We’re back!

December 24 2008HousekeepingDavid Benkof Comments

Welcome back to GaysDefendMarriage.com, one of the liveliest places to discuss and debate marriage on the World Wide Web. I shut down GDM last July because I did not want to assist the campaign running Prop. 8, which I considered to be unacceptably antisemitic and homophobic. Now that the campaign is over, and same-sex marriage is still in the news, I thought I’d bring back the blog.

Pretty much anything goes here except libel and name-calling. All opinions are welcome here as long as they don’t distract excessively from the main conversation.

Thanks for visiting!

-David Benkof

6 comments:

  1. Chin Blanco, 24. December 2008, 22:45

    David,

    I read your piece over at NorthJersey.com, and I’m wondering if what you call ‘the Salt Lake City plan’ refers to the same package that Equality Utah is calling ‘the Common Ground Initiative’ ? http://www.equalityutah.org/CommonGroundInitiative.html

    And I’m wondering if you could shed any light on the extent of Mormon support for NOM? I know Matthew Holland, son of LDS Apostle and former BYU president Jeffrey R. Holland, is on the board of directors, but I don’t know enough about NOM otherwise to understand the extent of its ties to the Mormon leadership.

     
  2. David Benkof, 25. December 2008, 15:44

    Welcome Chino, thanks for asking.

    I’m talking about the “mutual commitments” plan already passed by the Salt Lake City city council, with the permission of the State Legislature. You can read about it here:

    http://webserver.desnews.com/article/1,5143,695264778,00.html

    The Common Ground Initiative is limited to same-sex couples, and as such it has virtually no chance of passing. It’s a shame that Utah activists haven’t learned from the Salt Lake City mutual commitments experience that it is much easier to convince a conservative legislator to protect all kinds of non-spouse pairs than to create (not my term) “special rights” for same-sex couples.

    Do gay and lesbian activists think that non-conjugal couples aren’t worthy of protections, including hospital visitation? Or are they just focused on having the government tell them that their relationships are exactly the same as marriages that they’re willing to sacrifice protections for the very people they’re supposed to be looking out for?

    As for NOM I know virtually nothing, sorry.

     
  3. Andrea Essecks, 26. December 2008, 11:26

    I see you’re back in action: well, I hope your holidays were just as pleasant as mine!

    Be seeing you around, I guess.

    - Andrea Essecks

     
  4. Ron Miller, 29. December 2008, 11:19

    Does the Salt Lake City plan resemble the Reciprocal Beneficiary Agreement proposed in Colorado and Oregon and endorsed by Focus on the Family?

     
  5. Ron Miller, 29. December 2008, 11:19

    Oh, and one more question: what is your RSS feed? I’d like to keep track of your posts. I’m glad I discovered this site!

     
  6. David Benkof, 29. December 2008, 14:14

    Ron-

    Welcome. My understanding is the Reciprocal Beneficiary proposal is similar to the Salt Lake City Plan, with two exceptions:

    1) The Salt Lake City Plan has been implemented, and is working; and

    2) Utah is one of the 18 states where any kind of partnership, including civil unions, for same-sex couples is banned. The Salt Lake City Plan is perhaps the only constitutional way to make sure same-sex and other couples have hospital visitation and other rights.

    I don’t know what an RSS feed is, unfortunately. What does that mean?

     

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