Thursday, April 18, 2013

Marriage Equality Amendment

I once found this blog where someone was proposing a "Marriage Equality Amendment.”

The simple text of the proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

The right to marry shall not be abridged or denied by the United States or any state on account of sex or sexual orientation.

We are definitely in favor of lifting restrictions that prevent someone from marrying someone of the same sex. But this amendment would still leave on the books numerous laws that prevent full marriage equality. The people on whose behalf I am blogging would not only still be prevented from having their marriages recognized, but many could be imprisoned for openly living as married. Prejudice against one is prejudice against all.

A better wording for the amendment would be:
The right to marry or to personal consortium shall not be abridged or denied by the United States or any state on account of sex, gender, sexual orientation, ancestry, consanguinity, or number of participants.

Haven’t we progressed to this point? Why prevent consenting adults from loving each other?

[This entry bumped up because it is as relevant as ever.]
Posted by Keith Pullman at 2:43 PM
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1 comment:

  1. An even better proposal, albeit a bit more progressive (i.e. unrealistic in the current political environment) would be for the government to relinquish any and all power over the definition of marriage, making it an agreement between only the people involved and having no legal trappings defining it. Any joint ownership of goods or child custody could be handled privately via contract in the instance of divorce.

    ReplyDelete

To prevent spam, comments will have to be approved, so your comment may not appear for several hours. Feedback is welcome, including disagreement. I only delete/reject/mark as spam: spam, vulgar or hateful attacks, repeated spouting of bigotry from the same person that does not add to the discussion, and the like. I will not reject comments based on disagreement, but if you don't think consenting adults should be free to love each other, then I do not consent to have you repeatedly spout hate on my blog without adding anything to the discourse.

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