# Predict how the Supreme Court will Decide the Same Sex Marriage Cases **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 25, 2013, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936 "2013-03-25T18:12:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 23
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/441 "2013-04-03T19:47:18Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I think it would do us all some good to remember Chrost’s sacrifice on the chriss. Surely you mean on “Chrost’s sacrifice on the **criss** ”. I mean, geez, who ever heard of a chriss. ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/442 "2013-04-03T19:51:53Z")
> [@tim314](#): > > Surely you mean on “Chrost’s sacrifice on the **criss** ”. I mean, geez, who ever heard of a chriss. I think it’d make me jump JUMP ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/443 "2013-04-03T20:06:14Z")
Chrostopher Chriss? Isn’t he the guy who sang “Sailing”? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/444 "2013-04-03T22:40:11Z")
So how does gay marriage impact procreation, exactly? ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/445 "2013-04-03T23:26:17Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > So how does gay marriage impact procreation, exactly? Gay people who are free to marry one of their preferred gender are less likely to enter a sham hetero-marriage and have children as part of an attempt to conceal their deviant sexuality. Or something. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/446 "2013-04-03T23:33:15Z")
> [@stpauler](#): > > I didn’t say "maybe the answer is in Meyer. I said “Maybe if you look back to Maynard, you’ll get your explanation”. If you can’t read and comprehend, your ignorance is just going to be exhausting. Now go back to my questions. Oh, you can’t? Didn’t think so. In case you missed it: \*\*Why is Maynard a case about property and not about procreation? Could it be that marriage is not binary solely about procreation or not? \*\* This side trip is of your making. You asked the question “Was procreation a point in Warren’s decision in Loving v Virginia?” I answered yes. Then you said I was wrong. Your question wasn’t about other rights or incidentals about marriage, it wasn’t “Did Warren say the ONLY thing about marriage…” Warren pointed to Skinner, I have asked for a more plausible explanation, which you won’t answer and then feign frustration. The fact that he also cited _Maynard_ is irrelevant, so long as he did cite _Skinner._ I didn’t see any duty to answer your question further than you asked it, which you now are demanding, meaning you’ve moved the goalposts on me. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/447 "2013-04-03T23:35:27Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > You already conceded that marriage is not necessary for procreation. Please then DO tell us what Justice Warren meant. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/448 "2013-04-03T23:36:37Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Nor is procreation necessary for marriage. No-one at all claims you should have to have a kid first before you can marry. That I know of. Cart before the horse. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/449 "2013-04-03T23:37:22Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > So how does gay marriage impact procreation, exactly? Well, it means that gay couples who have children – either from previous relationships, or during their marriage by assisted means, or via adoption – get to raise them in a stable and legally supported two parent family. Right? (Making a slight jump here in assuming that the “good for procreation” reasons actually mean “good for child-rearing”, since whether the child is actually born in or out of wedlock I’d think that the environment for the next couple of decades is what really matters… unless we’re going to postulate that children born out of wedlock don’t have souls or something). 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/450 "2013-04-03T23:41:32Z")
And just to add: since gay couples can and do have children with assistance (donors, or surrogates, etc) – in exactly the same way that some hetero couples do – why isn’t this whole procreation argument just a big red herring? ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2013, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/451 "2013-04-03T23:58:29Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > So how does gay marriage impact procreation, exactly? The theory is: IF people believe that marriage IS NOT about being responsible with procreation, they will have no reason to believe they will have a duty to marry when they have an unplanned/accidental pregnancy. The more people believe this, the fewer will marry when there is a child in the picture. The fewer that marry, the more out-of-wedlock births. Reducing the number of out-of-wedlock births, and seeing to it that as many children as possible are in stable homes is a compelling governmental interest. Some argue that gay marriage would also have an impact in the opposite direction, because they would provide stable homes for children otherwise in need of care. Undoubtedly this is true, as some or many gays would in fact provide good homes. But the gay message, especially if it is made a part of our law, undermines the needed purpose of marriage to be ensuring responsible procreation. If too many straight people decide they are not in love or do not want commitment to the girl they knocked up last month, having had mere casual sex for the sake of sex, and not enough gay families are created to pick up the slack, we have a net increase in children not in solid two-parent committed homes. it is true that marriage is in a lot of trouble from other sources too, not just the same-sex marriage issue, but this is no reason to add to the trouble. Like Roberts and Scalia, I’d like a bit of long-term research that the few short years of gay marriage we have had cannot yet reach. Last year, the first ever “cost of out-of-wedlock childbirth” study was realeased, which estimates that the U.S. is spending $115 billion a year on this problem, and it is projected to rise. I’m convinced that gays can make just as good parents as straights can, in every short term criteria available in the studies. But there are other criteria we haven’t had enough time to study. I want to know, for instance, whether the heterosexual relationships of the mostly ehterosexual children gays will be raising will be significantly impacted by not having an intimate couple role-model available. It is entirely plausible their heterosexual relationships may suffer from not ever seeing how a heterosexual relationship works. It may be no big deal. But the question cannot be answered for about thirty years. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/452 "2013-04-04T00:05:55Z")
> [@Hamlet](#): > > I’ll tell you, it’s a tough slog. You are all over the board, jumping from one thought to the next, with no coherence to your points, or seemingly any understanding of one points relevance to the next. This makes it very frustrating to try and pin you down to one point, especially when you continue to misstate our opinions. > > I am not saying that procreation has nothing to do with marriage. What I am saying, and have said, is that marriage is a fundamental right. The fact that control over your own procreation is also a fundamental right does absolutely nothing to disprove that marriage is a fundamental right. And the fact that Loving cites Skinner does nothing to disprove it either. > > You simply ignore the entirety of the holding of Loving, as well as the language I cited (and bolded) twice for you. Here it is again: “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” Nothing about procreation, childbearing, or Skinner. > > You simply overlook that, just as you do the entirety of the holding of Loving, the difference between the Equal Protection and Due Process discussions in the ruling, as well as the citation to the other cases (Maynard v. Hill), and the other cases I cited (Zablocki and Turner). > > You take one sentence and one half of the citations of that sentence in one ruling and pretend it speaks for the entirety of the discussion. That’s simply not how one should do constitutional analysis. And it’s certainly not how you should debate. Boy you sure impute a lot to me when I have done little more than answer **stpauler’s** question “Was procreation a point in Warren’s decision in Loving v Virginia?” “yes,” and defend it. I never said marriage was not a fundamental right. It surely is. ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/453 "2013-04-04T00:27:25Z")
> [@David42](#): > > Boy you sure impute a lot to me when I have done little more than answer **stpauler’s** question “Was procreation a point in Warren’s decision in Loving v Virginia?” “yes,” and defend it. Were that the only thing you’d done in this thread, I wouldn’t have wasted my time with you. But, as I’ve said repeatedly, you’ve been all over the map, from misunderstandings about Equal Protection to misstatements about suspect classes, to misunderstanding about fundamental rights and misstatements about the law. And in none of those have you been coherent. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/454 "2013-04-04T00:30:43Z")
> [@David42](#): > > The theory is: > > IF people believe that marriage IS NOT about being responsible with procreation, they will have no reason to believe they will have a duty to marry when they have an unplanned/accidental pregnancy… Call me silly, but wouldn’t that suggest the value of laws against fornication rather than somewhat tortured logic involving SSM? There used to be US laws prohibiting sex outside of marriage weren’t there? Aren’t they all now struck? And doesn’t this suggest that the government (speaking broadly) does not actually desire this prohibition? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/455 "2013-04-04T00:38:55Z")
> [@David42](#): > > Please then DO tell us what Justice Warren meant. Pwehaps he meant that marriage is a basic human right, fundamental to society? That is after all what he wrote. Reading the words in the text is, I suppose, a radical idea… ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/456 "2013-04-04T00:41:06Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > There’s nothing private about 80-year-old women being post-menopausal and incapable of bearing children. No, there isn’t, in the sense that it is obvious, although Ms. Jones might not like the converstaion, being her business. One could make that reasonable decision without violating her privacy. But there is no logic in believeing that every exception makes a new rule, either. But who would have thought that simply designating one man + one woman wasn’t sufficient in order to channel irresponsible procreation into stable homes? You must remember there was a day when there wasn’t highly organized LGBT groups clamoring for marriage, that there was a day when it never would have even occurred to people that gays might want to marry, and when they contemplated who could get married in those days, they dealt with other more apparent problems and probably didn’t think it necessary to provide an upper-age limit cutoff. I see no reason to do so–and these people would have given the story of Abraham’s wife Sarah conceiving at 90 literally and would not have believed it impossible. Yes, they didn’t have the facts, and they were mistaken. But boiling all that down and finding their objective was instead hatred of gays seems a stretch compared to the far more plasuible “Who’s gonna care for all these rugrats?” So I think that the reason no-one ever came up with an upper limit age cutoff was due to a msitaken belief and/or the desire to be kind to the elderly. This still does not change the fact that the elderly are irrelevant to the problem marriage ought to solve–out-of-wedlock childbirth. And there is not any requirement that a law has to be PERFECT, to do all that it might, to make the superficial substantive, that it take an all or nothing approach, eradicate all evils or none. That sort of absolutism is simply not what EP is all about. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/457 "2013-04-04T00:49:48Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Pwehaps he meant that marriage is a basic human right, fundamental to society? > > That is after all what he wrote. Reading the words in the text is, I suppose, a radical idea… Well, I am sure he did mean those things too, especially since he more or less said so. He ALSO said it was fundamental to our very existence and survival. Are you suggesting that doesn’t mean just what it says? Another poster has suggested I am too literal. Is this a metaphor, is “existence” a synonym for “society?” No-one else can point out to me what about marriage makes it so that it is fundamental to existence and survival, can you? But, with due diligence in contemplating this matter, I have come up with a plausible idea–that, in an old-fashioned day when nearly all women relied upon their husbands for their provender, and IF THAT IS IN PLACE, marriage, i.e. food shelter clothing provided by the husband, that women and children indeed would find marriage fundamental to their existence and surviavl and men would not go on much longer without them. But I don’t htink Justice Warren was contemplating that kind of marriage structure. In his day there were still remnants of that, but many women were in the workforce and the race would have survived. Back in the middle ages and ancient times, maybe not so. ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/458 "2013-04-04T01:03:06Z")
> [@Apollyon](#): > > Call me silly, but wouldn’t that suggest the value of laws against fornication rather than somewhat tortured logic involving SSM? > > There used to be US laws prohibiting sex outside of marriage weren’t there? Aren’t they all now struck? > > And doesn’t this suggest that the government (speaking broadly) does not actually desire this prohibition? This is not silly at all and actually addresses the issues. Fornication laws indeed could have some impact on out-of-wedlock births. IF they scare no-one into fornicating, that is, which I doubt. I don’t think criminal morals laws work very well\* and this is all beside contemplating the right to privacy issue. There are many sometimes competing rights and purposes and none can be viewed in a vacuum. Putting dad in jail for fornicating seems the opposite of what we want to do, and tells kids “we locked that bastard up for conceiving YOU.” Marriage REWARDS with societal approval since a scheme that PUNISHES is not feasible, practical, or moral. \*_malum pro per_, that is. _Malum in se_ laws, on the other hand, can and do work to cut down serious crimes with victims. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/459 "2013-04-04T01:07:43Z")
> [@David42](#): > > The theory is: > > IF people believe that marriage IS NOT about being responsible with procreation, they will have no reason to believe they will have a duty to marry when they have an unplanned/accidental pregnancy. > > The more people believe this, the fewer will marry when there is a child in the picture. The fewer that marry, the more out-of-wedlock births. Reducing the number of out-of-wedlock births, and seeing to it that as many children as possible are in stable homes is a compelling governmental interest. > > Some argue that gay marriage would also have an impact in the opposite direction, because they would provide stable homes for children otherwise in need of care. Undoubtedly this is true, as some or many gays would in fact provide good homes. > > But the gay message, especially if it is made a part of our law, undermines the needed purpose of marriage to be ensuring responsible procreation. > > If too many straight people decide they are not in love or do not want commitment to the girl they knocked up last month, having had mere casual sex for the sake of sex, and not enough gay families are created to pick up the slack, we have a net increase in children not in solid two-parent committed homes. > > it is true that marriage is in a lot of trouble from other sources too, not just the same-sex marriage issue, but this is no reason to add to the trouble. > > Like Roberts and Scalia, I’d like a bit of long-term research that the few short years of gay marriage we have had cannot yet reach. > > Last year, the first ever “cost of out-of-wedlock childbirth” study was realeased, which estimates that the U.S. is spending $115 billion a year on this problem, and it is projected to rise. > > I’m convinced that gays can make just as good parents as straights can, in every short term criteria available in the studies. But there are other criteria we haven’t had enough time to study. > > I want to know, for instance, whether the heterosexual relationships of the mostly ehterosexual children gays will be raising will be significantly impacted by not having an intimate couple role-model available. It is entirely plausible their heterosexual relationships may suffer from not ever seeing how a heterosexual relationship works. It may be no big deal. But the question cannot be answered for about thirty years. The connection between the negative results you claim we should be concerned about and gay marriage is far from clear, though. Out of wedlock children have been around for quite some time - far longer than the gay marriage issue has been on the American stage. It’s like you’re going to spend thirty years studying the effect butterflies have on the tides while ignoring, you know… the moon. Maybe butterflies _do_ affect the tides after all, in subtle and pervasive ways. But, hey… _the moon_. Anyway, what early signs of disaster should we be watching for? I mean, if 30 years after SSM, the damage it causes to society is massive and obvious (and not just some insignificant element of a larger trend that was building long before), there should be some early indicators after, say, seven or eight years, no? Trick question, of course. I’m asking if you think Canada (SSM legal since 2005, proto-SSM legislation adopted regionally several years earlier) is on the path to disaster and if so, how. Or should I capitalize IF? ---
**Author:** ![David42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David42)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2013, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936/460 "2013-04-04T01:24:10Z")
> [@Hamlet](#): > > Were that the only thing you’d done in this thread, I wouldn’t have wasted my time with you. But, as I’ve said repeatedly, you’ve been all over the map, from misunderstandings about Equal Protection to misstatements about suspect classes, to misunderstanding about fundamental rights and misstatements about the law. And in none of those have you been coherent. Well, if twenty people all ask me different questions…yet now you impute some lesser intellignece or something. TO FURTHERLY CLARIFY, this is a DIVERSION from the ONE subject I started– “I think it will be unprecedented for The S.Ct. to create this suspect class, and I gave three factors that didn’t exist in any of the suspect classes they DID create.” More or less. I also opined that it might be unwise. Now, this Diversion, to which I was referring, to the best of my recollection, started with **stpauler** asking me what Warren did in _Loving._ To that I answered yes and discussed, and said I had done little other. Now, back to the idea that I am wrong, that Warren did NOT draw a connection between the fundamental interwtwining of procreation and marriage, if you would care to fight my ignorance instead of taking this so many places it does not need to be: You must explain to me what, other than procreation, would make marriage fundamental to the existence and survival of the race, because if I am wrong, Warren must have meant something else citing Skinner, and I want to know what that else might be, and no one can explain this point. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936.md?page=22) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predict-how-the-supreme-court-will-decide-the-same-sex-marriage-cases/653936.md?page=24)