Assuming facts not in evidence. Carry on.
Strictly speaking, you are entirely correct, the OP just asked for any secular reason for the passage of DOMA. Your unsupported assertion qualifies.
** Rat Avatar **, the three questions you asked in your OP have all been answered in one fell swoop, now that Terr has properly discerned your meaning. This discussion is over. One secular purpose of the law is to promote
and people pass laws based on common knowledge.
If you wanted evidence of these assertions, or a weighing of the the relative societal costs and benefits of extending the privileges of marriage to more people, or an examination of the moral implications of such a law, or more than one secular justification for it, you should have said so in your OP. You did not, therefore you left yourself open to the devastating “Everybody knows it” maneuver.
[quote=“Furious_Marmot, post:242, topic:616983”]
Correct.
correct.
Correct.
. Correct.
If one wants to discuss the viability of the state’s assertion, then one must agree that the state does, indeed, have a compelling interest.
So after five pages of pathetic flailing and desperate assertions, what do we have as the secular reason for DOMA to exist?
We’ve got, “children do better in single sex households” and “people will marry their sons or chipmunks”.
It’s nice to see that the pro-DOMA side is literally unable to make a coherent argument. Although, it’s been that way the last ten thousand times a similar thread came up.
Looking back at the OP he wrote:
Emphasis on have. In other words, is there any secular reason to keep the law on statute?
I don’t think that needs to be demonstrated in order to comply with the intent of this thread. To argue otherwise would be the two wrongs fallacy. If there is one legitimate secular reason for keeping DOMA that’d be sufficient. If the issue were that the intention of DOMA could be served better with another piece of legislation (say if the intention of DOMA was to protect children and it accomplished that, but interviews with potential parents would serve that role better), it’d be as irrelevant to this thread as the fact that legal age distinctions are arbitrary.
Edit: That said, there’s this.
To be fair, I was the one that said children do better in single sex households (namely when being raised by lesbian couples) and I think that’s a fairly coherent refutation of the basis for DOMA.
[quote=“Lobohan, post:244, topic:616983”]
Glad to see you recognize the anti doma advocates for what they are.
Who wrote that?
I’ve satisfied the OP’s question. I’ve given a secular reason for doma. there is no argument, it is what it is.
So why would you continue to futilely argue?
I agree, I meant mixed sex households, as an assertion of the pro-DOMA side. Whoopsie.
I think the key word here in ‘contract’. If two people want to love, honor and cherish each other for the rest of their lives, then they don’t actually need the government’s permission to do so. They do need the government permission to file a joint return. What it comes down is two people want to shack up and they want single people to subsidize them. Same sex marriage just means that gays and lesbians want the same subsidy.
This brings up the interesting question of whether the government should be in the business of subsidizing marriage in the first place. It actually seems counterproductive from the viewpoint of encouraging full employment. It would make more sense if someone in a relationship gets a good job offer somewhere else, then they should be able to move without a lot of expensive legal proceedings.
You are advocating nonsense. You have no basis other than bald assertions to promote your desire to keep rights from Americans based on nothing more than whim.
Jtgain said something similar, I assume as a joke to illustrate how utterly worthless the pro-DOMA people’s arguments are.
You haven’t given a good reason. You’ve given a nonsense reason. If someone asks what the moon is made out of, you can assert that it is a cloud of glowing moths, but that doesn’t make it true. You have no evidence, you’re only offering words without facts behind them.
The anti-DOMA side always wins intelligent arguments. Why not be on that side?
Except sometimes they end up in hospitals that deny visitation to partners but not spouses. Kinda tough to be cherished when the rest of one’s life is spent on a ventilator in isolation. Not to mention adoption and custody rights.
Of course this is about contracts. It has always been about contracts. Married in the eyes of the State for tax, survivor, and similar considerations.
There isn’t any reason for that to be the case. Again, the government makes imprecise laws all the time. That shouldn’t be surprising since our legislative system ensures that any potential law will be nitpicked like crazy, and it may be the case that only certain aspects of an initiative will have enough popular support to get enacted. If everything Congress did had to be absolutely comprehensive and precise, they’d never get anything done.
If, for example, Congress passed a federal marriage law codifying marriage as a union between two consenting adults, and gave as its reason the desire to support and foster two-parents household for the nation’s children, it could do that*, even if, say, polygamists claimed that their individual arrangements were just as beneficial, and could offer up evidence along those lines.
That’s why states can say “You have to be sixteen before we grant you a driver’s license,” even though some people may be perfectly good drivers at 14, and the state could just have a system where citizens could take the driver’s test regardless of age.
As far as the courts are concerned, non-suspect classifications are just going to get “rational basis” review, and courts wil sign off on pretty much any rationale the state offers.
What facts am I assuming? That there are fucked up people in this country? Golly willickers, I guess you got me. I don’t have an official analysis of all the fucked up people in America. I mean outside of reality televsions, I suppose.
But the concept has been upheld at the circuit level. Citizens for Equal Protection v. Bruning, 455 F.3d 859 (8th Cir. 2006).
On the other hand, a couple of federal district courts have found DOMA’s section 3 unconstitutional.
I think they key question is: does DOMA require heightened scrutiny? If it does, it must fail. If only rational basis review is required, DOMA can be sustained.
I don’t know what to tell you then. The state’s reason is to provide the best invironment for children. That’s a reason you may disagree with, but it’s a reason nonetheless. You may thinnk it a whim, but lots of reasonable people think otherwise.
I’ve yet to see an argument based on anything other than emotionalism. You want gay marriage because it makes you feel better. It satisfies your alleged heightened sensibilities of fairness. But, in fact, it does no such thing. But your feelings are what counts, right?
Silly goalpost mover. The OP never asked for a good reason. All the questions that were raised by him are satisfied with a single unsupported assertion. Take your highfalutin’ discussification elsewhere, this thread has been won.
Also, envy.
Obviously.
You don’t understand. It is a stated reason, but it is not actually true. If I want you executed for killing James Dean, it may be my reason, but it isn’t a real argument for it.
Why not deny gay marriage because it would anger space-aliens? Or because it would curdle milk, or cause eclipses. These are reasons by your standard, but they aren’t based in reality.
Then you aren’t reading.
Allowing a large minority to engage in rights everyone else has is fair. What you are unable to comprehend, is that there is no reason for it to not be allowed that isn’t based on bigotry.
Dagnabit! [throws hat into dirt]
I would have asked for a single reason if that was the standard I intended to meet.
I asked what the secular purpose was, look up above at the title bar on your screen.
If you go past that to read the OP you will see
“What secular interest does the state have in controlling the formation of contractual bonds between consenting adults based on gender.”
So although it may convenient to re-frame the original question it does not answer it.
What a brilliant argument. I’m stumped.