I was wondering the same thing (I'm not jealous, it's a great article and I hadn't written anything on it yet.) that's sort of what I was getting at earlier today in that post in the news group about defining sections... this is something that could definitely go either way.

Always great STFU material from our fearless leader.

He's right though, there should be a constitutional amendment, luckily there already is one:

Sec. 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Its political cultural and a powerful article ... It is about time the nation realizes all men are created equal, straight and gay ... as Margeret Cho says "any society that denies gay men bridal registry is wrong " ....

I hope Bush realizes the silliness of his quest for an amendment but I fear taht more time will be wasted on this silliness ... ecq

This issue is so simple, if they pull the nonsense were they say that goal of marriage is procreation, well then that would forbid steril couples to marry.

Or perhaps you will get people the likes of Newt Gingrich that belive that we need to keep marriage scared.

"In 1981, Newt dumped his first wife, Jackie Battley, for Marianne, wife number 2, while Jackie was in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment. Marianne and Newt divorced in December, 1999 after Marianne found out about Newt's long-running affair with Callista Bisek, his one-time congressional aide. Gingrich asked Marianne for the divorce by phoning her on Mother's Day, 1999. [Source: New York Post, July 18, 2000, Newt's Ex Wife Aiming to Pen Book by Bill Sanderson, available on lexis]." http://www.lexis.com/

Bottom line, the mere ideal of legislating morality goes against everything this country once stood for.

[Edited on Feb 05, 2004 12:41AM]

I think the issue is more complex than legislating morality, since who is to say that same-sex unions are immoral to begin with?

The problem stems what I (and my admittedly liberal bias) construe to be a misreading of the intent of the framers of the constitution. There are many out there who believe that a few casual references to "natural rights" and "God" in documents produced by known deists like Jefferson means that this country was intended to be consistent with "Judeo-Christian" values (never the "love thy neighbor" ones, usually the "fire and brimstone" kind). I completely disagree with this view, but there are lots of people, many of whom are in government, who don't. These people feel it's their duty to try and repress homosexuality, which most forms of Christianity do not endorse, to try and keep the country true to its founder's intent.

[Edited on Feb 05, 2004 4:41PM]

From the way I understand it, and sadly it goes greatly against my views about church and state, is that in the US, they wanted to have state churches and keep religion involved with government...but they wanted it not to be the church of England. That is why we have such things as a Congressional chaplain in congress. Of course most of this was done in a time before atheism was as intellectually respectable as it is today.

I think the question of whether this is political or cultural is interesting for many reasons. It begs other issues about the legitimacy of marriage as a social institution as well as a religious one, as well as whether sexuality is inherently political. A lot of feminist/post-feminist analysis looks at sexuality as inherently political and personal-- Susie Bright comes to mind. Sexuality within becomes sexuality all around.
Politics, in this case, comes to bare when it is asked by those within these political structures whether you can have institutions that are "separate, but equal". In this case, it seems as though the Mass. Supreme Court has said no.
It also seems as though this becomes a religious issue and whether legitimizing marriage violates the First Amendment by defining (and what legionnaire above calls) marriage as a Judeo-Christian Act.
Other compelling issues here are the religious rights of LGBT people and whether government can infringe on their rights to access religious legitimacy (even if its not the majority view of the religious legitimacy) of marriage. Does amending the constitution limit LGBT people access to religion and violate the separation clause?
What would be even more interesting is the establishment of an organized religion built on fundamental principles near and dear to LGBT people and whether or not Congress and the White House wants effect the 1st amendment.
Is this a cultural or political issue? In this case, I think iit could very well be both, but I differ to Sean's judgment and agree.
Enough of my ramblings.