Tuesday, April 28, 2015

My appearance on last night's PBS Nightly News

8 comments:

Old Rebel said...

Excellent job. I'm surprised PBS allowed dissent from Politically Correct Holy Writ.

Anonymous said...

Martin,

I'm not trying to troll you or be inflammatory. I just have a legitimate question I would like to pose. In the video above, you suggest that instead of re-defining marriage as a gender neutral institution, that issues facing homosexual couples involving life insurance, adoption, taxation, hospitalization, etc., should instead be resolved through the legislative process. The problem with this suggestion, at least in my mind, is that the Kentucky Marriage Amendment was too broadly written when it forbade the recognition of a "legal status" that is "substantial similar" to marriage. Therefore, how can the Kentucky legislature resolve these issues without passing another, clarifying amendment? How could the General Assembly create inheritance rights, health insurance benefits or tax benefits etc. without recognizing a relationship that is "substantially similar" to marriage?

In the video, you seem to take pride in the Family Foundation's work in supporting the passage of the amendment. Could it then be argued that you are being disingenuous when you suggest that the legislature easily can resolve the issues facing homosexual couples without first pointing out that another amendment would be necessary? Could it be argued that the overly broad language that your organization supported left same-sex couples with no option but to seek judicial recourse?

Singring said...

Well that's interesting.

So you support all and any legislation that allows gay couples the same legal protections as heterosexual couples as long as we don't call it 'marriage'?

Is that correct?

Jim said...

Regarding the comment left by anonymous, I understand the concern regarding rights and benefits, but one must first begin by asking why the marriage law exist and why the government is involved in the first place. The proper recognition of certain relationships, especially those that can bring about children, needs a special place in law to protect the interest of children, as well as the mother and father.

There are many other type of relationships that can also use similar benefits, like an older sister and brother taking care of younger siblings, or a grandmother taking care of a grandchild with their single mom, or any other relationship were care and support is being experienced. This does not make those people in those examples any less human nor their relationships any less important. But it’s important to note that marriage is much more than just getting benefits from government.

Would you allow marriage and extend benefits to a household consisting of three men? How about the 4 individuals? If not, why not? What makes a same sex so special that it leaves out those others?

Once you look a bit deeper as to the meaning of marriage, than you know why there must exist a reason to being an exclusive institution of a man and a women.

Martin Cothran said...

Anonymous,

I have no trouble with the tone of your comment: I think it is stated in a perfectly reasonable way.

That being said, I do question several of your assertions and assumptions.

First, I don't see how the "substantially similar" language affects the ability to resolve any of the problems you list. For one thing, it only affects what the government would do. For another, none of the remedies of the problems would amount to creating a relationship "substantially similar" to marriage. The only thing that language would prevent was creating the status of "civil union" in the law.

In fact, the hospital visitation problem has already been dealt with by legislation--after the amendment was passed (and it was a non-issue anyway, since no hospitals in our state did this anyway).

So the passage of the amendment would not force people to change the Constitution in order to deal with them.

But even if it did, it wouldn't force people who wanted to change them to seek judicial recourse. They would have the change the Constitution just like we did--by going through the regular democratic process to do it.

This idea that conservatives have to follow the rules of protocol set up in our system of government to make changes they want while liberals get to take the shortcut of finding a sympathetic judge willing to rewrite the Constitution seems to me to be rather inconsistent with the liberals' stated goal of "fairness."

Martin Cothran said...

Singring,

I said on the show that someone would not have to change the definition of marriage in order to deal with those issues. Nowhere did I say I would support some of the changes that they want.

What gave you the idea that I did?

Singring said...

Thanks for the clarification, Martin. I thought as much. I just wanted to confirm that you were being completely disingenuous in that interview by pretending your issue was just about the ' definition of marriage' rather than the actual substance of how gay couples are treated before the law.

Anonymous said...


This idea that conservatives have to follow the rules of protocol set up in our system of government to make changes they want while liberals get to take the shortcut of finding a sympathetic judge willing to rewrite the Constitution seems to me to be rather inconsistent with the liberals' stated goal of "fairness."


Amen.

I do not know you personally, just through your work as an Editor. I thought you gave a well delivered response.....best anyone could expect from PBS.