I am still having an issue why this would be a problem. Arguments go from religion to federal and state documents. Those documents are there to be changed, there would be no America if those documents could have been changed. I do not want to go all libertarian but if it does not adversely affect you or your property what the hell are you doing effecting theirs? Get off my lawn was a phrase before it was a mem and it meant something.
Church and state is another thread…learn it, it seems to be a major part of what made this country.
You mean the real world in which he compared gays to bestiality and incest, that one? Where he spoke at Princeton where he compared having moral feelings against homosexuality to having it against murder? Or in the dissent to Lawrence v. Texas where he defended his vote against the majority opinion by comparing sodomy to prostitution, incest, and child pornography? I fail to see the irony in using his own actual words where he did say those things and pretending like he didn’t mean it or it was all a big misunderstanding
There are people who will defend Scalia for simply being conservative, and there are those who defend him for being some brilliant mind who happens to be conservative. If you want to belong to the first group, just say so. But don’t pretend that Scalia isn’t either a 1) raging partisan hack, or 2) a stupid idiot prone to failures in logic.
He is OBJECTIVELY wrong on homosexuality. Just as wrong as those people who think that putting something to a vote automatically legitimizes it. Gay marriage, because it creates such deep, visceral gut reactions in a lot of people, should not be put up for a vote because it would take far too long and be no more or less legitimate than if unelected judges (ones who actually follow basic logic and don’t allow their political leanings to influence their decisions) force the issue by legalizing it for everyone.
Don’t get me wrong, we are allowed to disagree with anyone and everyone. But we are not allowed to substitute our own facts as reality. You can disagree with the SCOTUS on gay marriage all you want, but you don’t get to pretend your belief is rooted in fact. The reality is that 4 of the 9 justices simply got it wrong and Scalia is a hateful homophobe who consistently gets decisions on this issue factually wrong
For someone who has put so much effort into declaring what is “wrong,” it is amusing that you have clearly gotten this idea wrong, yourself.
The attitudes among voters have made tremendous strides in the last twenty years, (actually at an accelerating pace), and while SSM will not be fully legal in the U.S. next Tuesday, there is ample reason to believe that, (barring some extreme incident that causes a backlash), it will be legal within the next decade.
Now, I am aware that that is not “fast enough,” (depending on various values of “enough”), but it is going to happen just about as fast through the vote as it would through the judicial process. In fact, given that it is being decided on a state by state basis, where the overwhelming majority of Supreme Courts are periodically elected, even judicial implementation is going to be the result of voter action.
Hoping for a SCOTUS decision to sweep away every impediment is not going to happen any time soon.
For some reason I miss thread updates, but I came back to this one.
What are the “non ick” factors banning bestiality and adult incest? Surely some guy banging his horse in the privacy of his own barn isn’t hurting anyone.
Like you, I’m unsure of the risk of genetic defects of offspring related to incest, but in what other instances do we ban sex between consenting adults because possible offspring might have a disease? A ban on HIV positive persons from sex? Would that be a constitutional law? What if the adult brother and/or sister were sterile? Isn’t the law overinclusive as it pertains to them?
I think it is pretty clear that laws against bestiality and adult incest are “ick factor” laws, or as Scalia properly put it: morals laws. Morals laws have been in place since the founding without any issue until 1986 when Bowers almost struck them down.
But, I think we DO agree that Kennedy and O’Connor’s mealy-mouthed decisions are unsupported and the Court needs to decide these things in a proper way: finally decide the strict scrutiny question.
These “sweet mystery of life” decisions do disrespect to the Court because they are based on nothing and the decisions themselves are malleable, requiring harmed Plaintiffs (if that’s what they turn out to be) to pay more money to attorneys to file the next lawsuit that the mealy-mouthed opinion didn’t answer, and needed to answer to get at the result it did.
He risks spreading a nonhuman disease into the human population. It’s not like he’s going to cook the horse before having sex with it. The fact that the horse can’t consent either is also usually mentioned but that’s iffier; animals can’t consent to anything in the way humans can. Human consent theory (or whatever the official term for it is) doesn’t extend well to animals.
As for adult incest, the main reasons that it’s illegal are tradition, the fact that most of the time it’s non-consensual, and the number of people who are interested in a consensual incestuous relationship is too small to have significant political power.
So can we ban all sex for a person who has HIV? He risks spreading a real human disease into the human population. That also sounds like a rational basis against male homosexual sodomy laws. Sure it’s overinclusive, but what they hell, safety first!
And the animal consent could be covered under cruelty laws. Why the specific prohibition against sex? Do you really think that bestiality laws were/are written for disease purposes?
Is “too small to have significant political power” a good reason for a denial of an alleged constitutional right?
“The animal wanted it” seems pretty abusable to me. Hell, that’s an argument that happens with people, too, and they at least have the capability of speaking for themselves. Even if we did accept that argument, I think there’s an issue with informed consent.
As a general matter of legal theory, yes, some things are banned solely on “ick factor.” Public nudity, for instance. Or the preparing of horse-meat, which California banned, not too long ago.
So, yeah. Laws sometimes get passed on this basis. Is that the best reason anyone can come up with for maintaining a ban on gay marriage?
ETA: I originally wrote “eating” of horse meat, but, of course, that’s legal here, so long as it was prepared somewhere else. Or (ick!) before the ban was instituted.
The animal doesn’t do it if it doesn’t want to. The woman is passive. No different than setting up the dog with a bitch for breeding. Put the two together, and whatever happens, happens.
The animal consent argument is specious (he he) at best. I can keep steer in my barn for slaughter and consume its flesh, let my neighbors consume its flesh, sell said flesh to the policeman’s auxiliary association ball so they can comment on how delicate its flesh tasted… yet sex with the steer beforehand is unlawful because I lack its consent???
Is consent REALLY the motivation behind these laws?
Very simple: States are allowed to pass morals laws related to sexual behavior because since the founding of the country laws have been passed outlawing sodomy, bestiality, cohabitation, adultery, fornication, prostitution, and incest. Nobody until 1986 seriously thought that such laws were unconstitutional; the founders didn’t think so, and they are not unconstitutional.
They may be unwise given changing times, and when times change, the best way for laws to change is through elected representatives in the legislature.
Justice Thomas added an opinion stating that if he were a member of the legislature, he would vote to repeal the Texas law at issue, but it’s not the job of a court to say which laws are good and which ones are bad unless the law deals with a fundamental right. History teaches that none of the above are fundamental rights, and the majority opinion in Lawrence didn’t claim that homosexuality was a fundamental right.
If that’s true, then i’d say whatever subsection of that majority that also supported animal cruelty regulations were hypocrites.
Again, that seems pretty open to abuse as a claim. And, again, informed consent. I can’t give a person deadly poison, tell them it’s delicious candy, and expect no problems for me when they keel over dead. They wouldn’t have eaten it if they didn’t want to.
