[quote]pat wrote:
Geeez, Gay people are so angry.[/quote]
They’re angry because they know something is wrong with them. God made it so we’d have children and somehow they got fucked out of the deal. Instead of having sons and daughters, they’re getting a stiff one up the poop chute. You’d be mad too.
[quote]Uncle Gabby wrote:
popgoblinn wrote:
Hey I found this interesting. If CA voted to ban gay marriage, why did the state supreme court feel the need to over turn that? I thought democracy ment rule by the people. Why did they bother to even ask the 30 + million in this state what they wanted if they had their own agenda anyways?
For the record, it just so happens its about the gay marriage. my real issue the the whole turning the vote over. While I am against gay marriage, lets keep the thread on why the court would do that and not whether its right or wrong to be gay
also I think they keep the change to the state constitution of the ballot because, as the last vote showed, it would get banned by the constitution
thoughts?
The supreme court can and should over turn a bill if it infringes on the constitutional rights of a minority. I don’t know the specifics of the bill you are talking about and frankly I don’t care. But the just because you have 51% of the vote doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want to the other 49%. That is the dark side of democracy, the tyranny of the majority, that the founding fathers set the system of checks and balances to protect us against.
I think it is a sound principle and this country would go to hell quick without it.[/quote]
The reality is that a small group of appointed judges, with no accountability to the people they serve, are making decisions for everyone based on their own bias and political slant and not the letter of the constitution.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
Although I understand the point you fellas are trying to make, I believe that the court made a good decision.
Discrimination against a segment of the population is still discrimination, regardless of whether the people like it or not.
If 75% of Cali voted to take the right of blacks to vote away, would you agree that the judges would be wrong to overturn that? Even if it’s the “Will of the people”?
To me, you can’t fucking vote on whether something is discrimination or not- it either is or it isn’t. This clearly is.
Setting aside that race is in a different category due to its unique history in our country, assuming you are right about discrimination, you are okay with a court mandating that tax laws treating rich and poor alike (therefore no progressive tax), or striking down welfare benefits on the basis that they “discriminate” - i.e., confer a benefit on one category of people without the other category being eligible to share in it - against rich people?
You’d be ok with that, I assume? If not, why not?[/quote]
That is a different situation, and you know it.
It does not discrinate against those who make more money- it’s not like we’re taking everyone down to $20,000 a year and leveling it off, even if your net income is in the 150k’s. You pay more accordingly, but you keep far, far more.
Either way, I know what you want to bait me into- but the issues, at their core, are wholly different and not comparable. When the court decides what economic policy to follow, they are making a ruling on something that will affect every aspect of the country.
When they make a ruling about gay marriage, they make a ruling that affects only a tiny, tiny minority of the population, and in no way harms, benefits, or honestly has anything to do with the segment that isn’t gay.
This is the great conservative trap, the way of trying to relate economic issues to useless social issues that shouldn’t even be in the public’s conciousness.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
pat wrote:
Geeez, Gay people are so angry.
They’re angry because they know something is wrong with them. God made it so we’d have children and somehow they got fucked out of the deal. Instead of having sons and daughters, they’re getting a stiff one up the poop chute. You’d be mad too.
[/quote]
You really are a complete fucking moron. There’s a reason that I’ll argue with people like Thunderbolt or RJ, but I won’t go near your insane, homophobic, brutally stupid diatribes.
People like you are what make intelligent people lean on shotguns.
And to be fair- I am only for working welfare. Some folks need help- I dig that. But help those who are working full time and still can’t do it.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
That is a different situation, and you know it.
It does not discrinate against those who make more money- it’s not like we’re taking everyone down to $20,000 a year and leveling it off, even if your net income is in the 150k’s. You pay more accordingly, but you keep far, far more. [/quote]
The point is how you are treated under law - it’s not equal. I am fine that different tax rates don’t trip Equal Protection coverage, but you haven’t explained a good reason for them not to. If different classifications get different levels of scrutiny, somebody has to come up with a good explanation why some deserve more protection and some do not.
The “rich people” hypo merely demonstrates that no one seems to be able to draw up the lists, despite the passion for the cause.
There is no baiting - I am asking one simple question of those who like the decision: how do you decide who gets heightened protection?
Your explanation w/r/t economic policy makes no sense - gay marriage in one state certainly could have an effect in other parts of the country (will other states recognize the marriage?).
Incorrect - do they get federal tax treatment as being married? Can they divorce in a different state? How will a court in another state that doesn’t recognize gay marriage treat a child custody issue when a divorced gay moves there? Or alimony?
You think it doesn’t affect much outside a localized gay household? Think again.
It’s only a “trap” because liberals can’t give good answers to what are some tough questions.
There is no economic-social distinction: the Equal Protection clause references only laws, and their character isn’t determinative. But if you don’t like the “rich” people hypo, use something else.
Bigamists are a good conundrum - why give gays heightened protection w/r/t marriage, but throw bigamists under the bus of the electorate?
Courts have been pretty smart about not opening up Pandora’s Box - they have largely stuck with “rational basis” because they know picking and choosing who gets heightened protection and who doesn’t is nothing but a political nightmare.
My question remains as to how to make those distinctions in a principled, fair way that isn’t just a pure personal preference. What categories of people get heightened protection, and why?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
The point is how you are treated under law - it’s not equal. I am fine that different tax rates don’t trip Equal Protection coverage, but you haven’t explained a good reason for them not to. If different classifications get different levels of scrutiny, somebody has to come up with a good explanation why some deserve more protection and some do not.
[/quote]
Because different tax rates are just. They may not be fair, but they are just. You make more, you pay more. You live a far better, finer life then everyone else when you’re rich, so you’re going to pay more taxes. It keeps those less “equal” than you from rising up and killing you.
Bullshit. They are not getting “heightened protection”. We’re not sending out brigades of soldiers to protect the two queens holding hands.
All you are doing them is raising them up to the level of everyone else, and giving them the same exact benefits of having a partner in life that you’ll give someone else. It has nothing to do with sex- you choose to spend your life with someone, and there’s no reason that they shouldn’t be entitled to the same benefits- both legally and financially, as everyone else in this country. It is arrogant to think that we should decide for them.
And if I had my way, the whole fucking thing would be legal, and every fucking state would recognize it. Kind of liket that Voter’s Rights Act thing.
Yes, they get federal tax treatment. Just like everyone else. Not seeing the problem.
As far as every other issue, I’m still not seeing how any of that crap affects anyone who isn’t gay. Does your neighbor’s alimony payment affect you? Does your cousins child custody case really screw up your life? No. So stop making it seem like these issues are things that will tear the very fabric of the nation apart- they won’t.
No, it’s a trap because every year you guys will get the anti-gay lemmings in Kansas and Nebraska to vote Republican based on social issues, even though they’re voting for economic policies that hurt them.
Oh stop. And that’s what, a hundred people on a farm somewhere where you live? Why not just throw the goat fuckers in there too, huh?
No. There are enough gay people who have made a big fucking deal about being able to get married. Maybe if there were more bigamists, you’d have a shot at that one.
I know what you’re going to say- “But you said it was such a small percentage that it wouldn’t affect anyone”. Well, it’s a small percentage that is not anywhere near as absolutely minute as the bigamists.
There’s not news stories on CNN when we find gays living together. Bigamists are a bit more rare. Just a little bit. Not to mention I haven’t seen gays forcing their ten year olds to knock each other up.
Good. I’m sure someone said the same thing about the Dred Scott case.
“Doggone it, thank god that there judge didn’t rule in favor of Dred Scott. Can you imagine that Pandora’s box?”
You want to dodge the issue because you’re scared of it? (And I don’t mean YOU, per se, I mean the courts) it’s not going to help anyone. You WILL have to deal with it, so may as well do it now.
[quote]
My question remains as to how to make those distinctions in a principled, fair way that isn’t just a pure personal preference. What categories of people get heightened protection, and why?[/quote]
Heightened? Again, it’s not heightened. It’s bringing them up to everyone else’s level. Which I don’t see as a bad thing right here.
So are gay couples now going to have to pay the old marriage tax penalty retroactively?
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Because different tax rates are just. They may not be fair, but they are just. You make more, you pay more. You live a far better, finer life then everyone else when you’re rich, so you’re going to pay more taxes. It keeps those less “equal” than you from rising up and killing you.[/quote]
You’re missing the point - you are making a political argument. People are untreated unequally as a matter of law. I’ll address more of this later.
Uh, yeah, Irish, they are - CA shifted homosexuals into a “strict scrutiny” category, meaning the laws related to treating homosexuals differently are presumed to be invalid.
This, even though the California constitution does not recognize “sexual orientation” as a protected class for employment discrimination.
And we are back to square one - your definition above has no boundaries on it: how someone wants to spend their life with someone shouldn’t be discriminated against. No problem - so are you willing to extend that same fairness to other lifestyles?
Why, again, does a gay get to be “raised up to the level of everyone else” but polygamists don’t? Polygamists want to “choose to spend their life with several someones” - why deny them Equal Protection of marriage if you grant the same to the gay and lesbian alternative to marriage?
We are talking about a court coming in and making that decision, not a legislature - so, as a court interested in justice, how do you tell a polygamist who makes the exact same argument you just made above that his marital arrangement can be outlawed?
Good, and these are great political arguments. We aren’t discussing the politics - we are discussing the law.
No, they don’t - the Defense of Marriage Act. The federal government won’t recognize it.
Nor can a state court compel it to be so.
I never said it would tear the fabric of the nation apart - I have not once, in this thread, argued that gay marriage was “bad” or “good”. I have focused strictly on the error of trying to decide who gets new protections and the problems associated with courts trying to be “agents of change”.
State courts are typically obligated to honor child custody and alimony awards from other states. It is essential that they do, and most of the time, it works fine. Now, what does a foreign state court do when a divorced lesbian comes into court wanting a foreign court to honor a child custody arrangement created as a result of their divorce?
It’s a mess. And it is one that gets created regardless of what your personal opinion is on how good or bad gay marriage is.
Here we go with this crypto-Marxist blather from What’s The Matter With Kansas?. C’mon, Irish - you’re better than that.
People vote on values independent of their “economic policies” that help them all the time - how do I know? You support gay marriage, and you aren’t gay.
Same deal with the values-voters - the values actually matter, they aren’t mere “distractions” provided by the “ruling class” to keep them under the yoke of economic oppression.
Irrelevant, and you still can’t answer the question. These questions come up, and they will sue to challenge the law that restricts them. So what is your answer when a bigamist comes in with this decision as his precedent and says “it should apply to me to?”
Gonna call him a “goat fucker” and send him on his way?
There is a big question looming with this decision, but liberals whistle past it because they don’t want to be inconvenienced with the hard work of making sense out of it.
It is a court - volume of complaints don’t matter. It is either just on principle, or it isn’t.
[quote]I know what you’re going to say- “But you said it was such a small percentage that it wouldn’t affect anyone”. Well, it’s a small percentage that is not anywhere near as absolutely minute as the bigamists.
There’s not news stories on CNN when we find gays living together. Bigamists are a bit more rare. Just a little bit. Not to mention I haven’t seen gays forcing their ten year olds to knock each other up. [/quote]
None of this matters - what matters is “what does the law say?”
You are very confused as to how our system works - a judge doesn’t suddenly decide a law means something it otherwise hasn’t before because a large segment of the population is affected by it, nor does the court reject a decision as to what a law means because a small group is bothered by it.
“Equal Justice Under The Law” means equal justice for individuals that come before the court, and it sure as hell ain’t justice to have to make sure you get enough people to complain before you can get relief in court.
[quote]Good. I’m sure someone said the same thing about the Dred Scott case.
“Doggone it, thank god that there judge didn’t rule in favor of Dred Scott. Can you imagine that Pandora’s box?”
You want to dodge the issue because you’re scared of it? (And I don’t mean YOU, per se, I mean the courts) it’s not going to help anyone. You WILL have to deal with it, so may as well do it now.[/quote]
No one is dodging Dred Scott - and you will be sad to find out that atrocious decision was an exercise in…wait for it…judicial activism. The court “found” that a black man could never, ever have political rights in the US, even if a legislature granted it.
Dred Scott is the mother of all this judicial activist mischief - and the California case at issue is one of its progeny.
Don’t take my word for it, take Abe’s:
…the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
There isn’t a word of this that can’t be used to damn the California decision.
I’m not sure you are getting the issue - Dred Scott and the CA decision are the fruit of the same tree: “I don’t care what the legislature has come up with, I am deciding based on what I think is right, the law be damned”.
Oh, it’s heightened, whether you understand it or not. The court has changed the analysis for gays under law - “strict scrutiny” - while nearly every other conceivable class of citizens remains at the level they were before. Yet, no one can explain exactly why that is.
This analysis by Dale Carpenter, a prof at U of Minnesota Law who is very pro gay rights and seems to be a fan of the decision, is very informative:
http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_05_18-2008_05_24.shtml#1211244391
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
pat wrote:
Geeez, Gay people are so angry.
They’re angry because they know something is wrong with them. God made it so we’d have children and somehow they got fucked out of the deal. Instead of having sons and daughters, they’re getting a stiff one up the poop chute. You’d be mad too.
You really are a complete fucking moron. There’s a reason that I’ll argue with people like Thunderbolt or RJ, but I won’t go near your insane, homophobic, brutally stupid diatribes.
People like you are what make intelligent people lean on shotguns.[/quote]
I wonder if it is also now legal in California for someone to marry their mom or dad? If it’s not, then this just shows that the gay lobby has more money to influence judges than the incest lobby?
Sounds like we need to contribute to the incest lobby to make sure they get whatever they want as well. I guess we can start by making up words like “Incestaphobic” to help put down those who don’t agree with the lifestyle?
[quote]Lorisco wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
pat wrote:
Geeez, Gay people are so angry.
They’re angry because they know something is wrong with them. God made it so we’d have children and somehow they got fucked out of the deal. Instead of having sons and daughters, they’re getting a stiff one up the poop chute. You’d be mad too.
You really are a complete fucking moron. There’s a reason that I’ll argue with people like Thunderbolt or RJ, but I won’t go near your insane, homophobic, brutally stupid diatribes.
People like you are what make intelligent people lean on shotguns.
I wonder if it is also now legal in California for someone to marry their mom or dad? If it’s not, then this just shows that the gay lobby has more money to influence judges than the incest lobby?
Sounds like we need to contribute to the incest lobby to make sure they get whatever they want as well. I guess we can start by making up words like “Incestaphobic” to help put down those who don’t agree with the lifestyle?
[/quote]
Or a head of lettuce? Really, the term “marriage” has no meaning anymore.
[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
Lorisco wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
pat wrote:
Geeez, Gay people are so angry.
They’re angry because they know something is wrong with them. God made it so we’d have children and somehow they got fucked out of the deal. Instead of having sons and daughters, they’re getting a stiff one up the poop chute. You’d be mad too.
You really are a complete fucking moron. There’s a reason that I’ll argue with people like Thunderbolt or RJ, but I won’t go near your insane, homophobic, brutally stupid diatribes.
People like you are what make intelligent people lean on shotguns.
I wonder if it is also now legal in California for someone to marry their mom or dad? If it’s not, then this just shows that the gay lobby has more money to influence judges than the incest lobby?
Sounds like we need to contribute to the incest lobby to make sure they get whatever they want as well. I guess we can start by making up words like “Incestaphobic” to help put down those who don’t agree with the lifestyle?
Or a head of lettuce? Really, the term “marriage” has no meaning anymore. [/quote]
That is the very reason why the people in California voted to allow marriage for a man & woman only; because most feel that marriage is a religious institution and allowing people, who’s lifestyle is contrary to 95% of all world religions, to marry denigrates or nullifies the meaning of marriage.
Interestingly, Benjamin Wittes, a gay marriage supporter, offers up this criticism of the California decision:
[i]State Of The Unions by Benjamin Wittes
Are you an anti-gay bigot if you favor civil unions? The California court thinks so.
“Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as president,” the Obama campaign stated oh-so-carefully in response to this week’s California Supreme Court decision striking down the state’s ban on gay marriage. “He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage.”
It was a gracious response from a man the court had just branded as the legal equivalent of a segregationist.
What? You didn’t read that part of the opinion? Well, I’m exaggerating a bit, and the court didn’t mention Obama by name. But the opinion definitely imputes something invidious to those who believe in what Obama stands for about gay marriage.
The California justices declared the right to marry a person of one’s own gender a fundamental right, and they declared as well that it violates state equal protection doctrine for California to treat gay and straight couples differently for purposes of marriage. California has a domestic partnership law, which grants same-sex couples virtually all of the rights and obligations of marriage, making the current dispute one of nomenclature over the use of the word “marriage,” not about the substance of marriage rights. But as their colleagues in Massachusetts did a few years ago, the California justices treated this accommodation as a kind of “separate but equal” institution–which is to say, not an equal one at all.
“[Affording] access to this designation exclusively to opposite-sex couples, while providing same-sex couples access to only a novel alternative designation, realistically must be viewed as constituting significantly unequal treatment to same-sex couples,” the court wrote. Those challenging the law “persuasively invoke by analogy the decisions of the United States Supreme Court finding inadequate a state’s creation of a separate law school for Black students rather than granting such students access to the University of Texas Law School.”
I support same-sex marriage (though not its judicial imposition). Barack Obama does not–at least not publicly. Rather, he supports something, civil unions, that is in substance indistinguishable from the compromise the California political system has crafted and its highest court just struck down.
In all but a small handful of states, such a compromise would represent a giant step forward for same-sex couples. Yet according to the Massachusetts and California supreme courts, that doesn’t matter.
Their states, these courts have held, are constitutionally obliged to afford gay relationships all of the recognition given to heterosexual marriage. And the desire of Obama and millions of like-minded Americans to give gay couples everything but the name “marriage” somehow warrants comparison with the building of parallel African American institutions by way of keeping blacks out of white ones.
The court was not the most strident advocate of this view. The San Francisco Chronicle exulted in response to the ruling that the justices had “strode past the bigotry, fear and blind adherence to tradition that have stood in the way of marriage equality.” But what blind, fearful bigots are the Chronicle talking about here? Not just Californians who oppose gay rights entirely, but apparently also those who, like Obama, support civil unions of the type the court rejected.
Something is wrong with this picture. Somehow, we’ve confused progress on marriage equality with some of the most opprobrious episodes of our legal, cultural, and moral history. For having the guts to move forward while other states were passing nasty constitutional amendments depriving gays of any marital benefits, Californians stand condemned in their own courts for discrimination and in their own newspapers for bigotry.
Few people, of course, really believe this. When we listen to Obama touting civil unions, we hear the progress that he urges, not some appeal to segregation. But it can’t be progress when Obama suggests civil unions, and also progress when a court strikes them down as unconstitutionally discriminatory. And there are costs to asking courts to so far outflank our political system that we would admire politicians for advocating things we would simultaneously want judges to toss out.
One of those costs is that venerable phrases like “equal protection” become so twisted that you can get whiplash watching someone like Obama go from progressive to discrimination advocate. The California court trips over this problem repeatedly; the justices acknowledge the progress made by one of the most forward-leaning states in the union on this issue. They never accuse state lawmakers of bigotry, for example. Yet they still use the civil rights precedents to hold that progress constitutionally deficient. State residents may be justifiably confused to find themselves being congratulated by their court for having moved courageously forward into unconstitutionally disparate treatment of gays.
Another cost is that slow drip-by-drip accretion of power to courts, that steady undermining of the right of people to govern themselves. In California, the deprivation of that right is exquisitely on display, for the compromise the court upset involved decades of negotiation and movement. The nucleus of California’s domestic partnership law dates from the late 1970s. Over time, it has grown more generous, by 2006 including all of the rights and obligations of marriage. In 2000, however, the people of California voted overwhelmingly to limit marriage itself to opposite-sex unions. The legislature has twice voted to extend marriage to gay couples–and Governor Schwarzenegger has twice vetoed the bill. [u]The current arrangement, in short, reflects a series of evolving compromises set against the backdrop of a quickly developing social consensus concerning the value and honor of same-sex relationships–a process that the court treated as just so much bother on the way to a self-evident truth. Once upon a time, this bother had a name. We called it democracy.[/u]
In this case, the affront to democracy will probably prove less harmful to democracy than it will to marriage equality. It is so easy to get a constitutional amendment before voters in California that there is simply no way the electorate won’t be asked–and soon–whether to validate or repudiate the court’s action. The short-term danger, in fact, is that a lot of Barack Obamas will turn out to the polls to overturn a policy choice with which they could have contented themselves had it been enacted by other means.
In the long run, however, it matters a lot how we make marriage equality a reality. It matters whether we brand the people who want to proceed incrementally as discriminators. It matters whether we take the time to persuade them democratically of what we believe. And it matters if we think so little of them that we ask judges to flip a switch and change the world and damn our fellow citizens if they dislike it.
It matters, to put it differently, if our doctrines treat Barack Obama as part of the problem or as a cautious politician with constructive instincts. Nobody who regards him as the latter should be comfortable with what the California court’s decision.[/i]
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=13e09b4c-c23a-4683-90f7-b3bb733f8667
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
The California justices declared the right to marry a person of one’s own gender a fundamental right, and they declared as well that it violates state equal protection doctrine for California to treat gay and straight couples differently for purposes of marriage. California has a domestic partnership law, which grants same-sex couples virtually all of the rights and obligations of marriage, making the current dispute one of nomenclature over the use of the word “marriage,” not about the substance of marriage rights. But as their colleagues in Massachusetts did a few years ago, the California justices treated this accommodation as a kind of “separate but equal” institution–which is to say, not an equal one at all.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=13e09b4c-c23a-4683-90f7-b3bb733f8667 [/quote]
The California domestic partners law already gave gays all the same rights as in a legal marriage, yet the court stated that that was discrimination. So it’s not about the rights that go along with a marriage, it’s about using the word “marriage”. AND that is why this is so offensive to religious people. That is also why it is clear that the court is making a political statement and not a legal one.
[quote]pat wrote:
Scrotus wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
Your right. Asking them to vote on this is equivalent to asking them to vote on an interracial marriage ban a century ago.
HE IS BUTTHURT ABOUT CA SUPREME COURT OVERTURNING A BILL WE VOTED IN, NOT ABOUT WHETHER GAYS CAN GET MARRIED OR NOT. TRY READING A POST BEFORE BEING A JACKASS. SUPER ANGRY CAPSLOCK!!! CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG OP!!! DAMMIT I AM SO ANGRY!!!
You need Xanax…[/quote]
Oh, no, it mixes poorely with my other meds.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Although I understand the point you fellas are trying to make, I believe that the court made a good decision.
Discrimination against a segment of the population is still discrimination, regardless of whether the people like it or not.
If 75% of Cali voted to take the right of blacks to vote away, would you agree that the judges would be wrong to overturn that? Even if it’s the “Will of the people”?
To me, you can’t fucking vote on whether something is discrimination or not- it either is or it isn’t. This clearly is.
[/quote]
Yeah, but their is a specific amendment in the constitution that says everyone gets to vote.
[quote]orion wrote:
vroom wrote:
You guys still don’t get that the judiciary is the proper place to INTERPRET laws, as written, until new laws are written to reflect changing conditions and times?
Things become much clearer, and simpler, if you stop looking for a vast left-wing conspiracy everywhere.
The answer is simple. Change the constitution, at either the national or state level to reflect issues currently in contention.
Crying over interpretations you disagree with is futile… and misguided.
If judges start to interpret black as white in an important part of a constitution I think removing the judges is a better option than re-writing a constitution.
What would stop them from ass-raping it again?[/quote]
Bingo, you nailed that right in the g-spot. The second amendment says your right to bear arms shall not be infringed, yet when i go to the gun store to buy a gun it takes forever to get it, and I cant even buy something cool like an AK-47 or a rocket launcher.
How fucking lame is that? Which amendment says “men can marry other men and women can marry other women”? They are just taking some vagueries out of states rights amendment, unless the state constitution says “men can marry other men and women can marry other women”, but since it is the states job to regulate marriage I dont understand how they can overturn it if it doesnt say something along those lines. I AM SO ANGRY!!! DAMMIT ALL TO HELL!!! ANGRY!!!
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Bullshit. They are not getting “heightened protection”. We’re not sending out brigades of soldiers to protect the two queens holding hands.
Uh, yeah, Irish, they are - CA shifted homosexuals into a “strict scrutiny” category, meaning the laws related to treating homosexuals differently are presumed to be invalid.
This, even though the California constitution does not recognize “sexual orientation” as a protected class for employment discrimination.
[/quote]
Alright- I’ve got what you’re saying. But when you say “heightened”, you make it sound like they are getting a better deal than everyone else.
They are having discrimination against them, in the eyes of the law, ended. While that may be “heightened”, it’s not saying much that that word, in this context, means they’re coming out of the gutter and onto the street. It should be heightened, because that will mean, “Equal”.
You know as well as I that any given person will have a different answer to this. Honestly, I could give two shits about polygamists. You want to wear five rings, and have five pains in the asses and five alimony checks, more power to you. It ain’t something I would do, but again, it doesn’t affect me.
If you want to bring up things such as divorce and child custody in those cases, well, that’s something that will be decided by the courts or by congress (and lobbyists) just like anything else.
Polygamy to me is wrong because I believe in monogamy. But that shouldn’t dictate how others live. As Jefferson once said about gods, it offends me not if my neighbor has one wife or five hundred.
Saw this too late, but see above.
Sure are. But laws change depending on political arguments. They are not seperate issues- you can’t argue the law without the theory behind it.
I wasn’t saying that they already do, I was just replying to when you asked me how I would have it.
I think that the DOMA is discriminatory bullshit. You know as well as I that no act lasts forever, especially in a contentious issue like this. IF the states take steps forward and the federal government sets them back two… well, we’ll have problems.
I’m in the middle ground on states rights… more often than not I believe your state will fuck you as bad (if not worse) as the Federal Government can. But this issue should be cleared up by the Federal government. You might say it already has… I say the larger battle is either not over, or yet to be fought.
Fair enough. But if they’ve come up with all the bullshit about tax law and gun rights and all the other horshit the courts deal with, they can deal with this too, and set precendents just like every other court has for everything.
Call it what you will. My position on that holds.
Again, I disagree.
I support the freedom of the individual. I support the ACLU, and people’s right to do what they want when they want (obviously outside of hurting others). I am close to a libertarian in this respect… and your “values voters” often seem to hold the values of imposing their own morals on others, by force if necessary.
Values voters are the ones who walk off the pulpit, into the voting booth, and then go bomb an abortion clinic. You can keep your values, thanks.
I never understood why people’s “values” meant not letting others live a peaceful life the way they wish.
Again, I feel I answered this previously.
Again, I answered this above.
I sit through more court cases, and have more experience with this shit, than most people have in their lives.
I know what it means- but it’s still discrimination. A judge saw fit to call it the same. “Sweet land of liberty” doesn’t only apply to those who love vaginas.
[quote]
Good. I’m sure someone said the same thing about the Dred Scott case.
“Doggone it, thank god that there judge didn’t rule in favor of Dred Scott. Can you imagine that Pandora’s box?”
You want to dodge the issue because you’re scared of it? (And I don’t mean YOU, per se, I mean the courts) it’s not going to help anyone. You WILL have to deal with it, so may as well do it now.
No one is dodging Dred Scott - and you will be sad to find out that atrocious decision was an exercise in…wait for it…judicial activism. The court “found” that a black man could never, ever have political rights in the US, even if a legislature granted it.
Dred Scott is the mother of all this judicial activist mischief - and the California case at issue is one of its progeny.
Don’t take my word for it, take Abe’s:
…the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
There isn’t a word of this that can’t be used to damn the California decision.
I’m not sure you are getting the issue - Dred Scott and the CA decision are the fruit of the same tree: “I don’t care what the legislature has come up with, I am deciding based on what I think is right, the law be damned”.
Heightened? Again, it’s not heightened. It’s bringing them up to everyone else’s level. Which I don’t see as a bad thing right here.
Oh, it’s heightened, whether you understand it or not. The court has changed the analysis for gays under law - “strict scrutiny” - while nearly every other conceivable class of citizens remains at the level they were before. Yet, no one can explain exactly why that is.[/quote]
ALthough I understand what you’re saying, I was simply saying that the Dred Scott case did open a Pandora’s Box- and honestly, the outcome of the case was irrelevant, because either way one half of the population would have claimed that activist judges were fixing the thing for one side or that other.
Many looked on it as it was an activist judge pushing slavery, whereas had he ruled against it, others would have called in the legal status of slavery as a whole if it couldn’t cross state lines.
I would like to write a longer response to this part, but honestly I’m too fucking tired right now.
Here’s an interesting post on the effect that having a court hand down a gay marriage decision had in the case of the Massachusetts decision a few years back:
http://www.themonkeycage.org/2008/05/public_support_for_gay_marriag.html