Marriage Rights Without Fights-21-GayWeddingGay.com

The image “file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/My%20Documents/Other-Web-Pages-Mar-08/99-Websites-Photos-and-Graphics-Mar-08/21-Unique-Wedd-Flower-Photos/flowers_031a.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

GayWeddingGay.com

Is About Gay and Lesbian

Wedding Ceremonies and it's about

Gay and Lesbian Rights

How to Obtain

Full Marriage Rights Without Any Fights

How to defeat the opposition with a clear,
easy-to-implement end-run that completely sidesteps the opposition.

Synopsis ...

Ending the Conflict:

Of the three, so-called moral values issues ² that so strongly influenced the voters in the 2004 election, the gay marriage issue is the easiest one in which to find a middle ground where both sides can say, "We won." That's not to say resolution will be easy, but relative to the other issues, it's the easiest one to resolve. The proposal offered below will not only take this issue out of the voting booth, it will also create a program that millions of heterosexuals who are presently living together but not legally married will want to participate in.

Harder Versus Smarter:

If your goal is to gain equal legal rights for all regardless of sexual preferences, then the winning strategy is to work smarter not harder.

Harder: If you choose to work harder, after several years of a expensive, mean and nasty, freedom-costing, us-against-them, no-holds-bared, all-out warfare, you will probably sort-of succeed.

Smarter: If you choose to work smarter, you can bypass all the nasty fighting and simply step into your rightful position and in the process, bring hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of equally disenfranchised heterosexuals with you. The proposal outlined below is about how to work smarter.

The Goals:

Gays and lesbians are not proposing anything that would in any way, violate, injure, profane, harm, or do away with the government's secular, legal contract called marriage. What is being demanded are the rights ( to receive the benefits of a legal contract) that heterosexuals now have. Millions of heterosexual couples have already signed up for these state-sanctioned, legal contracts. Gays and lesbians are simply demanding equal rights. In this conflict, there are three additional goals: 1) to stop the fighting -- to get this conflict behind us, 2) to create something that is positive and constructive, and 3) to generate support for and implement equal rights for both the gay and lesbian community and for the community at large.

The Big Question:

The members of the Gay and Lesbian Community must answer this question: "Do we want to argue over the meaning of the word 'marriage' or do we want the same legal rights regarding taxes, inheritance, hospital visitation rights, etc. that heterosexual married couples now have? Do you want these rights in a new package the eliminates many of the downsides of present-day, government-endorsed, legal marriage contracts"

Some gays and lesbians are going to dig in their heals and say, "We demand to be legally married, just like heterosexuals are." To these people, we suggest the following: Read the remainder of this page and then re-assess you adamant position. It's possible to get what you want without several years of a expensive, mean and nasty, freedom-costing, us-against-them, no-holds-bared, all-out warfare.

Pulling Instead of Pushing :

Any good strategist and any good marshal arts instructor will tell you that the best way to overcome the opposition is to use their own energy against them. One takes the opponents energy and re-directs it. We are suggesting a similar strategy for gaining gay and lesbian equality.

In the strict, legal sense, gays and lesbians are technically correct. They should be able to ask for and receive the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities that heterosexual couples obtain by becoming legally married. To deny that right is plain and simple discrimination. Those opposing gay rights have no legal, moral or ethical base for their position.

That's all nice as long as you ignore the present-day social/ political/ religious context. Given the emotional content and the mind set of the hard-nosed fundamentalist Christians, it is obvious that they are not about to allow gays to be legally married without a long, costly, mean and nasty, all out war.

Do we want to give the bigots who are spearheading the anti-gay movement a rallying cry, or is it more appropriate to steal their thunder and send them off to wage their money-raising wars somewhere else?²

What Is Marriage?

Let's begin by understanding what a marriage is and what a marriage contract is. Here are the three aspects of marriage:

1) The real marriage is the heart-to-heart union, the love, nurturing, the caring, the sharing, and the commitment that comes out of that. The gender of the partners is irrelevant.

2) The second aspect is the public ceremony and celebration in which the couple publicly express their love and commitment to each other and also where they seek and receive the love and support of their community of family and friends. And here also, the gender of the partners is irrelevant.

3) The third aspect is the legal commitment for which most heterosexual couples go to the state and obtain a marriage license. The gender of the partners should be irrelevant, but in the minds of some, it's not.

For a detailed discussion of marriage we direct readers to the Marriages of the Heart ² page on our wedding web site. Readers are specifically directed to the first five sections on that page and particularly to the sections titled: Prenuptial Agreements ² and What is a Marriage License.²

"Give and Take"

To accomplish our goals we will need to assess the present situation, clearly define our goal, create a strategy that will win within the present social climate, take the necessary actions, make mid-course corrections as needed, hold the vision, and continue the process until the intention becomes a physical reality.

Examining the Situation:

Here's why continuing a frontal assault demanding gay marriage is less than wise, at this time.

Cultural Heritage: The idea of marriage as "a union of one man and one woman for life" is part of the cultural heritage of literally millions of conservative Christians. It has been drummed into their heads since early childhood. Their belief is based on what their leaders have told them and not on how the Bible tells them to behave.

In order to seem important and to collect millions of dollars in donations, the fundamentalist Christian leaders have seriously distorted what the Christian Bible tells them about relating to their fellow human beings. They focus everybody's attention on the few obscure passages that say anything at all that could be interpreted as anti- gay, and, at the same time, they ignore over thirty other extremely relevant passages that tell them about how good Christians are to relate to their fellow human beings, regardless of the other person's race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

For example, the "Golden Rule," Do onto others as you would have them do onto you. does not say anything about the recipients sexual preferences. Neither does "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." or "What you do unto he least of these my brethren, you unto me" (Reference: The Bible and Human Behavior)²

This flagrant distortion of the truth is typical of the fundamentalist Christian leaders. Some call this "selective literalism." Others call it Lies of Omission.² Either way, it's an attempt to deceive their followers and to deceive the public.

The above statements represent what the evidence tells us, but don't expect Christian sheep to look at the evidence. They have been carefully indoctrinated to never to question a church leader's wisdom or authority. To do so is to risk eternal damnation. They have been taught to believe God is exclusively on their side. To do anything but hold fast to what their leaders tell them is to make a pact with the Devil. They have been taught to believe that anything they do to defend their beliefs is justified. If you examine the recent history (1989-2000) of the forced motherhood (anti-abortion) movement, you'll see that some of them will even commit murder in defense of their beliefs.

The Present Social Climate: The 2004 presidential election gives a clear indication of the mind set in about half of the people in this country. Eleven states had voter initiatives defining marriage as between one male and one female only. All eleven passed by a significant majority. In each of these states, conservative voter turnout was also up significantly.

Twenty-two percent of respondents to election exit polls said "moral values" was their main concern. The Conservative Christian propaganda called Moral values was not really about moral values. It was a disguised scam using anti-gay rights, anti-abortion rights, and anti-stem cell research in order to get voters to vote for the Republican candidates in the 2004 Presidential election.

December 2004 Assessment: -- Bush is in the White House for another four years. Ultra-right wing Republicans are in control of both the House and Senate. The fundamentalist Christian leaders have been ranting and raving about the gay threat to God and how the follower must defend God's Wishes,¹ and now, they are yelling even louder. A frontal assault in this climate is like swimming upstream in a raging river that has been swollen by a dozen heavy spring rain storms.

Update -- July 2008 Assessment-- Things have mellowed somewhat, but an end run is still way better than a frontal assault.

There Is Another Way: There is an alternate way to get to the same goal. Symbolically speaking, climb out of the muddy water and travel on the clear pathway that goes along the hillside far away from the raging river. We'll explain how to do that in real-world-terms in a moment.

The Give Portion of "Give and Take"

To the people in the eleven states who in November 2004 voted to define marriage as "a union of one man and one woman for life" we say, "Good luck and God bless you." Although technically your religious beliefs should not be codified in secular law, at this time, we simply let the matter drop. (This is a temporary ploy to end the political opposition and steal (silence) their thunder. How this accomplished is explained below)

With regard to why this is done, here's as an analogy that will make it clear. Suppose you want to play ball and you throw a ball to me, expecting me to catch it and throw it back to you. But I choose not to play. I simply let the ball fall to the ground and roll past me. What happens to the ball game? There isn't any game and you have to go elsewhere to play.

The same thing applies to the word marriage. The anti-gay bigots have thrown you a ball to you called, "We own the word marriage." You can let the ball lie or you can pick it up and throw it back with an added message saying, "No you don't." If you want to continue the fight, I suggest you read the section below titled: The Losing Strategy.¹ If you are interested in obtaining full rights for all regardless of sexual preferences, I suggest you read the section below titled: The Winning Strategy.¹

The Take:

Millions of American citizens are simply demanding their right to enter into three-way secular, legal contracts -- contracts between two private individuals and the government -- contracts regarding issues such as hospital visitation rights, inheritance, taxes, child custody, and the like.

The Losing Strategy:

The loosing strategy is to continue the frontal assault on anti-gay bigotry. To continue fighting over the word "Marriage" is about as wise as riding on the Titanic and fighting over the deck chairs. If that approach continues, here are some of things you can guarantee:

1) If you give the anti-choice forces this battleground, you are playing directly into their hands. Your frontal attack is exactly what they want you to do. It's what they are expecting; what they are counting on. The anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-stem cell research, anti-abortions leaders and the Bush ego-atheist team members don't give rat's ass about who can be legally married. They simply want the war to continue because it's in the conflict, itself, where they become the big winners and not in the end results.

u They will use this war to gather hundreds of millions of dollars for ultra-conservative Christian organizations, and hundreds of millions more for political advertising.

u They will use this war as an excuse to inflame their sheep (their followers).

u They will use this war to support installing ultra-conservative judges into our court system. Installing closed-minded conservative judges into the court system is, by far, the worst downside of having another four years of anti-gay bigotry inflaming the public from the White House.

u They will use this war to consolidate their political power, to usurp your power as a citizen, and to push this country several steps closer to a fascist police state.

u And most importantly of all, they will use the anti-gay war to push literally millions of mindless religious sheep into the voting booths.

2) The divisiveness that this issue brings will further tear this country apart. It will divert our attention from other vitally important problems. The opposition will even attempt to pass a Constitutional Amendment to force their prejudice onto everyone.

3) And the main reason why a frontal assault on anti-gay bigotry is a gross looser is because it's not necessary! We can, with relative ease, create a far superior product without any of these downsides.

The Winning Strategy:

The winning strategy is to approach the gay rights issue using a combination of two techniques -- the military concept of hitting the opposition at its weakest point first and the universal principle found in the answer to the symbolic question, "How do you eat an elephant? -- "One bite at a time." How do we that in real-world terms? It's a three-fold process:

1) Back off from the letter of the law:

As described and suggested above, back off from the letter of the law and allow the fundamentalist Christians to (at least for now) keep the word, "marriage." This will make the fundamentalist Christians feel good. It will end much of their political ranting an raving. Many of them will go home and say, "We won."

Obviously some advocates for gay and lesbian rights are not going to be willing to take this approach. We simply do the best we can to tone down the fighting and focus on creation.

2) Initiate a challenge to false claims of moral superiority:

Initiate a challenge to the fundamentalist Christian claims of moral superiority. The challenge is not about marriage, it's about going onto their "home turf" and challenging the hypocrisy of fundamentalist Christianity. They claim that they are moral superior to gays and lesbians. It's time for them to prove it.

Because nobody else is speaking out on these issues, what they say is taken as "The Truth." The Goal is to reduce their credibility -- to eliminate their false sense of superiority -- to expose their false claims of exclusive access to God -- to reduce them from speakers of the absolute truth about God to one set of voices among many Christian perspectives on God and Creation.

Please also be aware that this challenge is also much bigger than a conflict over gay rights.² The economic aspect of our challenge is actually the most important at this time.

Challenge One: See the page titled, The Bible and Human Behavior ² about their denial of Biblical scripture.

Challenge Two: They claim that homosexuality is a Sin of Lifestyle ² and therefore is not a forgivable by God. They claim all who live a sin of lifestyle are condemned to hell forever. About forty percent of fundamentalist Christians are divorced and remarried which puts them into the sin of lifestyle that the Bible clearly labels as "adultery." We challenge them to walk their talk -- or stop the hypocritical condemnation of other doing as they themselves are doing.

Challenge Three: Initiate a challenge to their claims of moral superiority. Again, the challenge is not about marriage, it's about hypocrisy. They claim moral superiority. It's time to prove it. This pages on this site dealing with moral values has not yet been edited and added to the site. They will be added very soon. In the mean time readers are directed to: http://www.choice101.com/332-moral-values.html ²

3) Create New Law: New Law

The third piece of this action plan is to do an end-run on them by creating a completely new and separate set of secular laws. The plan is to create a separate, independent law for each right being demanded.

Some critics of the process described below will say, "We already have the domestic partner laws. They provide what we need." Unfortunately, that's not the case.

We are not talking about a rehash of an old, obsolete, one-size-fits-all, set of marriage and family rules set up by lawyers and for lawyers. The "Legal Human Rights Package." is designed to be quite different. The process is outlined below:

a) Examine the marriage and family laws by which heterosexuals agree to be bound when they sign a marriage license. (Signers are agreeing to be bound by a huge set of government/lawyer-created laws.)

b) Take all the desirable aspects from existing marriage codes and put them one by one into a separate packages. Create each piece as a separate and distinct law that stands by itself. For convenience, these laws will ( in this proposal and for the present cycle) be collectively called the "Legal Human Rights Package."

c) Because marriage and family laws were written by lawyers, to the advantage of lawyers, and to serve lawyers, and to make money for lawyers, carefully examine the laws you want and leave out anything that does not serve the partners, themselves.

d) Now that we have a list of clear specific, tangible, doable objectives, decide which specific, proposed law to start with.

d) Look for the opposition's weakest point. Find something: 1) that will trigger strong emotions 2) that will generate strong support and/or participation from the heterosexual community and 3) something that will not cost anybody any money.

Hospital visitation rights are probably the best place to start. Why? Because millions of heterosexual couples who are living together but are not legally married would also like to have this right.

e) Draft legislation granting this right to all who choose to sign up for it, and then go all out to get the law passed in every local, state and federal legislature. Write the law in simple, direct, straight forward, easy-to-read, and easy-to-understand understand language. Use short sentences. Write the entire law with as few words as possible. AVOID LEGALESE!

Intention is another important factor that is absent in the present laws. Each law shall have two equally powerful parts -- the letter of those rules and the intention behind that stated rules. A violation of a rule's intention shall be equal to a violation of the letter of that rule.

Avoid allowing anything that is not directly related to the letter and intention of a particular law to be attached to it. As part of the law add a sentence that says, any amendment attached to this bill that is not germane (directly related) to the letter and intention of this legislation shall cause the proposed amendment to the bill to become null and void.

This proposed law gives everybody, gays, lesbians, heterosexual, the young, the old, including the widowed elderly, a common ground to stand on. Who in their right mind is going to oppose a secular law allowing your widowed grandmother to determine who has the right to visit her in the hospital?

f) Once hospital visitation rights become law, then select the next easiest-to-pass aspect and repeat the process. Propose laws that make no reference to the word marriage. Propose laws that in essence say that what two people do in their private lives is their own business. Address only the legal rights issues.

Present-day marriage contracts are all-or-nothing packages. This is a major down-side for many people. On the other hand, our new approach will allow people the option of choosing which aspects of the Legal Human Rights Package that they want to have for themselves and it will allow them to reject all the parts that they don't want.

For an example of carefully setting up the laws for the interest of the governed and not the interest of the lawyers, see the section on Retirement trust Funds.²

The Bottom Line -- The End Result:

Once several of these equal-rights laws are past and included as options in the Legal Human Rights Package, we will almost certainly find many heterosexual couples opting not to enter into a traditional legal marriage. They will choose not to sign up for and be bound by all the rules and restrictions that are in the present-day, family and marriage codes.

Instead many will choose to join the gay and lesbian community and personally select only those parts of the Legal Human Rights Package that suit them. When that day comes, the fundamentalist Christians are going to be asking, "What's so special about that old obsolete state contract called "marriage?"

And one other thing. When the Legal Human Rights Package, is complete to your satisfaction, you just might choose to rename the package. Think of the names you might choose. What new name could you imagine might be appropriate? Is it possible that that name just might begin with the letter "M."

End run complete.

"Congratulations Mr. and Mr. Jones!"
"Congratulations Mrs. and Mrs. Smith!"

The Bigger than Big Picture:

Step out of the fray with us now and look, for a moment, at the bigger picture. The real issue in this conflict is not simply gay rights, it's economic, environmental, and social transformation. The gay and lesbian community is in the perfect position to spearhead major social changes.

We ask you, we even beg you, 1) stop the war ! 2) simply walk around the opposition and take what is rightfully yours, and 3) join us in the very public battle to dethrone the fraudulent anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-stem-cell research bigots.

Join us in the battle to create gay and lesbian equality -- to stop these people from forcing unwilling women to become mothers -- to stop the economic and environmental destruction they are endorsing by voting for George Bush and Company.² The anti-bigotry war has to be a public confrontation because this is a war against the false-belief peddlers who, by deception and lies of omission, control the minds of millions of mindless Christian sheep. These agents of darkness hide behind clerical labels and send out their mindless sheep to do gay bashing, to burn down women's health clinics, and to vote for the obscenity of war that is presently in control of the American political system. Come. Play and work with us.

Join
The Reasonables

Thank you!

Your Invitation

Some of us have stopped waiting for somebody else to solve our problems. We are taking center stage and we invite you to: publicize our work, endorse our programs, participate with us, and/or support us financially.

Here's how you can help:

http://www.GayWeddingGay.com/help-us-help-you.html#29

TLC- Life- Center ®

TLC-Life-Center Family of Websites

Robert E. Coté -- The Life Center

See: Terms of Use --- Privacy Statement

Gay Wedding Gay