That’s right.
This is the silliest thing that has been posted in this thread.
Yep, it is (eastern and western!). One Friday, the ladies at my workplace decided to go out to lunch at the local barbecue shack to celebrate a birthday. I was the only one at the table who ordered barbecue; with the exception of two ladies who ordered fried chicken gizzards, everyone else at the table got fried shrimp or fried fish. (The barbecue at this place is excellent, by the way.)
And heck, if these people are supposedly so concerned about marriage, why aren’t they trying to make divorce illegal?
Because that’s something that might actually inconvenience THEM…
If there’s no burdened class, what does the amendment do? If there’s a group of people affected by the amendment, how is there not a class defined for us already, regardless of whether “we have a reason” to define it?
In other words, why should anyone care whether an individual can hop in and out of the class, when by definition people are only burdened to the extent of their membership in the class?
You’re not exactly correct about the whole idea of suspect class analysis, incidentally. Discrete & insular minorities and immutable traits are only part of the picture.
Except that North Carolina state law prohibits the conduct of ‘marriage ceremonies’ which purport to create ‘marriages’ not permitted under state law. So perhaps you do indeed have a large problem with the NC law?
The only fabric mixture forbidden by the Bible is wool and linen.
I made a status about this on Facebook and currently have someone on it who is arguing why it’s a bad idea (as in, he’s a huge bigot). I have a few people arguing against him, but it’s not getting through.
WHY I’m friends with this person myself, I don’t know. I never knew he had these views before. I guess I’m only keeping him around now in the hopes that he’s torn a new asshole by others on my friends list.
So far that status is up to 130 replies.
If anyone would like to add me on FB, send me a PM and I’ll link you. : p
Many of you already know that I’m gay, but I’ll say it again here.
It pains me to say this, but I believe Terr may be onto something with his arguments.
In Loving v Virginia, the parties involved were arrested and charged with a crime. It wasn’t just that Virginia didn’t RECOGNIZE interracial marriages from other states (or ceremonies performed in their own state), but that it was actually illegal to have it done at all and be in Virginia.
Right now I could go get married to my boyfriend in another state, or another country, or even here in Texas, and go around flaunting my certificate and shouting it that I had gotten “gay married” somewhere. Am I going to be thrown in prison? No.
I am definitely not a lawyer or constitutional scholar, but I think Terr might be at least somewhat correct.
Perhaps Bricker or Rand Rover could correct my misunderstandings, but as I see it, the current laws banning gay marriage and gay civil unions are not on the same level as anti-miscegenation laws. Those laws actually resulted in prosecution for violating them, whereas the anti-gay laws of today only prevent state-level recognition of gay marriage and civil unions.
I certainly hope I’m wrong.
Also, to keep on topic, North Carolina… 60% of you guys who voted suck. But I won’t let a mostly republican turn-out skew my opinion of the state overall. I have learned that moving from Oregon to Texas, you can’t just paint an entire state with a broad brush. There are plenty of good people living everywhere, including the most homophobic states.
My Facebook diatribe:
If you're religious, that's fine. But if you're religious and you hear God telling you to discriminate against gay people, then you're insane. And I'm not speaking figuratively, I mean you're not right in the head, like Son of Sam crazy.
Okay, granted, what the dog told Son of Sam to do was worse. But at least I can imagine a dog not liking the neighbors. You? You think an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving being wants you to persecute people for who they love.
That’s way crazier than believing in a mean talking dog.
That 's trivially easy. Proving you not-gaty might be harder. 
If you look at the decision, though, the court didn’t hold that the distinction between illegal vs. non-recognized was relevant. The court held that
There’s nothing to indicate that it matters where you got married. The marriage is a freedom the individual enjoys wherever he or she is. The court’s focus is on the discrimination, and the discrimination exists in the different treatment afforded to marriage A vs. marriage B based on nothing but the parties’ race. The “broader organic purpose” of the 14th Amendment is to eliminate invidious racial discrimination, and that discrimination exists where a white-white marriage is treated differently from a white-black one.
The law doesn’t say anything about being gay, it forbids men from marrying any other man, straight or gay doesn’t enter into it. There is no need to prove or define sexual orientation because the question doesn’t, ah, arise.
Why would we need to get to the “realness of sexual orientation”? Given that sexual orientation is about desires, and that people need protection only inasmuch as either they’re trying to fulfill those desires or others are acting on their perceived desires, this is a distinction without a difference.
A person who commits racial discrimination against someone who’s black may not defend himself by saying, “It turns out the dude is actually Native American, and I don’t have a problem with Native Americans.” The putative reality of race is immaterial in discrimination cases.
And a law that forbids animal sacrifices may not defend itself by saying, “Who can really say whether Santeria is a real religion?” because religion exists only in people’s heads, much the same as sexual orientation.
Whatever “realness” these conditions have is immaterial to equal protection arguments. It’s something that, as near as I can tell, you’ve invented to try to create a distinction between race and sexual orientation. But it’s irrelevant.
Well you are wrong.
You may disagree with the notion but religion (among other things) is defined as a suspect class by the SCOTUS.
I have zero problem with you trying to make a case why that is wrongheaded but it is the reality.
LHOD, you know absolutely nothing about how equal protection analysis works. You are embarrassing yourself. Please hire a lawyer to help you in this thread (you’ll have to look for someone besides Bricker, it looks like he’s given up).
The whole point of the equal protection clause is that the government cannot deny a person the equal protection of the law. If a law separates people into different classes, and those classes are suspect classes, the law is judged under a standard of review called “strict scrutiny,” which means the law can stand only if it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. If a law separates people into different classes and those classes are not suspect classes, the law is judged under a rational basis standard, which just asks whether the law is rationally related to a legitimate government purpose (and almost all laws are).
So, if you want to strike down anti-gay marriage laws on equal protection grounds, you need to show that gay people are a suspect class. To do that, you need to first show that there exists a class of people called gay people in the first place. The defining feature of a class of people is that one can determine the members of it. Hell, that might be the defining feature of a class of anything–it’s just part of the concept of a class.
If there’s no way to determine if a person is in a class or not than to take their word for it, then the class doesn’t exist.
You are confused. The scenario described here does not raise equal protection concerns because you are not talking about a law that divides people into classes. Your analogy just has nothing to do with anything.
Another complete failure on your part. People of a particular religion (or the religious in general) are not a suspect class. Rather, laws that discriminate on the basis of religion receive strict scrutiny because they deal with a fundamental right (i.e., the free exercise of religion). So, again, this analogy is just complete off-the-wall stupid.
Forgive me for not being all that impressed with “as near as you can tell.” Hire a lawyer and come back buddy, you are out of your league here.
Please cite a supreme court case on point.
The secondary sources you are reading are short-handing the jurisprudence here. Laws that discriminate on the basis of religious affiliation do receive strict scrutiny, but it’s not because members of a religion are a suspect class, it’s because of the fundamental right involved. So, places like wikipedia etc. will often say that religion is a suspect class when that actually isn’t technically the case.
Bricker did address this:
The analysis her extends beyond criminal penalties as was the case in Loving v. Virginia.
It is the state granting benefits to some and denying them to others.
To be fair the state (maybe should be capital “S” State…never sure about that) often gives things to some group and not another.
But as Bricker noted there has to be a Rational Basis test that it passes as to why A should get a benefit and B shouldn’t (e.g. you cannot say A gets it because A is white and B does not because B is black).
Frankly Rational Basis is an amazingly low hurdle to cross but it is there. Many think sexual preference should be in Intermediate Scrutiny which is a much higher standard.
Others want Strict Scrutiny (a higher standard still).
Some suggest a “Rational Basis with teeth” which makes Rational Basis semi-meaningful (Rational Basis is such a low bar that it is darn close to meaningless…with teeth suggests it has a bit more oomph).
So far the SCOTUS has not dealt with this. I think both sides are scared to go there as it would be a final answer to this for a long time and given the court’s makeup it could go either way. No one wants to roll the dice on it.
The 14th Amendment mentions “creed” expressly; for constitutional-law purposes, that makes it as suspect a class as race. No lawyer is gonna tell you any different.
Do you have any actual case law for this proposition, because I’ve not seen anything to support this idea.
If I fire you because I think you are black, you don’t have to prove you are black to be in the protected class. If I refuse to allow you to vote because you are Jewish, you don’t have to prove you’re Jewish. It is the perception of the discriminator, not the actual identity of the person, that matters.
For example in Loving v. Viriginia, I don’t recall the Court requiring Mildred Loving to prove she was of African origin or that Richard Loving had to prove he was 100% white before striking down the anti-miscegenation laws. It was enough that the law made that distinction and that Mildred and Richard were perceived that way by the person who refused to allow them to marry.
So I’m curious why you seem to have required this additional element that, to my memory, hasn’t existed before in determining whether something is a suspect class or not. Do you have any actual basis for it?