I expect him, if he is and always has been opposed to the SSM amendment, to remain silent and not shill for something he supposedly doesn’t support.
Not a fervent bigot, necessarily, just enough of one to insist on a distinction that shouldn’t exist.
I’ve been following these threads (obviously), and this is the first time I’ve ever seen you throw out the civil union “concession.” Up until now, you’ve only insisted on maintaining that this is an issue of federalism and states’ rights, ignoring the fact of whether the core issue is a just one or not. In other words, yes, it’s exactly a smokescreen – distracting attention away from an unfairly discriminatory viewpoint by making it out to be a less-sensitive political process argument, in order to stall or overturn the rights of a minority without having to come right out and admit to being unfairly discriminatory.
Every time anyone has tried to cut through the smokescreen and force you to show your hand, you’ve either ignored the comment entirely, or brought up a tangential point. And whenever anyone gets frustrated with this tactic, he is dismissed as being a “shrill gay harpie” (not by you, granted, but by others), or a whiny fascist who would have his own private agenda forced down the throats of an unwilling public.
How can you argue against someone who refuses to present his case? Who refuses to explain himself? You can’t. When a voter goes into the polling booth and votes to deny the rights of others, he’s obligated to no one to explain himself or justify his vote. When a judge makes a ruling that a law is unfair or unconstitutional, he is obligated to explain his decision.
Saying that the issue should be left to the states to decide is not in any way an endorsement; it’s skirting the issue. Is it better than supporting a constitutional amendment? Obviously. But it helps nothing. Where would we be today if we had just sat back and looked at Georgia in the 1950’s and said, “well, let them figure out for themselves how they want to treat black people.” Why were the biggest advances in the black civil rights movement made by judicial decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education?
The key question is a simple one: why, exactly, do homosexuals not deserve the right to marry? We’ve talked about civil unions in various threads, and I know I have yet to hear a counter-argument that isn’t rooted in religion or just basic homophobia. Civil unions are an unnecessarily discriminatory term and there is absolutely zero legal justification for insisting on them, much less seeing them as a valid compromise.
Why is it that homosexuals are being overly demanding and intolerant when we demand the term “marriage,” but it’s considered a reasonable, conservative compromise when others demand the term “civil union?”
I still fail to understand how anyone can reasonably justify the need for this distinction. And since everyone refuses to explain, I’m left with no option but to assume that it’s based in nothing more than bigotry.
Oh.
Well, in this post I characterize the Virginia law that seeks to remove not only marriage but civil unions as a legal possibility for same-sex couples as “…ill-thought-out, overbreadth, and foolish in the extreme.” You might conclude from that that I favored something less draconian.
But perhaps you wanted something explicit.
Like here.
Or here.
Or here.
How many more examples do you want?
Objection - calls for speculation. How do you know that my argument is offered “in order to…” do anything like what you’re saying? Why isn’t my argument offered to do exactly what it’s saying: discuss the important issue of political process?
That’s not true, as I hope the linked posts above show. I have “shown my hand” over and over.
Hiya, Shrilly.
Er… I don’t think you mean to lump Plessy in with Brown. Just a hint.
What’s the reason for insisting on “marriage,” if the civil union provides every legal benefit of marriage? In what way, specifically, is it discriminatory?
- Rick
Yes, actually, I did. Saying “this is clearly wrong” is not the same as putting forth what is right. That’s part of the reason why I’m arguing against the idea that Cheney should be praised for his non-committal words in the first place.
None; the first one is sufficient to establish your position for civil unions. I had missed that one although I was active in that thread. Also note that I said “I hadn’t seen you make a stand on the real issue.” The other posts you link to were from February, before I came out of the closet, at a point I was in too much denial to even consider reading a debate thread remotely related to homosexuality. Anyone who wants to call me a “fair-weather homosexual,” only getting involved in the discussion when it became clear that it affected me directly, will get no argument from me.
Because the threads I have read on the issue that you’ve participated in have been like this one, in which you keep talking about precedent and the traditional definition of “marriage,” without responding to the core question but instead bringing up more tangential rulings and unrelated questions.
Yeah, good one. Your point, exactly? Am I being “shrill” because I didn’t do a web search and come up with posts you’d made 6 months ago?
Yeah, I’m well aware of the outcome of both rulings, smart-ass, and I very much did intend to lump them together. I intentionally mentioned Plessy along with Brown because I predicted that someone would come in and accuse me of only being in favor of judicial decisions when they supported “my cause.” What I failed to do, though, was go back and change my previous sentence to no longer use the words “advances in the civil rights movement” but instead “key events in the civil rights movement.”
My point still stands: judicial rulings are required to have explanations and show evidence that thought was made into the decision, popular votes are not.
So in the exact same post that you call me out for my supposedly not understanding Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, you end by asking me how “separate but equal” is discriminatory?
And we’re being “shrill” for getting frustrated at going round and round in pointless circles?
Go back and read the thread that I linked to above. In case you can’t be bothered, here’s the short version, which has been repeated in countless other threads by me and others: Establishing the civil union as a separate status alongside marriage is discriminatory because it excludes a significant portion of the population from being able to have that status, simply because of their gender.
Also, it’s completely impractical. If you are truly going to guarantee that civil unions have all the exact same legal benefits as marriage, then why bother making the separate status? Why not call them all the same thing?
So your solution to that: get rid of legal “marriage” entirely and call everything a civil union. Which is completely impractical, unnecessary, and the legal equivalent of a temper tantrum. Fine, then! Nobody can have it! I hope you’re happy now, fags! You want to talk precedent? People have been getting legally married for years, and now all of a sudden they can’t call it a marriage? Why not? Because a bunch of uppity homos decided to crash the party? Why can’t I turn the question right back on you? What’s the reason for insisting on “civil union,” exactly?
People act as if civil unions are a valid compromise and gays are just too obstinate and shrill to accept it. I see a bunch of people sitting in a corner with clenched fists and their eyes shut, muttering, “You’re NOT married! You’re not you’re not you’re not you’re not!”
That’s quite simple. It’s for the same reason that opponents of gay marriage are fighting to prevent it: “Marriage” (the word, the act, the religious/spiritual context) has a value in and of itself, outside of the legal benefits it affords. Otherwise, why would opponents care whether gays are allowed to marry?
In other words, it works both ways: By arguing that marriage is a “special privilege”, you are giving it a value above and beyond the legal issues. You are in essence acknowledging the fact that “marriage” has an intrinsic value, and you want to keep that exclusively for a man and a woman. That’s discriminatory. (And quite clearly, the value that it has is not solely the issue of “man and woman”. Because if it were, then neither side would really care much who uses it.)
So let me ask you – what’s so important about the term “marriage” that makes you feel it’s imperative that gays are denied it?
For what it’s worth, I think the evidence suggests that the right to use the word “marriage” is what is most under dispute, given the number of people who would support a “civil union” status so long as it is denied that term.
Given that it’s clearly important to a large number of people (including me, which is why I think the “civil union” notion is crap), it strikes me as unreasonable to pretend that this particular right is the one that doesn’t matter. It’s the one that turns the polls from “majority in favor” to “majority opposed” in a fair number of places, after all.
I once thought I could forgive Republicans for shrugging over the gay thing in their party. You can’t control every issue, and sometimes you have to fight from within the system.
Then I have to listen to a Republican strategist on CNN this morning deftly turn a question about gay marriage into a discussion on how the urban African American family has suffered a great deal, subtly implying that, since poverty and lack of opportunity for education doesn’t exist in Republoland, faggotry is to blame. Without, of course, actually saying that.
So fuck you anyway, you dipshit collaborators. I hope you and your kind rot in the hell of disgusted history reserved for those that voted Democrat back in the solid South days. It’s one thing when you party contains bigots. It’s a totally different thing to have the talking points of the day push it with a sly smile.
First of all, given that Cheney and even Bush might hint that gays should have such rights, they sure don’t seem to have made a single move to actually DO anything about it: even though that would take a lot of the pressure off giving gays marriage.
Zap: Makes you think.
Kif: ughhhhh… no it doesn’t.
Second of all, two separate but equal systems were tried before. Didn’t work. Unless you give people the same institution, same name, same law, the systems inevtiably diverge and get treated unequally in practice.
Third of all, marriage functions best as an institution when it’s a universal: something everyone in society aspires to in their relationships. Gay marriage can help save marriage as an institution.
No it bloody wasn’t.
Traditionally, though, it’s the vice-president’s job to shill for stuff you don’t neccesarily support. Part of being vice-president means that, in public at least, you’re supposed to shut up and do what the president tells you to do, support what the president tells you to support.
We’re still talking about Bush and Cheney, right? Charlie McCarthy and his Edgar Bergen? If Cheney seriously wanted the admin not to support the Anti-Gay Amendment, Bush would not have done so. While I don’t doubt that Cheney doesn’t personally agree with the concept of an amendment about gay marriage, he’s perfectly willing to allow his trained monkey to endorse it because it’ll play well in November.
But it’s not unprecedented for a VP to disagree. Spiro Agnew disagreed publicly with Nixon’s China policy, for instance. If Cheney had honor, he would have stood up for his own daughter over his political party.
Oops, sorry: quoted Brickers quote from your post and forgot to change the tag.
Here’s my more general take on the whole thing. I don’t think that either Bush or Cheney care much one way or the other about gay marriage (and I also don’t think that Bush is Cheney’s puppet, btw). I think that, about the time of the Mass. court decision, the administration figured that opposing gay marriage would win them votes, support.
But then, they went too far, by backing the constitutional amendment, because, even though most people oppose gay marriage, they also oppose an amendment banning it, so they decided to have Cheney say the “It’s a state matter” thing, and see what the reaction would be. If it was negative, the administration could say that it was just Cheney talking on his own, and if it was positive, they could adopt the new position.
If you had said “key events,” I never would have noted the problem.
Yup.
347 U.S. 483, 484, emphasis mine.
Now, you’re certainly free to argue we should conclude that “separate but equal” has no place in ANY SPHERE of government-run activities. But that’s not what Brown says.
It is discriminatory.
The question is: is it discriminatory in a way that the federal constitution forbids?
It’s discriminatory to put only men in combat positions in the armed forces. But the Constitution is silent on this issue. It’s discriminatory to forbid persons younger than twenty-five from becoming U.S. Representatives. But the Constitution mandates this discrimination. It’s discriminatory to require that a U.S. Senator be a practicing Catholic. The Constitution forbids this discrimination.
Simply pointing at the practice and screaming, “Discrimination!” is insufficient. Is it discriminatory in such a way that the federal constitution is offended? No. Is it discriminatory in such a way that your state constitution is offended? Answers thus far: 49 No, one Yes. And that’s exactly where the discussion should lie.
Because “marriage,” in the way it’s been practiced during this nation’s 200+ year history, has always meant “the union of a man and a woman,” and has strong religious grounding. Since religious grounding, 200 years ago, was a perfectly appropriate rationale for a law, that was fine. Today, it’s clear that religious influence has no place in law-making. So let the state bow out of the marriage business in its entirety. Indeed, I’d favor this even absent the same-sex discussion, since “marriage” is also supposed to be a “'til death do us part” deal. The easy availability of divorce vitiates the traditional idea of marriage as well: another reason to let the churches have “marriage,” and let each church decide when to confer “marriage,” the state merely grants the secular legal partnership of a union, which exists until legally dissolved.
Civil unions are a valid compromise.
In fact, let me ask you this: you’re the sole deciding vote on a referendum… you have a choice between civil unions and the status quo. Do you reject civil unions and continue fighting for marriage, given your apparent view that they are an odious alternative?
Which is, pretty much, the only legal way to have intercourse in Virginia. Deviating from this makes you a felon, guilty of sodomy.
And all sex doesn’t lead to dancing, it’s just sex while standing.
Not true.
But you knew that.
Actually, here’s the definition (which is now defunct, thanks to Lawrence, anyway), under the VA Criminal Code, under the heading “Crimes against Nature”
Subsection B strenghthens the penalty in the case of incest. So, like Bricker said, the missionary position is not the only legal way to have intercourse in Virginia. (We do also have a law against unmarried people having sex, but I’d imagine that’s enforced even less than the crimes against nature law.)
Unbelievable. I’m actually starting to worry that I was giving you too much credit for putting up a “smokescreen;” I’m starting to wonder if you’re just absolutely incapable of understanding the signficance of these rulings by making these distinctions.
But of course, you’re right. Brown v. Board of Education had absolutely nothing to do with the status of black people in the United States as a whole. It was only relevant to public school students in Topeka, Kansas. Justice Warren was overstepping his bounds by comparing it to a completly unrelated case of a man trying to ride in any section of a train that he wanted – how could they possibly be similar?
Now I feel like the schools were wasting my time all these years. I mean I, as a high school student with absolutely no interest in law, was forced to sit there and listen about how some kids I didn’t even know had to fight to keep from being segregated to a separate school, or some old woman in Alabama had to fight to be able to sit any place on a bus she wanted to. Why did they waste my time filling my head with such trivia that had absolutely no greater significance?
If you’d read my post other than the part that you quoted, you would’ve seen that I wasn’t just “pointing and screaming Discrimination.” I said repeatedly that it’s unfair and unnecessary discrimination. Did I claim that all discrimination is wrong? No.
Discriminating against females from serving in combat positions is unfair. It is based on some basic biological differences between the sexes, but is as much based on conceptions of gender roles and sexism. If a woman wished to serve in a combat position and proved that she was at least as capable as a man to do so, then I would fully support her in that.
Discriminating against a person from serving in public office because of his age is not unfair. The person will, barring disease, become a member of the included class in time. He does not have to change his behavior, beliefs, orientation, or anything else in order to turn 25 and become eligible.
Discriminating against a person from serving in public office because of his religion is unfair. We have a long history (see below) of the separation of church and state, and a person should not have to change his belief system to take an unrelated secular post. Religion has no place in the United States government.
Discriminating against a couple from being able to marry simply because of their gender is unfair. Heterosexual couples need only demonstrate age, lack of consanguinity, and willingness on the part of both parties to enter into the contract in order to qualify. The right of marriage belongs to all people as soon as they reach the age of consent. Religious affiliation, ability to procreate, “sincerity” – none of these are currently legal requirements for a marriage license. Restricting the status of “married” from people based on their sexual orientation is introducing a new restriction on the status of marriage.
I’ve no doubt that you would perfectly happy to let the discussion lie there. You’ve made that abundantly clear. Many of us (you know, the “shrill” ones) are not happy with that.
So there, we finally see what your legal distinction arguments boil down to – “the way it’s always been” and “religious grounding.” Which is exactly why I accused you of throwing up a smokescreen.
As I have stated repeatedly, saying that it’s this way because it’s the way it’s always been is absolutely no basis for the rule of law. And it’s definitely not sufficient as a counter-argument for marriage. Why has it always been this way, and why is it so important for it to remain this way? Until you can answer those questions, don’t bother trying to make it sound like anything more valid than throwing a temper tantrum.
And suggesting that the separation of church and state is in any way a “new concept” that’s just coming into vogue today is just a lie. Apparently Thomas Jefferson had access to a time machine, where he could come to modern times and spring this novel concept on us all. Hopefully he went around kicking the Ten Commandments sculptures out of public buildings and telling kids not to say the pledge of allegiance while he was at it.
Religion has no place in a discussion of legal marriage. Atheists are not being denied the legal right to marriage. Neither are agnostics, pagans, wiccans, muslims, jews, buddhists, satanists, animists, or members of the church of the Sub-Genius. Unless, of course, they’re gay. Because that’s clearly wrong.
Civil unions are not a valid compromise. For couples in love, they are a lie. They are an insult to the status of their relationship. They are a constant reminder that society’s ignorance and closed-mindedness forces me to refer to the love of my life as my “partner” instead of my “husband.” While millions of other people are entitled to marry and are required to do nothing more than fill out a piece of paper and pay a fee.
Please look at the definition of the word “compromise”. Please acknowledge the presence of the phrase “where each side makes concessions.” Please explain to me how the religious right and conservatives are making any kind of concession by insisting that I’m not entitled to marry the man I love and are willing to so far as to alter the constitution to prevent that. Please explain that.
In your hypothetical example, I vote for civil unions with the same legal status of marriage. Because there are plenty of cases of two consenting adults who are cohabitating and deserve the benefits of a true civil union.
And then I come back to this message board, and elsewhere, and I continue to fight for same-sex marriage. I continue to ask why I should be restricted to this civil union status and am not entitled to be married. I continue to ask why heterosexual couples are given legal “married” status while I am not.
And I continue to be angered when people offer no counter-argument, no concession, other than insisting that their understanding of their religion has more importance over my life than my own. I continue to be offended when people insist that my love is not as valid as their own. I continue to be frustrated when people maintain that the situation is fine the way it is, and throw out irrelevant non-arguments and talk about the way it’s always been and the will of the majority instead of asking themselves whether I truly am being treated fairly, and why I am not.
And I continue to be outraged and saddened that I’m forced to spend so much time fighting for something that other people take for granted, when there are so many more important things to be concerned about, and I should just be allowed to live my life, love who I love, and be happy.
DO you contend that the ruling in Brown v. Board had any direct legal effect on the bus seating situation encountered by Rosa Parks?
OK, fair enough. My bad.
That’s not true.
In fact, in determining whether a particular right is so fundamental that it is worthy of constitutional protection, one of the tests is whether the right is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” (Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 503 (1977)), see also Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)).
And that statement is a fair description of stare decisis, the legal principle that accords great weight to precedent. If it’s been done that way in the past, the presumption is that it should continue to be done that way.
Unfortunately, the discussion has become blurred between the merits and the procedure. So tell you what: you pick. Are we talking about the federal-vs-state procedural question, or are we discussing whether, say, Virginia should legalize same-sex marriage?
Because it involves a change to the law, in a country in which the law is made by democratically-elected representatives. Conservatives and the religious right, just as liberals and the looney left, are entitled to insist that the rule of law be followed. There is no procedure for you to simply announce, “My way is RIGHT!” and amend the law.
- Rick