Disparate impact. It’s a legal principle which means, essentially that a policy has the unintended effect of discriminating against a group of people.
So to those who say, “no, gays are not being discriminated against, because they have as much right to marry an opposite sex person as a heterosexual”, the effect of the laws is that they have a disparate impact on a group of people, so claiming that there is no discrimination is false.
Well, thank you, Ilsa. Out of modesty, I was going to stay silent, so I’m glad you’re not like that.
My brilliance is directed at fucktard fundamentalists who raise that as evidence that gays and lesbians already enjoy equal rights - that they are free to “enjoy” a right in which they have, by definition, no interest.
Just to extend that analogy, some French politician / journalist from the Nineteenth Century commented that the law in its impartiality permits both the rich and the poor to sleep under bridges–or equally forbids them, one or the other.
What about people who have no interest in sex of any kind.
What about people with disabilities or deformities that, sadly, leave them essentially unmarryable or uninterested in the franchise?
There are plenty of disparate impacts that are out there. Not all of them are prima facie cases of discrimination.
This is one of the reasons I favor a federal civil union benefit that makes no reference to the presence or absence of a sexual relationship among the participants. This will allow the establishment of a household, hospital visitation, tax benefits, insurance, death benefits, and other things.
I think this would go a long way toward removing much of the inequality many people deal with in addition to providing a safety net for many people who need one. And it would do so while respecting and leaving intact an important part of our American family tradition.
Certainly, should a man become pregnant, that would be his right.
RE the OP: the proper response to such is to point out that it’s not a sexual-preference issue, it’s a gender issue: Britney Spears has the right to get drunk and marry Whatshisname, and I do not, and gender discrimination is strictly verboten.
Not according to the Supreme Court of the United States; it receives intermediate scrutiny (and there is nothing – even race discrimination or impediments to free speech or the free exercise of religion – that are “strictly verboten.” You know, the old “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theatre” thing…)
If you can come up with a way for a man to terminate a pregnancy in a way that doesn’t violate a woman’s bodily autonomy, I’ll be all for allowing men as well as women to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
(Oh, and the so-called “male abortion” of refusing to accept parental responsibility for a newborn is NOT the equivalent of terminating a pregnancy, as a live child entitled to support from BOTH its parents is still around at the end of that particular form of “termination”.)
How about RU486 or the morning after pill?
If I, as a man, say to you, as a woman (assuming you are one given your name and the question), post-coitus: “Please take this morning after pill which I am happy to provide, as I do not wish to be a father. If you refuse, I am absolved of my responsibility for child support.”
And by the way, your definitions are legally incorrect.
Nevertheless, back to the point which is off topic anyway:
If all I ask is for the female to take a morning after pill, and she refuses, you think it makes sense that I am held financial responsible for this child?
Yes, because you had sex with her, and sex can lead to pregnancy. She cannot become pregnant without your sperm. Therefore, it would make far more sense for you to simply not have sex with her in the first place (if you didn’t want to be responsible for her child).
Having sex and then hoping that she’ll go along with you bailing out of your responsibilities for the child (if there is a child) doesn’t make any sense at all. It sounds very foolish.
If I’d been trying to make a legal point I might care. Given that I explicitly described my post as playing fast and loose, it would seem that legal hairsplitting wasn’t on my mind.
And I thought that the point was that gays really are discriminated against by opposite-sex marriage only laws. Which they are.