It’s arguable in this case though, isn’t it, that the law does treat men and women differently. Men can marry women but women can’t, women can marry men but men can’t.
Definition of “marriage” not sticky enough for you, eh?
Well, if you know of a rational reason to oppose SSM (other than the status-quo one you’ve already presented, which has been analyzed and found to not be rational), feel free to share.
In fact, I think this post could easily be the tenth or twentieth time you’ve been presented with such a request.
On reflection, I’ve confused raindog and Xenocrates.
Still, if anyone know a good reason to oppose SSM, I’d like to see it.
Some clarification and expansion was needed, I feel, but I missed the edit window:
There are indeed situations where maintaining the status quo is desirable. For example, a hypothetical argument that all cars must be hybrids. Even if the end result is a desirable one (and of course, that would be debatable), there is a considerable economic hardship imposed on companies that currently manufacture conventional cars (which must now retool or go out of business), companies that sell conventionial cars (which must now junk their inventories) and people who drive conventional cars (who must discard and replace them).
Is there a comparable example of hardship imposed on people who are in (or who one day will likely be in) a straight marriage?
Similarly, there may be an argument to maintain the status quo if one predicts negative results from the change. What negative results are anticipated? What negative results might now be visible in countries that have allowed SSM for several years?
I accept the possibility of a rational anti-SSM argument. I just haven’t seen one yet.
mhendo
"What this argument boils down to is: “Homosexuals have just as much right as heterosexuals to marry someone of the opposite sex.”
Before I address your argument, I would like to clarify what that part of my argument was intended to show. I am not saying “hey look homosexuals you have the same rules as heterosexuals so quit whining.” Homosexuals who want to get married would obviously prefer different marriage requirements.
“How can you seriously claim that a requiring the two parties to a marriage to be of different sexes does not put in place different rules for heterosexuals and homosexuals? By your logic, anti-miscegenation laws were reasonable, because both whites and blacks were equally authorized to marry someone of the same race.”
I don’t really understand the question. I can claim that there are not different rules because there don’t seem to be. Can you give me a rule that applies to only homosexuals or only heterosexuals? The only thing along these lines I can think of is something like “You can marry people of the sex you prefer.” For some reason that strikes me as a fairly ad hoc response though I can’t say precisely why. However, if that is the route you’d like to go I’d be happy to pursue it further. I am assuming that laws, rights, discrimination etc. apply at the level of the individual. If you think that they apply at the level of couples, then you can make a more convincing case but I don’t know why someone would want to take that view. And finally, it is true that my framework would not see “and are of the same race” as a special kind of requirement for marriage. However, in my framework the requirements for the legal status of marriage are rooted in social practice. I would argue that the requirement that both parties be of the same race is not deeply rooted enough in social practice. Even if it were, and that requirement were therefore appropriate, I would still oppose it just as I oppose the requirement that both parties be of opposite sexes. I just wouldn’t oppose it on as dramatic grounds as I imagine you would.
Bryan Ekers
I’m not sure I fully understand all of your points, Bryan. I take it that the legal status of marriage has something to do with the social practice of marriage. After all, there was marriage in the US before there was marriage recognition by the governments currently in place. That seems plausible to me, does it to you? If a society had some different but analogous kind of social relationship I would be very surprised if they had a legal status that matched our marriage practices. I would instead expect their legal status analogous to our legal status of marriage to match up roughly with their social practice. The social practice is relevant to the legal status. If sex matters in the social practice, then, it seems reasonable that it would matter in the legal status. We aren’t talking about a normal law here. We’re talking about a legal status that does and should reflect a social practice our society happens to have.
I wasn’t making a harm argument and I don’t think a good one exists. I don’t understand your request for evidence. Evidence is used to justify empirical claims and I am making no empirical claims. I also take some offense to your describing my argument as bigoted. The argument seems reasonable and I am making an honest attempt while not explicitly or implicitly saying something like “gays are evil.” The claim that it is bigoted therefore seems to be nothing more than empty name calling.
Meyer
My claim was that the issue of the constitutionality of Prop 8 is separate from the issue of whether gay marriage ought to be legal. You said “I have yet to hear a pro Prop 8 argument that doesn’t boil down to ‘gay people just don’t deserve the same rights as straight people’”. My claim wasn’t that the issue of whether Prop 8 should be passed is separate from the SSM debate, only that the issue of it’s constitutionality is separate. You could be the most adamant supporter of SSM and still think that Prop 8 is unconstitutional. Likewise, you could be the strongest opponent of SSM and think that Prop 8 is constitutional.
Also, if you read farther down my post I did make an argument against SSM that has nothing to do with desert at all.
Furthermore, I think the entire debate has nothing to do with rights. The only right I can think of that is violated by the requirement that the parties be of opposite sexes but not violated by the requirement that there be two and only two parties would be:
the right to marry one consenting non-married adult who is not related too closely to you so long as you are not already married.
But I don’t see what this right has over this one:
the right to marry one consenting non-married adult of the opposite sex who is not related too closely to you so long as you are not already married.
Do people think that it’s just a brute fact of the universe that you have the right to life, liberty, property, and to marry one consenting non-married adult who is not related to closely to you so long as you are not already married? And how is it that people see one of these rights as protected by the constitution and not the other?
Huh? 
Sure. In fact, that’s not a bad 10-secondbite for why same-sex marriage should be analyzed under intermediate scrutiny.
But that decision, if made, will be a first in federal law.
What I am trying to stop here is the constant and plaintive, “I don’t understand why it’s constitutional;” “No one has ever explained why this is constitutional;” etc etc.
I have.
Well, what is a “social practice” ? You’re using the term pretty freely without defining it. How many mutually monogamous long-term homosexual couples must exist before they get recognition as engaging in a “social practice” ? It very much looks like they want to participate in a “social practice” that many many other Americans do, but are being denied because of their genders, and that strikes me as an odd and unnecessary barrier and not something that needs to be written into law, when gender distinctions are generally not written into law.
Well, how do you feel about individual liberty and state power? It seems to me that if Citizen A is doing something and Citizen B wants to do the same thing, the state must prove harm before blocking Citizen B. I tend to operate on the assumption that the state has to make a good harm argument before banning anything. I can understand such an argument relating to marriage if Citizen B is a minor, or already married, or wants to marry an immediate relative, and maybe some others. That Citizen B has or does not have a penis doesn’t strike me as particularly compelling.
So if you believe that no harm will result from SSM, I remains baffled as to why you think it might be rational to oppose it. Some of your fellow citizens (assuming you are American) are demanding a liberty already enjoyed by other citizens. The simple interest of fairness demands you not oppose them without a good reason.
A stance that oppresses another group without reason… I don’t offhand know of a better descriptor than “bigotry”. Much as I dislike dictionary cites, dictionary.com supports me when it defines “bigotry” as “stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own.” I daresay the “stubborn” part is well-supported, though “any” might be overstating it, since I can only address your statements on this one issue. I don’t see the emptiness you’re claiming, nor have I ever said in response to anyone on this issue: “You only say that because you’re a bigot, period.” I believe I’ve presented a sufficient amount of detailed and thoughtful analysis. You are free to disagree, of course, including choosing the believe that my use of “bigot” invalidates anything I might say on the subject.
Thoughtful, reasonable people who are empathetic and decent can still have irrational views.
It’s not enough that thoughtful, reasonable, empathic, decent people hold a view, for that view to be reasonable and rational. The view must still be supported by some kind of reasoning and logic.
There is a distinct difference between a good reason, and an irrational reason.
Only blindness---------the result of the certainty of one’s beliefs* ------ or ignorance can have someone as confused as you appear to be.
Listen, I disagree with much of what Liberal and Polycarp have to say. Still, I can’t remember anything they’ve said that I would characterize as irrational, or illogical. (two words that are rarely used correctly here) They are thoughtful, intelligent, logical and rational in their views/posts.
And, in my view, wrong a fair amount of the time. That’s not to say that there isn’t illogical or irrational arguments to be made from any position. IMV, Der Tris is most often irrational in his posts. So…any given person can make a rational or irrational argument from many points of discussion.
So in [theoretical] situations where Liberal, Polycarp and Der Tris may hold the same [end] view, I can make a distinction between what I perceive to be a rational and irrational argument for that view, even if in the end I perceive them both to wrong.
IIRC, I seem to remember that Bricker made the mistake in those threads of not not advocating for Prop 8----after all he is pro-SSM----but for not demonizing the anti-SSM crowd. In a strange twist he ended up intellectually homeless. On the one hand he didn’t belong in the Prop 8 crowd. On the other, by asserting that he could see a rational, *logical * argument for anti-SSM--------even though not compelling enough for him to support--------he ended up attacked anyway. He was forced to argue for the rationality for a policy he didn’t even support!
It’s worth repeating: He wasn’t arguing for Prop 8, but rather it’s [potential, in some contexts] rationality. That’s a fool’s game, IMV. Because in my observation that both blindness and ignorance exist in sufficient quantity that simple fact flew over the head of almost all posters so that the responses were arguing the merits of SSM and not it’s [potential] rationality.
It’s that irony that interested me. I’m not going to advance an argument for SSM (especially since I have no position on it) and specifically it’s rationality when the blindness of faith and simple ignorance make it impossible for many/most here.
(*in some parts we call that faith.)
It seems clear to me that you are either blind —a product of the certainty of one’s faith------ or ignorant of the definition of the words rational and logical.
You and many others.
Listen I have to run. The truth be told, only a vanity search brought me here. Work is busy and I have little time as it is. So I can’t be sucked in to a 3 day exchange. So forgive me if I am a little scarce.
(and you are welcome to post that raindog was asked for the umpteenth time to advance an anti-SSM argument and that will serve as validation that “you win” and confirmation for the few who both read and understood my point, ironically, the majority of which will be pro-SSM)
True. And I’ve learned much from reading it (lest you think you’re just banging your head on a brick wall or something). I don’t think anyone’s presented a compelling case for why sexual orientation ought to be subject to rational basis review. While the distinctions are important to point out in why Perry isn’t viewed by the courts the same way that Loving was, I think that they leave something to be desired in explaining why they ought to view them differently.
When you get back, please tell us what definitions of these words you have been using.
I’ll go last to first, Bryan.
I don’t know why you think I am stubborn. We are having an argument. Typically in arguments people disagree. It’s not as though I’ve said “yes all your arguments make sense and mine are clearly fallacious but I still adhere to my original position just because.” I wasn’t saying that your use of bigot invalidates anything at all. Just that you don’t have reason to be saying anything substantial by it so I can only interpret it as “boooo.” I don’t think that opposing gay marriage makes one a bigot. However, I have said a number of times that I’m in favor of gay marriage so it seems very, very easy to meet your criteria for bigotry.
I can be classified as a libertarian though my views are more nuanced and less dogmatic than most libertarians I’ve talked to, so I have pretty strong views about individual liberty and state power. However, I don’t see how this is an individual liberty issue or an issue of the government “allowing” anything. In all cases I can think of, when we are talking about an individual liberty issue we are talking about a situation in which some people are doing some action and the government is stopping them by force and then punishing them with a loss of life, liberty, or property. But that is not at all like the issue of SSM. In the issue of SSM we are talking about the government granting a certain legal status. People can do whatever they want with regard to non-legal marriage (assuming all involved are consenting adults). You can have any kind of religious ceremony you like, you can call yourselves married, you can live together, you can sleep together etc. Heterosexual couples can do this, homosexual couples can do this, triplets of people can do this, hell even cousins can do this afaik. (In fact my “perfect world” scenario for marriage would have the state step out of it completely since I see no good reason for the state to even have a legal status associated with marriage but that is neither here nor there.) So if the government were arresting people for living with and having monogamous sex with a partner of the same sex, THAT would be an individual liberty issue and one that I feel very strongly about. Proponents of SSM are not asking that some people be LEFT ALONE to do whatever it is they are doing, they are asking for something to be GIVEN to some people, namely a legal status.
You’re right, that was bad word choice. I suppose the phrase that is closer to what I mean is “social institution.” It seems to me that the legal status of marriage is only there by virtue of it’s correspondence with a particular social institution that people tend to think is really important. I make the historical claim that marriage as an institution has traditionally been a practice applicable only to groups made of one man and one woman. Of course, I could be wrong about this. I could have been massively deceived while in fact throughout history, marriage in the western world has been a practice applicable to two adults regardless of sex. I find that unlikely, but it is possible. Of course, social practices are changing and as they do, they slowly change the properties of the very old institution of marriage. As practices change, it seems appropriate that the law should change as well since the only justification I can see for marriage law in the first place is the historical social institution.
So I see some people as saying “Stick to tradition!” while others say “Change the institution!” I happen to side with the latter group, but the first group doesn’t seem to have an unreasonable position. Given that the law should correspond in some way to social practice and that married couples are traditionally and typically of opposite sexes, it seems pretty reasonable to have the position that the legal status of marriage should apply only to couples of opposite sexes. In your reply I would very much appreciate it if you would answer this question: do you grant me that the above statement is true? By “given” i mean accept for the sake of argument. So IF I could convince you of everything before the comma would you then accept that it seems pretty reasonable (NOT correct, merely reasonable) to have the position that I go on to specify?
Maybe he’s saying the legal logic that lead to Jim-Crow was kind of a jackassed bigoted thing? But as you note, it’s not even “separate but equal”. This is nothing but an attempt to use the law to harass a class of citizens, through no crime of their own, and deny them the equal protections of marriage.
I’ve read your claims that the 14th only applies to race, but you’re full shit. For example:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=391&invol=68
I look forward to why you feel sexuality isn’t an immutable personal characteristic,like the circumstances of ones birth, and consequently why you feel gay couples are composed of nonpersons undeserving of equal protection.
Either that, or why you feel the court was wrong, why people should be second class citizens solely based on the circumstances of their birth, or sexuality.
I did the find/replace thing again. I replaced SSM with interracial marriage. Big wall of text, so in the spoiler for page flow.
My assessment is again, same sentiment.
Please tell me, why is gay marriage different than interracial marriage? Can you give me one argument against gay marriage that is different than the arguments against interracial marriage? Because it looks to me like the same shit, new label.
The Supreme Court has ruled that illegitimacy deserves a higher standard of review than rational basis. They have not done so for sexual orientation. I don’t believe Bricker has ever said that he personally endorses these categorizations, and further believe that he has said that he believes that the Supreme Court ought to find that sexual orientation ought to be covered under intermediate scrutiny, just as gender currently is. But without that happening, the standard remains rational basis. Bricker does object to the fact that Romer and Lawrence have (in his opinion, at least) misapplied rational basis review in a way that has set the stage for Judge Walker’s ruling, but I’m pretty sure he’d be perfectly happy if the Court in Romer (or even, heck, in Bowers v. Hardwick) had just said that intermediate scrutiny would be appropriate.
Hopefully I’ve correctly represented Bricker’s position. Because if I haven’t, maybe he really is being too obtuse.
I’ll let Bricker speak for himself, but as far as I can see you have accurately summarized the state of relevant jurisprudence and how Bricker has said he feels about it.