In a June 15 press release, national LGBT-rights group The Empowering Spirits Foundation (ESF) called upon the worldwide gay-lesbian-other community to immediately cease attacking Carrie Prejean, the People’s Miss California USA.
The ESF, a grassroots San Diego, Calif. organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender normalcy, issued the alert amidst a growing worldwide backlash against homosexual activists like Perez Hilton, Keith Lewis, and others who have repeatedly used intimidation, threats, firings, and attacks on the Prejean family to advance gay rights.
“Demeaning Carrie Prejean or others by using terms such as bigot will not advance our cause of civil rights and social justice,” said A. Latham Staples, executive director of the Empowering Spirits Foundation. “We must not marginalize someone just because they believe differently, as this is the very respect in differing opinion we are asking for from them.”
The ESF’s call for a retreat from demeaning others is, in the minds of many, continued proof that the LGBT movement has been severely damaged by its gay bullying tactics and smear campaigns aimed at Prejean, a fan-favorite beauty queen who continues to rally people of good will everywhere to her cause for traditional marriage.
Unlike the Perez Hiltons of the world, the ESF correctly understands that American citizens like Prejean have the right to express opinions without fear of reprisals and punishment. The organization expressed hope that “both sides can engage in respectful dialogue and come to see similarities rather than differences.”
I admire Ms. Prejean for standing up for what she believes and I don’t understand how the people of California voted for traditional marriage and voted against same sex marriage but yet they punish her by stripping of her crown. I don’t believe for 1 second what the President and the Executive board of the Miss California Pageant because they don’t seem like trustworthy people to me and the new Miss California can’t hold a candle to Ms. Prejean. It is the State of California’s loss when they took away her crown. She is a force with God’s help and she will prevail, she will be victorious in spite of the evil in the state of Ca. And they call LA the city and county of Angels. What happened?
There are many national organizations in support of traditional marriage between a man and a woman, and Carrie Prejean became a bigger voice for that. Proposition 8 was supported by such organizations as Knights of Columbus, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council, along with Mormon, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Jewish, Southern Baptist, and Seventh-Day Adventist Leaders. Keith Lewis and Perez Hilton did Carrie Prejean a huge favor in bullying her because it just shed a very bright light on the obvious overwhelming national support for traditional marriage in the United States. Congratulations to Carrie Prejean for her expressing her opinion and not backing down after bullying tactics and pressure.
Above post sounds like something the NOM organization would write to suit their interests – a post written from a not-too-bright person who’s totally buying the whole package, question nothing i.e. NOM is good, Calif. pageant folks are evil. Try again NOM – you’re too obvious.
Wow, Megan, if you aren’t defensive. That is exactly what is so laughable about bullying liberals like yourself. You are intolerant of conservative attitudes and believe all of their “support” is superficially created by national organizations that you have become very familiar with yourself. “Buying the whole package”, Megan? That’s funny, dear. Welcome to a new day, Megan; it is the general public who are speaking out in behalf of Carrie Prejean and their support of traditional marriage. I am amused at how naive you are!
Why can’t gay people get married? How does their marriage affect others?
If a gay couple lived next door to me, I would not live in fear of the collapse of the fabric of space-time. I would not live in fear that my daughter would suffer any psychological trauma. So, what’s the *real* issue?
David, the real issue is marriage law itself—i.e., whether or not the law is written to address the real needs and economic protections of children and dependent spouses.
Heterosexuals are currently being devastated by badly re-defined marriage law from a few decades back, and we can’t afford additional revisions that make things even worse. Kids and women are being wiped out on a mass scale due to confusions over the duties and responsibilities of marriage, which results in quick easy divorces and lots of abandoned kids. Gay marriage is additional confusion on top of that mess.
For heterosexuals, marriage and family are the same thing since our sex is procreative, and we need contract law that protects all the individuals of the family—especially children and women. Homosexuals simply don’t have the same reproductive situation or economics to protect, and so they need their own contract law that addresses whatever needs they may have. (Civil unions, or whatever.)
The *real* issue is the law and its impact on whole societies. You can’t have one contract law for two very different enterprises. It doesn’t work.
David, the issue has nothing to do with prejudice and everything to do with the impact of marriage law on children and society. Marriage law, if written well, protects spouses and children against easy divorce and ensures long-range stability and economic well-being for the individual parties involved in the contract. Written poorly, however, marriage law creates 50% or higher divorce rates, chronic instability for kids, and economic ruin for dependent women and children. This is a serious issue, and the well-being of nearly everyone in the world is at stake.
Next, of course all human relationships go through hard times, and this is why we have actionable contract law to ensure that no one is permitted to victimize others. The marriage law contract must be permanent to protect kids from the whimsical folly of adults who sire new dependent human beings in a burst of love and commitment only to abandon them 1-3 years later. This severe breach of contract is not permitted in the business world, and it must not be permitted in family law either, where the long-range well being of kids and economically dependent spouses is in grave jeopardy.
Next, you can indeed legislate partnerships and enforce people to follow through on the commitments they make. We do it in the worlds of business and government each and every day. And when a person attempts to ditch out, that person pays hefty fines to the persons he/she is trying to defraud. It’s called justice and fairness.
You are absolutely wrong that marriage law can “cater for access to the children” for heterosexuals and homosexual couples alike. For heterosexuals, marriage law is the legal right to the exclusive exchange of sexually reproductive activities which produce billions of people worldwide. For heterosexuals, sexual activity incurs long-term economic and legal responsibility, thus giving rise to the necessity of a contract. As we all know, homosexuals do not incur any economic risk or long-range family duties as a result of sex acts.
So, the heterosexual couple and the homosexual couple are entirely different by nature. And since the labor demands and economics of heteroseuxal coupling are entirely different from those of homosexual coupling, two separate law codes are required. You cannot use the same contract law for both—it doesn’t work. A marriage law written to accommodate homosexuals can’t offer the heterosexual family critically necessary legal protections. (And it wouldn’t offer adopted kids of homosexuals any protections either, by the way.)
The state offers marriage benefits to heterosexuals alone because the world’s billions of heterosexuals have been tasked by nature with the procreation, daily care, and education of the citizenry. Nature has not tasked homosexuals with this burden.
Contract law and enforcement is the only just and effective way to protect partnerships involving grave long-range economic risk. Mere verbal agreements are useless and dangerous. Marriage law must be reformed and strengthened, not gravely weakened by throwing heterosexuals and homosexuals into the same contract.
The issue in my view is right and wrong. Either there are moral laws and they are valid or there is no moral code. If God is, there are moral codes. If God is not, there need be no moral codes.
I choose to believe God. The law is just that has been handed down through the ages. Since God made the rules we live by who has the authority to change those laws?
So either there is a God and the law is settled or there is not and it doesn’t matter other than what is right for our society. Don’t let it bother you that homosexual’s children seem to be coming out at a rate about 7 times the rate of children raised by heterosexuals. Nah statistics lie anyway, there is no God and live for today for tomorrow we all die.
Party on! Or maybe if you actually seek God you will find out for yourself what is true.
Gays are evil and corrupt. Now they are going after our kids in preschool. They are teaching that there lifestyle is acceptable. This is a lifestyle of corruption. This is one of the signs that brought down the Roman empire. The Gays always want tolerance for there evil. Well I am not tolerant. I call it what it is SIN.
One more thing I forgot to add. Marriage is only for a man and a woman. IN the bible, the marriage of a man and a man or a woman to a woman is an abomination. The sick and the corrupt always want more rights than anyone else. We should not comprise with evil. I am ashamed of our nation that backed away from biblical principles. Marriage is only between a man and a woman, and may God bless that holy union.
Thanks for the reply. I will lay my cards on the table. My sister is a lesbian, and one of my best friends is a gay man who had a relationship for 17 years before his partner left for a younger man. I am remarried to a wonderful woman and am able to say I am more mature and ready for this marriage than my first.
I think the debate is actually based on prejudice. More on that later.
Relationships fail, regardless of whether there is a marriage certificate or not. You can’t legislate against it. This is true for heterosexual and homosexual couples.
If a couple are married and divorce, then the law can cater for distribution of property and the like. This is also true of heterosexual and homosexual couples.
If children are involved, then the law can cater for access to the children. This is again true of heterosexual and homosexual couples.
You speak of the needs of protection and dependent spouses, and I hope you mean both men and women as spouses, as I know men are often “left with the baby” nowadays.
You say “The *real* issue is the law and its impact on whole societies.”
I would agree with you. The law often interferes with people’s lives by trying to be too specific and trying to cater for every eventuality.
Example: I don’t want a racial equality board and laws. I don’t want a gender equality board and laws or any other narrow-remit equality board and even more laws. We need just a “human equality” board and laws covering the basic human right of everyone to be treated fairly and equally.
We need simple marriage laws and principles covering all partnerships. If a marriage breaks down, then we need equal weight to be given to each parent’s right of access based on the facts. Sometimes it will be the case that one partner will be better suited to having the child(ren) residing with them. Each case to it’s merits.
Unless one views marriage as a religious affair only, then I cannot see any objection. If religion pays a part in one’s thinking, then one would be biased to the mother raising the children. This being the case, no argument could counter the religious teachings. Marriage as a religious ceremony and institution would be seen as sacrosanct. If this is one’s belief, then one should state this and not hide behind any other argument.
What we do need is better education at a much earlier level. Education about our psychology as humans. Dealing with anger, jealousy, fear, ego and how this affects us and our interpersonal relationships. This would probably help all relationships; even those that don’t survive.
Education and understanding will be the key to our survival. If we are to repeat the mistakes of history and focus on our differences instead of the common humanity I have seen in all my travels across different cultures, then we are doomed.
Mike,
You are a very scary man. You believe in a book written by man, mis-translated over time and full of errors and inaccuracies; about a man for which there is no historical evidence. From this book you judge other people. It is no wonder it speaks of sheep. I bet you think Jesus was caucasian!
Lou.
If you get your morals from a book, especially the bible, then you haven’t read it properly.
Cassandra.
I have read the website more thoroughly. The views on here are clearly religious christian morality. I am a man of science and feel there is nothing further to contribute.
If the overwhelming evidence for evolution, and the equally overwhelming evidence that the probability of a god or gods existing is so close to zero as possible doesn’t persuade anyone, then they will never change their minds.
Your arguments are better defeated elsewhere on similar postings, and I’m sure you’ve read them.
I just find it very sad that so called christians, like posters above, are so full of hate and bile for their fellow humans.
You don’t like gay people or gay lifestyles because of prejudice. Nothing more, nothing less.
I am currently in China, and have sporadic internet use at the moment, so I will leave it for others to respond further.
David, you are prejudiced against children and women. After all, marriage is a contract agreement between people to deliver long-range high-cost family care. I am a person of law and human rights, and not a single comment I have made has anything religious about it, so what are you talking about? I use pure reason and logic to analyze law and its impact on whole societies. Simply put, bad law imposes bad outcomes on people and society.
Gay marriage law, when applied to heterosexuals, is bad marriage law with inevitably high-divorce outcomes. There’s no way around this fact. Therefore, the only solution is to have civil unions for homosexuals and traditional marriage law for heterosexuals. The economic and legal environments of reproducers are radically different from those of non-reproducers, and there’s no way around this anthropological reality. Therefore, you can’t use the same legal contract for both. The massive inefficiencies and lack of legal specificity ensure failure and economic devastation among heterosexual couples.