Gender, Marriage and the Rule of Law

Since President Obama publicly defined his stance on same-sex marriage and Mitt Romney took the opportunity to immediately reinforce his opposing position, I thought it might be prudent to re-publish an essay written back in 2004 for 3rdparty.org. Here it is, without any updating, so please forgive any dead links, etc. The essay can also be viewed in the "Essay" section of the site in the Minerva project archives linked from our main page.

Gender, Marriage and the Rule of Law

A Political Essay by Jeffrey E. Poehlmann

Originally published February 21, 2004

With the recent rulings in California and Massachusetts, the topic of same-sex marriage has guaranteed itself a place in the pantheon of hot button issues poised for the pressing in the political grandstanding of our current election year. The state of Massachusetts and the city of San Francisco, CA, have sensibly treated this as an issue for the courts and not constitutional amendments, though already there is a renewed fury to protect the sanctity of an institution from something that poses it no real threat.

It seems that every few weeks there is another story in the news that makes mention of the passionate arguments for or against the legalization of "gay marriage." Typically, sides against such a legal union call for the "protection" of marriage, as though existing marriages will somehow be in jeopardy if such laws offering equal protection of same-gender couples are enacted. Sides in favor of such laws, on the other hand, state that they are only looking to gain equal legal footing for what they claim are equally important and meaningful unions.

Welcome to the New 3rdParty Blog

Welcome to the new home of The Third Party of America / 3rdparty.org's blog.

This is the place where we open up discussion of issues that used to populate our forums and collaborators will have the opportunity to raise their voices again. That's YOU, Citizens of the United States of America! Log yourselves in and get started!

To begin, some of the topics that have been locked away in our archives will be brought forth for your reading pleasure. These will be rolled out over time, so do come back. And feel free to suggest new topics, too. Certainly, what was topical a decade back may no longer be as relevant to you as the news ripped from today's headlines, though surprisingly I think you will find more than a small amount of commonality between the issues we have discussed in the past and the issues currently on the political slaughtering block.

The level of interactivity here is going to be slightly different from what we had in the past. Because we have chosen to go (for now) with a blog instead of a bulletin board or Wiki, there will be leading "articles" or essays to introduce a position with the discussion following in the comments section. Hopefully this will reduce or eliminate SPAM as well as afford a cleaner reading experience since new topics will only be introduced and labeled under more controlled circumstances.

For the last several years, we have received countless requests to revive the forum, and finally we present it to you. Please treat it respectfully. The same rules of cordiality that we applied to our former forums will also be applied here.

You may notice the appearance of advertisements on this site. Please feel free to ignore them. We are not officially promoting anything beyond intelligent political discussion and the idea of moving beyond the labels and radicalism that are being pushed by some in the dominant parties. However, it is a reality that sites like this do not run themselves and if you happen to patronize an advertiser or click a donate button at some point, we won't object. There is a chance that an inappropriate or irony-laced advertisement may at some point appear. Feel free to alert us about such an event, especially if it is ironic. Our control over what ads are served is minimal, though they should all be contextually relevant. For the most part, however, we hope you will see these as an unfortunate necessity in order to keep our mission intact, our voices free and out of the pockets of any special interests. As always, we are beholden ONLY to the American People.

Thanks for joining the discussion!
Jeffrey Poehlmann
Co-Founder, 3rdparty.org