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News & ArtsThursday, December 20, 2012
LGBTQITSLFA Newt Gingrich: Legal Same-Sex Marriage Is a Thing That Is Happening Whether I Like It Or Not
Posted by Dan Savage on Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 10:12 AM
Progress! Huffington Post:
On gay marriage, meanwhile, Gingrich argued that Republicans could no longer close their eyes to the course of public opinion. While he continued to profess a belief that marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, he suggested that the party (and he himself) could accept a distinction between a "marriage in a church from a legal document issued by the state"—the latter being acceptable. "I think that this will be much more difficult than immigration for conservatism to come to grips with," he said, noting that the debate's dynamics had changed after state referenda began resulting in the legalization of same-sex marriage. "It is in every family. It is in every community. The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to... accommodate and deal with reality. And the reality is going to be that in a number of American states—and it will be more after 2014—gay relationships will be legal, period."
Gay relationships are already legal, of course. And advocates for marriage equality have been hammering away at the distinction between civil marriage (a right) and getting married in a church (a rite). And there are plenty of churches that will marry same-sex couples... but we never hear anyone speak up for their religious freedom.
But it's nice to see Gingrich—America's favorite twice-divorced, three-times-married Catholic convert—finally accept reality: gay people exist, gay people have relationships, gay people have families. Here's hoping Gingrich's fellow Catholic convert Brian Brown accepts reality sometime soon.
1
Speaking as a member of the Religious Society of Friends (aka Quakers) whose Meeting extended the rite of marriage to gay couples in 2004, you know what else pisses me off? When our state legalized same-sex marriage, our couples have to get married again to be legal, despite the fact there's a cut-out in NY family law that authorizes Quakers to conduct marriages in our own traditional way.
I really want to say to the state, "Okay, you finally caught up with us, now recognize legally what we already recognized as valid with 50 signed witnesses!"
I really want to say to the state, "Okay, you finally caught up with us, now recognize legally what we already recognized as valid with 50 signed witnesses!"
3
I love it that Gingrich has to actually say that he and other conservatives now have to "deal with reality." Which, of course, suggests that up until now they have been in a dream state. Whatever else is in that dream state? Reduced military spending? Higher taxes on the wealthy? The shifting demographics of the US of A? The need to regulate automatic weapons? A few are slooooowwwly waking up, issue by issue.
5
Newt can say what he really thinks because he's not running for anything and doesn't have to deal with Republican primary voters.
6
I am surprised that same-sex-marriage-supportive churches have not come forward more loudly and expressed the ban on same-sex marriage as "interfering with the free exercise thereof." Catholics are not shy about putting their opposition in exactly those terms, even though the marriages in question have nothing whatsoever to do with the Catholics. (Which is the logical equivalent of saying that if another person eats donuts every day, that interferes with my diet. But hey, logic has never been Catholicism's strong suit.)
7
Weddings are religious.
Marriages are civil contracts enforced by the State.
Nobody is making anybody perform or sanction any weddings.
Marriages are nobody's business but the people involved.
Marriages are civil contracts enforced by the State.
Nobody is making anybody perform or sanction any weddings.
Marriages are nobody's business but the people involved.
10
@6 "logic has never been Catholicism's strong suit.)"
I don't think that's fair. The Catholic church maybe an incredibly corrupt and reactionary institution, but it does have a tradition of intellectual excellence and philosophical rigor. On the other hand, fundie protestants tend to be dumb as a box of hammers and proud of it. I think that it's no coincidence that all the religious conservatives who have interesting things to say (Ross Douthat, Maggie Gallagher, etc) are Roman Catholics rather than southern evangelicals.
I don't think that's fair. The Catholic church maybe an incredibly corrupt and reactionary institution, but it does have a tradition of intellectual excellence and philosophical rigor. On the other hand, fundie protestants tend to be dumb as a box of hammers and proud of it. I think that it's no coincidence that all the religious conservatives who have interesting things to say (Ross Douthat, Maggie Gallagher, etc) are Roman Catholics rather than southern evangelicals.
12
Your Love isn't really LOVE until you force your blood enemy to acknowledge it.
Or something........
Or something........
13
@8 YES! But don't expect bring your sicko gay marriage up there.
The only recognized Newtopia Lunar Base Marriages are those between one 60+ year old white man and one to five 16 to 32 year old big titted women.
The only recognized Newtopia Lunar Base Marriages are those between one 60+ year old white man and one to five 16 to 32 year old big titted women.
14
Ugh. Every time Newt Gingrich comes up, my brain is too busy going into "disgusted cringing" mode to actually process whatever the story is. The origin of calling someone a "piece of shit" as an insult had to have begun with someone very similar to this guy.
15
@6
I used to think that way too, until the Canadian (equivalent of the) Supreme Court issued the ruling the legalized marriage throughout the country - in their ruling they addressed the issue, because some churches actually had sued on religious freedom grounds and their court combined those cases.
Their logic was that religious freedom wasn't infringed, because the religious ceremony didn't impact the civil marital status, and the government didn't determine the religious validity of their sacraments. As a result, nobody was keeping the church from sacramentally marrying anyone and, for church and theological purposes, treating them as married.
They said the individuals involved were very definitely being denied their civil rights and that full civil marriage equality was the remedy, but that since religious institutions didn't have the authority to grant civil marriage even to straight people, they weren't being infringed on by not being able to do so for gay couples.
I find that a compelling argument.
I used to think that way too, until the Canadian (equivalent of the) Supreme Court issued the ruling the legalized marriage throughout the country - in their ruling they addressed the issue, because some churches actually had sued on religious freedom grounds and their court combined those cases.
Their logic was that religious freedom wasn't infringed, because the religious ceremony didn't impact the civil marital status, and the government didn't determine the religious validity of their sacraments. As a result, nobody was keeping the church from sacramentally marrying anyone and, for church and theological purposes, treating them as married.
They said the individuals involved were very definitely being denied their civil rights and that full civil marriage equality was the remedy, but that since religious institutions didn't have the authority to grant civil marriage even to straight people, they weren't being infringed on by not being able to do so for gay couples.
I find that a compelling argument.
16
@10 Ken that's like saying the Spanish economy is doing great because of how they faired in the 16th century. It helps when thinking about the present to refer to the present.
17
@ 10 - If you understand Spanish (or can get a translation), I strongly advise you to read Pepe Rodriguez's excellent Mentiras Fundamentales de la Iglesia Catolica (in its revised 2012 edition, B de Bolsillo ed.) - a huge bestseller in Spain when it first came out, by the way.
You will never again be able to oppose the argument that "Logic has never been Catholicism's strong suit." Logic is and has always been, as clearly demonstrated in that book, its main enemy.
You will never again be able to oppose the argument that "Logic has never been Catholicism's strong suit." Logic is and has always been, as clearly demonstrated in that book, its main enemy.
19
@7 - Weddings are ceremonial; that doesn't mean they're necessarily religious. They certainly are when those engaging in the ceremony imbue it with religious significance. But I think you'll find that most irreligious married couples still had a wedding.
20
@10 Rising from the dead and virgin births, among many other things they believe, is not rational. And that means that the underpinnings of the entire religion are, simply, lies.
21
@12 - Love is surely not determined by the recognition or acknowledgment of one's enemies. But the legal contract we call marriage is defined by . . . well, by legal recognition.
You'd think that would be self-explanatory.
You'd think that would be self-explanatory.
22
@10 - There's something to that; Catholicism did, at least, seem to inherit Judaism's scholarly rigor, along with paganism's aesthetic underpinnings. Protestantism--which I hasten to add is not intrinsically and universally irrational, just somewhat more susceptible to irrationality than other systems of thought--is hobbled, in my opinion, by the five solas.
23
@15: I find that argument compelling as well. It works when you flip it around for Fundamentalist Mormon churches/cults. Obviously, their religion recognizes forced plural marriages between old men and teenage girls. Just as obviously, society doesn't have to recognize it as a binding civil marriage.
24
@3 I agree with you 100%. Maybe more will start to actually see and accept reality, rather than continuing to live in their own fundamentalist fantasy world.
25
@16 Catholic schools are pretty good. The, mostly Catholic, folks at the National Organization for Marriage are a lot smarter than the, mostly Protestant, folks at the Family Researcher Council. Brian Brown is a conservative Catholic. I think we can all agree that he did pretty well against Dan in their dinner table debate. I don't think many fundie protestants could have pulled that off. You can see what happens when a Liberty University bonehead like Tony Perkins tries to debate people who went to real colleges here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTySVskUc…
and here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiLlnCg38…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTySVskUc…
and here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiLlnCg38…
26
@22 You can't generalize about protestants to much. About the only thing all protestant churches have in common is that none of them take their marching orders from the guy in Rome with the pointy hat. However, I think the type of protestant fundamentalism that has flourished in the United States in the last 30 years is a religion founded by dumb people for dumb people.
27
@19 In the laws of the great state of New York, you can actually be married by wedding contract, on paper, as a legal proceeding, with no ceremony.
28
@27 - I didn't mean to suggest you can't have a marriage without a wedding ceremony. But it seems like a rarity. I grant you that I have no statistics at hand to demonstrate that.
29
What could be more intellectual than an institution that has a decades (probably centuries) old history of systematically harboring and protecting child molesters while at the same time condemning others for sex between consenting adults?
30
@26 - I think you can make some generalizations regarding any line of Protestantism that acknowledges the solas. This wouldn't apply to, say, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Quakers, etc., so if we're calling them "Protestants," your statement is probably fair.
31
@30 Solas? I'm not familiar with that term. The google says that Solas is an acronym for the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea.
34
@29 Covering for all those pedophile priests was short sighted, hypocritical, and evil, but I don't think it necessarily indicates a lack of intellectual sophistication.
35
I always thought that Gingrich probably didn't really care about gay people, in his own mind. Obviously he was perfectly happy to throw them under the bus to get power for himself, but I never saw in him the mix of obssession/fear/desire about gay sex that you get in a lot of those hardcore "family values" types. I bet as long as he has a never-ending supply of nubile female congressional aides (don't get sick, Callista!) he could actually care less what gay people do.
36
@many: Don't confuse intellectual rigour with having a solid factual underpinning. It is possible to construct a robust, internally consistent, intellectually rigourous belief system on a foundation of pure fantasy. Roman Catholic dogma is an excellent example of this. If you accept a few key foundational principles, it all makes sense from the inside.
But from the outside, those key foundational principles are false and the whole, marvelously constructed, enterprise collapses.
But from the outside, those key foundational principles are false and the whole, marvelously constructed, enterprise collapses.
37
catholic
1. Of broad or liberal scope; comprehensive: "The 100-odd pages of formulas and constants are surely the most catholic to be found" (Scientific American).
2. Including or concerning all humankind; universal: "what was of catholic rather than national interest" (J.A. Froude).
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/catholi…
1. Of broad or liberal scope; comprehensive: "The 100-odd pages of formulas and constants are surely the most catholic to be found" (Scientific American).
2. Including or concerning all humankind; universal: "what was of catholic rather than national interest" (J.A. Froude).
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/catholi…
38
@37: Non sequitur: "A statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said." (From Latin, "it does not follow.")
39
@31- That's correct. You should make sure that your church has enough lifeboats to accommodate all your members, and that they have adequate stores of Bibles, wine and communion wafers to last for not less than 72 hours adrift in a sea of unbelief and moral relativism.
40
It's a pity the shock waves caused by gay marriage traveled back through time and destroyed Newt's earlier marriages, caused a wave of homicides in the 1960s and made Henry the VIII kill so many of his wives.
41
210, wait, when did Maggie Gallagher ever have anything interesting to say? Other than in a clinical "this woman's manifestation of mental illness is interesting" way, that is.
45
Translation: Callista is not feeling so well, probably seeing several specialists....and Newton is seeing someone as well, through a glory hole.
46
34, You are being purposely obtuse as usual. It's the juxtaposition that is the point, not the cover up.
48
NEVER GIVE IN!!! Just because it's tough you never give in!! It's wrong no matter how many people do it!! Abortions are wrong but you don't do it because everybody else does it. Lying and cheating is wrong but you don't do it because so many people are doing it! Stick with what you believe and don't give into socialism! That's what they want you to do! Two wrongs don't make a right!!! Come on Newt you are a Christian please act like it!
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