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Supreme Court Ruling Supports Same-Sex Marriage
The U.S. Supreme Court issued Friday a landmark decision, ruling that marriage is a Constitutionally protected right to homosexual as well as heterosexual couples. The New York Times notes that last year, by refusing to hear appeals to decisions favoring same-sex marriage in five states, the court "delivered a tacit victory for gay rights, immediately expanding the number of states with same-sex marriage to 24, along with the District of Columbia, up from 19." (In the time since, several more states have expanded marriage to include gay couples.) Reuters expains a bit of the legal and political history of the movement which led to today's decision, and points out some of the countries around the world which have made similar moves already.
Besides, every single effort to recount the votes in Florida showed that Bush had an even larger margin of victory than at the time of the first count.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Next time, do some research rather than just being a parrot.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
From the decision:
"They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right." - Justice Kennedy
Time to un-ask the question - instead: Why do we let the government write these social contracts in the first place? The only roll the government should be to adjudicate the contracts in case of a conflict. People should write their own contracts. And why should being in a private contract give one special rights?
Well, contracts exist only between the parties, right? They're not binding on anyone else. For example, if I sign a contract with my buddy buying your car for a dollar, you don't have to turn it over to me, just because I have a contract, right?
So, let's say you replace the marriage contract between two parties and the state and just have private contracts... Well, what requires a hospital to let you visit someone you signed a contract with in the ICU? What requires the IRS to let you two file taxes together? What requires the prosecution not to call them as a witness to your conduct? What requires the INS to let them come into the country, merely because they signed a contract with you? What requires a veteran's cemetery to let you be buried together if only one of you is a veteran? What prevents the state from taxing you on property when they die? Etc., etc. There are literally over a thousand rights and privileges that attach with marriage and are binding on third parties who never signed any contract.
Why? Because it's valuable to society. Having two people look out for each other drastically reduces expenses.
How is that any different? We've moved away from biological reproduction and/or religion as a basis for the definition of marriage, so surely any combination must now be accepted, right? Single people shouldn't be left out, told they can't have what others have. Polys as well.
The interesting thing here is that the LGBT crowd now joins traditionalists as being the new majority on this issue and will continue to discriminate against singles and polys just as was done to LGBT for so long. The new minority group doesn't have sufficient numbers to make enough noise for anyone to think they matter and everyone turns a blind eye. Sound familiar?
Ummm. No.
Regardless of whether the State -should- be involved in marriage....it already -IS-.
Specifically there are certain legal statuses and protections as well as financial benefits granted to married couples.
As long as those benefits are granted one class of married couples (heterosexuals) they must be granted to -ALL- married couples, and to not do so is an explicitly clear violation of the 14th Amendment.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong to you. The Annenberg Public Policy Center which you point to is dominated by Progressives/Leftists. Therefore their "facts" are debatable as they continually lean heavily to the Leftists narrative (since in Leftist minds, narrative trumps facts).
Besides, every single effort to recount the votes in Florida showed that Bush had an even larger margin of victory than at the time of the first count. This conclusively proved that he should have gotten Florida's electoral votes and therefore win the election.
That's absolutely FALSE.
Read through that link for a number of different methods. The problem with the recount is that you need to decide what your standards were -- which was part of the problem in 2000. Where do you count? All counties in Florida, or just the ones that were actually disputed in 2000? Do you count undervotes, overvotes, or neither? How do you handle the "hanging chad" issues?
All of these standards produce different results -- in some cases Bush wins, in others Gore wins. The only reasonable conclusion is that the vote count of the 2000 Florida Presidential election fell below the margin of error and is thus INDETERMINATE. There are no clear legal guidelines that allow you to choose which result is "more correct." It's true that Bush would have prevailed according to the actual recounts Gore had requested, using Gore's standards. So, from a practical standpoint, had the existing recounts continued, Gore would still likely have lost. Some would argue that complete state recounts appear to show (according to some standards) that Gore would have won, but since such recounts were never actually suggested as feasible in 2000, those results are pretty meaningless.
The Supreme Court didn't take anything from Gore and give it to Bush.
Contrary to popular belief, SCOTUS didn't even "decide the election."
More accurately, what 7 of the 9 justices on the Court said (contrary to belief, part of the ruling was 7-2) was -- the current recounts were unconstitutional. 2 of those 7 thought the appropriate recourse would be to send that ruling back to the Florida Supreme Court to let Florida figure out what to do. 5 of the 7 agreed that the Florida Supreme Court (led by liberal justices, by the way) had actually already said what should be done, because it set a final date for completing recounts that had already passed. So, following the Florida Court's own ruling, the counts must stop.
Nevertheless -- and this is the important part -- the Supreme Court did NOT "end the election," nor did it say "the buck stops here." It REMANDED the case BACK to the Florida Supreme Court. The Florida Court could have said, "Uh, no, you didn't understand what we said -- we didn't mean that date." Gore's lawyers could have made that argument before the Florida court -- but they chose not to.
Instead, the Florida Supreme Court (again, composed mostly of liberals, not that it should matter, except everyone keeps quoting a 5-4 Supreme Court split along supposed ideological lines, when most of this stuff went on in Florida with a liberal court) chose to take no further action and dismissed the case a few days later. Only one justice dissented from that dismissal because he disagreed with SCOTUS. The rest implicitly agreed with SCOTUS's logic, since they didn't argue that further action was necessary:
The per curiam opinion in Bush v. Gore did not technically dismiss the case, and instead "remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion." Gore's attorneys therefore understood that they could fight on, and could petition the Florida Supreme Court to repudiate the notion that December 12 was final under Florida law. However, Gore dropped the case, because he was not optimistic about how the Florida justices would react to further arguments and, as one of his advisers put it, "the best Gore could hope for was a slate of disputed electors". On remand, the Florida Supreme Court issued an opinion on December 22, 2000 that did not dispute whether December 12 was the deadline for recounts under state law, although this was disputed in a concurring opinion by Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw.
No, we're Americans, but that fact was established by the Treaty of Paris instead.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Haven't checked out any polls lately, have we?
The percentage of Americans supporting same sex marriage has been above 50% for a while now.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Whether grimmjeeper understands the difference is irrelevant. He doesn't care. He's being disingenuous. He pulled the phrase "None of these findings are certain" out of context, so as to imply the study should not be trusted.
If one examines the context (per my other post in this thread) one will see that the researchers came to two probable, but not certain conclusions: that Bush would have prevailed in a limited recount, and that Gore would have prevailed in a state-wide one.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.