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At last, we have the details on the D.C. Council committee hearing on the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009, aka, the same-sex marriage bill that members of the D.C. Council, led by David Catania (I-At large), did indeed introduce this morning.
The Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary will hold a public hearing the bill at 3:30 p.m. on October 26 in the 5th Floor Council Chambers of the John A. Wilson Building.
Those who wish to testify should contact the Legislative Clerk at (202) 724-7808, by fax at (202) 724-6664, or via e-mail at dkelly@dccouncil.us. Be sure to provide your name, address, telephone number, organizational affiliation and title (if any) by close of business on Thursday, October 22. As committee chair Phil Mendelson promised last week, witnesses will be limited to three minutes of testimony, due to high expected turnout.
If you're unable to testify at the hearing, written statements may be submitted into the public record to Ms. Cynthia Brock-Smith, Secretary to the Council, Room 5 of the Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20004. The record will close at 5 p.m. on Monday, November 9, 2009.
Full announcement can be downloaded here.
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Here's to hoping the District does the right thing and allows those in love to join together as one, regardless of sexual preference.
Agreed. They should also send one of the writers to live blog this thing. It should be shit-tastic...
The general business of society and the social contract is human reproduction inside of the heterosexual blood kinship bond. Every painter, accountant, bum, lesbian softball player, astrophysicist etc is brought into this world thru the bumpin' of uglies their parents did. Whether they 'loved' each other or not..also USUALLY they are brought and nurtured into adulthood by a very committed network of able adults. Blood kinship is a "til death do us part" relation..whether you love your brother, sister, aunt, father, mother etc..or not they are STILL and forever your "mom, brother, father..etc" . For many reasons people often find the "blood relations " systems wanting and seek to make "new families" in social groups..eg: the gay community. Where being there for another person is autonomously chosen or dissolved. Society doesn't freak out when you leave your one night stand or your chess club. It DOES freak out when you abandon your child. This is the heart of the debate over "gay" marriage. Marriage is the central hub of the kinship system. You can't change the BRUTE fact of biology. Even the extreme interventions of gender reassignment can't match the natural order. The issue is NOT are gays "nice" people, it's the central meaning of marriage in it's role in the kinship system.
Wow dude, that was totally incoherent... Reading that pile of crap almost made my brain dribble out of my ear!
Oh honey. NO.
"The general business of society and the social contract is human reproduction inside of the heterosexual blood kinship bond"
Even if that were true, how's that working out for you? Oh, yes, a 50% divorce rate, record spousal abuse, single parent families, etc.
And what it the gays have to do with this dismal failure? Nothing.
Just like they will have nothing to do with it after gays get married.
In fact, if anything they will maybe improve it a tiny bit. As gays often adopt the children of these fucked up straight failures. And if those gay couples can wed and and add the strength of marriage to that new family, then the child certainly benefits.
Please tell me exactly how me and my partner of 20 years getting married has any effect on your marriage any more than, say, an infertile couple getting married, as that is against the basic premise of your premise. But I don't see you telling my aging grandma that she can't remarry, since she can't bump out any kids in your grand reproduction factory scenario.
well, that's a convincing rebuttal.
How about this? Your argument is predicated upon the absolutely horseshit-tastic notion that preserving marriage for heteros ensures that dudes will continue to bump uglies (seriously, are you in seventh grade?) with girls, whereas if dudes were allowed to marry other dudes, dudes would stop humping women and hump other dudes. Cause the inability to marry another dude is the only thing keeping the fragile procreation peace. Or something.
It also presumes that only heteros can successfully form a marital unit. I'm going to let others pick that one apart.
I kinda get where you're coming from, although I wish I didn't. The purpose of hetero marriage is to encourage procreation within an established familial context. Fair enough, I guess. But by that rationale, shouldn't hetero couples where one member is infertile be legally banned? If they one can't breed, the other should find one who can, right? And what about the gheys that want to adopt, or hire a surrogate mom to poop out a crotchfruit of their very fruity own? Your definition of "family" seems quite limited.
You can't rebut a completely incoherent argument.
Fact of the matter is that marriage is a social contract that should be able to be performed between any two consenting unrelated adults. For the simple reason that the marriage contract confers special rights to whoever the two parties are. Procreation and child rearing has nothing to do with marriage, since 1) you can procreate and child rear without being married and 2) you can be married without procreating. Finally, there are plenty of heterosexual couples who abandon, abuse and neglect their children.
Your comment was utterly ridiculous.
Wrong-o. It's NOT about any two consenting adults ..currently. Not gays, not Poly-amorous, not bi-gamous..etc. We are talking about what IS..and the underlying sentiment..behind WHAT IS. Marriage isn't a mandate to procreate..it's the AGREED upon paradigm for procreation. In PRACTICE the dark side of this paradigm is OBVIOUS..but social contracts are about agreed upon best options. Same sex relations are by definition opting out of the "great chain of being" are there some gay "parents" that would be better than straight? OF COURSE..but the institution CURRENTLY is committed to a "best case scenario" model...it's disingenuous to think this is a slam dunk discussion in favor of same sex marriage.
Orly Taitz, is that you trying to stir up some trouble with your incoherent mumbo jumbo?
The general business of society is not to procreate but to fuckin have a good time, whether it be by eating some steak, doing the polka, or getting laid. Why do people have to make things so complicated?
Yeah, nothing matters dude..beer grows on trees.
DAMN!!! I need to get one of those trees!!
Dead Pirates.."horse shit-tastic"..hmmm..where would we find this outer-limits model..? Comic books? Dr Seuss? or 2000 years of Western Civilization and the US/British legal system for which people can be jailed and sued for thousands of dollahs.
Man. I would not want to have dkelly@dccouncil.us's Inbox this week. Going to be chock full of crazy.