And the rational reasons for preventing polygamous marriage are?
Oh, and please don’t give me the “those Mormons wind up marrying 15 year olds” because: 1) that’s preventable with a “no marriage before 18 law”; and 2) it sounds a lot like the riduculous reason people give for not wanting gay teachers and scout leaders.
Just to be clear, I am playing Devil’s Advocate here. I have no problem with the state recognizing gay marriage, but I don’t think anyone so far has delivered a reasonable legal defense for that recognition. If I were a SC judge, I could not allow recognition of same-sex marriages without recognizing polygamous and incestuous marriages as well. And frankly, I have no problem with those types of marriages either. But those who try to argue for gay marriage saying that those opposed to it are gay-bahsers or bigots, while at the same to saying they would not support incestuous or polygamous marriages are simply being hypocritical.
I’m sure they were. It’s irrelevant. Marriage is a fundamental right. Fundamental rights may not be denied on the basis of sex without there being an important governmental reason for doing so. There is no such reason here. Fundamental rights may not be denied on the basis of sexual orientation without a rational governmental reason. There is no such reason here.
The orderly transfer of property, the property rights of spouses being compromised by multiple spouses, the consent issues which may be involved when one wishes to marry beyond the initial spouse, the conflicting rights of spouses to make decisions for each other, etc.
I am the (almost) only christian I know in real life or on message boards who actually thinks this makes no difference to me if gays marry.
Also, they keep saying it is a choice! WHERE do they get this?
Can someone give me some links that show it isn’t?(I know it isn’t)
Then they claim its because God said marriage is only between a man and a woman.
Well, He also said other things I am glad are not law today.
Not a basher, and as for knowing any gay people, I used to be married to one.
I notice some who are quite strongly against gay marriage don’t have the guts to come here and answer these questions! :mad:
vanilla, who realizes what cereal gays eat doesn’t affect my cereal at all!
Now you know one more :).
Actually, to say it makes no difference to me isn’t really true, it does make a difference to me in that I want gays to be able to marry.
I know a few more, but it is true that a majority are against it. Many of them don’t know (or think they don’t know) any gay people, but some of them do. It doesn’t always make a difference.
This issue is a sad and often frustrating one for me, but I do feel that we are living through a time that will be historically remembered as a turning point for gay rights.
As per Miller, am I the only person who’s still waiting for SnoopyFan to tell us if the gay friend she hugged realized she was a discriminatory bigot?
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
No, it was accomplished because blacks were eventually able to shift the opinions of a large enough segment of society into supporting full integration, and because proponents of integration won legislative and judicial victories to make it happen. It was the right thing to do, but that isn’t why it happened.
QUOTE]
I disagre. The genesis of all of those efforts was the idea that it was wrong to deny one human being his rights based upon skin color, and that remains to this day the underlying reason supporting a society in which “all men are created equal”. If the idea of equality being the right thing wasn’t there, blacks on their own in this country would have remained subjegated because they could never have gained control of the political, social and economic power needed to drive the engine of change. A vastly outnumbered, totally unempowered sub class of any society is never going to be able to force the society as a whole to grant them recognition as equals without at least some support from within the empowered majority.
Nope, I’m waiting too.
I’ll be the first to admit that it would be adminstratively trivial for the gov’t to allow gay marriages and that it would be non-trivial to allow plural marriages. But none of your examples is without clear and (not too complicated) precedence in the legal code already. “Multiple spouses” does not create more issue for inheritance than “multiple children” does. And corporatations are formed all the time between multiple partners, with new partners added later.
If you are going to argue from the basis of “fundamental right”, you need to show more than that it is inconvenient for the government to accomodate that fundamtal right for certain persons.
Well, it does actually, especially in community or marital property states. If Spouse A divorces Spouse B, can she claim Spouse C’s property in the settlement? What if Spouse A never told Spouse B about Spouse D and Spouse D claims Spouse B’s settlement from Spouse A life insurance policy? Avoiding that sort of entanglement suffices in my non-Justice of the Supreme Court opinion as a rational reason for upholding laws against multi-spouse marriages.
Now, personally, I don’t really care whether multiple marriages are legal or not. And as it happens, a friend of mine who I’ve lost touch with married her brother in California a couple of years ago (they were adopted away from each other so did not grow up as siblings and she is beyond child-bearing years) and AFAIK they are happy, so beyond the inherent ick factor I don’t really care that much about sibling marriages either. I don’t, however, think they are analogous to SSM and I do think that the State has formulated a rational basis for making them illegal. My argument has been and continues to be that the State has not and can not offer a rational basis for denying SSM.
Is this legal in California? If so, can it be just a civil marriage, or is there church recognition as well?
I hadn’t really thought about sibling marriage in relation to gay marriage. I am not sure what I really think about it (I get the ick factor - but then if you saw my brother, you’d understand 
). I have long believed that there should be legal protection for (platonic) siblings that live together as a couple - like in past decades in the UK where a spinster or widowed sister might keep house for a bachelor or widowed brother, as men in those days weren’t very able to keep house for themselves. In that case, I certainly support her getting the same or at least similar rights as his wife would have done - eg transference of property without probate, etc, so she wouldn’t get turned out of house and home on his death.
Why should I respect anyone who supports keeping me an unequal sub-citizen?
Yes, it does.
Divorce is not an inheritance matter (which is what I was commenting on). You are right in that divorce is more complicated, but it’s not like splitting up property when two-people marriages end in divorce is simple either. Again, there is a diffence between “it’s complicated to get the laws in place” and “it’s impossible to get the laws in place”.
I am baffled as to why the simple, obvious solution – getting government out of the marriage business entirely – is receiving so little attention. I would think that highly religious folks would LIKE that: then they could absolutely prevent who they considered married and who they didn’t consider married. It seems to me like the most basic of the separation-of-church-and-state issues.
Let religions decide who they want to consider eligible for marriage, and place no restrictions on that. Let anyone apply for a civil union with any one other consenting adult, and place no further restrictions on that. Have only the latter make any difference from a legal perspective. And presto! Problem solved?
Can anyone tell my why this plan would be objectionable?
Daniel
Again, I’m not arguing against multiple marriages. All I’m saying is that the State has presented a rational basis upon which to rest its denial of multiple marriage but it has not presented a rational basis upon which to rest its denial of SSM. If the multiple-marriage movement is able to persuade SCOTUS that the laws against multiple marriage run afoul of the Constitution then I am not at all bothered by it.
Sibling marriage is not legal in California. My friend’s marriage is void on its face, but the only proof of it is their birth certificates, which since they are both adopted are sealed. Someone would really have to do some serious legal legwork to get the evidence so it’s likely that they will live and die as husband and wife and no one will be the wiser.
Some domestic partnership laws (including the one currently operational in California) do allow mixed-sex couples over a certain age (I think it’s 62 in CA) to enter into them. It’s enormously useful because some senior citizens would suffer serious financial consequences should they marry (loss of survivor pension, social security survivor benefits, etc.). I don’t know if the law allows for blood relatives to enter into domestic partnerships in California.
It’s not objectionable. It’s already in place.
The only things that religious marriage and legal marriage have in common are the name, and that religious officials have been invested with the capacity to marry people. Of course, so have ship captains and justices of the peace.
There really are two separate institutions, as has been pointed out in these threads repeatedly. You can have a religious ceremony, and not be legally married. You can go down to the courthouse and get legally married without religion having anything to do with it.
People are getting hung up on the word marriage, and on their perception that a religious official needs to perform a marriage.
Legal marriage. Religious marriage. Already separate. Let’s keep it that way.
Because it’s much too sensible, you silly person. What would the haters have to screech about then? Especially the ones who want to impose (their brand of) religion on everyone else.
For one thing, married couples wouldn’t be able to ffed at the public trough of the hundreds of special rights they are given as a married couple. For another, no politician on this earth would attempt to tell tens of millions of voters that, oh, by the way, we’re going to unmarry you. The radical right wants marriage desperately; they just want to keep it for themselves.
Indeed, that’s how it should be, IMO. Except that, as you know so well, the laws have to be changed to make civil unions legally enforceable for gays as well as heteros. The Mass. Supreme Judicial Court’s decision basically says that the rights and responsibilities of marriage must be extended to SS couples as a matter of equal protection. That’s laying a legal, not religious, basis for revising the Massachusetts General Laws to accommodate the change in legal status: precisely what you (and I) wish to see. My observation is that it’s primarily the folks who want to keep the legal and religious aspects inextricably intertwined who are leading the charge for a constitutional amendment to undo that decision.
Wow, I didn’t realize that the radical right made up 60% of the US populatoin (and 50% of Democrats, to boot). Damn, those guys are everywhere!!