I am excited that when marriage passes this year in RI, fertility treatments will be paid for by health care for lesbians who want to have children! They almost had a bill for this pass a few years ago, but Carcieri vetoed it. Now, with marriage passing, fertility treatments will be paid for. It is a great step!

When Mr. Ahire brings his same-sex partner to the emergency room, would there be anything that would prevent him from volunteering to be personally responsible for the bill? Isn't that what one spouse expects to do for the other?

Marriage is fundamentally about joining of the two halves of human biology, man and woman, most significantly in the bodies of the children that only a man and a woman can create.

What utter nonsense. So a parent with stepchildren in your mind has no legal or moral responsibility for children not related to him/her by blood? Isn't marriage in that sense an agreement to provide for those children (and, yes, to extend job related or other benefits to those family members)?

I have a number of friends who are stepfathers who would be greatly offended by your suggestion that they are some how less than a real father to their children. Shame on you.

"Mr. Ahire would be more rational to direct his ire at those who've held up healthcare reform."

Like Republicans in Congress?

How the f**k does good healthcare require 1099's for every transaction over $600 and 16,000 new IRS revenue agents?
the mandatory requirement to buy insurance probably will be found unconstituional.
I recall about 18 years ago(don't hold me to the approximate date)ATF was shot down(pun intended)on the practice of charging people Federally with a number of firearms offenses based on the commerce clause.the commerce clause is far from unlimited.We'll see I guess.
Russ-who are you to tell people "shame on you"?
Shame on you Russ for being an apologist for Hamas.Don't like that,do you?

"Marriage is fundamentally about joining of the two halves of human biology, man and woman,"

So the institution of marriage comes down to a c@@k and a c@@t. Is that what you are saying?

Russ,

What's non-sense is your apparent inability to differentiate between things. There are individual marriages, and there is an institution called "marriage." The institution can be fundamentally about something — a man and a woman joining together in the person of a child — without a stepfather's having "no legal or moral responsibility for children."

And you an engineer and a self-professed geek. I'd have thought such reasoning well within your grasp.

A mother and a father still model and reinforce the core principle of marriage even if one or both of them are not related to the children embraced by the relationship. Indeed, nobody questioned whether step or adoptive parents were less fully parents until same-sex marriage advocates began claiming that their relationships were completely interchangeable.

So, shame on you for diminishing fathers by insisting that they can be replaced by mothers and diminishing mothers by insisting that they can be replaced by fathers.

I have what some would call a "relationship" with the guy who does my plowing. Should I provide health coverage for he and his wife? A few more storms and I will think about it.

A note out of order on Regulations. I had my gas can filled for the snow blower today. It is one of the new "safety" cans. The attendant refused to put the cap back on. Seems that all of the new "safety" cans strip the threads when putting the spout back on. The station is tired of being blamed for it

So the institution of marriage comes down to a c@@k and a c@@t. Is that what you are saying?
Posted by Phil at February 1, 2011 6:06 PM

Uh, yeah. Just like schoolgirls undress, shower and toilet in "separate but equal" facilities than schoolboys.
I didn't think even progressives were THAT dense.

So if that's your position, come out and say it, and skip the nonsense about civil marriage being about procreation (you're of course entitled to your own religious beliefs).

So you're saying that the purpose of marriage for childless couples is to "reinforce the core principle of marriage" as defined by the Catholic church. I'm sure that would be news to the many, many folks who choose to get married for any number of other reasons or to those like myself who don't happen to be Catholic.

The institution can be fundamentally about something — a man and a woman joining together in the person of a child...

That's an attempt by the religious right to redefine marriage. Here's what the founders had to say on the civil purpose of the institution:

In the eye of the common law, marriage appears in no other light than that of a civil contract: and to this contract the agreement of the parties, the essence of every rational contract, is indispensably required…

It will be proper, in the next place, to consider the consequences of marriage.

The most important consequence of marriage is, that the husband and the wife become, in law, only one person: the legal existence of the wife is consolidated into that of the husband. Upon this principle of union, almost all the other legal consequences of marriage depend.
-- James Wilson, 1792

Notably, Wilson himself is talking about "radically altering" the cultural meaning of marriage, which traditionally was one of patriarchy in which a woman essentially moved from being the property of her father to that of the property of her husband.