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  1. Default New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    As of just under 3 hours ago, New Zealand voted to legalise gay marriage (and as a consequence allow same sex couples to adopt children together). And for some reason they decided to break in to song in the middle of parliament.

  2. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Go, New Zealand! This must be happy news for a lot of people.

  3. Orbital Bee Cannon
    IGN: SaptaZapta
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    Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Well done, New Zealand!


  4. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    You heathens do not know what you wish on the world!

  5. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    I seriously don't get what's SOOO important about marriage...
    Other then religious stuff...

  6. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    It's much more deeper than that.
    Not acknowledging same sex marriages basically perpetuates that gay couples are inferior. It's basically a civil rights issue.


    Congrats New Zealand!

  7. Orbital Bee Cannon
    IGN: SaptaZapta
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    Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Marriage is not only religious, or else civil servants (judges, clerks; different offices in different countries) would not be perfoming or even noting it.

    Marriage gives people certain automatic rights and obligations towards each other and their children.

    For example, as Rick mentioned above: the right to adopt children together. If same-sex couples can't marry, that means any children they have are considered, by the state, to have only one parent.
    Consider: a lesbian woman gives birth to a baby. Her partner is not allowed in the delivery room because she is not "next of kin". The two of them raise the child together, but the non-birth mother is not allowed to register the child for school, or get him a passport, or consent to medical procedures for him, because she is not his mother. If the mothers separate, the non-birth mother doesn't have to pay child-support, and has no right to visitation. If the birth mother dies, the non-birth mother doesn't automatically get custody. All this, while in the child's mind both women are equally his mothers.

    And if you have a bio-bias and feel the birth mother is "more" mother, consider adoption: Two men adopt a baby. It isn't biologically related to either of them. But, in countries where men can't marry, only one of them can appear on the adoption papers. Only that one, picked at random or due to being a better match for some adoption agency criterion, is the baby's father. The other is nothing. Does that make sense?

    Even without children, consider: If you were lying unconscious in the hospital, and someone needed to give "informed consent" to treatments for you: Who would you rather the hospital consider your "next of kin", your same-sex partner of 20 years, or your parents who disowned you 20 years ago when you came out to them?

    All of these things, and many others (taxes, inheritance, insurance, etc), have nothing to do with religion. It's all about a legal status, paperwork, official records. And for these things, the genders of the two people getting married are irrelevant.

  8. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    What Miek and Sapta said above is true, but if you're talking about why people still place importance on marriage, it did have a lot of social value in the past and the couple being of the opposite sex did matter since it ensured continued survival. With the current advances in technology and changing values marriage's importance has been diminished by a lot, especially as one could more easily raise kids alone than they could in the past.

    In other words, as marriage does carry with it certain implications, obligations and rights it is only fair that same-sex marriages are allowed so that they receive the same rights.

  9. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Ah that speech so made my day~~

    Hadriel

  10. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Pretty much everyone said it already. Its more legal issues than emotional ones for why its an issue.

  11. Donator Straight Female
    IGN: icephoenix21
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    canada

    Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Congrats to them~

  12. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Can't believe I forgot about all that.
    So basically you're telling me;
    Gay people only want to get married so they can have rights like married straight people have.
    But some people use religion as an excuse against gay marriage, while they actually just don't want gay people to have equal rights to straight people.
    But gay people don't want to get married for religious reasons and actually just want equal civil rights so they can adopt a child, taxes, inheritance, insurance and stuff like that?
    Correct me if I'm wrong.

  13. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Half-correct. I'm sure some gay couples do still want to marry because it's a sign of commitment even with the rising number of divorces these days.

  14. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    I can't speak for anyone but myself, but as a gay man, I'm only interested in the rights, and I think gays as a whole have been done a great disservice by a vocal few making the argument about marriage. It sounds so petty sometimes, the left and the right arguing about it, like two five year olds who don't want to share the same toy. Personally, I'm going to commit to whoever I'm going to commit to, regardless of whatever you want to call it. Does that make me inferior and perpetuate a stereotype? Yeah, maybe. But you know what? People are going to think what they're going to think. If anything, those who already looked down on gays would look down on them more for having forced the issue and won. The argument I'd rather see going on right now is the rights issue- religious fundamentalists would have an infinitely more difficult time arguing against that. The whole people marrying multiple people, dogs, kids, argument goes flying out the window when you just make it about things like who can visit whom in a hospital and whether person A can inherit from person B. I don't need someone else's validation of calling my relationship a marriage to make it meaningful and when I eventually raise kids with that man, we're going to be raising them so that they don't need other people's validation for their love either.

    PS: Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for the folks in New Zealand. I think things could be better as a whole.

  15. ☮♫♥ Gay Male
    IGN: FrozNlite
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    Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    This. I guarantee you millions of LGBT couples across the globe would conduct their marriages as a religious sacrament, if their respective religion allowed them (which, to my knowledge, a few do).

    Also, @DavyJonesx, you live in the Netherlands, the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage over 12 years ago. Just ask your fellow countrymen!

  16. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Yes, and that's why this is a bigger fight than merely rights. Now granted I would fight for civil rights first if I was a part of the movement but given that one can be gay and religious it's only fair to say that the equality has been achieved only when it's recognized that everyone has a right to love, a right to choose or reject religion and the right to be recognized, as should be.

  17. Orbital Bee Cannon
    IGN: SaptaZapta
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    Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Religious acceptance can't be legislated.
    Freedom of Religion means that the State can't force any clergyman to perform a ceremony that is forbidden by their faith.
    The State can only legislate what marriages its own employees will license and/or conduct.

    Acceptance by religions can only happen with time, and with acceptance by the public. And acceptance by the public happens when people see gays all around them, living normal lives, raising normal children, without the sky falling.

  18. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Like @FrozNlite said; It's been 12 years here in Holland. I still don't see 'full equality' between straight and gay people...

  19. Default Re: New Zealand Votes for Equality.


    Full equality is difficult to achieve when the prejudices we have now have lasted for far longer. Yet every year that sees such baby steps being delayed means that inequality exists just a bit longer.

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