GAY MARRIAGE
The gay marriage debate is interesting. It is very narrow and fails to point out the negative implications for already marginalised fathers. Most men on this site, like myself, would have been in a marriage with the intention of it, being a state institution, giving them superior rights for access to their children, in case of a marriage break-up, to fulfill their fatherly duty. To our shock and horror we found that in reality we had little in the way of any rights. It appears that being married or not, a father’s importance to his off-spring exists only in the financial sense. Married or not, after 3 yrs of cohabitation he can lose half or more of all of his life’s savings. If he does follow the law and get a prenuptial (contracting out agreement) then every assistance is give to the his partner in order to smash it or blackmail him into paying out a large sum regardless. Marriage holds no magic anymore, certainly not for fathers. It was an institution geared for the security for children, nothing more nothing less.
Are gay people wanting marriage quite fucking MAD??? No, I don’t think so. I think this campaign is about politics, driven more by heterosexual wankers than gays.
If you want to bring about a more powerfully definition of marriage have a look at this site They may not stand for everything you want but they sure as hell will do more for you than the other bunch.
We already have “Gay Marriage” – Its called Civil Union!
What they really want is a form of procreating. Thats already there also. It’s called “Home for Life”
I really don’t care what they call it but not marriage. We have an operations manual dating back 4000 years. Worked pretty well I thing. If it ain’t brokr, Don’t fix it!
Comment by Gwahir — Thu 2nd August 2012 @ 1:10 pm
Marriage as it was traditionally meant to be for thousands of years no longer exists in New Zealand.
It used to usually be a heterosexual union for the purpose of providing security for children.
Marriage used to mean an adult man and an adult woman COMMITTED to each other.
It meant that each party was supposed to stand by and support the other through sickness and health, poverty and wealth, from this day forth………
Before no fault divorce laws became de rigeur divorce only used to occur when either the husband or wife could prove good reason for it, or by mutual consent of both of them.
After no fault divorce laws were enacted divorce rates spiraled upwards.
Just google it.
Wives mostly, realized that when their ‘marriages’ hit the inevitable speedbumps that all long term relationships have they could simply opt out rather than do the work previous generations like our grandparents did of overcoming the relationship difficulty and moving forward together.
They no longer needed to gasp! Support each other and perhaps compromise.
Instead they could rely on the state to fund their drive to hump and dump, and thanks to the ‘courts’ most often take the lions share of the children and property setting themselves up for their next relationship hunt as many good NZ men have discovered to their detriment.
The damage done to trust between men and women, but especially children who are the innocent ‘collateral damage’ in this whole process has been incalculable.
No fault divorce laws have rendered marriage a hollow meaningless shell of what it was formerly before the no fault divorce acts took effect.
I reckon Gays would be stupid to go down the path of Hollow marriage, Frivolous divorce.
Why John Key is beating that drum and homosexuals would think there’s any advantage to being ‘married’ is beyond me. I have to wonder if he’s simply offering up gay ‘marriage’ as a controversial sideshow to distract the public from other issues he’s working on politically such as selling off state assets?
Other rhetorical points worth consideration.
If the premise is that gays should be able to get ‘married’ as a public affirmation of their love for one another, then why can’t I express my love for several women who love me with legalized polygamy?
My dogs and I love each other devotedly, why can’t we get married?
How about I marry my sister, my auntie, my Grandmother, or all four of us get ‘married’?
We love each other, and just want to express that publicly after all!
The point should be getting clear to those who think beyond immediate gratification that just as when feminists redefined rape and domestic abuse with ever widening definitions making those terms mean whatever they want them to mean ‘marriage’ faces the same slippery slope.
Comment by Skeptic — Thu 2nd August 2012 @ 3:41 pm
Nice piece of thinking and writing Skeptic (#2). For me, if marriage were a meaningful institution then I might agonize over distorting its raison d’etre but as it is I really couldn’t care if they extended marriage to include employment relationships or agreements with neighbours over hedge trimming.
Interestingly, this debate reminds us of another dramatic example moderating the feminist story of historical oppression of women. Homosexual activity between men used to be punishable by death, then in 1867 that was reduced to life imprisonment with hard labour plus a bit of whipping thrown in. Didn’t men have it good huh? It was not until 1961 that life imprisonment for sodomy by males was reduced to 7 years imprisonment and so it remained until 1986 when the Homosexual Law Reform Act decriminalized homosexual activity between consenting adult males. In contrast, homosexual activity between females has never been a crime in New Zealand.
I strongly supported the Homosexual Law Reform Bill in 1986 and I continue to find it appalling that men were treated with such violence concerning their private lives as consenting adults. Note though, men’s private behaviour has now been subjected to various new forms of censorship accompanied by harsh punishment, this time according to modern feminist dictates about men’s morality. For example, tea-room discussion even in an exclusively male group comparing their female associates’ (carefully presented for impact) breasts can be enough for those men to lose their jobs or careers should anyone complain. At the same time, women’s preferred forms of immorality are not illegalized but instead the right to behave in such ways is defended in our Family Courts. For example, wrecking children’s lives by trashing their family unit in order to pursue a new, more exciting sexual relationship is defended only because women might want to do this too , to the extent that almost any objection by a cheated father can result in a protection order against him.
Comment by Hans Laven — Sun 5th August 2012 @ 10:32 am
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/celebrities/7696243/Rupert-Everett-slams-gay-parents
Interesting comments from a gay actor.
Comment by Down Under — Tue 18th September 2012 @ 3:30 pm