Heard of this?

[SomeDude]

Hey!
have you heard of this one county in Oregon
that is banning or holding strait marriges because of this issue on gay marrige. dont you this is wrong? i do, if i had spend thousands of dollars only to find my wedding day postponed until this issue was over, i would be very po'd...what do you guys think?

[AuntieSocial]

They have a moratorium on heterosexual marriages? Now that is silly. The only issue here is whether homosexuals are entitled to equal benefits under the law, not whether no one should be allowed the benefits of property succession!

Of course, there is a profound ignorance of what a marriage actually is ... so, maybe I'm not so surprised that a county in Oregon has postponed all marriages.

[Yaw]

First of all, the story is on CNN here.

Now, what basically happened was that Benton County wanted to issue same-sex marriage licenses under equal protection grounds. Because all the areas that have done this to date have been hit with lawsuits, Benton decided not to issue any licenses at all. In essence, this comes down to the all-or-nothing interpretation of equal protection. (For example, posting the Ten Commandments in a public place -- you either can't do it, or you can only if you also post religious documents from as many different religions as you can.) Benton decided that the status quo discriminated against gays and lesbians, so chose the "nothing" option to protect them since the "all" option was running into stiff resistance.

I think it's a novel way of making the point, though I can see why it would cause distress.

[AuntieSocial]

That is interesting ... now, I'm actually in favour of abolishing marriage altogether and allowing people to have a legal contract dealing with property rights (oh, maybe a Will would suffice), but that's a whole other story ...