{"id":1272,"date":"2011-06-24T09:11:46","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T13:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=1272"},"modified":"2011-06-24T09:28:41","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T13:28:41","slug":"not-about-me-not-about-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2011\/06\/24\/not-about-me-not-about-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Not about me, not about you"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At least not if you&#8217;re heterosexual. The current debate and political shenanigans going on in the NY State Senate once again misses the point. And, the Senate is addressing the issue behind closed doors. Shame on them. Here&#8217;s today&#8217;s NY Times <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/06\/24\/opinion\/24fri4.html?_r=1&amp;nl=todaysheadlines&amp;emc=tha211\">editorial<\/a> on the Senate&#8217;s behavior.<\/p>\n<p>I have taken a public stand on this issue in the past. While I try to avoid taking a public stance on controversial issues, this particular issue is for me as black and white as the civil rights struggle of the &#8217;60s. There is a right and a wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Marriage is a religious ceremony. I agree with the Catholic Church and others who wish to &#8220;protect&#8221; marriage as a practice based in religious tradition. But, that being the case, it has no place in the domain of civil practice. Remember: separation of church and state.<\/p>\n<p>The solution seems simple: establish civil union between adult couples as the only &#8220;contract&#8221; recognized by civil law, including tax-relief and other benefits. Marriage moves back into the church (or synagogue or mosque) where individual congregations or sects can choose whether or not to &#8220;marry&#8221; gay couples. However, marriage in a religious setting should no longer be recognized by civil authorities as the basis for those privileges provided couples. Only civil union provides those privileges. A marriage ceremony is for personal religious purposes only. And civil union is available to any pair of consenting adults.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s time to get out of other peoples&#8217; bedrooms and home life. It&#8217;s degrading to all of us, and it mocks a basic tenet of our constitution.<\/p>\n<p>I guess it is about you and me. It&#8217;s about all of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At least not if you&#8217;re heterosexual. The current debate and political shenanigans going on in [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6123],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}