No. Just the ones that deny rights in the absent of any compelling reason for not granting them; and absent any procedures of judicial review other than the one(s) I’ve cited, I know of no better way of figuring out if that’s happening. Do you (know of a better way)?
I actually have several legal bases, of which the Loving decision is but one. Loving plus the 14th amendment plus various antidiscrimination laws about sexual orientation… collectively they form an argument that an effort to block gay marriage is inconsistent with existing law.
Human nature, I guess. There are examples of it in debates over immigration, too.
Well, “tradition” is not enough to sustain a law and what, if not “nature”, is represented in a homosexual couple seeking a long-term pair-bond? Is homosexuality alien or unnatural? I know it’s frequently perceived as such, but is it really?
Let’s be honest - it was largely about sex and the revulsion some whites felt about white women being married to black men. As for issues of procreation, the mixed-race offspring would face the same hurdles. It would probably be okay for them to marry blacks, but try to hook up with a purebred white… nope.
No, it doesn’t. At the very least, please try to recognize that any fertile woman, even if she is a lesbian, can be impregnated by artificial insemination. Even straight women in hetero marriages use this process and, in fact, they were the first and as far as I know remain by far the largest group of users of this process.
No, it wouldn’t, for reason that should be obvious.
Are your fellow citizens who happen to homosexual childish? Are they incapable of making adult decisions? Is it impossible for them to form long-term pair-bonds? Will they run amok if granted the privilege of marriage? Abuse it? Try to destroy hetero marriage with their new foot-in-the-door? How alien do you perceive these people to be?
Exactly what do you think the homosexual attitude is?
I don’t, and I know you don’t, have any but the vaguest idea what American society will be like a century from now or however “down the road” you mean. It’s perfectly conceivable to me that something abhorrent today might seem casually acceptable decades from now, and something acceptable now might seem abhorrent in future. Societies and cultures evolve. Prop 8 represents an effort to resist a change that would hurt no-one and actually increase the happiness of a percentage of the population, hence I look upon such efforts negatively.
Besides, popular vote is a terrible way to make law. It bypasses the thoughtful analytical process that making law should be.
No, and no. Gay marriage in the various Canadian provinces wasn’t passed by popular vote, incidentally. It represented a back-and-forth process between the courts and legislatures that took several years, which I figure is probably the best way to do so and how it’ll eventually come to the U.S. overall.
On further reflection there seems to be an unspoken assumption in play here:
Premise: Homosexuals don’t like the process through which children are typically created, i.e. heterosexual intercourse.
Conclusion: Homosexuals don’t like children and will never produce children.
I see this in all the “procreation” arguments, but is it sound reasoning?
That whole “existing laws regarding heterosexual marriage do not take into account a couple’s ability to breed” thing does seem to be lost on you.
For the godknowshowmany-th time, heterosexual couples aren’t expected to prove that they’re capable of reproducing before they marry, and they aren’t expected to reproduce after marriage in order for the union to remain valid. I could, if so inclined, get together with my female acquaintance, walk with her into the appropriate facility while wearing my “I have no testicles” T-shirt (and she in her “My uterus and ovaries are in a medical waste bin in New Jersey”), and get a 100% valid marriage license, redeemable for one 100% legal heterosexual marriage. This marriage is not going to produce biological children. The state doesn’t care.
The religious significance of a heterosexual couple’s fertility is of no importance in this discussion. We’re discussing civil marriage, i.e., the governmental recognition of the union between two adults.
Huh. I’d no idea BustedTees served such niche markets.
LOL you’re silly.
You’re so cute when you don’t have anything constructive to add to the discussion.
Interesting. Here’s what you said:
When mswas challenged you on this, here is your response to her, (which, refreshingly, admitted a rational failing on your part).
And when I questioned you on the exact same point, along the same lines as mswas, this is your response:
Yet, you’d be fine in using to restrict what you see is a right when it applies to another group.
So, why the inconsistency regarding the “right to marry” for different groups? Also, why the inconsistency in your two answers to the same question, one to mswas and a different one to me?
Yes, now that you mention that’s very nearly the argument that I’m seeing, too. I’d modify it slightly by rewriting the Conclusion thusly:
“Homosexuals, if they want children, cannot copulate in the exact same manner as heterosexual couples. That is, by the very definition of a homosexual couple, one partner cannot insert his penis into the other partner’s vagina. There are either two penises or two vaginas. Despite the fact that many other alternatives exist (some used without comment by heterosexual couples) this is different, and different is bad.”
Your version is certainly more concise, though.
How in the world do you go from premise to conclusion? Who has claimed that gays don’t like children? You see this in “all the ‘procreation’ arguments”? Really? Please point to one. Please point to anyone who has said that. Or intimated that. You’re just making things up here.
What “rational failing” do you mean? Didn’t blacks vote for Prop 8 in large numbers? Wasn’t there comment at the time that this seemed odd - that after their own civil rights struggle that a large number of them should vote to stymie the civil rights efforts of another minority group?
My point, and perhaps I was unclear, is that extending civil rights in one situation doesn’t open the floodgates to all vaguely-similar situations. In fact, in practice, the group that just benefited from the extension can easily move to prevent further extension. I don’t understand why this isn’t a valid response to slippery-slope arguments that homosexual marriage today will inevitably lead to incest marriage tomorrow. Incest marriage may happen one day (it has in the distant past) but I figure it’ll have to go through the same lengthy battle that blacks and homosexuals have, and that the successes of blacks and homosexuals aren’t necessarily going to be helpful.
I don’t understand the second part of your post (“Yet, you’d be fine in using to restrict what you see is a right when it applies to another group”) so I can’t comment on the claimed inconsistency between my responses to you and mswas.
So if a gay marriage has access to artificial insemination and surrogates, all the reproduction arguments are moot, right? After all, we have a gay marriage that will bring a child into the world, albeit with some outside help, such help already being enjoyed by many heterosexual marriages.
On further reflection, I think I get what magellan01 was referring to in #1008.
It’s not just the actions of so-called activist judges, or even legislators, that create social change. Civil rights for blacks was a hard struggle that eventually won over enough of the society at large to let progress be made, helped along by the gradually shrinking perception that blacks were inferior or animalistic and had to kept in their place for the good of society. In more recent years, there’s a gradually shrinking perception that homosexuals are sinful and willfully evil, and must be kept in their place for society’s good. No bang of a judge’s gavel or wave of a legislator’s pen could make these perceptions fade away, it took gradual change within the society to do that.
Sure, the Prop 8 voters were resisting this change. That’s understandable (though not logical). However, the society around them is becoming less supportive of their views, not more, and Prop 8 is a setback for the rights of homosexual Americans, not a defeat.
If there’s a perceived hypocrisy in my attitude (i.e. I like society when it agrees with me, and not when it doesn’t), I’d like to clarify that, by default, efforts to increase rights have my favour, while efforts to deny or decrease them without a very good reason do not.
You’re fooling yourself if you think this is true. Posts ago I quoted one of the arguments against interracial marriage. from the landmark case. This from the trial judge
He’s talking about tradition and nature, as in, interracial marriage violates tradition and nature. Which , as we now see, is total bullshit.
there is a very clear and apt comparison between the civil and basic human rights struggle for interracial marriage and the current one for SSM.
Which is why they will be overturned in this case as well.
That’s what it is alright, in both cases, but it is a process of making society aware.
And you haven’t presented any substantial reason for seeing it that way. You just do.
I am not at all sure why you resort to repeating this error that I have bolded. It was debunked pages and days ago:
How Many Children Have Gay Parents in the US?]
While the numbers emphasize adoptions, (the numbers come from an adoptions web site), they also note the existence of a third to a half million homosexuals who had parented biological children over thirty years ago. The numbers have surely grown since then.
It seems odd, to me, anyway, to harp on procreation as the key to the words to be used rather than the aspects of child rearing and families. It appears to be a capricious way to stigmatize the children in non-traditional families much more than a way to reinforce societal support for family units in which to rear children.
This is especially true given the increasing number, (already large), of marriages in which the (currently) heterosexual couples eschew procreation:
Childless By Choice
The Constitution is a strawman? Really?
He asked why they should be considered equal. I pointed to the Constitution, in the place where it *says *why. Because they’re persons.
He’s been given that explanation in the past, too. So, it can only be inferred that he either (A) doesn’t accept that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, or that (B) its equal protection guarantee doesn’t apply for some reason, and in fact there’s only one reason inferrable from that text.
I’ve asked already, and will ask again, and maybe one of you can answer, though that looks exceedingly doubtful: Why do you believe gays are not entitled to equal protection of the laws under our Constitution?
Because apparently there’s an even more Supreme Law of the Land: procreation. :rolleyes:
Well, you have to admit that if procreation in the U.S. stopped entirely, the Constitution would eventually become moot.
How gay marriage would bring this about, though, is unclear.
It’s because of the squirrelly standards for application of the Equal Protection Clause, which SCOTUS in its wisdom has not deemed sequal orientation to be a legitimate application of, as yet.
The whole thing revolves around:
May the states regulate marriage?
Yes, obviously. All of them do, and laws prohibiting a 40-year-old and a 10-year-old from marrying are almost universally considered reasonable.
On what grounds may states devise regulation?
Anti-SSM contingent: Whatever they choose to, so long as they don’t violate the prohibition against anti-miscegenation laws, which we think is a reasonable one. But otherwise, they’re supreme: Just look at the Tenth Amendment.
Pro-SSM contingent: Well, you’re supposed to have valid reasons related to state purposes. “Protecting the instutition of marriage” from some ill-defined threat is not one of them. And you cannot violate the established “suspect classes” without outstanding reason. In many states sexual orientation IS a “suspect class”; in all states and the Federal jurisprudential regime, sex is – and if Tom can marry Susan but Beth can’t, fo no good reason other than Beth is of the same-sex as Suisan, that is a discrimination on the basis of sex, and needs a law with grounds that will survive heightened scrutiny to be allowable. And those grounds are not evident.
Let’s avoid this sort of personal swipe.
[ /Moderating ]