And segregation did not end after Brown. Earlier Interstate Commerce Commission and indeed some Federal Courts had made dozens of rulings on abolishing segregation and they had sweet fuck all effect.
The real success was due to the VRA and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
And thus the 19th amendment guarantees women the right to vote. I’m at a loss as to the significance of your nitpick.
I’m actually glad someone posted this. I’ve been listening to C-Span for the last two days at work; it’s what my coworker likes to listen to, so I just go with it. Anyhow, I’v been listening to the debates back and forth ad nauseum and after a while I’ve just come to the conclusion that neither those for or against gay marriage have a lock on rational argument in favor of their respective sides. There seems to be no principle applied to the situation which does not have a contradiction in current law.
Really, for me, it seems that we have social norms and they go more to how we feel about things and are not completely rational.
Is the Supreme Court supposed to bow to public pressure, or interpret the Constitution?
This is nothing knew. Over 100 years ago, with regard to the question of whether habeas corpus applied in the Philippines, Mr. Dooley noted that the Constitution may not follow the flag, but the Supreme Court follows the election returns.
“Any person” includes 14-year-olds, correct?
If not, why not?
If the proponents of gay marriage claim that it’s ok to discriminate against 14-year-olds who want to get married, then they must explain why (a) certain kinds of discrimination are ok, and (b) why they feel that it is so important to redefine marriage into something that it has never been before in all of recorded history.
Hint: if marriage is defined strictly as between one man and one woman, then all the associated issues, such as polygamy, simply and quietly disappear.
Because 14 year olds aren’t men and women? What if I drag into court evidence that in normal human societies, the breeding actually starts at <some age lower than 18> on average? Oh, well, a 16 year old getting pregnant can’t care for her baby because she hasn’t finished high school? In today’s world, 18 year olds can’t either, they need the right certs from college or they can’t support a kid in conditions better than poverty.
You could argue that a 17 year old hasn’t matured enough to have sex…but the latest evidence seems to show the maturing takes until about age 28…
Essentially, 18 is arbitrary. Maybe we should make it 19 or 28.
14-year-olds lack the capacity to form most kinds of contract, not just marriage.
And if marriage is defined strictly as between two people, the associated issues also simply disappear.
Either we are tolerant or we are not.
Lack of tolerance is the problem.
Why is there so much of the lack?
Because I want my share to be bigger than yours.
How do I get more than you?
By being in control.
In the dim past when the first human traded another something they had for something the had or could do, we doomed ourselves. We established ‘classes.’
We now have gone around the corner where we want our freedoms to be guaranteed by force of government with a total lack of responsibility on our part which is exactly the opposite of freedom.
The majority opinion written by Kennedy did not go into level of scrutiny, or much legal analysis at all for that matter. It basically said the right to marry is fundamental because of liberty. Yeah, let’s hear it for Liberty!
Roberts’ and Thomas’ dissents delved more into some form of legal analysis, but neither touched the level of scrutiny idea. Thomas opined at some length that the term " liberty" as include in the 14th and 5th Amendment was used as a part of a phrase that had its roots in the Magna Carta. And the meaning of " liberty" in this setting was a right of " loco-motion" and thus a protection against imprisonment without due process. Nothing more.
Scalia’s dissent raised Ginsburg’s comments about Roe v. Wade, that deciding such an important issue via judicial means may in fact result in the issue continuing to foment for much longer. While I agree with the outcome, I hope we don’t rue the reasoning used.
Of the dissents, three quite explicitly stated that it is certainly the privilege of the States to permit SSM, but none delved into whether such marriages would have to be recognized across state lines.
Here is the Judgement in question.
Kennedy J seems to dispense with even the pretence of legal reasoning for most of his opinion.
Without touching to the merits of the matter, that is not a good thing, for anyone.
Let’s take a look at Loving v. Virginia, which overthrew that state’s ban on interracial marriages.
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868.
In 1880 the Court held that Alabama’s ban on interracial sex didn’t violate the 14th Amendment because it applied to both blacks and whites.
More than 50 years after the 14th Amendment) Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, forbidding interracial marriages. In fact, at one time or another, the majority of states had laws forbidding interracial marriage. Or just ask the people of those 14 states which still wanted to ban interracial marriages 99 years after the 14th Amendment.
Also, after the 14th Amendment there were three separate attempts in Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriage, the last coming in 1928.
I’ll pause for a moment to let us ponder why Virginia, or any other state, or Congress would even consider such a law more than a half-century after “any rational reasoning of the text” of the 14th Amendment might suggest that banning interracial marriage would be unconstitutional.
And anyone who believes that ballot box + legislature = always good needs to reread John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty.
ICBW but I believe I’ve read that polyandrous and polygamous marriages are allowed if they predate entry to the US. Perhaps ‘respected’ might be better than ‘allowed’.
I’ve never understood the argument that basic human rights should be up for majority vote.
Thanks Iggy, well done.
I suppose we should have known it would be Kennedy.
Habeed - have you actually read the rulings in any of these cases you’re complaining about? Because if you have, you haven’t addressed any of the rationales for why the Court decided the way it did. It looks like you have simply leaped to the conclusion that everything the the majority’s opinions are BS that’s covering up a political decision, and yet you don’t seem to be aware of the Court’s reasoning at all.
I posted a question in the GD thread about what I saw as a really interesting hole in Kennedy’s opinion. The dog that didn’t bark, if you will. Maybe if you read the opinions and join that conversation, your questions would work themselves out some way.
Not a lawyer and not knowledgeable about the law … but as the word “marriage” is not defined in the constitution the court must accept the use of the concept within our society. Once most of the country (by way of states) is defining these contracts between same sex couples as valid marriages then to some degree that becomes what the word mean for purposes of textual understanding. And there is no going back.
The point had been made in the NYT back last October after they let stand appeals court rulings allowing same-sex marriage in five states:
If this is what you want, push for it. File a lawsuit, and advocate publicly. I’m certainly willing to consider that such relationships are (or should be) Constitutionally protected, but I’d have to hear some reasoned arguments from people actually in such relationships who state they are denied certain rights.
If it’s a fundamental right under the due process clause, then the standard is strict scrutiny. At least that’s what I remember from constitutional law in law school.
Which would mean this decision sidestepped the whole equal protection of the laws issue with regards to homosexuals. We don’t know whether the government can discriminate against homosexuals with other laws that do not prohibit same sex marriage. We just know that homosexuals can’t be denied the fundamental right to marriage.
Show me somewhere in the country where the government allows three people to get married and I’ll agree you’re entitled to equality.
But because the overall movement is usually referred to as the GLBT i would not rule it out in the future that marriage and family will evolve way beyond what we recognize now. I could give examples of group families now who have been together decades and are just as much good members of society as you or I. Will their day take a lot longer than it has for basic couples? Sure. But don’t write it off as impossible. As pointed out in another post, what we’re talking here in a sense is contract law and that doesn’t have to be limited by anything other than the people involved and the state. And the state can clearly change its mind.