[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Maybe it’s an issue he feels strongly about, that affects him personally. Maybe you’d do the same thing if someone told you that you couldn’t marry the wanted to.
[/quote]
Yea, I would be pissed someone told me I couldn’t marry the wanted to! “The wanted to” is hot. Like, hot.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
Mick28 wrote:
Let’s tear down every major institution that we have in order to accommodate them…Ha ha
We did it for interracial couples and for females who wanted to work and be public officials and for the retarded who wanted to not be considered insane and for… etc… etc…
No, but that’s different. Stop being racist/sexist/whatever. Let’s not move forward, that’s not what humanity is all about. Let’s go back to the dark ages and burn witches and execute all teh gayz.[/quote]
Lets keep modern acne medicine. I heard some woman back then were vile.
If we do go back to the dark ages, I’m advocating a T-Nation castle where we build a huge ass gym with no cardio bunnies allowed.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Marriage laws are older than the country, and not a single person can, with any intellectual integrity, suggest that they were passed with an eye to making life harder for gays or to reward straight relationships at the expense of gay relationships.[/quote]
How come they were legal before the Roman Christian Emperors made them illegal?
[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
And same sex coupling won’t?[/quote]
Sure it will, and so what? It is irrelevant to the point, which was that interracial coupling will occur and produce outcomes that marriage is designed to affect (producing children) whether or not interracial marriage is permitted.
Not so with gay marriage.
Children - gay relationships do not produce children, so there is no concern over the larger public policy problem of whether children will or won’t be taken care of by those who created the child, etc. That is marriage’s primary concern.
No - in terms of Equal Protection, nothing is like race, even gender.
Of marriage? If you don’t know, it’s not my problem to fix. There are countless posts outlining it in a number of threads.
But, here is the quick and dirty - to order childbirth and raising by the biological parents and to prevent children from being born outside the distinct relationship of husband and wife.
Because the argument has no realistic basis, is pure fiction, and defies even common sense?
It means the institution, as designed, is largely uncommited and uninteresed in homsexuality because homosexuality is irrelevant to its purpose.
Keep up.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
How come they were legal before the Roman Christian Emperors made them illegal?[/quote]
You’ve tried this before, and the results were the same - homosexual marriage in the (late) Roman Empire was a limited, play-acting prerogative of the decadent royalty, not some wide, well-received civil institution in society. Romans mocked the exercise - see Seutonius, The Lives of the Ceasars, The Life of Nero and Juvenal, as examples.
Stop peddling this myth as an “answer” to the idea that gay marriage has some legitimate historical predicate.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Makavali wrote:
How come they were legal before the Roman Christian Emperors made them illegal?
You’ve tried this before, and the results were the same - homosexual marriage in the (late) Roman Empire was a limited, play-acting prerogative of the decadent royalty, not some wide, well-received civil institution in society. Romans mocked the exercise - see Seutonius, The Lives of the Ceasars, The Life of Nero and Juvenal, as examples.
Stop peddling this myth as an “answer” to the idea that gay marriage has some legitimate historical predicate.
[/quote]
How about the Greeks?
[quote]Makavali wrote:
How about the Greeks?[/quote]
Good Lord - there wasn’t even a semblance of the institution in Ancient Greece. In fact, despite the modern revisionism that the Ancient Greeks were living in a gay-tolerant utopia, the culture, in fact, did not believe in gay “equality”.
Here is an idea, Makavali - actually learn some facts about a topic before offering it up as truth.
Seriously.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
How is it punishment for the black person to not be able to marry a white person, but not for the white person? The law was equal, because a black could only marry a black and a white could only marry a white. No one was ‘punished’ and I dont see the right to an interracial marriage specifically written anywhere.
No one suggested a “right” to an interracial marriage, certainly not me - you made it up. The issue is whether or not someone is being “punished” by merely “being” of some classification.[/quote]
No. The Supreme Court did. In Loving v. Virgina. I suppose you could say it is ‘made up.’ There’s certainly an argument that all the rights stemming from the ‘right to privacy’ are ‘made up’. Probably moreso than marriage as a fundamental right. But this is still binding law of our land and requires a strict scrutiny analysis and implicates the equal protection clause.
That does not automatically mean that failure to extend benefits to gay unions violates the equal protection clause. Some state courts have held that it does. Like the Vermont Supreme Court in Baker v. State. Others have held that it does not. The New York Court of Appeals probably presented the best-reasoned arguments why gay marriage is not a fundamental right and failure to extend benefits to same-sex couples does not violate the Constitution.
The Supreme Court itself also affirmed that traditional marriage laws do not violate the Constitution in Baker v. Nelson, a few years after Loving.
The Constitutional issues are something the Supreme Court would need to rule on if they were ever willing to hear a case.
[quote]jsbrook wrote:
No. The Supreme Court did. In Loving v. Virgina. I suppose you could say it is ‘made up.’ There’s certainly an argument that all the rights stemming from the ‘right to privacy’ are ‘made up’. Probably moreso than marriage as a fundamental right. But this is still binding law of our land and requires a strict scrutiny analysis and implicates the equal protection clause.[/quote]
The Supreme Court said there is a broader “right to marriage”, not an “right for blacks to marry whites” - in other words, the “right to marry” is not a race-based right, but one that covers all folks that are eligible for marriage.
The “race” aspect in Loving was about Equal Protection analysis, not some enunciation that there was a right to “interracial marriage”. The “right to marriage” aspect was one of Due Process - an individual right that the anti-mescegnation laws ran afoul of.
[quote]That does not automatically mean that failure to extend benefits to gay unions violates the equal protection clause. Some state courts have held that it does. Like the Vermont Supreme Court in Baker v. State. Others have held that it does not. The New York Court of Appeals probably presented the best-reasoned arguments why gay marriage is not a fundamental right and failure to extend benefits to same-sex couples does not violate the Constitution.
The Supreme Court itself also affirmed that traditional marriage laws do not violate the Constitution in Baker v. Nelson, a few years after Loving.
The Constitutional issues are something the Supreme Court would need to rule on if they were ever willing to hear a case.[/quote]
You stated:
States have come to different conclusions on the issue
Ultimately, the US Supreme Court would decide on the EP issue if a case ever got pushed far enough
Thanks.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
And same sex coupling won’t?
Sure it will, and so what? It is irrelevant to the point, which was that interracial coupling will occur and produce outcomes that marriage is designed to affect (producing children) whether or not interracial marriage is permitted.
[/quote]
Why’d you bring it up if it was irrelevant?
[quote]
Not so with gay marriage.
Which social goals are gay marriages unable to produce? If a gay man or woman has kids from a previous relationship, what then?
Children - gay relationships do not produce children, so there is no concern over the larger public policy problem of whether children will or won’t be taken care of by those who created the child, etc. That is marriage’s primary concern. [/quote]
Why not protect kids born to gay people from previous relationships? Why not allow married gays to adopt? There are a lot of kids who are not being taken care of now, seems promotion of adoption by healthy gay couples would be a societal good.
[quote]
What is the basis for this claim? Are you arguing that people are just making a “choice” and there is no “born gay”?
No - in terms of Equal Protection, nothing is like race, even gender. [/quote]
Another poster has addressed this better than I could
How would gay marriage prevent children from “being born outside the distinct relationship of husband and wife”?
Lots of kids are born everyday outside the bonds of marriage, wouldn’t gay marriage promote better relationships among fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, etc?
Doesn’t Marriage promote other societal goals? Why shouldn’t these be taken into account?
The question mark at the end of the sentence was perhaps the best Freudian slip I’ve read in a while. I agree, the premise doesn’t hold.
[quote]
“traditional marriage has been agnostic” …what is this supposed to mean?
It means the institution, as designed, is largely uncommited and uninteresed in homsexuality because homosexuality is irrelevant to its purpose. [/quote]
Who do you think “designed it?” What is “it’s purpose”? and how does gay marriage not promote that purpose?
[quote]
Keep up.[/quote]
Keep up yourself. My questions have implications that you completely blew over. Was it because you didn’t understand the implications or because you choose to ignore them?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
No. The Supreme Court did. In Loving v. Virgina. I suppose you could say it is ‘made up.’ There’s certainly an argument that all the rights stemming from the ‘right to privacy’ are ‘made up’. Probably moreso than marriage as a fundamental right. But this is still binding law of our land and requires a strict scrutiny analysis and implicates the equal protection clause.
The Supreme Court said there is a broader “right to marriage”, not an “right for blacks to marry whites” - in other words, the “right to marry” is not a race-based right, but one that covers all folks that are eligible for marriage.
The “race” aspect in Loving was about Equal Protection analysis, not some enunciation that there was a right to “interracial marriage”. The “right to marriage” aspect was one of Due Process - an individual right that the anti-mescegnation laws ran afoul of.
That does not automatically mean that failure to extend benefits to gay unions violates the equal protection clause. Some state courts have held that it does. Like the Vermont Supreme Court in Baker v. State. Others have held that it does not. The New York Court of Appeals probably presented the best-reasoned arguments why gay marriage is not a fundamental right and failure to extend benefits to same-sex couples does not violate the Constitution.
The Supreme Court itself also affirmed that traditional marriage laws do not violate the Constitution in Baker v. Nelson, a few years after Loving.
The Constitutional issues are something the Supreme Court would need to rule on if they were ever willing to hear a case.
You stated:
States have come to different conclusions on the issue
Ultimately, the US Supreme Court would decide on the EP issue if a case ever got pushed far enough
Thanks.[/quote]
Your welcome. I’m not quite sure what you are disputing. But in point of fact, the Supreme Court DID hold that marriage as a broader matter is a fundamental right. The Supreme Court then EXPLICITLY stated, “The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, A PERSON OF ANOTHER RACE resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”
Did the Supreme Court not also give the decision of Gay Marriage to the States?
If so, then would the Supreme Court just refer to the decision on future Gay Marriage cases, which are brought before the court.
[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
Why’d you bring it up if it was irrelevant? [/quote]
Interracial coupling is not irrelavant to the point, since they produce results that are within the coverage of what marriage is trying to affect - gay coupling is. You raised the issue - and it is irrelevant.
Because of the immense trade-off of disintegrating traditional marriage even further and thus losing the larger benefits of marriage on the whole. This has been discussed at great length in other recent threads - search down the page.
[quote]Another poster has addressed this better than I could
[/quote]
No, they didn’t, because race is treated differently than anything else, including gender, and that is not a matter of opinion.
It doesn’t, and that is one of the main points - gay marriage doesn’t serve that purpose, so there is little reason to enact it. Thanks for making my point for me.
Why would it? Why would there be gay fathers and sons? Gays don’t procreate.
The fact that kids are born everyday outside the bond of marriage is something we, as a society, are trying to fix, not acoommodate.
I can’t think of any good ones that are worth endangering strengthening the primary reasons.
The question mark at the end wasn’t a slip, it was intentional. And you are right - the premise does not hold.
Mankind designed it, across many cultures, and Western civilization fine tuned it. Its purpose has been repeated over and over. Gay marriage, since it has nothing to do with the natural creation and raising of children, does not serve as a means to important social goals of child and family ordering.
It would merely be a therapeutic vehicle by which gays would get cultural acceptance for their relationships, and once you peel back the layers of gay marriage advocates’ arguments, that is the thrust of it.
No, they really don’t - rather, they demonstrate a quick and thoughtless gloss-over of issues that have been thrashed and re-thrashed out.
And, I actually bothered to answer them - you just don’t like the answers.
[quote]jsbrook wrote:
Your welcome. I’m not quite sure what you are disputing. But in point of fact, the Supreme Court DID hold that marriage as a broader matter is a fundamental right. The Supreme Court then EXPLICITLY stated, “The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, A PERSON OF ANOTHER RACE resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.” [/quote]
I am not disputing the fundamental right to marriage, which is an individual right - CappedAndPlanIt chose to argue that gays are being denied the right of marriage on the basis of their classification the same as blacks were, so I am refuting him on classification grounds, i.e., Equal Protection.
As in, I was not arguing that blacks have a “fundamental” right to interracial marriage for the purposes of my answer to CappedAndPlanIt - I never mentioned it, and was squarely focused on an EP approach.
And, as I mentioned earlier, the idea of a fundamental right to marriage isn’t necessarily a good thing for gays, because “marriage” is a very specific, very narrowly defined institution. Under that “fundamental” right, gays don’t have a right to gay marriage anymore than polygamists have a fundamental right to polygamy. The fundamental right is not predicated on some idea that there is a fundamental right to state-recognition of any relationship your heart desires - because if that were true, a Constitutional fundamental right to marriage would effectively get rid of marriage as a public institution, and that is an absurd result.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
Your welcome. I’m not quite sure what you are disputing. But in point of fact, the Supreme Court DID hold that marriage as a broader matter is a fundamental right. The Supreme Court then EXPLICITLY stated, “The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, A PERSON OF ANOTHER RACE resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”
I am not disputing the fundamental right to marriage, which is an individual right - CappedAndPlanIt chose to argue that gays are being denied the right of marriage on the basis of their classification the same as blacks were, so I am refuting him on classification grounds, i.e., Equal Protection.
As in, I was not arguing that blacks have a “fundamental” right to interracial marriage for the purposes of my answer to CappedAndPlanIt - I never mentioned it, and was squarely focused on an EP approach.
And, as I mentioned earlier, the idea of a fundamental right to marriage isn’t necessarily a good thing for gays, because “marriage” is a very specific, very narrowly defined institution. Under that “fundamental” right, gays don’t have a right to gay marriage anymore than polygamists have a fundamental right to polygamy. The fundamental right is not predicated on some idea that there is a fundamental right to state-recognition of any relationship your heart desires - because if that were true, a Constitutional fundamental right to marriage would effectively get rid of marriage as a public institution, and that is an absurd result.
[/quote]
Of course you’re right. But by declaring it a fundamental right, there are much broader implications that the simple holding in Loving. As a fundamental right implicates the equal protection clause. The government was never obligated to provide any benefits or recognize traditional marriage. But having done that it cannot freely discriminate. At least that’s the constitutional argument. That does not mean it can’t discriminate (see below) but it does mean there is a higher burden and justification for disparate treatment.
The Supreme Court can uphold failure to extend state or federal benefits to same-sex unions by finding that they cannot definitionally be traditional marriage and are thus not a fundamental right that implicates equal protection.
But that is not the only way. Your premise that the government would then have to recognize any relationship your heart desires is simply wrong. The equal protection clause is not an unequivocal mandate for identical treatment of all. When a fundamental right is involved the government can still draw distinctions between groups and treat them differently if there is a compelling government interest and the disparate treatment is the least restrictive means of achieving it.
There is a whole host of evidence that polygamous relatioships promote instability and abuse and oppression of women in this country. Not to mention beastiality (inherently not a relationship of consent between adults) and problems with incestuous relationships. There are ample grounds for making distinctions between monogamous gay relationships and these other relationships. You may not agree. But plenty of people, courts, and commentators have.
Additionally, a court can find that a monogamous same-sex union has many of the same benefits as opposite-sex unions and the same goals of promoting it are satisfied. It is probably true. It really doesn’t matter that it’s less common. When it happens, the same-sex couple tends to be healthier, happier, more productive and contributing to society. And any children involved are better off.
None of this is to say that the Supreme Court shouldn’t reject extending these benefits upon a finding that gay marriage really does threaten traditional marriage. But that’s a diffiult empirical question, and the burden of proof should be on the goverment. If it ever did decide on this question, there would no doubt be many amicus briefs on the issue from both sides. The opposition would need to do a much better job than it has on these forums of establishing that tradtional marriage is threatened.