Umm… that’s the way all this suspect classification stuff works. For example, the California case which legalized gay marriage stated that sexual orientation is a suspect class subject to strict scrutiny (in California). Sexual orientation includes both gays and straights and even bisexuals.
If you look at ENDA (the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act) the protection is worded the same. It’s for sexual orientation (whether gay or straight).
The government doesn’t care about love. It cares about rights and obligations. There’s a huge benefit to having a standardized set of rules for two adults merging their assets, liabilities, and responsibilities. If you do away with governmental recognition of marriage, you’ll wind up with a patchwork of a zillion different private contracts, all with different obligations and conditions. You’ll replace the simplicity of merely being able to say “I’m her husband” with complicated and lengthy legal wrangling and multiple opportunities for scams and exploitation. It’s the sort of “solution” that only a libertarian could love – conceptually pure, yet in practice a complete nightmare.
As far as I know, the US government does ask questions to verify that there is a genuine romantic relationship between a US citizen who wants to marry a non-US citizen (fiance visa) or bring their non-US spouse into the country as a resident (spouse visa). So marriage and love aren’t completely separate for the US government, and couples do have to “prove” they have real affection for and emotional commitment to each other for their marriage to be valid for some legal purposes.
Yeah, but immigration law is a whole crazy Twilight Zone unto itself.
Is it just me, or did I already answer this?
I’ll try again: I’m not advocating doing away with that standardized set of rules. Exactly the opposite: I’m advocating expanding the availability of that set of rules to any two consenting adults who are not currently engaged in that set of rules with someone else. In practice, there’d be no nightmare at all.
Bryan, your last post to me is about right. As I say over and over, it’s my ideal situation, but I’m hardly upset that it’s never going to come to pass; it’s more in the “Also, I’d like a pony” realm.
There is never going to be a time when everyone is going to be comfortable with legalizing gay marriage. Either gay marriage is going to have to be legalized in the face of opposition or it will stay illegal forever.
Look at civil rights for blacks. A hundred years of waiting patiently and quietly for equality didn’t work. It was protesting inequality that got progress moving.
Agreed. We can’t sit around and wait for people to figure out that being gay is OK. If we treat gay people differently and don’t give them the same legal protections, the tacit implication is that being gay isn’t OK.
There are still lots and lots of areas of this country where people would pass laws to discriminate against blacks if they could. Lots of additional others would no doubt be this way if they didn’t have a generation raised in a society where discrimination against blacks was illegal.
I think that by going after gay marriage, you’re simultaneously going after everything the OP considers to be under it or steps along the way. If you can even call it that.
Gay marriage isn’t the top of the pyramid. Gay marriage isn’t the goal. Equal protection under the law is the goal and that equal protection should apply across the board from hiring practices to marriage to selling someone a house.
So how does one give gays equal protection under the law? By elevating sexual orientation to the level of protected class status like is currently done with age, gender, race and religion.
Proponents of gay marriage in general, and judge Walker’s opinion in particular, are making large strides towards that goal. When - not if - it happens, not only will gay marriage become protected but all those other aspects that the OP claim are steps along the way will simultaneously become protected as well.
Well first you crush the grapes. And then you add some yeast to the juice and let it ferment.
Are you requiring that those two consenting adults register their union with the government when it starts and again when it ends?
If they want that package of legal rights and obligations, yes. If they want those legal rights and obligations to end, again yes. Otherwise in both cases, no.
Yes. Since gay/lesbian couples can not be legally married in most states, they can’t easily use their combined incomes to get a loan to buy a house. That can make real estate transactions quite hard.
And many jurisdictions or Neighborhood Associations have regulations about the number of unrelated people that can live in the same house. I know of at least 2 gay/lesbian couples that are technically in violation of Minneapolis ordinances, since they and their children from previous marriages live in the same house, but under Minnesota law they are “unrelated”.
Yes, in most US States, that would be perfectly legal. But rather blatant – they just do it more subtly by making sure they don’t hire any GLBT people. Only a few actually fire gay employees, and admit to it – like Cracker Barrel.
A civil union instead of marriage is like saying to a black person, “Why do you care if you have to ride in back, it gets there the same time as the front.”
Would you say that to an African American?
It is valid to go after marriage first because marriage like children are a basic human right.
This is why when states tried to limit the number of children women on welfare could have it was struck down. This is why when a husband says in a will he’ll only leave the wife money on the condition she never remarries, it is not enforceable.
These are basic rights and there is a lot of precident in the judical system to back them up.
So this is a logical place to start. You have to start by fighting battles you can win. If you constantly lose, people fighting give up and it starts to look like the other side is correct, even if they are not.
Good News! That’s what the protected class is, in most non-discrimination policies. If you can’t be fired or denied housing for sexual orientation that protects straights and gays alike. You just don’t hear about it because straight people are rarely if ever discriminated against due to their orientation.
“Jenkins, you were spotted kissing your girlfriend outside a Starbucks Tuesday. Your perverted lifestyle has no place here at Megacorp. Security will excort you from the building.”
These laws operate on a state-by-state basis. California already has strong anti-discrimination laws, for example, and so even by your standards is ready for SSM. Or are you advocating even the most advanced state wait for the least advanced one to pass anti-discrimination laws before proceeding? I don’t suspect that the average SS couple in California wants to wait for Alabama and Utah to get these rights.