Winning the fight for Gay Marriage.

[Meldread]

I think we have a long uphill battle for gay marriage, and I think one of the key things we are doing wrong is framing the debate. We've let the Religious Right frame the debate around religious issues. We've let them drag faith kicking and screaming into the equation and that's what has us hurting so bad.

The majority of the United States SUPPORTS Civil Unions, so why don't they also support gay marriage? Obviously, it's the word and its religious connotations.

The Religious Right is easily able to mobilize people around gay marriage, they are able to trick ignorant straight people into supporting their agenda based around their twisted version of "faith". So we have to take religion out of the equation. We need to reshape the debate.

We need to make sure everyone understands that:

1. There are two types of marriage. Civil Marriage and Religious Marriage. Anyone can have a Religious Marriage, but the state only recognizes Civil Marriages - we want Civil Marriage not Religious Marriage. We can already have Religious Marriages if we want them.

2. If Civil gay Marriages become legal then Religious institutions will not be forced to recognize them. A Religious institution has the right to refuse to acknowledge or recognize any type of person or couple they don't like. If they don't want to marry interracial couples - they don't have to. If they don't want to marry people who are overweight they don't have to. If they don't want to marry gay people they don't have to.

Those two points above should help bring the "Religious Middle" over to our side. Leaving the final thing to do is to cut off the Religious Right's balls by challenging them based on the First Amendment.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

We should take this to the states who have passed gay marriage bans in their Constitution and laws and challenge them in federal court. We can accuse them of passing laws respecting an established religion(s) and prohibiting the free exercise of religion. We can use gay friendly Rabbi's and Pastors claiming that the religious right doesn't speak for them, and that the bans are an attack on their faith.

If that works then it will force the Religious Right to argue against gay marriage in secular terms... something they cannot do. It would also hurt their fundraising and organizing efforts as anytime they use Churches to organize and fundraise we can take them to court again accusing them of breaking the first amendment.

What are your thoughts on this? Is it possible?

[xchrom]

1. i'm so conflicted because i think the work

has to focus on the democrats.

gay marriage has always operated under the idea that religous intitutions wouldn't be forced to perform weddings.

conservatives work on the idea of ''family'' -- and that same argument some how winds up in the mouths of democrats.

i sometimes wonder if i'm liberal first or gay first on issues like these -- for example -- would focus on an equal rights ammendmant get us where we want to go better than a law changing marriage?

i.e. conservatives chip away at roe v wade little by little -- is it time to revisit the era as a result -- a better tactic?

[freestyle]

2. We have to focus on marriage EQUALITY.

The emphasis must be on the equality aspect, and equal access to the full rights and benefits of citizenship. This is about citizens having access to a government service, nothing more or less. In Maryland, one amicus brief to the marriage equality lawsuit was from a wide range of clergy and religious groups advocated for marriage equality and for the removal of religious arguments from the debate. Religious institutions remain free to exercise their respective faiths, and government is not basing a decision on civil services on the views of part of the religious establishment. We will see what happens.

Ideally, clergy would not even be able to perform the civil ceremony. The words "by the power vested in me by the state of ...." should never fall from a clergy person's mouth. That is a horrible commingling of church and state, in effect making clergy agents of the state. There is something deeply wrong with that.

[Meldread]

3. I agree.

I'd love nothing more than to completely devoid all religious marriages and make them get them through the government. I'd love to put up a wall so thick that if every Christian current, past, and future were to get a jackhammer and go at it - they wouldn't even make a dent.

However, I am more focused on winning. What will it take to win? What are the costs and what do we have to do? I don't really care about semantics. Once we win we can hammer those out.

I just believe that in order to win we must knock religion out of the picture, and once that is accomplished victory for us is pretty much assured.

[BR_Parkway]

4. I want to know how "one man and one woman" isn't discriminating

based on the sex of the people involved. It seems like the wording in these amendments should make it easier to make the claim that they are making rules based on the sex of the individuals that other aren't available to others.

If I could marry a man as a woman, then it's discrimination that I can't marry him as a man - the only difference being my sex.