[victorhooi]

I love the overblown rhetoric here...sigh.

This was never about security or liberty (although it's a bit like the Monty Python sketch - "We're being oppressed, we're being oppressed! We really are!".)

I'm not saying there isn't discrimination against homosexuals in other areas, but this wasn't it.

This was basically a semantic debate about marriages versus civil unions.

A majority of Californians (Eich included) took the viewpoint that marriage was a traditional institution, and if people had a new style of relationship, they should have a new term for it, even if it had the same privileges (not rights - government's can't grant rights).

However, another group said no, we want to use the same word for it (I assume for ideological reasons, as opposed to purely utilitarian ones).

So no, please don't hoist the whole "WE'RE BEING OPPRESSED" flag - it doesn't help your case

[wpietri]

That's incorrect. Prop 8 stripped all marriage rights. Most of those rights were restored by the time it got to the CA Supreme Court, but only because the CA Supremes said that Prop 8 was, legally, horseshit, but that to honor the will of the people they would let Prop 8 have the term "marriage". They're very clear about that in their decision.

The point of Prop 8 was to prevent gay marriage, and all the privileges that marriage includes. That is, to strip a civil right from gay people.

[Roscius]

And cue the separate, but equal, rhetoric (...longer sigh).

That same sex marriage, isn't a new style of relationship, and that civil unions could never provide the same "privileges" is the whole point.

It's not just semantics, it's about real people.

[victorhooi]

Err, how is it not a new style of relationship?

For thousands of years, we've had the concept of "marriage" and "families", and (more or less) monogamous relationships.

Central to this has been the idea of a man and a woman procreating, and raising children.

Now, perhaps we'll evolve away from that - maybe we'll simply clone people.

Or perhaps we'll have special breeder castes, and we'll raise the children away from their (biological) parents in learning centres.

Or perhaps the idea of having children will seem antiquated, and we'll just die away as a species.

Who knows.

But this (large scale homosexual relationships in society) is most definitely a new thing - and procreation, and nuclear families have no place in it.

Hence this whole ideological fight over whether to call it "marriage" (with all the associated ideas of families and raising children) or something else entirely.

[Roscius]

Same love.

[victorhooi]

Sigh...really?

Look, for many cultures - marriage aren't about love (or aren't solely about love) - this is very much a Western/modern thing.

For them, marriages are part of society - a married couples has responsibilities to the society.

And the family unit, and raising children are a big part of it.

You need to look outside your own experiences.

That's what I don't get about this whole fracas.

You have all these people on HN screaming and jumping up and down, saying EICHS IS A BIGOT! ONLY MY VIEWPOINT IS CORRECT! IT'S SO OBVIOUS?!!!!

Well, if they were as "big-minded" as they claim, then they'd see that there many people with differing opinions to you. Shock!

I think this poster said it best (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526663)

Don't support welfare? You're against poor people. Support welfare? You're against the working man. You're pro-choice? You're against babies. You're pro-life? You're against women.