If I didn’t understand that, I wouldn’t have suggested that you meant: “It wasn’t Gore v. Bush; it was Bush v. Gore.” That would’ve been clear and concise. What you wrote is vague because it is poorly worded. “[T]here was no such case” is very different from ‘you got it backwards.’
That makes sense. I wouldn’t call that a semantic dodge, either. It is nitpicking, but I can’t say much about nitpicking 
I won’t address this argument comprehensively right now, but I do want to point out a few things:
(1) The “vague sense of fairness” is a neat slight of hand. Same-sex couples are being something a lot more substantial, including societal dignity, and very tangible legal and financial benefits, the denial of which causes harm on a level much higher than a vague sense of unfairness.
(2) The presumption of a lack of sexual fidelity in homosexual couples is a neat trick, especially since the history of American jurisprudence has over the past century been on a track of getting its nose out of the bedroom. At one point, the issue of marital fidelity for married heterosexual couples was the subject of a lot of law, but we have as a society decided that this kind of thing is best left up to individual choice rather than legal boundaries. So sexual fidelity is more and more not a business of the government, and this should be no different than in the context of civil marriage.
(3) The assertion that the fate of “step-children” is inferior to that of others is thrown out there without much support and more importantly without any indication of how it is actually applicable to same-sex couples, even ignoring the fact that same-sex couples are often in a position to adopt children, which is actually good for society.
(4) This entire argument rests on a series of assumptions, wishful thinking, and outdated societal attitudes. All the evidence we have today is that more and more people are accepting of same-sex unions, more accepting of civil recognition of same-sex marriages, and that same-sex couples are able to create family conditions in which children thrive.
(5) I believe that a few years ago, statistics revealed that in the United States, the number of childless adult women was now greater than the number of women with children. Furthermore, add to that divorce, remarriage, out-of-wedlock births, and other societal trends show that broad policy such as marital policy should no longer be based on assumptions that marriage, coupling, and families are primarily for raising children that belong biologically to the two adults heading the household.
But there is no such case.
Definitions change over time. I think societies in general have a right to determine what is and isn’t legal though.
An interesting point is that as far as I’m aware, society does not reward or restrict child-rearing apart from in cases of neglect. There were various eugenics programs that attempted to do so, but the only remnants of these are planned parenthood.
Another is that the definition of marriage in the United States no longer precludes infidelity nor does it necessitate perpetuity other than in cases of adultery (which was Jesus’ injunction to the married).
As far as I’m aware, the arguments against homosexual marriage are taken independently from arguments against single parenthood, homosexual adoptions and infertile marriages.
How does this differ from homosexual marriage?
Cite?
I was going to say that the same applies to Laura Ingraham but then I realised I parsed a more sensible sentence (that they don’t have a genetic stake in their children). What you’re proposing is that heterosexuals have a genetic predisposition towards creating stable societies. Do you have any evidence to support this?
If we’re arguing based on characteristics of populations alone, the obvious correlate from Malthusian reasoning is something similar to the Chinese solution. If not that, then at least encouraging people to have fewer children - unless one holds that foreigners are predisposed to certain traits, in which case one ought to encourage the Nordic stock to breed more and subsidise abortions for foreigners (reductio ad absurdum, I know). Or encourage homosexuality amongst them: exclusively homosexual teenagers do not get pregnant.
C’mon, he got the case caption wrong. Just correct the name. Isn’t saying “there is no such case” a bit overly pedantic?
Yeah, I got that, but not the first time.
Because, unless you were intentionally trying to be obtuse, your statement was poorly worded.
Not in context. If he was just plain wrong, then yes ; “no, it was Bush v. Gore” would have taken care of it, but it appeared to me from reading his post that he was trying to refer to the underlying case (since he referred to Gore as the one who initiated it).
And I was making the rhetorical point that it was Gore, not Bush who instigated the whole affair. Yes, the end of this came when Bush v. Gore was filed and decided by SCOTUS, but the origins of the litigation were with Gore as plaintiff. Sure, Harris was the defendant, but I didn’t claim “Gore v. Bush” was the technical style of cause.
Even now, the Florida court has a web page about Bush v. Gore, in which they had nothing to do with.
He got his recount, he lost, he went to court again.
No Florida jurist has ever lost an up/down vote, probably due to the fact that state law effectively outlaws campaigning.
Chiles was not Bush’s immediate predecessor, but a predecessor none the less. Buy a dictionary. McKay was a short term place holder for the office after Chiles died.
Within a statutory regime, they do not invent new laws. Where there is no statute, then the common law will fill any gaps. There was no gap here: Harris was obligated by statute to certify the election returns in 7 days and the court told her she could not certify the result until almost two weeks after that.
Gay marriage is not a ‘human right’: European ruling torpedoes Coalition stance
Is that so?
I actually agree to large extent with your premises, laid out prior to the quotation above. But I put to you that those premises must, needs be, lead not to condemnation of gay marriage, but embrace of it.
Now, the logic that I will put forth also depends on a few other premises, chiefly that we, as a society, are not about to criminalize homosexual orientation, nor to prohibit homosexual couples from raising children as couples. I will assume for the sake of argument that you do not object to those premises.
Given those, then, the interests that you mention as being served by the institution of marriage (“It looks like a good situation for raising children. Stability and trust that these people will continue to be there sound like a great thing for kids.”) surely ought to be extended to homosexual couples, should they not? If marriage fosters stability and trust, then don’t you want children of homosexual couples being raised in that kind of environment?
Don’t the same arguments you use in favor of heterosexual marriage – that it fosters stability and trust in the interest of raising children more effectively – also apply equally to homosexual couples?
Powers &8^]
Why on earth would I want that? . . . Ah, because Hollywood and liberal academics tell me I should. They’re probably right. It’s not like these people could ever steer us wrong. It’s not like they advocate pedophilia (The History Boys), a one-child policy which leads to forced abortions (Harry’s Law), infanticide, or bestiality (Peter Singer). Hmmm, wait a minute, maybe I shouldn’t listen to them.
Let me approach this from another angle: say we have a couple, both adults, who genuinely love each other and want to get married. It would be arbitrary and wrong for us, as a society, to keep them apart, right? Okay, what if they’re brother and sister?
My point here is that even for you, the standard of “two adults who love each other” is incomplete. But that’s the only standard I’ve heard. It applies just as well to the above case.
Another argument I’ve heard equates this to the now settled argument over interracial marriage. This comparison isn’t very good, though. That was an question of *who *could marry. This is a question of what marriage is. To clarify: marriage has not, historically, been defined as a union between two people of the same race. At some times this was accepted and others rejected, but it was never part of the basic definition. On the other hand, the historical definition of marriage has *always *been between a man and a woman. These two issues are not the same, and the comparison is unfair and misleading.
Cite for your historical definition of marriage. I’d be especially interested in Biblical definitions, or ones that don’t use special pleading to exclude the two spirits Native American tradition.
Strawman. The reason you should accept homosexual adoption of children is that empirical studies suggest that they make as good, if not better, parents than a heterosexual cohort (Gartrell and Bos, 2010).
It’s a mixed bag but there have been no long-term studies. The case in favour of gay adoption is a heck of a lot weaker than the case for GM foods, and yet the left favours the former while opposing the latter on purely ideological grounds.
That definition fails as a historical definition since it doesn’t include the polygamous relationships of Joseph Smith for instance. While it gives the legal opinion delivered in Loving vs. Virginia, it doesn’t mention the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, nor does it mention that anti-miscegenation laws have been around in Virginia and Maryland longer than the Declaration of Independence. Pace vs. Alabama held that the laws were in accord with the Constitution too, which gives rise to the canard that homosexuals have as much a right to marry as anyone else, just not to the consenting adult that they love.
The study I mentioned was a longitudinal study of 25 years. Please cite any study study that refutes its central premise.
In every civilization throughout recorded history, the concept of “marriage” (or whatever in the local tongue) has involved a man and a woman rather that two (or more) people of the same sex. This is not to say that there were no acknowledged same-sex unions, but they were conceptually different than heterosexual unions and had different terms to denote them.
There were different terms used for marriages outside of the race too - plaçage, or left hand marriages (in the Quran, it’s actually ma malakat aymanukum, slaves the right hand possesses that are held in sexual slavery).