Thanks, Kate.

He asks some great questions…that will most likely never be answered.

What was it that caused this outcome? What am I not hearing?

I would expect Olbermann’s remarks to be the norm in California. Even Obama’s presence on the ballot would support a turning out of an electorate in support of same sex marriages.

Is it possible that it is not a moral judgment? That Olbermann is tilting at wind mills.

Could it be a reluctance to go quietly into the night, to give up that definition of marriage that acknowledges a man and a women making a committment to bond for life. Could it be that simple?

The unwillingness to let go of thousands of years of history burned into our being. An unwillingness to accept that marriage is an institution of love, and only love.

I am unwilling to hear a moral judgment in this vote. As a nation I have faith that we are more than that. Something is being lost in the rhetoric of this debate. For me, something is missing.

There is something else straining to be heard. We may not be listening.

Another, you may be right. The key is that this debate, like other political/moral debates in our society, is being dominated by those who are either unwilling or unable to actually listen to the people on the ‘other side’.

Many times, if you actually listen to or read the comments on topics like this one, you’ll see that the comments, while they might be directed at the opponent, the questions asked, and the responses made, don’t actually correlate to what the other person said.

For example: “Gay Marriage is about me having the civil right to have my partner at my bedside in the hospital.” Frequently winds up facing a response that goes, “Allowing Gays to marry weakens the social institution of marriage.”

Did those two statements actually correlate to each other? No, they did not.

Until we learn how to listen to the people we are talking to, and learn how to actually answer their concerns with statements that actually respond to those concerns, we’ll never get anywhere. It’s really about respect, I think. We don’t want to grant respect to those we disagree with, we don’t want to admit that they might just have a point.

How about some of these gays considering that there are some people (many) who truly find it disrespectful to THEM and their God for them to continue to insist on passing laws that would call their unions MARRIAGES which they feel and which this nation has always upheld but more importantly which from the beginning of time were ordained by God who is Lord and whose name is Jehovah as unions between man and a woman?

Note: (Just making certain you understand which God I am speaking of here).

Could some Gay(s) PLEASE (because I want many different takes on this issue from many different gays) to explain to me why there’s a problem with our nation or laws allowing legal unions of (men and men) OR (women and women) where you have ALL the same equal legal rights under law as marriages between a men and a women?

Shouldn’t respect be both ways or do you think only of yourselves here?

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Kate: Thank you. As a native Californian, I was distressed by this turn of events in my home state. I am just barely old enough to remember a time before initiatives and propositions began to overrun the ballots in California, and I truly believe that this is the downside of direct rather than representational democracy: the tyranny of the majority. There may well be a majority of Californians who are against gay marriage, but that doesn’t make them right.

Keith Olbermann did a stunning job of asking the right questions: why do people oppose this? If your religion doesn’t allow same-sex unions, fine. Nobody is going to force them on anyone. My own church is bitterly divided on the topic. But marriage licenses in California are handed out by county government offices, not churches. I know, I got married there. My (traditional, Catholic Church-blessed, heterosexual) marriage and my religious freedom are NOT in any way threatened by gay people being allowed to marry. And a right that they had should never have been taken away.

Some people have said on this blog that being against gay marriage does not make you anti-gay. But none of the other explanations make sense to me. If this is not bigotry, what is it?

Pamela,

Your asking the question I want an answer to. If this isn’t bigotry what is it?

I am not convinced this is bigotry. Something else is going on here, and we are not seeing it.

Democracy has never been about being right. People will argue their point with righteousness, but democracy is a crude form of agreement based in the power of the majority. It is proof of only that. Kind of a deliberate and thoughful mob, but nothing more than a tacit agreement is generated by democracy, and then only if it works.

Comparing it to the civil rights movement generated by racism doesn’t seem valid to me either.

I believe people are being genuine about this issue. Olbermann’s remark are universally appelaing. Something else is going on here.

I agree that this is not bigotry. As an issue, I struggle on this one. Where I usually land is asking the question: Why does our government get involved with marriage in the first place?

I see it being a natural acknowledgment of the concept of a family unit. They are the building blocks of society, and we are evidently unwilling to decide that they can just be anything we feel like letting them be. Are we ready to accept polygamy? Why not? Is that choice any less legitimate than gay marraige?
So if we are not in the business of supporting the concept of traditional families, then our governemnt would never have gotten involved with marriage in the first place. I for one think it’s good that we are in that business, and believe that any government activity that weakens family structure is a bad thing - but also my faith is not in that government to save the institution as it exists, which is why I think that the argument around divorce etc. in heterosexual couples does not really play into this.

I too think there is more at play here than a “we don’t like gays, so we’ll opress them” mentality.

It certainly has nothing to with not liking gays because in my life-time some of my dearest and most trusted friends and most enjoyable friends have been gays, and this is not say that I have not known gays who are miserable trouble causing nightmares who want to make everyone else’s life Hell. Now, is this unlike the general population across the whole spectrum of all human beings? I think not. Gays certainly do not have any up on being unlikable human beings.

My feelings about the issue is no different than my feelings about couples living as man and wife unwed, sex outside wedlock etc., which I use to see absolutely nothing wrong with and has been as just as guilty as anyone who live such lifestyles. But, at the same time I realize that people have the right to choose to live their life however they choose for themselves. I am however extremely glad that I was called by God out of the world and sinful lifestyle that I once lived.

The history of our government issuance of marriage licenses began for the purposes of distributing things of value regarding obligations and entitlements and upon separation or death of one of the parties. This reason along is why government began issuing marriage licenses. Our society’s jobs and government knowing that men were the sole providers of wives and their children offered special benefits to these wives and children and upon death of the husband our government or even the husband’s place of employment cared for the widow and children and, I would imagine that it was naturally based on God’s word to care for the widows and children.

Now we have come to a place in our society where it is not so shameful for gays to be public about being gay and a host of other things that people were once ashamed concerning such as living together outside wedlock, sex outside marriage, becoming pregnant outside marriage and having children outside marriage.

But anyone with the truth within them will acknowledge that government begin the issuance of marriage licenses based upon the religious ceremonial marriage of a man and a women. And, again my question to gays and now Kate Lovelady and Pamela Dolan is why do you or gays feel that it is not insulting to ones who recognize that marriage is a union in God’s eyes between a man and a woman as shown in scripture even when one of the parties or both do not even accept or believe in Christ or God?

Marriage licenses were issue by the government for legal reason as mentioned in this comment but were based on the RELIGIOUS UNIONS that are called MARRIAGES, so based on these facts why is it that you cannot see why people of various religions feel that this is truly a insult to them personally and to their God? Even though there are those who are religious such as Pamela Dolan who has no problem with gay marriages.

Why is it that gays and others are so against “Civil Union” for gay couples? I personally think that gays and others who feel this way are either being extremely stubborn or they truly love perverting what scripture shows us as being God’s intent of a marriage is. I feel that some people despise God and those who follow Him because of the fact that scripture shows that homosexuality is sin and marriages were intended by God to be between a man and a woman. I can remember a time in my life being uncomfortable and angry with people and God because I only saw in scripture that my lifestyle was not acceptable to God. I did not want to accept that.

Even so, I feel that adults have the freedom of choice to live what ever kind of lifestyle they choose even though I gladly choose to follow Christ and His teachings and, hope that all would come to accept. But at the same time I accept that this hope will never become true on this present earth. My feelings have absolutely nothing to do with bigotry or dislike of gays per say.

No one has yet answered Olberman’s question: how does legalizing gay marriage cheapen marriage?

D. Walker, you’re only partly right: The legal entity of marriage was based on property rights. Women and Children were legally considered the property of the men of the household. Daughters were bought with a dowry to compensate the father for the cost of raising her to marrying age.

Not so much in this country, but the English system of ‘entailment’ made sure the property passed intact to the oldest son, rather than being divided between the heirs…something that frequently impoverished widows because they were not permitted to own property if they were married.

On this subject, I really think the ‘typical’ gay person wants two things, really. They want to have the various automatically granted legal rights that go with marriage granted to them. Things like automatic next of kin rights at the hospital, to tax benefits, to joint property tenancy (there is a very long list).

They also want society to accept them as they are. And that, I think, is the REAL thing. They want to be free to live their life without being constantly judged as something ‘less than’. And, they see, rightly or wrongly, that laws like Prop 8 treat them that way. Most gays see themselves as born gay, they didn’t create themselves that way. And so, they wonder, why doesn’t society accept them as they are?

Disclaimer: I have a gay daughter. I struggle with this.

Kate,

Thank you for bringing this to my notice. While I might quibble with some of the details, in general I find Keith’s commentary profound, moving, and right on.

He keeps returning to the phrase “what is this to you?” This, I think, is really the question, because it is what compels us to make laws. The opponents of gay marriage claim that it does indeed hurt “traditional” marriage. It seems to me that this is a simple thing to settle–in Massachusetts.

I lived in Boston when gays were given the right to marry. At the time, there were predictions of dire things that would happen if this was allowed. Did they? Or did things get better, since there were more married couples providing stability to communities? I would like to see a sociological study of the effects of gay marriage in Massachusetts, and let rationality come into the discussion of gay marriage across the country.