{"id":251,"date":"2008-09-16T14:29:31","date_gmt":"2008-09-16T20:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=251"},"modified":"2008-10-22T05:50:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-22T11:50:00","slug":"sociological-commentary-on-gay-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2008\/09\/16\/sociological-commentary-on-gay-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"sociological commentary on gay marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2008\/sep\/16\/usa.gayrights\">Guardian (UK)<\/a> reported on the battle over Proposition 8 in California. Proposition 8, also known as the &#8216;California Marriage Protection Act,&#8217; is a proposed amendment to California&#8217;s state Constitution which will only recognize heterosexual unions, eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry. The Guardian article describes this battle as emblematic of a larger cultural divide in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Guardian reports:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Conservative and evangelical groups were freshly mobilised by the California supreme court&#8217;s decision in May to overrule voters&#8217; approval of a ban on same-sex marriages in 2000.<\/p>\n<p>But the movement has its roots in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, says University of California-Berkeley sociology professor Michael Hout.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They got as far as they could on abortion and have embraced marriage laws as the next step in their agenda,&#8221; said Hout, co-author of The Truth About Conservative Christians: What They Think and What They Believe. &#8220;Their main agenda remains the reversal of Roe v Wade, but they&#8217;re trying to gain new allies who look askance at gay marriage.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Not that it&#8217;s a purely Machiavellian manoeuvre. Proponents of bans on same-sex marriage are &#8220;truly concerned that the state should not be licensing immoral behaviour&#8221;, Hout said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In their interpretation of the Bible, they see a prohibition on homosexual activity. Gay marriage condones a lifestyle that&#8217;s ruled out by their reading of the scripture.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2008\/sep\/16\/usa.gayrights\">full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning the Guardian (UK) reported on the battle over Proposition 8 in California. Proposition 8, also known as the &#8216;California Marriage Protection Act,&#8217; is a proposed amendment to California&#8217;s state Constitution which will only recognize heterosexual unions, eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry. The Guardian article describes this battle as emblematic of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[122,154,176,161],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-lifecourse","tag-political","tag-sexuality","tag-social"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}