This doesn’t preclude people from thinking of themselves as the other sex. That’s their right and freedom. It is also might right and freedom to think they are the other way. For myself, however, I will honer whatever it is they want to call themselves. Just legally there sometimes needs to be some clarity.

Anyway, he/she is still married and is technically still a male, I believe, according to Utah law. If there’s a Y chromosome you’re male, if not you’re female. Pretty simple. Not arguing that he/she doesn’t have the right to change. I meet with him/her all the time in my line of work and treat him/her as a female. (I’m only using “him/her” here for clarity, I don’t mean it to be degrading.)

So, I guess the answer is yes. They are still technically married. But, I don’t really know why they would want to be.

I appreciate your willingness to compromise on this issue of same sex marriages. Compromise, the true essence of democracy, seems like a dying art these days. I don’t have a problem with civil unions per se, but this whole “marriage-for-heterosexuals-and-civil-unions-for-homosexuals” thing, separate-but-equal deal, reeks of Plessy v. Ferguson. I’m not exactly sure why, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So here’s my compromise: civil unions for everybody. Heterosexual and homosexual couples each get all the accompanying legal rights. Religious institutions can still conduct “marriages,” but at the courthouse, we’ll all file for civil union licenses. Then there’s no separate-but-equal stink on the whole deal, everyone can use the same terminology, and no one’s feelings get hurt.

POP QUIZ: If a man and a woman get married under today’s definition of the term, and one partner in the relationship undergoes a sex-change operation, is their marriage effectively null and void, or would they have a legal same-sex marriage?

I don’t necessarily agree with everything the DEA does. As long as what you do or take into you own body does not have adverse effects on other people, I’m all for legalizing it. I would even be for legalizing hallucination drugs if some way could be devised, at no expense to the general public, to insure the safety of everyone around the drug taker when he is high or out of control. This is why alcohol is heavily regulated. Persons under the influence of a substance may not act rationally and harm others, therefore the DEA and government have every right to regulate or ban such substances. Smoking, except for second-had smoke, does not fall under this category, and alcohol may not, at least partially.

Just like abortion, neither option is ideal in the gay marriage debate. But, just like abortion, I think a middle ground can be reached. There are valid moral points on both sides of the abortion debate, which are mutually exclusive, likewise in gay marriage. The other side is not going to be happy if we go to the extremes. I’m fine with gay marriage, most of my Mormon counterparts are not. Neither is most of the general public, therefore I think a fair compromise is in order. YES, I KNOW IT IS NOT IDEAL, but we can all still be reasonably happy in the middle ground. A civil union in most states, as far as I know, has all the property rights, rights of “divorce” and so forth that an actual marriage in name has—just not the name. Appeases the “unenlightened, backward-thinking” hairless apes out there who stupidly think sexual intercourse between two men is “not quite right.” Work on “enlightening” them all first then ask for the legal recognition, would be my suggestion. I don’t expect you to agree, I just want you all to see this is a valid viewpoint.

As for being atheists, I agree! I never said we Mormons have the worst of the persecution. After all, we’re still going to some form of heaven. You atheists, get it at both ends—here and after you’re gone! Yup, you don’t get the evangelical vote, but I dare say you probably get most of the commie vote.

John, I like what you said here. However, when government is the establishment in question, it too must cater to ALL the general public regardless of benign characteristics, such as race, creed, or sexual orientation. Face it, you’re description of the perfect marriage might make sense from a religious perspective, but in the eyes of the state, marriage is little more than a property-sharing agreement. When they marry, they agree to share their stuff, and when they divorce, they divide it up. The government has no reason to deny homosexuals the right to enter a property-sharing agreement. And your contention that legalization of same sex marriage would force other people to accept it as moral is just wrong. Abortion has been legal for thirty years, and no consensus has even begun to develop as to its moral validity. People will continue to believe whatever they want to; it is the American way.

“[The government] does not have any right to tell you you can’t smoke yourself.”-John

John, have you run this by the DEA? They seem to have this crazy notion that they can arrest people who smokes cannabis. Have you mentioned to them that they don’t have that right? They must have skipped that part of the Constitution.

First of all I don’t appreciate calling my own sexual preferences into question here. If that is where this discussion heads, I’m out of here. Rest assured, I am quite confident in my heterosexuality.

Now, if I, John Hamilton, cannot declare what is moral and valid, who can? Fact is, no one can perfectly. But since that is the case, should we just dispense with government and community morals altogether?

As for Mormon victimhood, no we don’t have it all that bad compared to some. That still doesn’t negate the fact that Mitt Romney or whoever would loose half, yes a full 50 percent, of the Evangelical base within his party merely for the fact he was Mormon. No other religion (except possibly the Catholics) would ever come close to approaching those kinds of numbers. Though it is not as bad as it could be, I think I’m justified in mentioning it as a factor. And besides, I think I’m very special, thank you very much!

Concerning interracial marriages in Virginia or elsewhere: No one, in their heart of hearts, actually believed it was immoral, in principle, for two races to marry each other. Whites and Indians did it all the time, a few in my ancestry, and it was fairly acceptable. Once again this is evidence of the psychopathic nature, or its residual, in the South. I understand it was perfectly legal, though not common, in many other states. Homosexuality is a different matter. Most people in every state where polls have been taken believe it is wrong to one extent or another. I see your point, Caleb, and I’ve said before, I personally have no problem with gays getting married. I’ll fully acknowledge such a marriage, legal or not, personally. I do, however, see the real problem others may have with it and until they become the minority I’m not going to ram it down their throats. Their fear and abhorrence may be unwarranted, but I have do doubt that it is real, to them.

Evidence of a natural and proper relationship between two individuals is the production of offspring. The sexual act at its very core is to reproduce. All other affectations surrounding it are nice, but are ultimately secondary to that evolutionary fact. This is in the idealized perfect senerio, of course. A man and a woman of different races produce quite healthy offspring very well and therefore it cannot be argued that it is “unnatural” by a logical, reasoning person, whether he personally likes the practice or not. Sadly (and I mean that) this is not so for homosexual relationships. Of course they can adopt and so forth, but their sexual acts are not natural in this sense. Not saying I agree whole-heartedly with that view, but it is the prevailing view of the vast majority of Americans for now. And I don’t think the vast majority of Americans are psychopaths, even if a bare majority of them voted for Obama. (Who is also against legalized gay marriage, by the way.)

Getting married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas is definitely immoral! Especially if such a union produces offspring! (Shudder!) But that’s why they call it Sin City, right?

If being gay is a choice then quite reasonably one will conclude that being heterosexual is also a matter of choice. Personal experience informs me otherwise. (Maybe you are not so sure of your own leanings. That would explain much of the hostility.) On the other hand, actions are voluntary. You may accurately observe that a person of either orientation may choose to engage in such activities. To conflate sexual orientation with sexual actions is simply not being truthful, and that’s a sin in my Book.

As free individuals we are permitted to decide for ourselves what we consider normal, quite apart from what the law says. John, it’s not that hard to understand. As I’ve pointed out before, Catholics have a much more narrow view of marriage than civil code and it hasn’t kept them from enforcing their theological restrictions on their flock. Bully for them. It’s time for folks to get a thicker skin and let other citizens be free.

Yes, I know that the LDS church no longer seeks plural marriages. That was an awfully weird challenge that you proposed, and it’s clear that you didn’t really believe in your own position. Again, I’ll be interested to hear your attempt to equate same sex marriage with plural marriage or any other type.

Re: the Mormon stigma. You are right that Methodists and a few other religious groups have a lower profile that the LDS. (That’s not necessarily a compliment to us.) However there ARE other religious affiliations besides Mormonism with a similar burden of heightened public awareness, especially for politicians. President Kennedy sure knew that. The Catholic faith of Sen. Kerry and Vice President Biden became matters of public discussion during the campaign, when we should have been talking about issues instead of whether someone was allowed to take communion. Any national candidate who is Southern Baptist will be scrutinized carefully. Lieberman is Jewish, we all know that. And– this is very important, John– the Mormons are far ahead of some other faith groups when it comes to public acceptability. It’s long past time to quit crying about victimization. You’re really not that special. Now please drop it.

Re: “People were never ‘disgusted’ with blacks having freedom…” Poppycock.

John, you have so many good things to say about freedom but it is so dadgummed selective! It’s shocking that you could actually believe what you say, that equal treatment is a divine right but only for the few things that John Hamilton declares good and valid.

While I understand your viewpoint, I can’t accept it. You seem to believe that morality is somehow wrapped up in the law, and in issues like this, it’s not. You say that the reason gays want to use the name “married” is so that people will think they are moral. Maybe, but maybe they simply want the same rights everyone else has. I know that many think that “civil unions,” whatever that means, gives them that. Maybe it does, and if it does, why not give them the name as well? That was the holding of the California Supreme Court, and while my Harvard education was notoriously deficient in Locke-ian studies, we made up for it by reading actual cases, and this is a good one. I realize that it has effectively been overruled by the majority vote of the population, which leads me to ask whether Loving v. Virginia, the case which held that states could not ban interracial marriage would have been overruled had the good Christian people of Virginia been able to do so by ballot. Of course, Brown v. Board of Education itself would have been overturned on the same basis all over the South, probably including Kentucky, which had segregated schools at the time.

I am sure that many people get married under circumstances that you and I might agree were not moral. Is getting drunk and getting married at a wedding chapel in Vegas by an Elvis impersonator moral? Is getting married and divorced many times moral? Is marrying someone for money rather than love moral? Each of these things happens every day (well, the Elvis thing happens mainly on weekends). Certainly the good Christians of Virginia thought that a black person marrying a white person was immoral, and by the standards of the time it was. Those folks didn’t change their opinions because of the ruling of the Supreme Court, and I don’t imagine a court ruling would change your opinion, either (or mine for that matter). Marriage, as regulated by the government, is not about morality, it’s about legal rights, and if our courts have held the right to get married to be a fundamental legal right, as they did in Loving v. Virginia, how can we deny it to anyone?

The southerners who lynched blacks or denied them the right to vote were infringing on the freedoms of those blacks. The government was perfectly within its powers to pass laws forbidding such actions and to enforce them by any means necessary. Likewise, when you open an establishment to the “general public” the government has the right to enforce laws that make you honor that—meaning it is truly a business meant to cater to ALL the general public regardless of benign characteristics, such as race or creed. Otherwise the liberties of the blacks, or whoever, would be being infringed since they are slaves to an arbitrary and changing definition of “general public” depending who happens to operate a general public business. Same goes for hiring and employment that would otherwise be open to all. Some jobs are still not open to all because of certain requirements that make them no longer open to the “general public” such as a dressing room attendant for female dressing rooms, or a clothing or make-up model that requires an attractive woman or man, or because of certain knowledge being required. These would be classified as talents or skills that narrows the pool definition, but are not arbitrary in nature.

You are making the case FOR limited government, Caleb, when you bring up the violations of its constraints of powers in the voting rights and rights to fair trials in the South. These are classic examples of government overstepping its bounds. Same goes for the Civil War. The Union troops had a right to enforce the contract the states made to honor the results of a national election. Nowhere in the Constitution or the laws does it say that a state can leave just because it doesn’t like who the majority of other states elected for president (Abraham Lincoln). It would be like Utah seceding because Obama was elected. (Bill Clinton actually came in third in Utah—we can spot a scoundrel a mile away—we’ve had enough experience with multi-level marketers abusing our Mormon culture.) Can you imagine the complete breakdown of proper government if this were allowed to happen? It’s one of the reasons we have a Constitution in the first place.

The LDS Church is an VOLUNTARY organization. It’s members are free to join, leave and return of their own free will. Therefore it can make rules for personal conduct and morality. A person merely being born under a government does not have that freedom of association. It is therefore imperative that that government is constrained in its powers. Each of its laws must stand the burden of proof that it is not infringing on the freedom of the individual to do or say whatever the hell he wants, so long as by doing or saying so does not infringe on another’s right to do or say whatever the hell he want. Get it?

As far as gay rights go, either option is infringing on the rights of the other. If gays don’t have the right to marry, it is infringing on their right to freely associate. However, by forcing official recognition of their marriage, it is infringing on the rights of others to redefine their definition of marriage to accommodate what they feel is immoral. It’s a gray area. Therefore either the will of the majority must be respected or a “middle ground” must be reached. Gays have all the legal rights of married couples save the actual name. The only real reason they want the actual name, and I don’t blame them for it, is to make others accept them as moral. When the majority of the general public accepts them as moral, then the law can change. We’re talking about taking a proactive step into the personal lives of others when they have done nothing to warrant it. If I deny a seat to a black person in my public restaurant, I’m actively infringing on his rights. All I did was be here to have the gay community force me to recognize their CHOICES as legitimate and moral.

Caleb, did they not teach John Locke at Harvard Law? I don’t know how this is hard to understand. Maybe you don’t agree and think we should be guided by an enlightened king or cadre of intellectuals that know what is best for us, but that does not mean my firm belief in the rights and freedoms of the individual, no matter how inconvenient or misguided they may be at times, should be paramount. You’re always free to move to Cuba, ya know.

No, John, they just want to FORCE others to treat them equally and to give them the same civil rights as others enjoy. “Normal” is not a legal standard, and I know of no law requiring me to “recognize” anyone as either normal or abnormal. In this regard, the civil rights act of 1964 FORCED restaurants and other public accommodations to do the same for blacks, and the voting rights act of 1965 FORCED the southern states to allow blacks to register to vote. The reason that the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education was not obeyed until decades after its issuance in most southern states is because the US Government, for political reasons, refused to FORCE these states to obey it, and the result was another generation of segregated schools.

What all these statutes have in common is that they came only after long and protracted campaigns to get people to do these things voluntarily, which they didn’t. But when you look at it from the point of view of the people being discriminated against, it was the FORCE of popular opinion that kept them in inferior places in society. I mean, why is it FORCE to require the recognition of gay and lesbian marriages, but not FORCE to refuse to recognize them? After all, it’s the full power and weight of the government that either recognizes or refuses to recognize them, and right now that FORCE is arrayed against them.

And, the civil rights legislation of the sixties remedied wrongs that were perpetrated by FORCE. It is FORCE that allowed good Christian southerners to lynch blacks without fear of legal consequences, and that same force that allowed southern states to refuse to register blacks to vote for decades.

And, using the ultimate demonstration of FORCE, it was only the FORCE of the Union Army that ended slavery in the south in the first place: Had it not been for the use of FORCE against the confederacy, it would have continued to use its FORCE to enslave others.

John, several times on here, you have argued against nearly everything government wants to do on the ground that these things are brought about by FORCE. Well, John, FORCE is the only thing that government has to use when people won’t do the right thing voluntarily. I understand why, as an LDS member, you don’t like the use of FORCE by the government. Your own church, in perhaps the only instance in history of church doctrine being changed by government fiat, was FORCED to change its doctrine on polygamy or else have its temple and property sold at auction by the government. I can understand how something like that can leave a bad taste in one’s mouth, but let’s get past that and look at the present.

And, John, today that very FORCE is the only thing that keeps any of us going. When the LDS Church claims its right to exist under the first amendment, the FORCE of the US Government is the only thing that enforces that amendment. When the LDS Church desires to propagate its message using all the media available to it, protected by that same first amendment, it is once again only the FORCE of the US Government that allows it to do so.

In fact, the only reason we are able to blog like this, again using the first amendment, is because the FORCE of the US Government allows and protects it. So, just from my point of view, John, May the FORCE be with you!

As for the religious affiliations of politicians: You may know what they are, but I dare say the vast majority of the electorate does not. Except for the late Ted Kennedy, maybe, and possibly Obama because of the Rev. Wright issues.

When asked to describe all they know of Donny and Marie Osmond, most people would include that they are Mormon somewhere in their description. Pick any other random celebrity out of a hat and see if that person’s religion ever comes up in the descriptions most people would give. There may be some, like Tiger Woods being Buddhist, or Tom Cruise being a Scientologist, but unless they’re Mormon, it would most likely never come up.

That is what I mean. Mormons, no matter how successful, are still considered “odd” by most, and maybe even hated by some. The same cannot be said, as a general rule, about Methodists or Lutherans, etc.

People were never “disgusted” with blacks having freedom (unless they were mild psychopaths, which the South was unfortunately full of as a result of prolonged justification for immoral behavior), they just didn’t think blacks were capable of handling freedom and needed masters to guide them, or so forth. Others just didn’t care about slavery, unfortunately. But, most, and I’m quite comfortable about saying “most,” people, when they think about the acts of sexual intimacy between two men (not sure about two women) they are absolutely disgusted. The gay community wants the rest of us to consider them normal when most of us think their actions are disgusting! It would be like having a campaign to force people to recognize nose-picking as an Olympic sport.

I’m talking about the ideals here. Any random heterosexual couple’s bedroom actions could be considered disgusting to others not in that particular relationship, but the ideal of intimacy between the “perfect” man and the “perfect” woman does not disgust the vast majority of people. The thought of intimacy between two gay men, no matter how “perfect” they may be, is abhorrent to most people, as poll after poll continues to show. In other words it is not considered “normal.” Everyone knew there was something “unnatural” or “abnormal” about slavery, whether they admitted it or not. Same could be said about polygamy, I suppose. Therefore it is perfectly and morally justifiable to contend against being forced to recognize the gay activities as normal.

Like I say, I have gay friends, but they don’t force their “gayness” on me and say I must accept or celebrate their lifestyle. That sitcom on NBC a few years back with the gay main character (I forget the title of it right now) still made me uncomfortable. AND I THINK THAT IS A NORMAL AND “PROPER” REACTION! A gay person might think otherwise, but he/she must work on conquering the uncomfortable feelings in others first before using the force of law to tell everyone they shouldn’t feel a certain way.

For the record: The Mormon Church does not support reinstating polygamy, we’ve moved beyond that. There is no “bargain” being proposed about allowing it if gay marriages are allowed. If gay marriages do become legal, the Mormon Church would abide by that and would not demand the “right” to marry more than one spouse. I was just making the point to show the multiple possibilities of the definitions of marriage and therefore the need to come to an understanding that the majority can agree with.