The one thing we do risk by trying is that the court might specifically rule there’s nothing wrong with discriminating against gays in marriage. Right now it’s de facto constitutional to do so, but the court has never said that. If they rule, it’ll be on the books, and harder to change; the court’s less likely to overturn a previous decision.
You guys crack me up. My post has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of SSM. It simply reveals the stupidity of one imbecilic talking point: “Oh, why should anyone be against SSM…nobody’s forcing them to marry a person of the same sex.!!!”
Hint to all who might think that ANY opponent of SSM is concerned with being forced to marry someone of the same sex: don’t eat with a fork. You’re not smart enough, and might end up stabbing your eye with a forkful of spaghetti.
Yes. That is part of my point.
Well, that’s us trying to be nice and assuming you’re only stupid, not completely divorced from reality. After all, there’s only so many ways someone else’s marriage can realistically affect your own.
Don’t you go minimizing how oppressed magellan01 is going to be by being forced not to oppress other people. I won’t stand for it!
Yeah, because gays are a race.
:rolleyes:
Is the immutability/mutability of an aspect of a human being the deciding factor in whether you should treat that human with fairness and justice? Race you shouldn’t, but sexual preference you can? How about religion? Religion is a choice; do we get to ban Jews from marrying?
The fact the arguments for stopping interracial marriage are so closely akin to those for stopping same sex marriage should give you a bit of pause.
This… aside from the "tool"comment… I was recently reading Kenneth Davis’ book “Lies… American History” when he makes the point concerning the Fugitive Slave Act…essentially whoever is out of power always wants to limit the Federal Govt… and when they re-assume power that argument goes flying out of the window. My “libertarian” colleagues at work prove this consistently…
Someone could believe that SSm will have zero effect on his marriage and still be against it. Perhaps he’d like his children to grow up in a world that acknowledges the very obvious differences between the two genders. Perhaps he values the institution and believes that it makes no sense to now do what no civilization has ever done—not even the Ancient Greeks, who at times were very accepting of homosexuality—and seek to say that A does not equal B, but A+B = A+A.
In other words, you should order the soup.
I already said that I think SSM is probably inevitable. I don’t care for it. I think ‘marriage’ means something in this culture & it’s one man & one woman. I’d prefer civil unions for all. But it’s not something I’m going to crusade about.
What I am really concerned about is when religious groups & individuals are penalized for refusing to support SSM or homosexuality. And that is already happening even without SSM.
One side believes sexual orientation is what you are while religious/philosophical identity is what you choose to believe. Thus, sexuality is a set part of your identity while religion/philos is a changeable matter of preference.
The other side see one’s religious/philosophical stance/values as more intrinsic to what a person is, while sexuality is more a matter of how people choose to act, tho perhaps based on unchosen feelings.
So the first side sees sexuality trumping religion/philosophy while the second reverses it.
Oh- and gayness still isn’t a racial identity. Tho I’m not so sure that it’s not becoming a religious one.
If you think about it, this IS essentially what happens now, only in the exact opposite way in which the anti-SSM folks would likely prefer. There are many many churches that will perform private, ceremonial-only marriages for gays and lesbians, though the legality of those marriages are not recognized by the federal government. At the same time, any hetero couple can walk into the courthouse and get a judge to marry them without any lip service to the Almighty whatsoever.
So as things stand, the only way the evil blasphemous probably atheist gays can be married in most of this country is with the blessing of the church, while the secular government-approved civil aspect of marriage is reserved for proper religious heteros only. Ironic, no?
Please explain why allowing SSM would stop people from recognising differences between genders.
The value of the institution? Ha! That’s a laugh. Straight people have been happily making a mockery of marriage for generations. Want a green card? Get married. Get wasted in Vegas and wind up getting hitched to some lowlife in a black velvet chapel of love in a ceremony presided over by a midget in an Elvis catsuit? No worries. Get an annulment the next day. Marry a ninety year old billionaire for his money? We’ll look the other way.
But ask us to be cool with a monogamous gay couple celebrating their love through matrimony? Ask us to treat gay people just like everyone else? Well, that crosses the line. We’ll fucking march on Washington to stop that. We’ll presume we have the sheer, brass-balled audacity to vote on whether our countrymen have the right to be happy and we’ll rob them of the opportunity at the ballot box.
We, as a society, are stuck in the past, shackled to a strain of bigotry that’s somehow been sanctified by time, tradition, and mainstream faith. The sad fact of the matter is that anti-gay prejudice has escaped our otherwise relentless drive towards liberty and now we have a golden opportunity to correct this injustice. We owe it to ourselves to take it, “tradition” be damned.
It’s an immutable personality characteristic. Tell me, how would a gay marriage hurt you anymore then an interracial marriage hurts a klansman? Keep in mind bigots against interracial marriage had arguments very much like yours.
Interesting take, but I think you’re excluding a vast group of people in the middle who don’t have one “trump” over the other and see both as deserving of anti-discrimination protections. More importantly, which “side” are you on? You didn’t mention.
I think describing sexual preference/identity as becoming “religious” is kinda missing the point. I’m more interested in why you seem to think it is OK to discriminate on the basis of one, but perhaps not on the basis of the other.
Well yes, they will, when those religious “rights” are being used as an excuse for discrimination. See, you can be a bigot all you want, and you can blame your bigotry on your religion all you want, but when you operate in the public sphere, not the religious sphere, you cannot discriminate.
If you don’t want all the members of the public to use your services, then you don’t make your services available to the public. That’s pretty clear. That’s why private clubs exist.
And if you don’t want your precious little children learning in school that non-hetero people exist, and that we get married and that means that some married couples have two men, some have two women, then I don’t know what to tell you, because that’s just a fact. And I don’t know what to do with people who are afraid of their children learning facts in school.
If you don’t want precious bunchkins learning this fact neutrally, and want them to be told that this is wrong and bad? Well open up your phone book and find the most convenient religious school that’s teaching that particular “moral” belief and send your kids there. You don’t get to have your religiously-based morals taught in public schools.
No, non-hetero people are becoming more and more widely recognized under law as a suspect class, that is to say, a group that is subject to widespread and unconstitutional discrimination, as racial and ethnic minorities have been for quite some time. (Something that religious adherents have never been, because from the beginning of this “Christian” or “Judeo-Christian” nation, our laws have always reflected the fact that religious adherence is a choice.)
Non-sequitur. The most obvious differences between the two genders (granting the existence of a gender binary which I reject, but YMMV) are biological, not sociological, and have nothing to do with who may marry whom. Women do not cease to be women because a small minority will choose to be married to other women, nor men when married to men.
And perhaps this person needs to recognize that “institutions” change. That the status changes of men and women over time has meant that the institution of marriage has changed substantially from what it once was (see: women being allowed to have assets in their own names, change in property transfer presumptions, equal right to seek divorce, illegality of marital rape, change in child custody presumptions, etc.) and that living in an evolving, changing society means that things don’t always stay the way that they once were. That person may not like it, but it’s a plain and obvious fact.
It hasn’t meant that since divorce became illegal. And it hasn’t meant that in a gender sense since 2004. And the only reason to hang your hat on “marriage means something and can’t ever change” is your own bigotry. Suck it up. We don’t stop progress for bigots.
And yes, it hurts to be called a bigot. You’d probably rather that I stop calling you a bigot. But I’d rather you stop being a bigot. Because as much as being called a bigot hurts your feelings, the effects of the particular bigotry that you espouse have a far greater impact the ability of people in this society to live their lives than any hurt feelings ever could.
Well, the evidence for this is pretty set. You can change your religion. Millions of people have done it. They have embraced faiths 180 degrees opposite of what they were raised to believe is true. They have eschewed religion altogether. They have changed religions multiple times in their lives. Right here on this board I bet we have dozens of active members who have changed their religion substantially – by which I don’t mean became Methodist rather than Catholic, but by which I mean became Catholic rather than Jewish or vice versa, or atheist rather than Pentecostal.
Show me millions of people who have entirely changed their sexual orientation or eschewed any sexual attractions whatsoever for their entire lives. Give us any reliable evidence, that your “belief” that sexual orientation is mutable is actually fact.
Wow, so you outright reject that one can be both non-heterosexual and religious? Really? On what basis would you make such a stinkingly stupid claim that’s so blatantly and obviously wrong on its face?
You shouldn’t be able to price a banana and an apple the same either. Because then banana+apple=banana+banana, and that shit won’t fly.
To be fair to him, I don’t think he’s saying that. He’s saying there’s a conflict between people who think that being gay/doing gay stuff (having sex with somebody of the same sex/getting married to them, whatever) is natural, isn’t immoral and that gay people’s rights to live as openly gay people trumps a religious person’s right to live according to their beliefs, and (certain) religious groups who think that being gay/doing gay stuff is unnatural and immoral and that their rights to live their lives in line with their anti-gay beliefs trumps gay people’s rights not to be discriminated against.
This is my view and I haven’t seen it rebutted in this thread. I can’t for the life of me see how anyone can believe that the framers of the 14th (or the 9th) amendments meant for those words to apply to SSM. In section 2 of the 14th amendment, it outlines a procedure for a state that would not allow black males the right to vote.
It seems that under this construction of the 14th amendment, there is nothing that can’t be asserted as a constitutional right.
I want to have legal mumblegumbles. If you outlaw mumblegumbles you are denying me and my fellow mumblegumblers equal protection and due process under the 14th amendment.
So the Court has issued a test. Is the activity deeply rooted in the traditions of the country, and is it implicit in the concept of ordered liberty? The first is an obvious no, and you would have to answer the second one “no” as well unless you believe that we had no ordered liberty from 1776-2004.
I seem to recall a monster thread in which opponents of SSM were asked and given full opportunity to explain their objections at length. I take it for granted the idea that one might be forced into a gay marriage wasn’t a reason, but I can’t seem to recall what was…
Well, if I may, it’s not that the 14th makes it possible to assert anything as a right, it’s that if one group of citizens has an existing and well-established right that another groups of citizens wants to enjoy, it is unconstitutional to deny it to them as a violation of the concept of equal treatment.
If there are other Americans who enjoy and have enjoyed their mumblegrumbles, it is fair to ask why you cannot.
That’s not what I believe. I believe the Americans (and western democracies in general) have gradually expanded the definition of liberty as old taboos and assumptions are either discarded or marginalized, for the benefit of all. There were times when it was honestly and generally believed (at least among the group in power) that voting was not for women and fronts of buses were not for blacks. Those ideas proved useless and are gone. I understand the view that homosexuality is sinful and deviant was (and still is) commonplace, but the need for thie belief to have legal weight escapes me. A group of a citizens want to enjoy a right which is already enjoyed by other citizens. I would need a compelling reason to deny it to them, and such reasoning has not been presented to me.
I daresay if one is determined to deny marriage to homosexuals, the only fair and constitutional approach is to deny it to everyone.