I agree, but this isn’t what my thread was about. I understand you care about the issue, but my question was strictly about a divorce as it relates to a gay marriage…
I will comment about Elvis’ equal protection comment: I can’t marry a man in Florida, just like Richard Simmons can’t marry a man in Florida. My next door neighbor lady can’t marry a woman the same way the lesbian I work with can’t marry a woman. EQUAL. Just because our preferences are different doesn’t matter.
I love to not wear my seat belt when I drive. That doesn’t make it a 14th amendment issue denying my equal protection as a “non seatbelt wearer”.
If we take your argument to its logical conclusion, then every law is a 14th problem, because whatever “group” the law hits on is denied “equal protection”…
You don’t need it, because you aren’t gay. Gays, on the other hand, have a very immediate need for the right to marry, and there’s simply no rational reason not to grant it. Which point, I am sure, you are about to make for me, when you attempt in your usual clumsy fashion to explain why gays should be excluded from the institution of marriage.
Every state in the union recognizes a common-law marriage legally formed in some other state, even if they don’t themselves permit common-law marriages.
But they don’t ahve to, and this is not by operation of the Full Faith and Credit clause. Such recognition arises from each state’s laws providing for that recognition.
That would certainly be the better way to go about it. Right now, marriage is itself not a federal issue, but you can make a very good argument that in this day and age, it should be. A Constitutional amendment would firmly place regulation of marriage in the federal sphere and offer it to same-sex couples, which is appropriate.
And in general on this issue. Certainly being able to get married is a good thing, but if you can you need to take into account that getting divorced could then become a pretty significant problem. It’s not as if every couple getting married even thinks about divorce, so I do have sympathy. But while I think they should be able to, they’re stuck with what the law says.
Why? Just make a trivial modification to the legal definitions of marriage and divorce (a modification, I should point out, that would just be the abandoning of a long-standing tradition that few bothered to codify because it never occurred to them to do so) and both are covered adequately. I’m not personally aware of anything in current divorce law that requires the spouses be of different gender. Are you?
I’m not aware of the law, point blank. And to be clear, i’m not saying that I don’t think they should be able to get divorced (or married); I would be in favour of a change such as the one you mention. I’m just saying that as the law stands, it seems they’re not going to be able to get divorced, at least as the Supreme Court in this question interpreted it. If someone’s going to get married or do anything really, looking at the legal consequences of that are a good idea, even when you don’t agree with what those consequences should be. Because it’s the ones that exist that’ll bite you in the ass.
Or what happens if one of the women marries a man in a state that doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage (or civil unions) and then moves to Massachusetts? Is she then guilty of bigamy? The RI Supreme Court was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It couldn’t allow the couple to get divorced without ruling that they were married. It’s the legislature’s job to make laws, not the judiciary. The judiciary’s job is to interpret the law in accordance with the constitutions.
In reading your response to Bryan Ekers, I’m now unsure exactly what you were agreeing with LonesomePolecat about, so I don’t really know if it’s sad or not.
There is exactly the same “need” for gay marriage as for straight marriage—i.e., none.
All we need are civil unions that allow for consenting adults to enter into mutually beneficial relationships, and that make clear what the rights and responsibilities of each party to the agreement is.
But, if we are going to grant one section of the community the right to marry, and the social and legal benefits that go along with that, then everyone should have the same right. It has nothing to do with whether society prefers heterosexuality or homosexuality. It has to do with according heterosexuals and homosexuals the same rights.
Yeah, shame on those liberals. Whoever said that the Constitution was to be used as a basis for running a nation?
There’s just as much need for gay marriage as there is for straight marriage; it’s all marriage. And society has no right whatsoever to prefer heterosexuality over homosexuality, any more than it has a right to prefer men over women, or right handers over left handers, or whites over blacks. Doing so is bigoted and evil.
And I notice you didn’t answer my question :
Well ? DO you support the right of states to do such things ? Or, let me guess, is homosexuality somehow a special case ?
As much as I like the mystery; I do think there’s no need for gay marriage, just as I don’t think there’s any need for heterosexual marriage. “Need”, for me, means food, water, that kind of thing. It’s a good want, but not a need.
In terms of rights, there’s two types (as far as this goes, anyway); legal and inherent. As far as legal rights, current American society can indeed prefer heterosexuality over homosexuality in this way. And I don’t believe there are any inherent rights. As much as I would like society to not be able to prefer in this way, it is able to.
Society could declare itself able to prefer anything it wants, actually. In theory, ~2000 people in the United States could amend the Constitution at will (these representing 67% of 75% of the state legislatures, plus 67% of Congress, as I understand the process), so I’d guess that “society” can pretty much do what it wants but at the same time nothing that society decides is permanent.
I figure ten years, tops, before gay marriage in the U.S. doesn’t even raise an eyebrow, through a combination of Canada and several states allowing it and the Earth not being destroyed as a result. The kids will grow up accepting it as normal and that’ll be that, because an energetic segment of the population wants it, there’s no compelling social reason to deny them, and most of the population won’t care.
Depends on what you mean by “raise an eyebrow”. I think SSM will be legal in CA within that timeframe, and it will probably be done by the legislature. We already passed it once, but Arnold vetoed. A Democrat in that office probably would not do that. A few other states might follow (or precede) CA.
But… you won’t see SSM in all 50 states in my lifetime. The SCOTUS isn’t going to mandate it, and there are many states firmly locked into no SSM through state constitutional amendments. I’d be very surprised if we had SSM in even a majority of the states before I kick the bucket.
It’s amazing to see the anti-SSM side (I know you’re not one of them) so often claim that they wish to preserve the institution of marriage against those who would redefine it (as if current mixed-sex marriages would be affected at all), and *simultaneously * claim that they’d have no objection to a far-more-radical redefinition themselves, by having the state get out of the business entirely.
