Do stereotypes about interior decorating count as “mockery”?
By supporting SSM by any and all means, yes, he puts himself in that danger.
Do not confuse this–I think there is little risk of harm in legislatively enacted or voter approved SSM and care little one way or the other. I did care enough to vote for it, but half of that was in hopes of preventing court mandated SSM.
If you want to take it seriously, I’ll explain more in a bit but I am out of time for now. I’ll be back with your Blackstone.
I agree I mocked back.
Is this a mocking contest? let us cease and desist and reason together instead.
If you insist, but it probably won’t be any more productive.
Well, you appear to be arguing that you would vote against SSM because gay people are mean. I don’t think it desperate to say that’s an emotional argument.
I take SSM very seriously. I don’t take you seriously.
It’s a pretty simple two-pronged test. First, do you support laws that discriminate between gays and straights? Second, do you regularly engage in demeaning and insulting stereotypes about gays when your logical arguments fall apart?
So far, you’re zero-for-two.
Patent nonsense. You are confusing arguing against you, with arguing against traditional marriage. Gay marriage is not, in any way, shape, or form, a threat to traditional marriage. The idea that it could be such a threat is idiotic, illogical, and unsupported by any sort of evidence at all. Having contempt for erstwhile “defenders” of marriage is not the same as contempt for the institution they claim to be defending. No more than contempt for flat-Earthers indicates a contempt for the Earth itself.
I didn’t say that Phelps was right, I just said that “God hates fags” is a more logically coherent position than the one you’ve painfully failed to construct in this thread.
You can claim whatever you like about your personal history. I have no way to verify it one way or the other. I can only judge you by the things you’ve said on this message board, and on this message board, you have made an extremely poor showing of yourself.
I think you missed the parts where I said I did vote for it and the part where I said my continued support for reasonable gays, fortunately for them, is not being swayed by your hatred.
Horseshit. You haven’t addressed anything I have said, just dismissed it with conclusory statements YOU HAVE no evidence of. Show me the proof SSM can do no harm.
First of all, it is your burden to show it will do no harm, not mine to prove it will.
But setting that aside, many experts and other proponents of SSM say that it indeed will have consequences, some unknown.
Here is a portion of the prop 8 respondent’s (petitioners at the Supreme Court Level) brief. Professor Cott gave the testimony that was the foundation of dozens of findings of fact that Judge Walker made. I haven’t seen SSM proponents railing against Professor Cott, but since he doesn’t agree with your theory lockstep, you can let whoever coordinates the hate campaigns that he’s due for a five minute hate. Perhaps if his life is threatened enough he’ll retract.
I am not proposing that any of the Respondent’s arguments are evidence, but cite the same expert testimony they cite. My bolding:
**More fundamentally, it is simply impossible
to “escape the reality that the shared social meaning
of marriage . . . has always been the union of a man
and a woman. To alter that meaning would render a
profound change in the public consciousness of a
social institution of ancient origin.” Lewis v. Harris,
908 A.2d 196, 222 (N.J. 2006). Indeed, even “[r]evisionists
agree that it matters what California or the
United States calls a marriage, because this affects
how Californians or Americans come to think of
marriage.” GEORGE, WHAT IS MARRIAGE? 54. Plaintiffs’
expert Professor Cott, for example, conceded at trial
that redefining marriage by law would “definitely
ha[ve] an impact on the social meaning of marriage,”
and that changing the public meaning of marriage
would “unquestionably ha[ve] real world consequences.”
J.A.431-33. Professor Cott also admits the
self-evident truth that it is impossible to accurately
predict the long-term social consequences of changing
the public meaning of marriage. J.A.429.
Indeed, some gay rights advocates favor redefining
marriage because of its likely adverse effects
on the traditional understanding and purposes of
marriage. They argue that redefining marriage “is a
breathtakingly subversive idea,” E. J. Graff, Retying
the Knot, THE NATION, June 24, 1996, at 12, that “will
introduce an implicit revolt against the institution [of
marriage] into its very heart,” Ellen Willis, contribution
to Can Marriage be Saved? A Forum, THE NATION,
July 5, 2004 at 16, such that “that venerable institution
will ever after stand for sexual choice, for cutting
the link between sex and diapers,” Graff, Retying the
Knot, at 12. See also, e.g., Michelangelo Signorile,
Bridal Wave, OUT MAGAZINE 161 (Dec./Jan. 1994).
More generally, even some supporters of redefining
marriage to include same-sex relationships,
such as Professor Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins
University, identify such a redefinition as “the most
recent development in the deinstitutionalization of
marriage,” which he defines as the “weakening of the
social norms that define people’s behavior in . . .
marriage.” Andrew J. Cherlin, The Deinstitutionalization
of American Marriage, 66 J. MARRIAGE & FAMILY
848, 848, 850 (2004). This weakening of social norms
entails shifting the focus of marriage from serving
vital societal needs to facilitating the personal fulfillment
of individuals. See id. at 853. Cherlin predicts
that if deinstitutionalization continues, “the proportion
of people who ever marry could fall further,” and,
“because of high levels of nonmarital childbearing,
cohabitation, and divorce, people will spend a smaller
proportion of their adult lives in intact marriages
than in the past.” Id. at 858. The process of deinstitutionalization
could even culminate, Cherlin writes, in
“the fading away of marriage,” to the point that it
becomes “just one of many kinds of interpersonal
romantic relationships.” Id.**
So, first of all, I am accepting that not all advocates of SSM are even out to do no harm; and second of all, even those who legitimately hope to do no harm cannot with confidence predict the future. Therefore I limit support for SSM to ways that are least likely to do harm, and as a secondary condition less important, I’d like to see about thirty years or so of accepted gay marriage in some states but not in others so that research into such questions can be as clear as possible by comparing one state to another. The typical answer to that is the pervasive false premise that a fundamental right is involved and it is too unjust to make people wait. Well, I don’t buy that false premise for this purpose either. There’s not a court in the land that has put this under strict scrutiny and talked about a fundamental right. Just a bunch of wishy-washy argle bargle (as Scalia called it) that no-one can draw a clear conclusion from about whether some form of heightened scrutiny should apply or simple rational basis. I can’t agree even under strict scrutiny because you have to prove marriage has no relevant purpose of serving procreation in order to be sufficiently “similarly situated in all relevant respects.” That’s the problem–you can’t walk in and apply EP to saying there should be tow different kinds of marriage, one procreational in purpose, and the other based on companionship or love or 1100+ federal duties, burdens and benefits or whatever purpose marriage means to gays. No for EP there can be only one kind of marriage and you have to prove that you, as a group, are similarly situated in all relevant respects; not to the odd individual who is counter to that purpose but cannot be ferreted out due to privacy restrictions, but to the main group, because it is the main group that was legislated for, not the outliers.
heck, I’m willing to stipulate that SSM could help marriage, but it has to be in tune with the will of the people to be certain of help. If nobody cares and it makes no difference, then the fact that you may adopt up a bunch of kids is a very good point. But if huge swaths of people on the order of half the country disagree, and are plainly telling us this offends their idea of marriage, it doesn’t really matter if its for bigoted or rational reasons–what matters is whether even some small portion of them boycotts marriage and dumps even more kids into the system.
So if we can see a help from SSM in providing stable homes for five million kids in need of care, but the very conceivable fear of some straights boycotting marriage and dumping seven million more kids into the system because you forced states that weren’t ready into it, then I see a net harm while also realizing that you did good adopting up five million kids.
Perhaps better said you have painfully failed to rebut.
When the only possible good showing is lockstep agreement, I’m not too concerned.
No, precisely because there is a difference because the government has no business inserting itself into any love relationship that does no harm but it does have an interest inserting itself into potentially procreative relationships that can and do burden society.
Equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This can’t be the first time you’ve asked that question and received that answer.
And I am not taking you out of context. I am laughing at your self-congratulation and your peevishness. You really want praise for supporting SSM decades ago, but you also want to bash gay guys and suggest your support got the cause weakened because you supposedly met some people who were not nice. What a joke.
And Miller, I think he is saying I am giving up my right to ban gay marriage. Or my right to decide the issue by vote. Neither of which is a real right- the correct term is injustice.
Here is your Right Honorable Sir William Blackstone, Esteemed Esquire and Statesman of the Common Law, whose view is often upheld as authoritative today.
Book 1, Commentaries, Chapter 15
“By statute 32 Hen. VIII c. 38 it is declared that all persons may lawfully marry, but such as are prohibited by God’s law; and that all marriages contracted by lawful persons in the face of their church, and consummate with bodily knowledge, and fruit of children, shall be indissoluble.”
Of course most of us agree that the “God’s Law” part has been abrogated by the first amendment.
Book 1, Commentaries, Chapter 15 Of Husband and Wife
“Montesquieu has a very just observation upon his head: that the establishment of marriage in all civilized states is built on this natural obligation of the father to provide for his children;”
Marriage achieved this with its presumption at law that the husband is the father. A presumption that two men are the father is untenable during a dispute at law over the paternity of the child, even if the two fathers are married. If the marriage is dissolving, say maybe over a disagreement to become parents, Bob may have had nothing to do with a child Ted conceived with Mary, the friendly lesbian down the block, with the help of a turkey baster. Ted might have tried to force Bob into a family that Bob never agreed to. Shall the law automatically presume Bob is the biological father because he is married to Ted, who admits to such biological paternity. Bob hasn’t otherwise accepted the child as a parent–he was so pissed at Bob for dismissing his wishes and trying to force him into parenthood that he walked out the door the same hour the child was brought home. Meanwhile, Mary who has procreated irresponsibly, doesn’t accept the child because that wasn’t her agreement with Ted. Since she is not a licensed fertility clinic or working through one as a surrogate, the responsibility should devolve on her as the person who should be helping Ted who now finds himself a single parent.
Bob never wanted a kid, and is now stuck in the ridiculousness of paying thousands of dollars for a DNA test to prove he is not the biological father when everyone already agrees he is not; as DNA testing is the mandated statutory requirement to rebut presumed paternity. So Mary is stuck paying child support; Ted is stuck as a single parent; and Bob is stuck paying for a ridiculous DNA determination that we all know isn’t going to show he isn’t a biological father. Nevertheless, he is a husband for whom paternity is presumed. Yes, maybe Bob and Ted raising the kid together is preferable, but we cannot pin Bob with any responsibility for this , he said no kids and he meant it. Mary is responsible; ignorance is no excuse she knows or should have known that she can be held responsible for bringing this child into the world.
Bob and Ted and Mary may all be ne’er do well alcoholics with no college education and poor jobs–that’s why the turkey baster was utilized instead of the fertility clinic.
I am not discounting all the solid families that may form where the responsibility for children is clear–some SSMs may work out fine without requiring a different presumption of paternity in the law. But the fact that some difficult cases are possible, like the one I contrived* means the laws will have to accommodate different biological realities.
But separate laws for same sex unions have been rejected too, and might be rejected nationwide; leaving us with a huge problem of different is the same but different is different too. SSM as the exact same thing as traditional marriage can also mean manifest injustice for a gay like Bob who might be held responsible for a child he never had a thing to do with and did not father. Somebody has to be looking out for the Bobs of the world, too. Don’t you argue that even if most gays are bad parents, we cannot deny those who are good parents and throw their children under the bus; yet we cannot deny Bob’s autonomous choice to not become a parent when he never waived that right by having sex in a potentially procreative manner or accepting the child as his own.
This would mean a second scheme of laws to support SSM and its potential peculiar situations and another set for different situations that arise from procreative relationships, or ptentially procreative ones.
I do not have any confidence in any claims that gay people aren’t just as capable of screwed up situations as straight people are. I saw a lot of screwed up situations evaluating both heterosexual and homosexual domestic cases in the office and no matter what you tell me about the solidness of homosexual relationships I know for certain there are indeed plenty of messed up ones. You don;t have to believe what I saw in the law office, but I sure am not going to forget, and it doesn’t make me a bigot to say I know there are messed up situations.
In the end, Ted and Mary are responsible for a child, whose life will be best if they team up and marry to raise the child. I really do not care that Ted and Mary did it with a turkey baster. it’s the fact that they did it and they are the only two responsible.
Don’t procreate with someone you will not be willing to marry. And if you can afford inexpensive fertility clinic help, you again are not the target problem group of irresponsible procreators.
Book 1 Commentaries, Chapter 16 Of Parent and Child.
“The main end and design of marriage therefore being to ascertain and fix upon some certain person, to whom the care, the maintenance, and the education of the children should belong,”
pretty much a repeat of the last quote.
- There really was a similar case within the last few years where the court had a great deal of difficulty choosing which two of three putative parents the child’s parentage should ascribed to, leading California to recently enact the so-called “three-parents law.”
If we accept as a point of law the 9th circuit holding that it is unlawful to deny a child’s parent’s marriage, how long will it be before some polygamist figures out all they need do is get all three of them recognized as a child’s parents and dump the VERY DIFFICULT question of “which two?” into some unlucky court’s lap. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment of a judge. (Scalia’s ACA joke when someone suggested the court read it all) Which two indeed? And if the question why two isn’t answered by “because it takes two to procreate and never more than two” then I don’t understand why two is the magic number anyway. Nor is it acceptable to say it leaves aimless unmarried young men around; I predict just as many aimless young women left out o someone else’s polygamy, too, and your side wouldn’t complain if 150 million lesbian pairs left most of 150 million men marriageless.
For a guy who is all about the intellectual discourse, you sure do try to talk about feelings an awful lot.
I don’t hate you. I don’t know you. You appear to be a ranting and impotent person. I’m not sure what there is in that to hate.
Asking you for citation does not mean you can proffer your opinion as an authority. I do not see your claim of SSM being in the fourteenth amendment. Nor have I EVER SEEN ANY COURT under strict scrutiny analyze any kind of gay rights, and if it involved a fundamental right, then they would have. EP does not serve to create the right or prove you* have it. It asks the question independently whether you have the fundamental right to begin with. It is a circular argument to use the EP clause to answer whether you have the fundamental right when EP’s jurisprudence needs to know whether you have the right to answer any questions about EP. Nor can an analysis under rational basis or heightened scrutiny confer the fundamental right; if they did, they could kick all cases up to strict scrutiny. I’ve never read an EP case that started off with one of the lower standards and then say, and well, since that proves there is a fundamental right involved, we’re switching on over to strict scrutiny…
Let me walk you through EP analysis.
The very first question we have to answer, the threshold question, is whether the two groups are similarly situated in all relevant respects. This is where the fundamental problem of whether marriage is primarily centered on being a responsible means to procreate where we conveniently know who is responsible for what. Only one kind of marriage is offered; not several; unless we’re talking a state with civil unions. We’re not. Since only one marriage type is offered, it is on you to prove you are entitled to that same marriage. Now, if you are not procreative in the pairing you want to be recognized, you have a problem under EP–because marriage’s ONE MAN ONE WOMAN bit speaks procreation in a big way. No more than what it takes to procreate, no less, EVER, in the only precise way it can–because Griswold and the like forbid government from going further. We’ve already been over the ground that at least under rational basis review** perfection is not required and thus the argument that procreation happens outside of marriage and not all marriages procreate, and homosexuals can procreate with someone else other than the marriage partner all become moot because those are perfection based arguments.
Now we must decide if you’re similarly situated at the threshold because an EP question is foreclosed if you’re not. Thus it is incumbent to prove marriage has no relevant purpose centered on procreation which is just not so under a mountain of evidence and authorities. Most of the marriage questions we are familiar with are peripheral (but all relate to procreation) because the the idea marriage is centered on procreation is so well settled it almost escapes mention–no-one argued for centuries over what everyone knew and agreed upon. For many of those centuries we didn’t even know of a concept of a “gay” as we do today, meaning animus against only a modern concept is slightly faulty for a reason as to why we have marriage all along, when the world’s most respectable “gays” were more likely to marry a woman and agree with such social structure, while seeking sex with men outside marriage. Not always, bit many many times. Such a man, if exposed in the 18th century, would be a sodomite. But even he agreed with the social structure that marriage was for his procreative instincts, any which he had. No-one had the idea that two men should marry, and thus no-one could have had an opinion against it based on animosity.
Since there is no similar situation in all relevant respects between completely non-procreational in a beyond doubt sort of way, and apirs that are ptoentially procreational, the remaining questions need not be answered, and EP is not your route.
But let’s assume marriage is sufficiently non-procreational to agree that SSM is similarly situated. Now we are confronted with which standard to use. If there is a fundamental right involved or if a suspect classification is involved, we must use strict scrutiny and next ask whether there is a compelling governmental interest involved (Much less than $100 billion a year has been used to justify a "compelling interest, and that’s what we spend each year on out-of-wedlock childbirth, a problem not helped by gay activists pounding their propaganda that marriage is not rationally related to procreation because there are so many baby daddies runnin around and similar perfectionist arguments that the public is too uneducated on EP to understand is not a valid argument) and if there is, then we must ask whether the law is as narrowly tailored as possible. One man + One woman can not possibly go further to express a procreational function of marriage because we cannot require it to “possibly” violate privacy. That’s the end of possibility of narrowness–as narrow as it can get. But if we can neither say there is a fundamental right involved (independently of EP lest we use your circular argument that EP recognizes a new fundamental right in order to evaluate whether something is a fundamental right.) nor a suspect classification and it is very clear the state of the law is neither is true–we have to deal with intermediate, or heightened scrutiny, or rational basis review.
Now if this gets difficult and confusing its because this argument is difficult and confusing, I too am bewildered at the Alice-In Wonderland quality of it all. 'Twas Brillig, indeed. So, perfectly confusing, why are we even considering again whether marriage is sufficiently centered on procreation when we already had to decide that at the threshold to discover whether two groups are sufficiently similarly situated?
Well, because we have a different reason. This time, if we happen to be stuck with rational basis review (maybe we aren’t but for the moment let’s concede we are) we are faced with the nifty mental exercise of whether there is any conceivable state of facts that can rationally justify the current marriage scheme, NOT whether the legislature acted with animus*** but whether even if it did, there can still be rational reason advanced. Even if the legislature thought outlawing cheddar cheese would make the moon’s green cheese more popular, the fact that is irrational as can be isn’t what we’re asking–if the Attorney General can argue there is some new and previously unknown disease at least correlated to cheddar cheese consumption, regardless of the legislatures reasoning, then the anti-cheddar cheese argument is probably good to go, despite cheddar cheese manufacturer’s claims the science of the cheddar cheese disease is not well-settled. If finding marriage to be centered on procreation is rational, then our inquiry once again ends. It plainly is. Traditional marriage survives rational basis without offering SSM. Proving all the animus in the world only matters AFTER showing there is no rational basis. You can’t just switch animus for the proffered reason and skip deciding whether it is rational because you prefer animus an explanation for the existence of the law, and there is a lot of mistaken opinion that any animus alone is the key to Kennedy’s opinions–Kennedy first removes any rationality form the proffered reason and then says “Bare Animus Alone” is no justification. You guys instead seem to say “Any Animus we can find then replaces any rational reason and proves it irrational.” And that is too far a stretch from what Kennedy has written for me to swallow.
I’m stopping the walk through now, because the rest as applied to SSM is currently controversial to say the least in the courts.
The real proof there is no fundamental right involved is the fact it is so widely admitted that heightened scrutiny might or might not apply, vs the usual rational basis. There was some talk of “rational basis with teeth” here on the boards and other places which I have come to realize is no new doctrinal development since it was quite some time ago that the rational basis standard was said to not be toothless. because the real controversy is which of the lesser standards not involving strict scrutiny apply. If you were right, the balance of authority would be applying the
I cite Baker as an authority that says your opinion ain’t squat. If something trumps Baker and says it is a fundamental right, by all means trot out your authorities, because there’s no fundamental right under the federal constitution if there’s no federal question involved.
And once again, my arguments are based on a refusal to let you strip marriage of a procreational shelter or any other procreational function it has with an EP argument demanding the only kind of marriage be seen as a matter of law as non-procreational. NOT ANIMUS, for I surely am capable of agreeing with your end result–legal gay marriage–but not by any route at all, and especially not by an EP route.
*You mistake me for claiming “you” are gay when I am meaning to say as a proponent to this right, you must have the same rights to SSM as a gay has, because it’s not a special right for gays, but everyone’s right to marry the person of their choice. So maybe you might want to go do you some gold diggin’ even though you’re not gay. Somebody will invent SSM gold-digging (probably already did) and they’ll have just as much right to it as Anna Nicole Smith did.
**(I contend that this applies under any review, with special attention in strict scrutiny for narrowness, but will settle for now that at least rational basis review does not require perfection in a law. But the court has said NO LAW is perfect, not “no law which falls under rational review is perfect.” It simply makes no sense that any standard could require a law to go so far as to violate some other constitutional right such as privacy.)
***The mistake here is all of Kennedy’s reasoning about animus in Romer, Lawrence, and Windsor is based on first determining the proffered justification is rational, and then, after determining that, saying the only possible reason to justify this law is animus since the proffered reason is not rational. This is a far cry from saying the proffered reason is irrational because the legislature had animus, or the people did. Proving gays have been victimized may prove animus exists, but that is not our question under EP. The question is whether any conceivable state of facts or opinions can rationally justify the law. If the question is debatable, and SSM is highly debatable, then rational basis is satisfied and an EP argument for SSM loses.
crap/ “Inexpensive fertility clinic help” should read “expensive fertility clinic help.”
“isn’t going to show he isn’t a biological father.” should read "he is a biological father.
I’m not surprised. Still, that’s my answer. That’s the reasoning they are using in overturning gay marriage bans post-Windsor, and you can expect them to do the same when they take up SSM in the next few years.
Really? You are the one who asserted that the underlying purpose for marriage had a specific function:
Now you want to say that I cannot ask for a citation that that underlying purpose was expressed in law?
If the purpose is not expressed, it is an error to claim that it is expressly for a specific purpose.
As to your subsequent effort to support your claim:
Taking the text out of context fails to make your point.
In fact, you have inverted the actual opinion with your truncation.
Blackstone was noting that it is a primary natural duty for a father to care for his children. From this it followed, (from Montesquieu’s opinion, not actually from statute or judicial opinion), that a marriage secured that legal obligation.
Blackstone does not say that marriage was created for the exclusive purpose of securing parental obligations. He says nothing about the need to prevent children from becoming burdens on the state. Those are misreadings of the text. (And this without even getting into the fact that it is merely a Blackstone opinion regarding an opinion of Montesquieu regarding a philosophical point without any reference or citation to an actual law or judicial opinion.)
I deny your “expressed goal” as neither proven nor even supported in actual law.
I very carefully explained that the purposes of a law are rarely contained within the law itself. If you want a citation for a law with the purpose contained within itself you are asking for nonsense. I cannot cite to You are already aware that many states have proffered this rationale, are you not? Well, it is the state that gets to decide the purpose of a law.
I asked you to clarify what you meant, and you still haven’t. I asked you whether you wanted me to cite the state’s purpose, or a law that has the purpose expressed within it in no uncertain terms. You are neither answering nor acknowledging, if the later, that you are asking for something that largely doesn’t exist. Show me a citation that the purpose of a law indeed has to be contained in the law itself.
The best this really gets is sometimes a whole act (meaning a set of laws passed together–may have some sort of preamble expressing the purpose, but this is not really done that much. One cannot expect a law to express its purpose–its only function is to apprise you of the acts you must do or refrain from doing or what you may do. There is no requirement in law that the purpose be expressed.
You are correct insofar as it’s not the “taking the text out of context” that doesn’t make any points–it is the text that makes a point that the number one consideration of marriage is the care of children and who is responsible. The additional text does not disprove this, and further supports it. There certainly is not a hint that the purpose of marriage is companionship between adults or love or 1100+ plus federal benefits, duties, and burdens.
Stick your head in the sand and deny authority on the common law all you wish. It doesn’t make you right. Blackstone made a statement on the common law that is widely accepted as authoritative which you dismiss as mere philosophy.
There is no misreading of the text–marriage is about determining and securing responsibility for the children one has made, which is the same thing I am saying.
As for why we want to do that, are you seriously contending that does not address out-of-wedlock birth? of course it does; if the father properly supports his children, then it follows that the state ISN’T. But in Blackstone’s day, any welfare was charity done by the church–which of course was state supported, so I could concede they had a state welfare program–but nowhere near as robust as ours today.
Well I was still waiting for your clarification.
if indeed you demand that the standard of proof is finding the purpose clearly stated within the law, my rebuttal is that you are demanding the wrong mechanism of proving the purpose of a law. The purpose of a law is determined by the state’s say-so. Whatever the state proffers, and it need not be backed up by anything at all, we have to accept for analysis.
If you continue to claim to the contrary, 1) Cite authority for the position that a law must have its express purpose contained within the law. 2)Then show me ANY of the gay’s proposed purposes of marriage likewise satisfactorily contained in the law.
Perhaps this will help you:
“Procreation: The generation of children. One of the principal ends of marriage is the procreation of children. lust. tit. 2, in pr.”
Black’s Online Law Dicitonary 2nd Edition. Also Bouvier’s Law Dictionary and the Free Legal Dictionary. The exact same definition in all three, apparently taken from Bouvier’s as it was the first of these dictionaries.
I suppose the dictionary revisionists haven’t been able to touch the law dictionaries yet.
Next, here is the 8th circuit’s handling of the question: (My Bolding)
PDF!
** § 29, Nebraska Constitution: “Only marriage between a man and a woman shall be valid or recognized in Nebraska. The uniting of two persons of the same sex in a civil union, domestic partnership, or other similar same-sex relationship shall not be valid or recognized in Nebraska.”**
This is the law in question. Note it does not say WHY anywhere, NOR does it say “the purpose of this law is animosity to homosexuals” Which you would seemingly require it to say to prove your own argument (or that of others you fail to contest, and therefore implicitly accept–if not, tell them they are wrong) that the purpose of the law is animosity. Somehow you require my purpose to be in the law itself but not anyone else’s purpose. This law does not say its purpose is companionship, love, keeping lawyers busy, or 1100+ federal benefits, burdens and duties. So how could any of these “purposes” then stand, if mine fails for failure to be contained within the law?
**“The State argues that the many laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman and extending a variety of benefits to married couples are rationally related to the government interest in “steering procreation into marriage.” By affording legal recognition and a basket of rights and benefits to married heterosexual couples, such laws “encourage procreation to take place within the socially recognized unit that is best situated for raising children.” The State and its supporting amici cite a host of judicial decisions and secondary authorities recognizing and upholding this rationale. The argument is based in part on the traditional notion that two committed heterosexuals are the optimal partnership for raising children, which modern-day homosexual parents understandably decry. But it is also based on a “responsible procreation” theory that justifies conferring the inducements of marital recognition and benefits on opposite-sex couples, who can otherwise produce children by accident, but not on same-sex couples, who cannot. See Hernandez v. Robles, No. 86, 2006 NY Slip Op 5239 at 5-6 (N.Y. Ct. App. Jul. 6, 2006); Morrison v. Sadler, 821 N.E.2d 15, 24-26 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005). Whatever our personal views regarding this political and sociological debate, we cannot conclude that the State’s justification “lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.” Romer, 517 U.S. at 632.3”
“Appellees argue that § 29 does not rationally advance this purported state
interest because “prohibiting protection for gay people’s relationships” does not steer procreation into marriage. This demonstrates, Appellees argue, that § 29’s only purpose is to disadvantage gay people. But the argument disregards the expressed intent of traditional marriage laws – to encourage heterosexual couples to bear and raise children in committed marriage relationships. Appellees attempt to isolate § 29 from other state laws limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. But as we have explained, there is no fundamental right to be free of the political barrier a validly enacted constitutional amendment erects. If the many state laws limiting the persons who may marry are rationally related to a legitimate government interest, so is the reinforcing effect of § 29. The barrier created by § 29 was enough to confer standing, but Appellees’ equal protection argument fails on the merits.”**
Ctizens For EP v. Bruning 455 F.3d 859 (8th Cir. 2006)
**Also See Mirizio v. Mirizio(242 N.Y. 74, 81): “The mere fact that the law provides that physical incapacity for sexual relationship shall be ground for annulling a marriage is of itself sufficient indication of the public policy that such relationship shall exist with the result and for the purpose of begetting offspring.” **
Please note these courts simply accept the state’s proffered rationale. They engage in none of your nonsense of demanding the purpose must be contained in the law.
Cite for your claim. It is erroneous and you will not be able to find support for it.
Again, you cannot disregard the proffered purpose and exchange it for your preferred one, the one that allows your argument to succeed. What you have to do is show the proffered purpose has no relation to the actual law, not ignore it and say the purpose is something else.
“This demonstrates, Appellees argue, that § 29’s only purpose is to disadvantage gay people. But the argument disregards the expressed intent of traditional marriage laws – to encourage heterosexual couples to bear and raise children in committed marriage relationships.”
This opinion was not appealed to the Supreme Court, and is the standing law in the 8th circuit.
Again:** " The State and its supporting amici cite a host of judicial decisions and secondary authorities recognizing and upholding this rationale."**
A HOST OF AUTHORITY.
Who’s “they?” Show me these decisions and explain their rationale. What source do you rely upon for the opinions of this “they” who is so important to you? And don’t forget this is your claim we are talking about, that there is a fundamental right to SSM in the federal constitution.
Not even the most pro-gay court in the land has said this, and none of the recent post-Windsor decision say this. You’re making it up because you wish it so.
By way of example:
These judges are ruling that bans on SSM violate the equal protection clause.
All of you please note my primary opposition is too an EP argument which conceivably can strip marriage of its procreative purposes.
However, the “new doctrinal developments” in Lawrence, and somewhat in Windsor, Rely on substantive Due Process, which is less threatening in my view because it does not require proving marriage is non-procreational.
The court’s lead, wherever they may wish to lead us to, is clearly much more founded in due process.
What I do not understand is why you guys stick so hard to alrgely failed EP attempts, when it’s obvious your wins are much more under Due Process?
My advice is forget EP and stick to due process. That doesn’t say anything about gays being bad or not deserving gay marriage–all it is is about the strategy.
Why you’re so blindly devoted to this EP strategy is beyond me when your chances of winning are much stronger under Due Process.
The best I could do to argue Devil’s Advocate against due process is pointing out it’s privacy provisions demand government stay out of harmless sexual relationships, so it makes little sense to put it back in. That’s not nearly as strong as my EP arguments, and I really have no personal reasons to want to push that. Except thinking some caution might be wise and the issue could use more, and more solid, study.
And of course I am not ignoring that due process has Liberty interests to consider. That one is much harder to get around.
But in the interest of debate, and more fully wanting to understand, I pose the question anyway, for the sake of all of our knowledge…why put the state back into your harmless relationships with no state interest in being a partner in your relationship?
I understand that married people tend to be healthier, and that could be a legitimate state interest in being in your relationship? But so far as I know–and I could be wrong–the studies showing better health of married couples were only of heterosexual couples, which in any other context is rejected by gays because it didn’t study GAY marriages on an equal footing with heterosexual ones. So, if we accept this reason for why the government should want to be involved, health is rational. But is there any evidence that SSM couples specifically have better health? And if they do, are they as rigorous in methodology as the studies of heterosexual married couples? I know it is a problem to random sample and find enough gay couples in comparison to how easy it is to random sample heterosexual couples, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept convenience samples as having the same weight as random sampled studies, though we might have to accept this is the best that can be done at the moment.
This isn’t being addressed anywhere that I know of, and I am extremely curious, if someone knows. I’d prefer not to hear more opinions and speculation, but an authority on the question.