Mar 052004
Ohboyohnboy. My new Radeon card arrived. Now to install it and indulge in some long-overdue shoot-’em-up goodness. But before I go, check this article about Ralph Nader and his…supporters. It’s official. The man is a crank.
Mark Siegel's Desperate Plea for Attention
I know this is off topic but I have a point to share concerning the proposed marriage amendments. I just read Wil Wheaton’s writting on the subject and I thought about something I heard a Senator say recently (forgive, I don’t remember his name). So, according to the Senator, the sole reason for marriage is the procreation and care of children. No concern for the commitment between two people. Apparently we are here to breed. The point that many gay couples have children seems to have slipped his mind.
How does this affect disabled people? What about those who choose not to have children or cannot? I remember a case of a young paralyzed man refused marriage in the catholic church because he was medically not able to have children. Will the constitiution be changed to include that marriage be defined as requiring offspring?
Ok that’s off my chest…What do you think?
>>I remember a case of a young paralyzed man refused marriage in the catholic church because he was medically not able to have children. >>
Got a link? I’d like to read about that.
Essentially Janice, the argument that the Senator cites is a hold over from a time when illegitimacy implicated a great deal of rights that a couple’s children would have. I guess you could look at the fundamental right to marriage more as a fundamental right to have legitimate children, so that you could have someone continue your family name once you’ve joined the choir invisible, so to speak.
As for how it affects the disabled, or the elderly, or other people who cannot have children, yes, they can use those cases as justification to restrict access to legal marriage, but I somehow doubt they would. Unless there’s some groundswell to prohibit infertile people from marrying, this issue isn’t going to come up. There’s no political currency in it either way.
Thanks you’all. I doubt it would come up as well. But these thoughts creap in to my head, so I wonder…
I can just see even the issue of illegitimacy coming into play over the gay marriage issue: since they have to ‘borrow’ from egg or sperm doners, some idiot out there would insist that those children aren’t legitimate. Thus making the marriage null and void or some such foolishness.
Unfortunently, there shouldn’t be political currency in the gay marriage issue either, but they sure seem to thing it has. So, you never know. Hell, our media spent the last several weeks talking about a breast. Who cares. Has anyone seen European TV? Really, what the Hell.
And sorry, I do not have a link concerning that case. I remember seeing it on a news program several years ago. I’m sure, though, as everything else is, that it is on line somewhere.
Suppafly,
Here are some credible links to the Catholic church’s refusal (which was made into a documentary):
http://www.ican.com/news/fullpage.cfm?articleid=268D492A-CD22-4603-BEE50EE51C208F7B and http://www.filmakers.com/indivs/ForbiddenWedding.htm