And thereby your argument should profit from a claim that canadians aren’t disillusioned by marriage.
“Gays are not harmed by denial of gay marriage.”
There, my simple statement proves as much as yours.
I’m equating bigotry based on orientation and bigotry based on race as being comparably ignorant and unworthy of legal enshrinement. Spare me pointless semantic quibbles.
What are you talking about? How does gay marriage affect the number of children in welfare/domestic relations cases? If anything, I can imagine gay marriages reducing the number of said children, if gay married couples are allowed to adopt, as straight married couples are.
If you’re still talking about your “disillusionment” theory, I remain unsatisfied that gay marriage has any such effect and invite you to prove such.
I’m not assigning another motive. As far as I can tell, hatred of fags is pretty much the only motive, coupled with “marriage is so special, fags shouldn’t be allowed to sully it.”
If there are other factors, I’m on record as repeatedly inviting them across multiple threads to be clarified and explained. You’re offering me “disillusionment”? What does that mean exactly, and how is gay marriage a factor?
Pretty much. What do respondents think they’re preserving marriage from? Fags, right?
I’m not changing their views. I’m getting to the heart of their views.
So what’s a potential compelling government interest that could dissolve gay marriages? Can you give me an example comparable in gravity to, say, the decision to inter Japanese-Americans during World War 2?
And whose rights are being imbalanced by gay marriage? You’re suggesting giving marriage rights to gays must be depriving someone else of… something. Who, and what?
Oh, they appear quite childish regardless of anything I might do. I would think an American who bought into his nation’s premise of liberty and justice for all would be on board with gay marriage but… I guess not.
How is gay marriage a “punishment” to anyone, aside from the now-hackneyed joke that it’s a punishment for the gays themselves, derp derp… Seriously, there are Americans who would actually feel “punished” by other Americans being able to get married? What a bunch of crybabies and spoiled brats they must be.
My argument has never relied on them being harmed. They wanted to indulge a legal process that other Canadians had enjoyed for a long time and there was no reason to block them. Since my default stance is that the onus is on government to justify its regulations, not on citizens to justify their rights, and the government had no justification to block gay marriage (and the lack of harmful effects in the seven years since stands as evidence), gay marriage was a go.
Currently, gay Americans want to get married. What harm does it cause to anyone to let them?
As a minor clarification, I belatedly realize, it’s true that someone could “fail to support gay marriage” without having any particular negative feelings toward homosexuals, indeed being utterly indifferent to them and the issue. That’s fine. I trust, then, that they won’t be voting for any anti-SSM statewide resolutions or constitutional amendments. If they do, they can no longer claim neutrality on the issue. At best, they’re merely spineless.
Once again, the only possible view one can have against gay marriage is evil bigotry. No other consideration allowed, and you call this logic and reason?
if only 10% of the half of America (5%) do not form marriages because they think it has become a joke, the children they leave wanting without two-parent homes will outweigh the numbers of gays who adopt, unless gays are adopting disproportionately. If 2% adopt 2 kids per family, it’s not enough to make it worthwhile when 5% each leave 2 kids per pair in less than desirable situations.
Yet every court that has granted gay marriage privileges has noted that other legitimate reasons exist for holding the opposite view.
Disillusionment:
to free from or deprive of illusion, belief, idealism, etc.; disenchant.
Disillusion: the condition of being disenchanted
Not all that long ago the vast majority of Americans thought of marriage as a holy, sanctified, union of man and woman primarily for the purpose of begetting and raising children in a healthy environment. We thought this for a long time. But no, we are told of late, we didn’t do that because we were trying to get a man to stay and assist a pregnant woman and thus better the chances of offspring surviving. No, no, not at all, we created marriage, didn’t you know, to put gays down! That’s all it ever was! it was meant to exclude them, there was never a positive purpose that we invented marriage for.
And then we’re told, no, we weren’t right at all to think we did this to raise kids. We never really did, as a society you know, think the right answer to “I’m pregnant” was “will you marry me.” Nope, that was all an illusion cast before our eyes in the name of hating gays. Then we’re told the real reason all along was love and companionship the polestar.
You can claim that you are inviting clarity and explanation of other factors, but you cannot be reasoned with because instead of seeking clarity, your response is consistently insults to your opposition, denial of facts, belittling, mocking and general behaving in a most unsociable manner.
Declining marriage rates caused in part by gay mockery of the source of life.
Whatever. You of course know others’ views better than they do. Oh, the joys of pro-gay enlightenment.
I can’t think of a valid reason to inter gays in concentration camps or anything similar. But not needing to imprison them isn’t a reason to celebrate their relationships, and grant them privileges they do not need, nor offer them incentives to sway their irresponsibility into responsibility.
Nevertheless, any gay marriages that exist cannot be dissolved by any compelling government interest, period. The government does not decide to divorce or nullify marriage absent a request of at least one of the couple involved.
No, you miss me. There could be a granting of privilege to gays to marriage, but no right devolves. The people denied whom you cannot conceive of are every child who lives in poverty when inducing marriage between his parents instead would have gotten him into a reasonable life.
Unless you’re also conceding incestuous marriage and polygamous marriage as a matter of right, let’s knock off the “liberty and justice for all” crap. Gay marriage does not grant rights to “all” who desire marriage. It elevates gays alone and leaves all those others who desire to marry and can’t “third class” citizens.
What you said was:
“The majority you’re describing “needs” to treated like the thumbsucking spiteful children that they are.”
Forgive me for charcterizing your statement as punishment of those who do not hold your views on morality. But what is it they have done that makes them unworthy to be viewed as adults? Is there some right an adult has they do not deserve? What is the logic behind treating those who disagree as children? Most importantly, I believe the argument against pederastic marriage is that children cannot consent to marriage: Are you suggesting, since we should treat half of American adults as children, are you claiming they should not be allowed to marry, since we must treat them as an (unconsenting) child?
Part of your mistake, you keep insisting gay marriage is a right, and I think it’s high time you prove it.
To contradict that claim, I will direct you back to the purpose of this thread, analysis of a legal case (and not your moral musings on the subject) and specifically what the Supreme Court will do with it.
From the case at hand:
"Equal Protection. The Legal Group says that any equal
protection challenge to DOMA is foreclosed at the outset by Baker
v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972). There, a central claim made was
that a state’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriage violated
federal equal protection principles. Minnesota had, like DOMA,
defined marriage as a union of persons of the opposite sex, and the
state supreme court had upheld the statute. On appeal, the Supreme
Court dismissed summarily for want of a substantial federal
question. Id.
“Baker does not resolve our own case but it does limit the arguments to ones that
do not presume or rest on a constitutional right to same-sex
marriage.”
If you wanna argue they’re wrong, go ahead, you can have your opinion, but why don’t you show some legal precedent and prove your claim that gays have a right to marry under the U.S. Constitution.
John and Mary are dating one member each of a set of identical twins, the fiancé/e of each being willing to marry him/her. In a state without SSM, one of them is denied a marriage license which the other is granted. One of them is being discriminated against according to his/her gender, in the pursuit of an otherwise identical action (which is why the hypothetical of identical twins).
As for your earlier assertion about procreation, I am not disputing that procreation is, with one or two debatable exceptions, the mode for the continuation of the human race. I asked you for the legal connection between marriage and procreation. There is no doubt a logical connection between the two, in that the raising of children is most effectively done by some form of family unit, and it does take gametes of opposite sex to conceive. The point is that I am unaware of any law that describes the purpose of marriage as being procreation. If you have something which says so, please trot it out. If not, the point is that people marry for many reasons, chiefly fort pair-bond-type love, and procreation is not necessarily an issue on the table. People procreate without marriage, people marry with no intent to procreate, people who cannot procreate are not ipso facto barred from marrying, and people who marry and want children but cannot conceive naturally adopt, foster orphans, use fertility clinics, host mothers, sperm donors, IVF, and a host of other strategies to provide for children in their lives. Thge nexus is just plain not there between marriage and procreation; they overlap quite extensively, but are not identical nor is one a subset of the other.
You’re wrong, I believe. It may be gender discrimination if men enjoy a benefit that women do not, which is not the case here. I think Poly’s example is torturing logic as well. The discrimination is not based on the person’s gender, but on her sexual orientation. The freedom denied her is the same freedom denied the man–neither can marry someone of the same sex. SCOTUS has agreed with this interpretation up until now in that intermediate scrutiny has NOT been applied in such matters.
But I think my point is being misconstrued, including by Bryan Ekers. In this thread I stated I believe sexual orientation ought to be a suspect classification, subject to strict scrutiny, in which case SCOTUS and others would presumably judge matters similarly to matters of race. Here’s some criteria of a suspect class, which ISTM apply to homosexuals:
[quote]
Some of the criteria that have been cited include:[ul][li]The group has historically been discriminated against, and/or have been subject to prejudice, hostility, and/or stigma, perhaps due, at least in part, to stereotypes.[] They possess an immutable and/or highly visible trait. [] They are powerless to protect themselves via the political process. (The group is a “discrete” and “insular” minority.)[*] The group’s distinguishing characteristic does not inhibit it from contributing meaningfully to society.[/ul][/li][/quote]
If homosexuals are considered a suspect, down comes DOMA, SSM will be installed as law, etc., etc. That’s what I think ought to occur.
My specific point was in reaction to “why isn’t this being handled as gender discrimination?” For the same reason it isn’t being handled as race discrimination. Because it’s not. My point was NOT that this is not discrimination. I was answering somebody’s question, that’s all.
Just noting that although state courts are not bound by lower federal courts as to “the law,” they are bound by any decision regarding the application of the law to the parties involved in a given case. That might even be the reason for a stay, since forum shopping could be an issue.
US ex rel Lawrence, 432 F.2d 1072. United States of America Ex Rel.richard Lawrence, Petitioner-appellant, v. Joseph I. Woods, Sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, and Winston M. Moore, Warden of the Cook County Jail, Respondents-appellees, 432 F.2d 1072 (7th Cir. 1970) :: Justia
By all means, please give me an alternative consideration. I consider myself a rational person - I will consider the merits of such an alternative, if it exists.
It’s your notion that gay marriage is the cause of this “joke” view that is wanting. Sure, marriage rates are dropping. They’ve been dropping for quite some time. How gay marriage will accelerate this remains unclear and unproven.
I’ve learned from reading these threads that, yes, the legislatures can indeed pass laws restricting gay marriage, as they can pass arbitrary laws on any number of topics, because the prohibitions that would stop them are not (yet) strong enough. This doesn’t make them good laws that serve a useful purpose.
I know what the word means - don’t waste your time with such petty semantics - I don’t recognize the validity of you applying it to this situation.
Utter self-pitying nonsense. There’s nothing stopping anyone from continuing to view marriage as a holy sanctified union if they wish, sealed in the religious traditions of their choosing. What you’re being “told of late” is that a frequently ignored, dismissed and abused segment of your population wants the banal legal benefits that other citizens have routinely derived from marriage, and the courts (as well as the example of your biggest trading partner) are starting to hold that there’s no good and just reason not to grant such.
Meh, I don’t really care what you think you were “told”. I’ll assume anyone old enough to be seriously contemplating marriage is an adult and has at least some capacity for independent reasoning. There’s nothing about extending marriage to same-sex couples that will impede heterosexual marriages in the slightest. If someone wants to use the existence of gay marriage as an excuse to abandon their responsibilities, I can’t stop them, of course, but I see no reason to use such childish behaviour as a justification to deny other citizens something they want and which other citizens already enjoy.
I’m entirely confident in my ability to rationally and clinically analyze alternative anti-SSM arguments, if presented. I don’t believe I’ve denied any “facts” - I recognize the political realities of trying to advance civil rights despite majority opposition. It took national guard units to ensure desegregation in some places in the 1950s, after all, and the Democratic Party paid a steep price in the evaporation of much of their support in the southeast. I don’t believe such measures and upheavals are likely now, but the “fact” you’re suggesting I recognize is that a significant number of Americas are bigots and should be indulged, while I instead accept that a significant number of Americans are bigots but should not be indulged. It doesn’t benefit anyone, including the bigots themselves, and they’re going to eventually lose, anyway.
Heh, seriously? When you put it like that, it sounds even more foolish.
I consider it pro-freedom enlightenment, myself. Pro-equal-treatment-under-the-law enlightenment. Pro-bad-laws-should-be-opposed enlightenment. And indeed enlightened self-interest, since being in favour of equal treatment under the law for a group that I don’t belong to increases the chance (I can reasonably expect) for equal treatment under the law if I ever do belong to a group that is being denied such treatment.
Anyway, part of my enlightenment is not being swayed or fooled by less-than-impressive arguments advanced on behalf of people with less-than-impressive motives.
Yes, but you suggested that a “compelling governmental interest” could arise to over-ride civil rights, and the internment of Japanese-Americans was the first example that came to my mind. I’m naturally curious what possible circumstances there could be to compel the dissolution of gay marriages, and presumably only gay marriages. I daresay it would take quite the imagination to conjure such.
Anyway, nobody is being compelled to (or asked to) “celebrate” a gay marriage, just recognize its legality as identical to that of a straight marriage. And what do you mean, “privileges they don’t need” ? Do straight couples “need” the legal privileges they now enjoy? And if they do, why does their needs count and a gay couple’s do not?
I don’t get the “irresponsibility” reference, either. Exactly who is being irresponsible in this circumstance?
Well, actually, I assume there are indeed circumstances where a specific gay marriage can be nullified - if it comes to light that one or both partners are underage, or one or both partners were already legally married at the time… basically the same things that could potentially nullify a straight marriage.
It remains entirely unclear how gay marriage makes straights more irresponsible. Frankly, straight people come off like jerks under your argument.
I’m prepared to consider arguments for incestuous and polygamous marriages. I admit not being especially inclined to argue in favour of either, but so what? The Loving decision was about interracial marriage. Does the fact that it was not about gay or incestuous or polygamous marriages mean we can retroactively dismiss it as “crap” ?
And I stand by it. Give me a line of reasoning I can recognize, even if I disagree with it, but don’t invite me to indulge ignorance, fear and hatred.
Well, quantify this so-called “punishment.” Will their taxes go up? Will crime rates go up? Will their life expectancy go down? What are the actual measurable negatives they will suffer? You’re basically offering me:
“I feel like I’m being punished.”
“But you’re not being punished.”
“But I feel like I’m being punished.”
If they want to feel that way, let them.
Well, that they’re behaving childishly. They are acting in a way to hurt someone else, even though that person poses no threat to them and indeed hurting them offers no benefit. Spiteful, certainly. Childish… well, that might be a tad hyperbolic, but it certainly seems like childish behaviour to me.
It’s not the disagreement in itself that demonstrates childishness, but the line of thought behind it, or at least I’ve yet to see what I’d consider an adult line of reasoning at play, one that doesn’t have blatant leaps of logic and/or nuggets of “gay people are gross” mixed in.
Well, now you’re delving into pointless semantics again, which to me is starting to suggest dishonest or disingenuous tactics. It was obvious enough I was using the word childish to describe behaviour and how to respond to said behaviour, not chronological age.
- Marriage is a right.
- Equal treatment under the law is a right.
- Gender and sexual orientation are not exceptions to (2).
Therefore gay marriage is a right. Granted, the premises have some arbitrariness to them that would not stand in a formal mathematical proof, but I’m satisfied.
Hey, I can only hope that what SCOTUS eventually does with the issue is on the side of justice. The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) made that call way back in 2005 and nothing bad happened as a result.
In any case, SCOTUS has within their discretion to make decisions I think are unjust, unnecessary and unfair, but which I can’t mathematically prove are “wrong” in the sense of two plus two not equaling five. Americans (and indeed all nations, including my own) are routinely if not outrageously unfair at times, even in violation of what they claim as their own founding principles.
I’m gladdened that it’s generally getting better and there have been significant advances in what I’d consider individual rights within my own lifetime. Gay marriage will come to the U.S. sooner or later with (I guess) Utah being the last holdout, and 25 years from now the whole thing will seem like a quaint and foolish thing to have fought over.
I’m perfectly happy to recognize the necessity of a strict legal framework on which to base decisions, slow to change, with careful consideration of precedent in order to build a “seamless web” with consistency to the greatest extent possible. I cheerfully admit being annoyed at the simplistic grumpy-old-man attitude of “there oughta be a law against that!” in response to some perceived nuisance perpetrated by another citizen, or “the government’s got no business sticking its nose in!” in response to some perceived state intrusion.
Still, though, if SCOTUS comes up with a decision that does not recognize SSM, I’ll recognize their right to make such a decision, even if it’s not a right decision.
I did not read it, I was just assuming it was the same gravaman.
FFC case law also states, although NOT concerning SSM, that one state does not have to honor the public policy of another state if it violates thier own. IF the question is presented to SCOTUS, of course then it will deal with PP on SSM.
I happen to agree. I’d amplify it this way: if SCOTUS comes up with a different conclusion, that’s certainly within their power, but IMO they would be illogical, wrong, and I can’t imagine the constitutional argument they’d base this wrong conclusion on that doesn’t ignore their own protocols.
The language “for want of a substantial federal question” is very confusing, and until I read the Baker case years ago when the CA question 1st came up around 2005, I had never heard the term myself.
A “Summary decision”, as Baker was, IS a decision on the merits, while a DENIAL of Certiorari is not. There WAS a federal question, it is just the “dismissal for want of” is confusing.
This outlines it and the prcedential value of Baker and discusses the Hicks/Miranda ruling on exactly what is a dismissal for want of a substantial federal quesion.
Through “Doctrinal developments”, an inferior court can be released of the binding effect of Baker. Some say there are 2 DD’s since Baker, Lawrence v. Texas, and Romer v. Evans.
Are there any SCOUTS justices on record as not accepting the idea of a “suspect class” in the first place? I would suspect (pun intended) that Thomas falls in that category. Maybe Scalia. But not anyone else.
Please have a look again at your post #57, my response in #58, comment #61made by waterj2, and my comment #62.
If you would answer #58 substantially differently than waterj2 in comment #61 please say so. If not, please review Skinner and Loving, and consider my comment #62, and explain how Skinner (having nothing to do with marriage, but instead procreation) could possibly be a precedent for Loving if the right to marriage does not flow from procreation as a matter of law.
The public policy of the states has always been to recognize legal marriages in the others, regardless of variance in marriage law. For instance, say state A says first cousins can marry and state B says that they may not. As far as I know, and I have extensive experience briefing domestic issues, it would be unprecedented for state B to refuse to divorce a first cousin couple from state A. Except now, in the gay marriage issue, of course. Now we have such a precedent.
But then I do not recall ever working on any case where it was an issue. I quit paralegal work in 2003. I never really had cause to search the issue, so I could be wrong. Anyone know of such precedent in another aspect of domestic relations law, besides gay marriage?
You need to cite legal authority for this proposition, rather than mere self-satisfaction.
Please cite in the law the principle that marriage is a fundamental right for any and all pairings, or accept that a fundamental right does not devolve on all pairings.
We never had a founding principle that gay marriage is a fundamental right. We do have a founding principle that each state has a prerogative to determine what marriage is.
With a track record of 31 states forbidding it in their constitutions, more forbidding it in their statutes, and only 8 upholding it, I think you optimism is misplaced.
That would take some research, but concerning SSM, most have provisions that exclude other state marriages, here is Ohio’s Constitution:
§ 15.11 Marriage Amendment
Only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this state and its political subdivisions.
This is an inclusion clause to out of state non recognition also.
Now, Ohio did away with Common law marriages in 1991, but had a grandfather clause. Whether out of state CL marriages would be recognized, that would also take some research, probably at the law library.