I’m still trying to figure out what the point of that was supposed to be. My best guess, after filing it with the other SDMB analogy that will live forever, is “substituting a paper towel tube for a washing machine hose is a really bad idea”.
But the “experts” themselves were driven by parochial prejudices. When I say that opposition has always been irrational, I mean for humans generally, not any subset in time and place.
There’s an interesting underlying question: is it rational to trust experts? For most folk in the 1950s, say, they had very little information about homosexuality, and the information they had mainly came from professionals like psychologists (telling them that it was a mental illness) and religious leaders (telling them it was a sin). Certainly you can fault those professionals for irrational behavior, but I’m not sure it’s fair to fault the lay people.
But that’s not how our system is supposed to work. You find harm and then legislate against it, not the other way around. We can do it the other way around, of course (leaving constitutional limitations aside for a moment), but you have to admit that when we do so we are (generally) legislating based on irrational prejudice.
Because nobody in Loving was challenging a ban on SSM, you mean?
But surely this is an impossible standard? I mean, we let heterosexuals marry and raise families if they are felons, junkies, mentally imbalanced, in extreme poverty, and any number of other disadvantages and ne’er do wells of every type, and many of them do an all right job. And in extreme cases the state will step in. Why shouldn’t we give SS couples the same benefit of the doubt? More importantly, how exactly are homosexual couples supposed to prove that their marriages are as good as straight couples’ if they’re not allowed to get married at all? (That’s some catch, that catch-22.) And even if they had worse “metrics” on average, why punish them collectively? Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer were together for over 40 years before having the opportunity to marry - maybe we ought to make straight couples pass that test.
I still think that a state law that will recognize any marriage to a member of the opposite sex and no marriage to the same sex should be subject to intermediate scrutiny and would clearly fail that test. I suspect that the ultimate ruling of the Supreme Court will not apply that standard though.
Wait, you’re mixing up two different things here. The concept of a “protected class” does not apply to the equal protection clause.
IANAL, but my understanding is that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment talks about “any person,” while the civil rights laws are for protected classes.
He IAL.
“Protected classes”* are relevant to 14th Amendment jurisprudence because they determine the level of scrutiny involved. Classifications based on race, national origin and religion get strict scrutiny. Classifications based on gender and between marital and nonmarital children get intermediate scrutiny. Every other classification gets rational basis review.
I’m grossly oversimplifying here but it is sufficient for our purposes to say that it’s very difficult to get a law subject to rational basis review overturned. SCOTUS has applied a slightly different formulation of rational basis to orientation classifications (sometimes called “rational basis with bite”) but it’s still pretty deferential.
*Protected class is an awful, terrible term, and lawyers should stop using it. It implies that a particular group may get special treatment under civil rights legislation or the 14th Amendment itself, which isn’t true. Suspect classifications is a much more accurate term. Civil rights laws and the 14th Amendment are for everyone; they both prohibit discrimination against all persons. It’s just that some persons are more likely to be subject to impermissible discrimination. The only truly “protected classes” under federal civil rights legislation are the over-40 (Age Discrimination Act) and disabled (Americans with Disabilities Act), since that legislation does not similarly protect the other side.
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight.
“Homosexuality is immoral and harmful,” is a legitimate argument that should be debated on it’s merits.
“Opposition to homosexuality is bigoted,” is a scandalous and outrageous attack on your personal character.
Yeah, that’s a fair standard. I can see why you like to use “smart” as a sneer word.
Let’s keep the personal comments to a minimum, please. No more of such.
They opted for a post mortem religious union only.
Y’know what my favorite part about this? Opposition to homosexuality can be cured.
Could be worse; wasn’t it also referred to as “Suspect class?”
while it would not be my first thought on the matter, I suppose that I could be persuaded to agree with you that your hyperbole was an order of magnitude worse. 
Yes. But suspect classification (or protected classification, for that matter) is a much more accurate term.
Individual people can believe anything they damn well please. The state, OTOH, can’t just go around positing that X is morally harmful, therefore subject to legal sanction.
Because X could be damn near anything. X could be dancing or card-playing or using certain curse words in public - and in fact was those things in a goodly number of places in this country, within living memory.
So the only reasonable solution is for the state to stay the hell out of questions of what’s morally harmful, and address questions of practical harm only.
Uh, governments decide that possessing particular political views is a moral harm all the time, including our government. You cannot become a permanent resident of the United States if you’ve ever been a Communist, for example. (I disagree with that, but unfortunately it happens to be the law).
I don’t have a position on whether homosexual intercourse is immoral or not- maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, maybe certain sexual acts are immoral and others aren’t- but I doubt social science and/or human physiology can tell us much about the question one way or another. The moral status of homosexuality depends on your view about the purpose of sex, and that’s not a question that can be decided by the social sciences one way or another (though it may be informed by them).
Breaking news in the Alabama case. The 11th Circuit has declined to extend the stay.
Next stop is presumably SCOTUS and then weddings on Friday.
SCOTUS still hasn’t ruled on an Alabama stay, but Chief Justice Moore (Asshole) has ordered state probate judges to refuse to issue licenses claiming that the Federal Judge has no authority to overrule Alabama law.
This will not end well for Judge Moore.
I think he wants that. I think the only reason he ran for his old job was to get thrown to the lions again, so he could command a better speaking fee at hate rallies.