarities to Libertarians).
“The notion that government is bad, and we should have the smallest amount of regulation possible is clearly part of that influence.”
Yes, well Republicans claim that philosophy(which is what Rand self identifies as), but their actions demonstrate otherwise, right? So are they Republicans or Libertarians? (because Libertarians claim the same)
But what’s clear about this last quote of yours, is that it’s not libertarian by any stretch…(which is an outright rejection of the state)…but that quote could be considered “Classically Liberal”, just to add a little more confusion to your already confused statement.
:)
Wow, Rand Paul making up facts. What a shocker. Republicans just make things up as the go along. I have never met a Republican that wasn’t fact challenged. They simply don’t think facts matter.
We still have some states with laws against fornication and cohabitation, and that is why some people view a marriage license as primarily a permit to do sexy-time, rather than a proxy for a binding contract to comply with certain laws regarding inheritance, financial support, etc.
Lena Dunham: I Was Raped By a ‘Campus Republican’ In 2008
SC Political Digest • 17 hours ago
I’ve always wondered why most all lesbians are Democrats… Are their men that bad at it, it turns them?
If this is what their women are like, it’s no wonder most gay men ore Democrats, too.
The reason most gay people, male or female, are Democrats at the moment is that the Republicans don’t grant them equal rights. If the party brass stopped pandering to nutjob evangelicals they privately despise, I think gay people would be pretty much split down the middle, politically speaking.
Btw, I note you don’t mention Dick Cheney’s daughter?
That’s a fairly significant omission.
You’re good at those, aren’t you?
:)
A Tenth Anniversary Photograph, 1952
BY MILLER WILLIAMS
Look at their faces. You know it all.
They married the week he left for the war.
Both are gentle, intelligent people,
as all four of their parents were.
They’ve never talked about much
except the children. They love each other
but never wondered why they married
or had the kids or stayed together.
It wasn’t because they knew the answers.
They had never heard the questions
that twisted through the jokes to come
of Moses and the Ten Suggestions.
They paid their debts and never doubted
God rewarded faith and virtue
or when you got out of line
had big and little ways to hurt you.
People walked alone in parks.
Children slept in their yards at night.
Most every man had a paying job,
and black was black and white was white.
Would you go back? Say that you can,
that all it takes is a wave and a wink
and there you are. So what do you do?
The question is crueler than you think.
You have any idea how many guys who went off to the war after marrying their sweethearts never came back? Or came back crippled, physically and or psychologically?
Does that mean God punished them?
I’m not convinced you understand this poem you just typed out.
People with genuine faith have grappled for millennia with the question of why bad things happen to good people.
Others have used the pretense of faith to justify hating people who never wronged them.
Which are you?
FITSY, I am inclined to agree with you, but how is divorce, especially property division, support, and custudy issues, to be resolved? Obviously the courts fuck that up left and right – especially in the pathalogically inept Court of Queen Jean – but what do you think a better alternative would be? I’m not being a gadfly, I’m just trying to work through this.
FITSY, I am inclined to agree with you, but how is divorce, especially property division, support, and custudy issues, to be resolved? Obviously the courts fuck that up left and right – especially in the pathalogically inept Court of Queen Jean – but what do you think a better alternative would be? I’m not being a gadfly, I’m just trying to work through this.
It’s like having to embrace something that you find to be all off-putting and icky and not knowing exactly how to go about doing it.
Rand Paul 2016!