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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.
Its nice to see that there is some social progression being made in a country that has had such rocky times lately. Good luck to all the gay couples that can now be 'equals under the law'.
Bye!
You don't think there's any gay nerds?
First, congrats to all LGBT and to America as a whole.
Second, to Justice Scalia, in Nelson Munt's voice - HAW HAW. Your dissent was entertainingly shrill and dubious.
But I'm already married to my job!
Nerds can be gay too? This is a pretty critical piece of legislature.
Lots of jolly ones.
I believe it falls under the "stuff that matters" clause. Although I have no doubt Scalia will dissent with that.
Making something out of nothing : MD5 ("") = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
A system of government that makes the people to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy
Being as he was one of the unelected lawyers who selected our president in 2000, he apparently has no sense of irony.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It's about damn time.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Legislature would mean from the congress of the people. That isn't this, this is the courts engaging in a judicial decision. Some may consider that judicial activism.
Om, nomnomnom...
This affects me about as much as just about all the other cases decided this year, which is to say not in the least.
Why don't you just say "I really don't care about anyone besides myself" instead of beating around the bush?
Now that we have gay marriage, can we finally get weed legalized?!
Now burn a Confederate flag to celebrate and let's move on.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Time? No, it is long overdue. Now it is time for incest.
There is no argument for making acceptance of gay marriage mandatory, that would not also apply to making sex between and marriage of parent and (adult) child or between siblings legal. "Troll" my foot — do try to come up with one...
This is hardly news — and some legal professionals have said so. And the fight for Full Marriage Equality is already ongoing. All over.
Oh, and before you say "Think of the (malformed) children of such unions!" — sorry, that's not enough. First of all, they don't have to have children with each other — like gay couples, they can adopt. Second, most of the existing laws banning incest make no difference between actual close blood-relatives "in laws" — it is equally illegal for a step-father to marry his adopted daughter (Woody Allen got away with it, because he never formally adopted his wife's child).
And third, the courts have ruled for years (here is a "1948 decision for example!), that any concerns for the health of the offspring are not sufficient grounds for denying the right to marry.
Within a generation the term "motherfucker" will become a disparaging sign of bigoted microaggression — which is, of course, much worse than the actual bona-fide aggression it manifests in our parochial times.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I heard a rumor somewhere that slashdot readers are actual human beings, do you deny it?
And some may consider it judicial correction for failing to follow the legislative action taken on July 9, 1868.
Hardly activism to support the equal protection clause.
A determination of "Water is wet" would be an 8-1 decision by the court with Scalia writing a scathing dissent that forcing the ruling on americans destroys democracy.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
The reality is that for thousands of years and across all known cultures marriage has been defined as a relationship between different sexes.
The reality is that for thousands of years, most known cultures didn't have the word "marriage". They had some other word which may or may not have had precisely the same connotations. Now go forth and read Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe before you climb up on that horse again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The reality is that for thousands of years and across all known cultures marriage has been defined as a relationship between different sexes. The fact that a majority of a minority culture in the world has chosen to call a cat a dog doesn't make it a dog.
The same reality is that for thousands of years and across all known cultures slavery has been accepted as the normal way of doing things. Are you REALLY going to go for the "heritage and history and tradition" angle?
IE, "Ruling a way I don't like."
Their right to be married and your right to be nerdy is the same right. Equality matters to everyone.
I am worried about what this will do to domestic partnerships. There are a lot of people under the insurance and other things of their domestic partners. Does this mean forced marriage?
"If the lord does not soon punish the United States he owe's a big apology to Sodom and Gamorrah"
Thank you for being so anti-hate. It's unfortunate when people are hateful. Again, thanks for the loving sentiment.
Yeah, it's a pretty radical decision to state that the equal protection clause should actually provide for equal protection under the law.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
So it's judicial activism to say that "your discriminatory law is discriminatory and therefore bullshit"?
Because what they've basically said is the religious right doesn't get to define what rights other people have, and that marriage has a civil definition which provides rights and protections which can't be taken away.
So, they can't decide women no longer have the vote. They can't decide black people can be property.
The argument that "we got together and had a vote and you don't get this right" is pretty much garbage.
Honestly, given that everybody is saying "yarg, teh terrorists hate our freedom", to say that it is your religious right to demand someone else doesn't get a right is pure hypocrisy.
If you're going to swap one theocracy for another ... just give up now.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There is no irony here. None. Florida fucked up its election process to hell and back. The US Constitution provides no mechanism--none--for redoing such an election or extending a presidential election until that state can get its head out of its ass and finish its election.
All they did was decide based on the law when and how to finish the vote tallying and force the state to declare a winner. It was the best decision they could constitutionally make.
You know why you should thank your lucky stars they didn't keep it going until everyone had warm fuzzies? Because then the SCOTUS would have arrogated to itself the power to let a sitting president stay in office beyond his constitutional term or allow a man who is not legally entitled to assume the presidency assume it.
Do you really want to live in a society where the SCOTUS can hold up an election so long that the President has to stay in office illegally or resign and then the VP can assume that office via succession law until the election is all hunky dory to all parties?
So now we have a right out of thin air that has been left to the states in every form since the founding of our country. The majority in this case have clearly decided that 'progress' should sustain and even override the Constitution. Scalia's dissent is very brute force and blunt ...and rings true. Justice Roberts, on the other hand, seems to be confused. He, along with Scalia in this case basically says, the federal government has no say in an institution that it never conceived or created..etc etc and it should be left to the states - but then yesterday in the ACA ruling he basically is part of the majority that there should be a new right out of thin air based on word games. i.e. What does 'state' actually mean, instead of just abiding by what the Constitution says.
The 14th amendment does talk about equality for all but it doesn't express a fundamental right to marry, even for heterosexuals. In other words, since the states have been handing out marriage certificates, it has never had a legal right to do nor a fundamental religious or natural reason to do so but the states chose to do so to help solidify a taxpayer base that was grounded in strong family units - (i.e. families that stay in the state that shop, live, eat and contribute overall to their communities) and the states recognized that a stable family unit was beneficial (whether you agree or question the motives).
What's to stop three people from wanting to marry? I don't mean to be a conspirator but according to the language that I see there is nothing that can stop it. What about four? How in this world now are we supposed to both protect same sex marriage AND protect the freedom of religion and the ability to practice and act upon our beliefs without being sued? I am waiting now for the first lawsuit to appear about a pastor at a church won't marry Jane and Sally because of the pastors firmly held beliefs and the core doctrine and tenants of the church's faith. I see there is language talking about this balance in the ruling - but that's not going to stop people from getting targeted and sued.
This is the beginning of mish mash of lawsuits that the SCOTUS has brought on all of us. If they can make up rights out of thin air then there's nothing stopping them from doing it again...and again..and scalia calls the court egotistical..with an overreaching hubris...
Today and yesterday really and truly make me afraid of our freedoms moving forward.
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?
Special rights to special groups is how the government divides the people and enslaves us.
I think anyone that wants to bind themselves with such a contract should be free to. I don't see scrapping the rule of law (this is a state issue at best) as being a good idea. - the ends don't justify the means.
I celebrate freedom - not the end of the rule-of-law.
you're just yet another hopeless narcissist who flails when reading something that isn't about them and their precious life
All known cultures? No. For example, right here in America, the original Americans -- specifically, the Native Americans of the Great Plains -- had what you would define as homosexual marriage. From http://plainshumanities.unl.ed...:
See also http://www.sinclair.edu/academ... , which notes that those relationships ranged from promiscuity to stable marriages, depending on the tribe. Among the Crow, for example, physiologically-female berdaches generally married women.
So you see, both acceptance of transgendered individuals and homosexual marriage is a long-standing American tradition.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
I know you guys like to roleplay being a human, but come on. The brave lizards of the infiltration squad wiped out all those monkeys years ago.
Drop the skinsuit and enjoy the surface world.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
And some may consider it judicial correction for failing to follow the legislative action taken on July 9, 1868.
Or, some may consider it judicial activism since the majority opinion talks about marriage being about love and commitment, and two people becoming more than they were before, etc. To many, regardless of one's views or same-sex marriage, it seems that the majority opinion went beyond equal protection under the law.
Where the Bush v. Gore decision was largely based on the exact same section of the 14th Amendment.
How does this ruling effect local ordinances that make gay sec illegal. I think Texas and v the South still have a few...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
Yes that is exactly what is happening here. The government is no longer allowed to step in and stop two people from signing a marriage contract based on their sex.
If "get the government out of the business of regulating contracts" is your goal then you should be celebrating today's ruling.
Nope, news posted because slash dot is controlled by someone else and was told to post this crap. Who cares.
First it was socialized medicine...
what "sociailized medicine" are we talking about here? The vast majority of americans are still buying private hospital insurance and using private medical facilities.
now that same sex partners are protected, I hope we can move on to getting rid of the polygamy stigma along with the lack of rights.
See, the thing about the religious right is that they firmly believe that God punishes them for your sins. So it's absolutely critical to them that you follow their personal beliefs...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The GOP should be happy that the supreme court ruled this way. The right's opposition to gay marriage has been one of their biggest obstacles to attracting young voters, but the supreme court has now made sure it's no longer a campaign issue. The more clever candidates on the right will figure out quickly that it's now in their best interest to just shut up about gay marriage and to focus on a part of their platform that's less toxic to young voters.
They certainly still are in that business, it's still limited to 2 people after all. To get them out you need to revise tax, inheritance, and a slew of automatic assumptions under the law to not assume a binary or just ignore marriage altogether.
No sir I dont like it.
In their opinion on gay marriage, Roberts issues a dissenting opinion with the following quote:
The internal inconsistencies of the SCOTUS are appalling.
It's not.
But it IS "stuff that's important".
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as if someone's religious liberties are being trampled on because they can no longer trample on the actual real liberties of others
religious liberty dimwits: an actual denial of religious liberty by the government would be the government saying you can't go to church
meanwhile, you being unable to decide how other people who are not in your religion live their lives does not mean you have been denied religious liberty
at all, in any way
all the demagogues on the right now whining about religious liberty are either:
1. lying to you and laughing at you to get your support for another agenda
2. proving they are as fucking stupid as you by proving they don't know what the concept means
to believe religious liberty means you have a "right" to deny liberties to others so simply means you don't have a fucking clue what liberty and freedom really means
your "freedom" to oppress others never existed, was never promised by the founding fathers (the establishment clause: separation of state and church pretty much explicitly states that), and has absolutely nothing to do with freedom, except as an example of how fucking stupid people can be in their conception of what actual freedom really is
all that happened today is the government stepped in and *preserved* freedom by denying the "right" of literally oppressive bigots and blind stupid assholes from trampling the freedom and liberty of real americans
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
maybe you should lead the campaign to allow polygamists to marry and see how far you get with that
Who cares what happens between consenting adults? This issue has been blown way out of proportion by religious fundamentalists in the US (mostly Christians). No one is forcing anyone to get married, merely extending that right (and the associated benefits) to all couples. No, the sky is not falling.
the comments about this on the foxnews site are just crazy. the postings are exploding with rage... its kinda scary.
No, they should expand constitutional rights, like the right to drugs. Reagan was wrong. Drugs are a civil rights issue. The government used to think drugs was a constitutional amendment issue. The court should bring them back to that position. How did they slip out of that one again?
Exodus 21:2
"If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything.
Explain the continued ban on polygamous marriage.
From Fish v. Oregon: "There's nothing in the constitution guaranteeing that water is wet. Therefore, any determination by this body that it is wet is nothing more than hand-waving gobbledy-gook."
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Slavery is expressly addressed in the Constitution in the 13th Amendment. The definition of marriage is not. It is not a federal issue as the federal government does not issue marriage licenses - the states do.
Better known as 318230.
From the decision:
"They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right." - Justice Kennedy
Great! This issue being finally resolved once and for all, we can go back to news for nerds. Can we?
Achille Talon
Hop!
nevermind that homosexuality is widely recorded across the animal kingdom
homosexuality is completely *natural*
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They didn't, really: alcohol and cigarettes are available pretty much freely, and most drugs are available as long as you pay the "health" complex to get them.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
How do you know you're not projecting? Homosexuals existed in the Founding Fathers' times, in their circles of friends. The writers of the constitution understood that times change and that compromises such as the sanctioning of slavery would eventually be corrected. That they didn't mention homosexual rights as protected does not mean they didn't expect future generations to include homosexuality as a protected right.
Explain the continued ban on polygamous marriage.
3>2
"Jiggery-pokery" is is the term Scalia learned from Harry Potter. It is the first new thing he's learned in 20 years, give the guy a break.
I've been to jail a few times for possession. How are mandatory minimums for drugs still constitutional?
Sure there are, and I fully support them. Slashdot has always been lacking in the department of celebrity gossip, fashion design, and red carpet pre-award shows.
It'll be corrected. I want to marry my bag of drugs!
You mean like the amendment banning slavery would have mortified the slave-owning authors of the Constitution?
The Founding Fathers got some things right. They got some things wrong. In hindsight there are a couple of things about which they probably should have elaborated (the Second Amendment is very concise, perhaps they should have spent a little more time explaining what they were thinking.) They were human.
I think a thing that matters to everyone (yes, even straight people) matters to nerds.
Here's why this is a big deal for everyone: because excluding people from getting married based on sexual orientation means that the Government, at its own discretion, can create arbitrary groups that it can discriminate against based on any number of grounds, for any reason, so long as enough people or deep enough pockets can lobby for it.
For the Supreme Court to come out and say something is a constitutional right and therefore protected under the law for all people is their way of saying that all individuals deserve an equal amount of dignity. And if something was once denied a person based on social mores, it can be corrected.
This has far-reaching implications, not just for homosexuals, but for the population as a whole.
I'm straight, and I'm breathing a sigh of relief over this.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Slavery is expressly addressed in the Constitution in the 13th Amendment. The definition of marriage is not. It is not a federal issue as the federal government does not issue marriage licenses - the states do.
Perhaps you missed the 14th amendment:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
so tell us more about how the federal government can't regulate marriage laws. the constitution says it can regulate ANY state law.
So you aren't concerned about being being sued, fined and jailed for so called "hate speech"? If a person of faith speaks out against gay marriage and the government reprimands that person - then that is the government interfering.. and if you are so naive to think that scenario isn't coming - then I have a nice little bridge to sell you.
And Yes, i do believe the state (and moreso the states constituents) should be allowed, at their discretion to make any type of marriage illegal. If the state doesn't have that discretion then you are ok with the massive federal government doing so? It is very clear that the federal government overstepped here.. even hearing the case in the first place.
tell us more about your universe where two wrongs make a right
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.
No one on this board is likely to marry anything with a pulse anytime soon....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Prop 8 was of the people, as are all the constitutional amendments passed in many states explicitly defining what marriage is or isn't. Isn't that independence of the people? Who is it that's against independence now?
The 14th Amendment reads in part, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Note that the only two descriptors of people are "persons" and "citizens." It doesn't talk about white, black, native, asian, gay, straight, or anything else. The only thing that counts is "citizen." So even if your state passed an amendment to its constitution that said black people couldn't drive on Sunday, it would be unconstitutional. This is the same reason the court invalidated laws prohibiting inter-racial marriages in Loving v. Virginia in 1968, a point which seems to have been lost on Justice Thomas.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
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?
the religious right doesn't get to define
You have that backwards. This is the religious right pushing their beliefs on us. They created the plague of marriage, and now they are forcing it on everyone. I don't know any happy married couples. The vast majority of gay couples I know are happy. Now, the religious right has forced their ridiculous marriage concept down our throats. They have defined taking our rights to freedom. You are spouting lies. It is them that hates us. They hate us, and why does your kind constantly defend that hate?
So, if a majority of say, non-white people voted for a law which said "white folks can now have their property seized", you'd be OK with that? Because it's the will of the people here?
Or are you specifically thinking that the right to pass laws which treat people unequally should entirely be a right reserved for Christians?
What is your specific set of legal criteria in which one group gets to vote on the rights of another? Is it limited purely to sexuality, or will it include race, religion, or gender?
So, the whites could vote to enact slavery again?
You're not arguing for anything other than "it should be my right to vote to deny you a right, but nobody else can do it to me".
If you really think that, then you're missing the whole point. You're not making a principled argument, you're making one based on how special you deem yourself.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You mean like the amendment banning slavery would have mortified the slave-owning authors of the Constitution?
You do understand what it takes to amend the constitution ?
You are saying the supreme court should be able to legislate as if it were3/4ths of the states and two thirds of both houses of congress.
For thousands of years and across cultures the sun has been going around the earth. That fact that a minority culture in the world has chosen to call a cat a dog doesn't make it a dog.
This might be the first time a GNAA post would be on topic...
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Yes, i do believe the state (and moreso the states constituents) should be allowed, at their discretion to make any type of marriage illegal. If the state doesn't have that discretion then you are ok with the massive federal government doing so? It is very clear that the federal government overstepped here..
Maybe you should try reading the 14th amendment:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So tell us more about how you don't believe in the constitution and what it says
How is that any different?
How is "more than 2" different from "2"? Are you sure Slashdot is at your speed?
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.
No, marriage is about property and inheritance rights. It's irrelevant for singles, and it's different for polys since you would need some sort of proportional probate system. Draft that law, and then you can have polygamy. Until then, not yours.
But it *is* a federal issue:
- The IRS is a federal agency that collects taxes from individuals and differentiates between "married" and "single" tax payers.
- The "Full Faith and Credit Clause" of the Constitution says the states have to respect the public acts, records, and proceedings of every other state.
You might want to read some history.
The states have a poor record on the subject of minority rights. Such as slavery. And segregation. And so forth.
You need to read about Westboro Baptist Church. They've already proven the you are wrong. And they did it at the Supreme Court.
Actually, it was legal for him to suck a dick in all 50 states before this, now he it is legal for him to marry that dick as well. Also, some people like to suck dick and get their dick's sucked. Insults should be grounded in things that no one likes to do, like eating the still warm entrails of an Ebola infected skunk while getting a colonoscopy from your daughter. Rule 34 probably negates this observation.
Just FYI, several of the states had official religions at the time of ratification. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" was just as much about preventing congress from abolishing those as it was about preventing them from creating a new official federal religion. "Respecting" here means "regarding" or "relating to", and swings both ways.
See that "Preview" button?
Not to speak an opinion on the subject, but I do have a question:
Where in the hell in the US Constitution is there a "right" to "dignity"?
If that's the basis Kennedy used, then he obviously has no idea what is actually contained in the very document he claims to uphold.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
There is no shortage of people leading the push for polygamy now. Why would we need one more?
See that "Preview" button?
All forms of group marriage should be legal as well, as should time limited marriages and any other variants people want to come up with. The governments only legitimate role in marriage is as the enforcer of contracts.
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.
You are as obsessed with the number two as traditionalists were with the words man and woman. Can't you see that?
Marriage is not exclusively about property and inheritance. I can sign a property deed along with someone I'm not married to and I can do the same in my will for inheritance. Man and woman, only two, it's the same type of argument.
"Draft that law, and then you can have polygamy. Until then, not yours."
Exactly what the LGBT crowd was always told until the courts said no. How does it feel to be on the other side?
Would be 7-2. Thomas just goes along with whatever Scalia wants.
It seems unlikely that there are any gay nerds. Nerds are a fraction of the general population. Gay people are an even smaller fraction of the general population. This would make the existence gay nerds seem highly unlikely.
Similarly, the odds that in the vastness of space, an asteroid could just happen to strike our moon seems so incredibly remote that one could safely conclude that there are no craters on the moon.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Banning slavery would have mortified a large segment of the people who wrote it too.
Good thing intelligent people can remember that the Founder's were fallible men, and they knew it too, which is why they gave us a living document able to change with society.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
How does it ruin anything? If you have a problem and gay marriage ruins something for you, it's YOUR fucking problem, not anyone else's.
Go fuck your sister, fucking hillbilly Yank.
Calm down there AC.. Your side won... No need to get all bent out of shape at this point.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Exactly this. Let's say we allowed the gay marriage bans which are primarily based on "Christian values" (as expressed by some Christians). What's to stop those same people from saying "the only legal marriage is a Christian marriage"? So if you want to get married in the Jewish tradition, or Muslim, or even without any clergy but just a Justice of the Peace, that's not valid. After all, if you're not accepting Jesus (where Jesus = their particular interpretation of Jesus) then your marriage isn't approved. You can't legislate based on "my holy book says X is wrong so X should be illegal for everyone whether or not other people follow my holy book."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
While it had its place in the 18th and 19th century, the Electoral college has long outlived its usefulness. The entire concept of winner-take-all in most states means that only a few key states actually decide our election every time it comes around....until the rules change, that's how the system works whether you like it or not.
I'd like to agree with you, but it depends on the proposed method of election. Given the population distribution and unique division of powers between state and national governments within our nation, I'm not a fan of a direct popular vote for the presidency. I just don't believe it best encapsulates the spirit of our nation. While I would generally support a change over to the Congressional District Method, I am greatly concerned about gerrymandering and its affect on such a proposed alternative solution.
In fact, check out the statistics at the Daily Kos, then do the math. If every state followed the Congressional District Method, Romney would have won the 2012 election...by one electoral vote! Interestingly, Obama would have still won the 2008 election. I wonder what happened between 2008 and 2012 that would have made such a difference...
Because there's clearly no state interest in denying a citizen's right to consensually enter a union with another citizen.
There's clearly state interest in keeping majority populations from being able to coopt minority property.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
You are as obsessed with the number two as traditionalists were with the words man and woman. Can't you see that?
Nope. If you change "husband and wife" to "spouse and spouse" in existing statutes, nothing else changes. Taxes are still the same, marital privilege is still the same, immigration is still the same, etc. In fact, if any existing statute treated husbands and wives differently, it would already be unconstitutional due to discrimination on gender.
But, if you change, "spouse and spouse" to "a group of spouses", then how do you change "upon death of a spouse, the remaining spouse shall inherit 100% of communal property before probate"? As in, you die, and your three widows each inherit 100%? That's 300%. Where do you get two more identical houses?
Or what about medical proxy? You go into a coma, your first spouse says 'pull the plug', your second spouse says 'keep him alive at all costs'. Does the doctor get to decide? Because they can't. Under existing law, no matter what decision they make, the other spouse sues and wins.
In both cases - and in many others - the laws have to change. That's not true for gay marriage, where literally nothing but the label on a line on a form changes.
Marriage is not exclusively about property and inheritance. I can sign a property deed along with someone I'm not married to and I can do the same in my will for inheritance. Man and woman, only two, it's the same type of argument.
You've got it backwards - property and inheritance are not exclusively about marriage. That's why you can also sell deeds and leave things to your children. But yes, marriage is about property and inheritance, which is why when you're married, not only do you not need a will to leave things to your spouse, any such will is irrelevant because you won't even go to a probate court.
"Draft that law, and then you can have polygamy. Until then, not yours."
Exactly what the LGBT crowd was always told until the courts said no.
And what law would the LGBT crowd need to write? None, as noted above. Literally nothing changes in existing laws when there are two spouses, regardless of their genders. Not one single law is different. If you don't believe me, then go find one that has to be changed. I'll wait.
How does it feel to be on the other side?
The side of law and logic? Feels great, just as it always has.
well, slashdot is gay...
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
I heard a rumor somewhere that slashdot readers are actual human beings, do you deny it?
I must confess that I do sometimes question the humanity of my fellow slashdotters, yes.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Nope. It would be 8-2. You can't forget about his mute shadow.
Point being that the government should get out of defining marriage, to do so it needs to adjust all those laws that make assumptions about marriage.
No sir I dont like it.
time limited marriages
Don't we have divorce for that ?
It's life changing for at least 10% of Slashdotters. More if you count those like me who have family members that this has serious and positive ramifications for it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
For thousands of years, marriage was defined as "Parents of a girl gave her to some guy in an exchange of property in order to win some sort of social or political favor." So obviously, we can't ever change the errors of the past and must continue to treat women like property instead of equals in marriage!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
All forms of group marriage should be legal as well, as should time limited marriages and any other variants people want to come up with. The governments only legitimate role in marriage is as the enforcer of contracts.
As noted in another reply to GP, marriage places obligations on people outside of the contract. The government enforces those obligations too, even though the INS, DoJ, IRS, VA, etc., haven't signed any contracts with married couples. So, the government's role in marriage goes beyond merely enforcing contracts.
"That's not true for gay marriage, where literally nothing but the label on a line on a form changes."
Nothing but a label.
"The side of law and logic?"
So.. you supported the Defense of Marriage act? Because that was law. Right?
What you're basically saying is that convenience is more important than civil rights. Gay marriage was "easy" to do, so it gets implemented. Poly or single is not, therefore they get nothing, and it's okay to continue discriminating against them.
Taxes? You file as a group, just like a couple does. Inheritance? You divide the assets, same as when the last parent dies and the estate is divided equally or as laid out in the will. Children? Again, as laid out in the will or the court decides based on whatever criteria they wish to use, or ideally the surviving adults come to agreement.
Step back and really think about your comments. You are the new traditionalist. You really are. You're reaching for justification to continue denying something to a smaller portion of the population.
"Due to gay marriage, the spouses are now considered dependents. Therefore, less money is coming into the IRS and we'll need to cut funds to the following social programs..."
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Citation needed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Seriously. If you want a religious pledge, you can do that in the dark under a full moon with friends and family present. I still don't understand in any way why any state government should approve/disapprove of my relationship, or why I should care?
I understand that there are legal issues and there's the usual insurance scams that don't let you designate anyone you wish as a dependent. Anything aside from that? Is this just an insurance and inheritance issue resulting from a bunch of dumb, archaic laws?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
that's not going to keep people from suing, being sued and discriminated against on the religious side. It's a HUGE mess. How did that work out for the bakery lady? or the photographer?
Ah yes, the fictional Founding Fathers, who (as revisionists would have you believe) had the foresight to predict 200 years of technological, cultural, and societal changes...
Most of those legislative ancestors had slaves, and according to primary sources, they treated those slaves about as well as any of their peers did. They held pretty normal views on most societal issues of the day, with a bit of irritation at specific injustices perpetrated by the British colonial government. From a historical perspective, the Founding Fathers were not radical liberals, or ultimate paragons of social justice. They were mostly wealthy middle- and upper-class colonists, primarily distinguished from other rebellious colonists by the fact that they played a very good political game to gather and sustain support during their revolution.
We could simply say that they had the realistic foresight to build a government that is merely able to change with society, but that won't reinforce that lovely pedestal we hold so dear. Instead, we project our own morals onto the deceased diplomats, and assume that they support our causes.
This is not to say anything about whether the recent decision being good or bad. Rather, this is a plea to give credit where credit is due. The recent legal changes originate with the recently-changed opinions of American society as a whole, rather than the opinions of a few long-rotted corpses. This is why a public awareness campaign is so important, and why complaining about politicians accomplishes so little. Whether you approve of the current law or not, we did this together, for better or worse.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Drugs are a civil rights issue, an unalienable self-evident right. The court should rule that Congress cannot take away my freedom to do drugs.
So, they can't decide women no longer have the vote. They can't decide black people can be property.
That's true because of the 13th and 19th amendments, respectively. Those rights were not due to court rulings (which went the other way).
That's an important distinction between the above two cases and SSM. Ostensibly the objection to this ruling is that the right did not come from the legislative process. Although I'm sure opponents would be equally pissed if SSM were legalized by a legislative process, I do think the gripe has some merit. SSM was legalized by one vote out of nine. It can be undone by the same amount. Other rights won through the supreme court (such as abortion and even the right to use contraception -- Griswold v. Connecticut) can also be undone if the supreme court membership changes. The same is not true for a constitutional amendment -- which is how many other major rights were endowed.
Is it a good or bad thing that the legislative process got bypassed? I don't know. I'd much rather see this type of thing handled by the legislature. However, I'm pragmatic. I think that we see lots of end runs around the legislative branch because the constitution is so darn inflexible with so many hurdles to pass legislation and constitutional amendments. That inflexibility was well intended, but if the constitution were just a little more flexible, I think we'd see the government work much more smoothly.
So, in order to address this concern, they crafted a specific amendment--the ninth--which says "hey look, this isn't an exhaustive list!"
And then everyone decides to ignore it and keep using the exact argument it was designed to address. Your argument.
If they can make up rights out of thin air
THEN THE COUNTRY WILL BE A MUCH BETTER PLACE. The right to privacy (ANY privacy, other than a physical search of papers) isn't in the constitution, either. I think the right for the government to keeps its nose out of my chromosomes and out of my crotch is also a pretty obvious, fundamental right. The ability to "make up" rights doesn't give the SCOTUS unlimited power; it only gives them the ability to limit the power of government, which is an ability that many people on both the right and the left greatly value.
and scalia calls the court egotistical..with an overreaching hubris...
Scalia is a hypocritical hyperreligious twat. Hubris is the quality exhibited by lawmakers (and their supporters) who think that the state should have the power to examine the chromosomes/genitals of its citizens in order to decide what rights they are entitled to.
I fully agree with you. I think in the end, we will see the government withdraw from being involved in people's lives this way. Divorce proceedings and other legal entanglements are burdening the courts and even traditional marriage is starting to fail as a usable construct. "Until death do you part" is becoming a case of false advertising more often than not. There's a much larger dialog to be had on this topic.
That's a big stretch for that clause... but then, the US government should have zero business with marriage in the first place.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Amazon has moon maidens?
It will certainly be a massive pain in the ass. But administrative inconvenience is not an adequate justification for denying people their fundamental rights or equal protection of the law. It'll take a while, but just as this took a while, but in time polyamororous marriages will be legally recognized.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Of course. Because the people that do that think every single thing they personally don't like is judicial activism. Face it, a conservative court just affirmed gay marriage.
You seem to be under the impression that there's something morally wrong with possessing drugs.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
If it took a constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol, how can they prohibit cannabis without one?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There is of course the flip side as well: federal and state tax penalties for being married, divorce laws (and the attendant alimony laws and etc as applicable by state, etc)...
I don't think it's going to be as rosy as proponents think it will be.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Pretty sure he knows what's in the constitution.
Taxes.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
There are African cultures (or were) where the males and females lived in separate huts. The males considered the female's genitalia unclean, because of menstruation and all that. The men would have the young boys (we're talking boys of all ages) perform fellatio on them, with the explanation that drinking the men's semen would make the boys grow up to be strong men as well.
Citing primitive cultures (Native American or otherwise) as some kind of model for our society is pointless.
Better known as 318230.
If 2 people want to get married, they have every right to be as miserable as every other married couple.
Depends on the state. Places like Nevada make it quick and easy, on the other hand Arkansas has onerous alimony laws** coupled with a long and tortuous process (I got to see it second-hand; my siblings and are from AR. It's one hell of an ugly process).
** for example, the lesser-paid spouse has full lifetime rights to a percentage of the higher-paid spouse's salary, retirement/pension, etc. unless the spouse receiving said money gets married again, or the higher-paid spouse's income drops (which necessitates another drawn-out court hearing, etc.)
If I were to lay money down on something, I'd say that in a couple of years, look for divorce laws to be targeted hotly in states where marriage is more strongly considered to be a lifetime commitment.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: "The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity," I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
If this is the only thing that legal "marriage" is all about, then why restrict it in the ways we restrict it? Why can't a sister and a brother get all of these benefits, if they wanted? Why can't they have access to all of these wonderful legal benefits of "marriage"? Even if they don't have an incestuous relationship, but just are otherwise unmarried and love each other (even not "in that way")?
Oh, that's right... marriage is actually about something else. That "something" is really hard to define, and conservatives and liberals seem to disagree on exactly what it is, which leads to the gay marriage dispute.
The question I take away from GP's point, though is -- why can't you just have a bundled contract that grants all those rights? Why couldn't two sisters sign up for it together, instead of just an unrelated man and woman, or (as of today in the U.S.) two unrelated lesbians? Or how about three unrelated lesbians or a group of three gay guys or whatever -- couldn't they be eligible for most of those bundled contract rights?
If we're really going to divorce (no pun intended) the word "marriage" from its traditional definition, it's fine by me. But if it's mostly about the legal contract rights, we should have actual contracts that any group of consenting adults can sign onto. Perhaps we should group some of the rights separately, since a lot of marriage law once had to do with dependency (of the wife, in previous generations, as well as the kids) and how to handle children and estates. In an era of DINKs and no-fault divorce and now gay marriages, most of those centuries of accumulated archaic marriage law should be deprecated or rewritten.
Perhaps you can sign up for the "dependency" package of contract rights only when you can prove it -- thus a four-some of polyamorists only get tax benefits if they can prove dependency according to the laws we already have. If you want to sign up for the "procreation" package, then all the marital rights involving children apply. We can have the "cohabitation package" and the "estate-planning" package, etc.
And while we're at it, it's probably high time to institute a "temporary" version of many of these packages, with built-in prenuptial safeguards for unwitting spouses. You want to get married "till death do us part"? Fine -- sign up for the "permanency package," but it's harder to get out, and fault usually must be determined, with dire legal and financial consequences. You just want to get married "for as long as we both give a crap," then the "temporary" package is just for you -- let's be more honest about it, but also let's protect you from your own idiocy and build-in a reasonable pre-nup.
Oh, and the relationship between the "temporary" contract bundle and the "procreation" bundle is complex -- basically, you want to have kids, you should be able to commit to dealing with them until they reach maturity.
If it's really about contract law -- this is what is SHOULD look like. Instead, we have a mess of a contradictory set of wacky laws involving old assumptions about marriage structure, child-rearing, wife dependency, etc., along with a mishmash of sometimes arbitrary restrictions having to do with gay marriage (until today?), polygamy, incest, etc. If free association and self-determination are what everything is about, should we make the appropriate types of contract bundles available to any consenting adults who want them?
This affects me about as much as just about all the other cases decided this year, which is to say not in the least. On to the next topic. It's warm and sunny here, time to take the kids to the playground!
Methinks he/she doth protest too much!
"That's not true for gay marriage, where literally nothing but the label on a line on a form changes."
Nothing but a label.
Nothing but a label.
Your turn to repeat it, unless you'd actually like to provide some argument for a change?
"The side of law and logic?"
So.. you supported the Defense of Marriage act? Because that was law. Right?
The Constitution is the highest law in the land. DoMA was in violation of both the due process clause and the equal protection clause (as well as being a violation of the 10th amendment and outside of Congress' power under Article I). The side of law and logic was the side that won in Windsor.
What you're basically saying is that convenience is more important than civil rights. Gay marriage was "easy" to do, so it gets implemented. Poly or single is not, therefore they get nothing, and it's okay to continue discriminating against them.
Nope, I'm saying that the arguments for the two are entirely different, and that one is a due process and equal protection issue, while the latter is simply a lack of existing statutes.
Taxes? You file as a group, just like a couple does.
Is that legal right now? Can I get a group of people and file taxes together? No? You mean you have to write a new statute to cover it, just as I said?!
Inheritance? You divide the assets, same as when the last parent dies and the estate is divided equally or as laid out in the will.
So you're going to treat spouses like children for the purpose of division of assets? That would require changing hundreds of laws, and would make estate taxes a huge issue again. Good job. You haven't really thought this through, have you?
Children? Again, as laid out in the will or the court decides based on whatever criteria they wish to use, or ideally the surviving adults come to agreement.
"I'm OhPlz, and I'm suggesting a pragmatic solution: we just let the court decide based on whatever criteria they wish to use, or maybe people can just come to an agreement."
Seriously, do you even understand why courts and laws exist and we don't just have everything based on "whatever criteria a judge wants"?
Step back and really think about your comments. You are the new traditionalist. You really are. You're reaching for justification to continue denying something to a smaller portion of the population.
Step back and really think about yours - you're saying "we don't need laws, we can just let judges decide whatever they want". That's more "traditionalist" than me... mind you, it's also several thousand years out of date.
10%? Are you suggesting that Slashdot has a population of homosexuals that exceeds the general population ratio of 1.6-3%? Additionally, are you suggesting that this higher than average population of Slashdot users are all seeking to get married?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
It will certainly be a massive pain in the ass. But administrative inconvenience is not an adequate justification for denying people their fundamental rights or equal protection of the law. It'll take a while, but just as this took a while, but in time polyamororous marriages will be legally recognized.
Unlikely. It's not an equal protection issue because, as noted earlier, 3>2. Equal protection is an issue where two groups that are equally situated are treated differently. For marriage, there is no difference between a gay couple and a heterosexual couple. There is a difference between a couple and a larger group, however.
It's also not a fundamental right, as polygamy is not part of the traditions and collective conscience of society, except for Mormons.
Hence, it's just a regular old issue, like a zoning variance or naming a post office. If poly people want polygamy, then they can draft a bill and get it passed. It's not a big deal.
Where in the hell in the US Constitution is there a "right" to "dignity"?
The answer to your question is in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Consitiution:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
You may want to read the Constitution again. Here's a link:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
He means "This marriage is for a term of 10 years. At that time the married persons may renew the contract. If it is not renewed, the marriage contract is concluded and terminated with no further responsibility or obligation for either party."
This is different that a divorce, because it is a known factor at the start, and it is final at the termination date. Child custody and property ownership would be parts of the details, but would simply be part of the contract, instead of something for a judge to have to worry about.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
"The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away." - Clarence Thomas
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And why should they discriminate against me being single? Granting protection to married couples only makes sense if those protections make it easier for procreation. Same-sex couples cannot procreate, so they should be granted no protections. If same-sex couples are being given those protections, I should be legally allowed to marry myself and have them too.
I tought nerds are all virgins... can a virgin be technically considered gay?
"Contrary to popular belief, UNIX is user friendly. It just happens to be selective on who it makes friendship with"
It was also well known by that large segment that banning slavery was an important issue for another large segment of the people who wrote the Constitution. Nothing in the document suggests that it was a surprise topic, since it was mentioned and accounted for at least twice.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Why should it be irrelevant for singles? I can adopt a child, or have a child without marriage, even more than one, from more than one partner, who each have more than one partner. So what, why aren't we all given those protections?
When asked to comment on today's Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, God said, "The US is going to pay for this once the caliphate, I mean...Jesus comes back to straighten things out. It's like, what were they thinking giving human rights to corporations? What's that? This is about same sex marriage? Nah, I don't give a fuck. Peoples is peoples. Good for them."
Zeus could not be reached for comment, since he had transformed himself into a bull in order to have sex with Europa without his wife Hera finding out.
You are welcome on my lawn.
then you should celebrate this decision, as it's not the end of the rule of law.
Nor is freedom and equality is ever a state issue.
(We kind of fought a pretty significant and bloody war over that...)
There are certain benefits granted to married couples. Many of these make perfect sense. For example, when you die, your spouse gets automatic legal claim to your property or half of the estate, as well being exempt from rules and taxes that otherwise apply to the transfer of ownership upon death.
At least as long as you're heterosexual anyways.
For the longest time the law treated homosexual couples as legal strangers, unable to assume their partners estate even after a lifetime together, or unable to make any medical decisions for their incapacitated partner, indeed sometimes even unable to simply BE with their partner in the hospital. Or assume survivor benefits. Or a host of other examples.
All simple and accepted benefits and privileges granted to one group of married people, and not another, simply on the basis of their gender.
the only laws being scrapped here are unjust and unconstitutional laws that impose a discriminatory burden upon a segment of society.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
So I sold my slave to my buddy in the 6th year.
And he sold me his slave.
You say "loophole" while I say "cheap labour".
The argument that "we got together and had a vote and you don't get this right" is pretty much garbage.
Last night, on the news, they had one of our troglodyte legislators saying, basically "well, people need to realize that if the Supreme Court does strike down our ban on gay marriage, it may take us a few weeks to figure out how to write a new law to get around that."
I am not kidding. Sigh. They've lost the war, but it will be decades yet before the ones who refuse to admit this have all died off...
We could simply say that they had the realistic foresight to build a government that is merely able to change with society
Which they did but this was not the way to to change the government that they had enshrined in the highest law of the land. The constitution states what rights are reserved tot he federal government of which marriage is not one of them so it was left up to the states. This would simply mean that each state could have its own laws regarding marriage and could define it any way it wanted. What muddies this issue is the full faith and credit clause which means states would have to honor marriages (and any number of other things) from other states, unless regulated by congress. So back with President Clinton the DOMA was passed by congress regulating interstate recognition of marriage, which is one of the powers granted to congress to do. I dislike this ruling, even though I feel it was the morally correct one, because it does smell of activism by the judiciary. The proper way to handle this would have been to:
repeal the federal DOMA
modify the constitution to add sexual preference as something that cannon be discriminated on
or do what my state did and have the state legislature vote to approve homosexual marriage
All of these would have been constitutional and were how the framers envisioned changing our government. The way this came down I expect it to become a huge wedge issue (more so than before) like abortion and to be something that gets rehashed many times over also like abortion.
Time to offend someone
No, time limited should dissolve on itself and each party keeps what they owned before they entered into the marriage, and the property or liability obtained together is shared (e.g. tax). E.g. hypothetically I have a good friend who is pregnant, but the biological father of the baby is even not allowed into the country. If we tree wish so, I enter into a limited term marriage with her, until the father is allowed to enter the country or until she and the child can go to the father. In the mean time I am a father (a second one) of the child and not merely a legal guardian, so the child has all benefits of a father and married parents. Explain to me why this should not be allowed?
I'm a gay nerd.
Hardly, since it just upheld equal rights for all. That gay couples can enter into a legal contract, i.e, marriage. Until now they were denied that simply because they wanted to marry the same sex. That was clearly unconstitutional.
my point is simply a refutation of the social conservative fallacy that homosexuality is "unnatural"
of course the existence of something in the natural kingdom does not mean automatic endorsement in morality
most notably, social policies nothing more than social darwinistic cruelty endorsed by many conservatives
but thank you for making a ridiculously broad statement without any logical coherence
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If this is the only thing that legal "marriage" is all about, then why restrict it in the ways we restrict it? Why can't a sister and a brother get all of these benefits, if they wanted? Why can't they have access to all of these wonderful legal benefits of "marriage"? Even if they don't have an incestuous relationship, but just are otherwise unmarried and love each other (even not "in that way")?
Because we don't want property passed between siblings probate-free?
The question I take away from GP's point, though is -- why can't you just have a bundled contract that grants all those rights? Why couldn't two sisters sign up for it together, instead of just an unrelated man and woman, or (as of today in the U.S.) two unrelated lesbians? Or how about three unrelated lesbians or a group of three gay guys or whatever -- couldn't they be eligible for most of those bundled contract rights?
Go re-read the post you're replying to. It explains why marriage places obligations on a bunch of parties who never signed any contract. Even if you bundle contracts, that still doesn't apply to people who never signed them.
We moved away from no such definition because none existed. There is no requirement to have children as a condition of marriage.
The litigant needn't be the entire group. Marriage is a fundamental right, subject to various restrictions, such as consent and consanguinity. Yesterday, one of the restrictions, at least in some places, was that the genders of two of the spouses couldn't be the same. Today, it's fine nationwide if they're the same.
The restriction to look at now is whether the marital status of each spouse in the marriage at hand is single. Today it has to be. But there's not a good reason for it. (As already mentioned, administrative convenience is not a good reason). So why can't Alice, who is married to Bob, now also marry Carol? Bob isn't marrying Carol; the A-C marriage would be between two people only. You're treating Alice differently merely because she is already married.
Marriage is a fundamental right and is extremely broad. Restrictions on marriage, such as requiring the spouses to be of opposite genders, or of the same race, or of the same religion, or of compatible castes, etc. are not inherently part of marriage and are certainly not part of the fundamental right of marriage.
Also, today's events make it clear that tradition is irrelevant; polygamy is practiced today among many groups, and has a long history back into antiquity. Same sex marriage was known in the past but was far more rare.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Except marriage confers certain legal rights that are not available outside of marriage.
Honestly there isn't a logical reason. I wouldn't personally have an issue with it. But seeing how there isn't a ground swell of popular support or wide spread in our culture whatever. Things would get complicated if each spouse then had their own spouses.
So it's judicial activism to say that "your discriminatory law is discriminatory and therefore bullshit"?
Yes, by definition, unless your value of "discriminatory" was established in previous precedent.
There's no general Constitutional principle that you can't pass a discriminatory law. You can discriminate against all kinds of people for all sorts of reasons. I can have a store that says "no shirt, no shoes, no service," and a shirtless, shoeless man has no grounds for suing me for discrimination. If you have a good reason (i.e., it has to do with the job), you can choose to hire a more attractive person or a thinner person or shorter person or whatever. And even if a state enacted some laws discriminating against such groups of people, as long as they had a rational basis, they could likely pass legal muster.
There are standards of scrutiny for laws. Most laws only require a "rational basis." Laws involving race involve "strict scrutiny" because the Constitution basically explicitly bars discrimination by race. Race and national origin also fall under this.
Over the years, the courts have extended some of that scrutiny to gender-based laws, dubbed "intermediate scrutiny." But sexual orientation? That only gets a "rational basis" standard -- and rational basis standards are notoriously low historically. (Seriously... all sorts of discriminatory crap has passed rational basis review. The "rational basis" doesn't have to be a good one or even a logical one or even one agreeing with the people who passed the law -- if a judge can even imagine a possible reason any reasonable person might ever pass such a law, it should pass "rational basis" according to the usual standard.) Even today, SCOTUS declined to grant discriminatory laws against homosexuals a higher status of scrutiny, unlike things like race or gender.
So, yeah -- until sexual orientation is granted a higher standard of review, discriminatory laws dealing with it do in fact require "judicial activism" to overcome.
Sometimes judicial activism is a good thing (as it arguably is today). Judicial activism has a bad reputation, but it really simply means that you find a new reason for a ruling in an old law that contradicts earlier legal precedent.
Many people want their judges to be activist -- that's one way the law can evolve. Others feel like those shifts should be left to the legislature. That's a matter of opinion, but perhaps -- if we want judges to be more responsive -- people should be more willing to admit when judges are taking an "activist" stand.
TL;DR: Let's not try to hide what happened today as if it isn't a bold, new leap of legal logic that didn't occur to generations of previous judges to take -- to some, it may seem to be a good one, to others, it may seem unjustified. But it is one.
Why should it be irrelevant for singles? I can adopt a child, or have a child without marriage, even more than one, from more than one partner, who each have more than one partner. So what, why aren't we all given those protections?
It's irrelevant for singles, because if you die, you have no spouse to inherit your assets, which is what marriage is about. Yes, you can adopt a child or have a child without one, but there are separate intestacy statutes about how property passes to your child. Marital statutes are about inheriting from a spouse.
It's like saying you don't drive and don't have a car, and then asking why RMV laws are irrelevant for you. It's not an imposition on your civil rights that you're not required to get annual inspections on your skateboard.
The founders were fallible but they were wise in that they realized that and provided a means to modify and correct the constitution. They did however make it difficult to do so that it couldn't be modified on a whim. This issue however didn't need a constitutional amendment to change or another shitty court decision (morally correct but how it was done bad in my opinion), but instead needed a simple repeal of the federal DOMA and then all states that don't allows gay marriage would be forded to recognize it from other states because of the full faith and credit clause. The one exception to this I could thing of is if a state didn't recognize any form of marriage, in which case it gay marriage wouldn't matter to begin with in that state.
Time to offend someone
I would argue further.
Marriage is now the domain of NON-STATE/FEDERAL entities, and let it exist as such, since there are obviously various definitions of it coming into existence.
Wanna get married? Fine, do it.
Your Church/social club/culture believes in marriage between (insert some definition of marriage here)? Fine, go ahead.
Want the state to grant tax rights, parental rights, etc? Nope, sorry, fill out the form establishing these things if you want them. If you want to marry your (insert definition of partner/s here), then fill out the appropriate paperwork for them to visit you in the hospital, whatever: file it, you're good to go.
The issue is not so much that everyone wants their thing. It's that everyone wants their things and wants the state to back them up on it and for everyone to pat them on the back and agree with them.
Would this kill the concept of marriage? almost certainly, over time.
Because we don't want property passed between siblings probate-free?
Why? Just because we want to charge taxes? Probate restrictions based on marriage are yet another archaic issue that needs significant reform, given the changing shift in marriage.
Go re-read the post you're replying to. It explains why marriage places obligations on a bunch of parties who never signed any contract. Even if you bundle contracts, that still doesn't apply to people who never signed them.
Sure it does if the government says it does... just like it currently does for marriage. The problem is right now we have a bunch of monolithic rights that are all shoved together into this legal morass. If people sign up for the correct "bundle" of "marriage," they get the various rights guaranteed by 3rd parties.
Or do you think that the government's extension of marriage rights to homosexuals today somehow can just be ignored by those 3rd parties? No -- if the government says X union with bundle of contracts Y is a "marriage" that entitles everyone to previous "marriage" rights Z, all third parties who grant rights Z would have to subscribe.
Of course, this is all a pipe dream. It's never going to happen in my lifetime. But it we were serious about putting marriage law on a rational basis, this is the kind of thing that should happen.
10%? Are you suggesting that Slashdot has a population of homosexuals that exceeds the general population ratio of 1.6-3%?
No, I'm suggesting that the general population ratio is 10% and in some reports say it's closer to 20%.
Additionally, are you suggesting that this higher than average population of Slashdot users are all seeking to get married?
I'm saying the actually-its-normal population of Slashdot users has no particular inclination to be different than the rest of the world.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Jiggery-pokery has its origins in the 19th century, so its use by Scalia isn't terribly out-of-character.
Sure. Perhaps you've heard of bigamy? Alice can't marry Carol because Bob already has a vested marital interest with Alice. For example, if Alice marries Carol and dies, Carol is entitled to 100% of her assets as spouse. But so is Bob.
Marriage is a fundamental right and is extremely broad. Restrictions on marriage, such as requiring the spouses to be of opposite genders, or of the same race, or of the same religion, or of compatible castes, etc. are not inherently part of marriage and are certainly not part of the fundamental right of marriage.
And yet, none of that addresses the number of spouses and the issue noted above.
Also, today's events make it clear that tradition is irrelevant; polygamy is practiced today among many groups, and has a long history back into antiquity. Same sex marriage was known in the past but was far more rare.
On the contrary, tradition is absolutely relevant as to whether something is a fundamental right. Marriage is a fundamental right because it's enshrined in our traditions and collective conscience. The fact that it has other traditions associated with it - the bride wears white, or Justice Thomas can't marry his wife because she's white - are irrelevant to whether the right to marry itself is fundamental.
Polygamy does not have such a place in our traditions or collective conscience, and therefore is not a fundamental right. So, instead, you'd have to fit it into the existing umbrella of marriage, and, as noted above, there's no equal protection argument for polygamy, unlike for interracial or same-sex marriage.
Because we don't want property passed between siblings probate-free?
Why? Just because we want to charge taxes? Probate restrictions based on marriage are yet another archaic issue that needs significant reform, given the changing shift in marriage.
Yes. It helps prevent the establishment of a hereditary aristocracy. Feel free to argue for those.
Go re-read the post you're replying to. It explains why marriage places obligations on a bunch of parties who never signed any contract. Even if you bundle contracts, that still doesn't apply to people who never signed them.
Sure it does if the government says it does... just like it currently does for marriage.
Then it's not really just "contracts," which is what you were proposing. So, just to be clear, you're now proposing that the government replace marriage with a bundle of rights and obligations that they will enforce on third parties? Like, say, marriage?
Or do you think that the government's extension of marriage rights to homosexuals today somehow can just be ignored by those 3rd parties? No -- if the government says X union with bundle of contracts Y is a "marriage" that entitles everyone to previous "marriage" rights Z, all third parties who grant rights Z would have to subscribe.
Of course, this is all a pipe dream. It's never going to happen in my lifetime. But it we were serious about putting marriage law on a rational basis, this is the kind of thing that should happen.
I have literally no idea what you're proposing here. Can you rephrase?
You're still arguing convenience over rights. You really want to go with the defense of "it would be too much work"? Throw that argument out the window, it's irrelevant. Does marriage after this court decision still discriminate? Based on the reasoning laid out for this decision, yes, it absolutely does.
"Seriously, do you even understand why courts and laws exist and we don't just have everything based on "whatever criteria a judge wants."
Two points.
First, there is a thing called "legislating from the bench". It's real. It happens.
Second, when it comes to child custody, there are numerous variables in play and often no clear-cut solution as defined by law. The judge does have a lot of say in the final outcome. Any ruling by a judge is always based on that judge's interpretation of the relevant laws, and no two judges will always come to the same conclusion. Beyond that, one judge may put more weight into financials while another may put more weight into family ties or other metrics. Family law is a mine field.
Back to my point though, all the court did was bring in some of the groups that were being discriminated against, yet marriage still discriminates. Yes, absolutely, it may be a more difficult thing to correct than gay marriage (difficult to say because even that took a hell of a long time), but this problem still has not been resolved. It's a partial victory, at best.
3>2 was addressed well by another user, but it's a classification not unlike "one man and one woman". Your equal protection argument breaks down because "one man and one woman" always held true for every adult, whether man or woman. No matter your gender, you could always marry one adult of the opposite gender. I know a lot of people detest that analysis, but it was true. Just like for polys and singles today, that wasn't acceptable, but that's how it was.
In both cases - and in many others - the laws have to change. That's not true for gay marriage, where literally nothing but the label on a line on a form changes.
So now whether you get a legal right depends of whether it's convenient to make appropriate alterations to existing statutes? Good to know!
And what law would the LGBT crowd need to write? None, as noted above. Literally nothing changes in existing laws when there are two spouses, regardless of their genders. Not one single law is different. If you don't believe me, then go find one that has to be changed. I'll wait.
You obviously have no clue about marriage law. Many states still have plenty of laws on the books and legal precedent that is based on gender assumptions, particularly involving child custody (and often favoring the mother). Gradually, these have been changing and sometimes actually ruled discriminatory... but there is still stuff out there.
And regardless of laws existing NOW, I can tell you things were a VERY different story a generation or two ago. One of the classic examples is coverture, the doctrine where a woman's rights were subordinated to the man's during marriage. This was a HUGE part of marriage law for a long time. And then there were all the complexities of fault divorces a few decades ago, which often involved all sorts of gender assumptions. Child care was also heavily gender-biased.
Somehow, though, we found it in ourselves to say these laws against women were unjust and discriminatory... and even if it required rewriting huge sections of marriage law and overturning centuries of precedents, it gradually happened.
It's all wonderful that same-sex marriage can mostly be accomplished without changing MUCH. But your argument that we should restrict fundamental rights based on the fact that it would be too hard to change all the damn marriage laws is not only specious, but it would put you on the same side as those who wanted to keep women oppressed a generation ago... "That's how marriage is! Gender inequality is part of marital law! Do you have any idea how much we'd have to change in law to effect reform that would put genders on an equal footing?! It's what marriage is and always will be!!"
You really want to be argue that side??
(By the way, I'm NOT taking a stand in favor of polygamy/polyamory, though I don't much care what people want to do with their lives. But that doesn't make your argument any less wrong.)
I've got to hang with Theaetetus here. I'm all for poly marriages, but existing inheritance, tax, insurance, etc. laws don't handle more than two people well. Gay marriage doesn't run up against any existing law except the one that says "no gay marriage". You don't have to change anything else when you say, "You know all those laws about a man and woman being married? Yeah, they apply to two dudes or two chicks, too." To include polys you have to redefine how inheritance is divided, how taxes are paid, who's eligible for insurance, etc. etc.
There also need to be new laws for situations that just can't occur in a two-person marriage. For example, what happens when one person wants out of a poly group? With a two-person marriage, a divorce necessarily means the end of a marriage. With a poly group one person leaving is not necessarily the end. What about when one person is unwillingly pushed out of a poly group? Or if the group fissures into two or more sub-groups? What happens if a child of someone in the group turns 18, should they be allowed to marry into the group? Does it make a difference if the child is adopted and not the biological offspring of any existing group member? If members can be added and removed, what are the implications of a continuous marriage that can outlive all of its individual members?
The laws could be changed to make poly unions work. The laws should be changed to make poly unions work. It's just that there are a lot of things that need to be examined for that to happen. It's not just a case of going from "two people of opposite sex" to "any two people". It's a serious qualitative change that will require qualitative changes to the law. Personally I'd love to see a serious proposal to change the laws in question and allow poly marriage. I think we could borrow from laws governing corporations to put something solid together. But I'm not a lawyer. I'll let someone else do the work. I'll vote for the result, to be sure, but I'm not going to kid myself that it's just a matter of adding "or more" between the words "two" and "people".
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Strawman; of course we are humans.
But this site's slogan is is news for nerds . What interest do nerds have of news about marriage rites?
And I don't mean the hipster neo-nerds who actually might grok sex or relationships. Not this site, no sirree. This site looks like it was designed in the 1990's. The upgrade to something looking like it was designed in the previous decade was shouted down. This is the last bastion of the honest-to-$DEITY, assembly-writing, coke-drinking, beer-bottle-bottom-spectacled elite.
I for one find people's preference in $EDITOR infinately more important and fascinating than their private social life (or, goes without saying, sexual preferences).
Its nice to see that there is some social progression being made in a country that has had such rocky times lately. Good luck to all the gay couples that can now be 'equals under the law'.
still involves swearing an oath with right hand on the Bible. This speaks both to their valuation of the Bible [not my problem], and their valuation of their word. This latter part should concern you
In both cases - and in many others - the laws have to change. That's not true for gay marriage, where literally nothing but the label on a line on a form changes.
So now whether you get a legal right depends of whether it's convenient to make appropriate alterations to existing statutes? Good to know!
Are you trolling? Please let me know before I waste more time. That has nothing to do with what I said, and if you're going to fight strawmen, you can do that on your own.
What I said - as you noted when you continued quoting me - was that unlike polygamy, gay marriage changes nothing in existing statutes. It is literally the same, except for the genders involved. Polygamy is different, due to the fact that existing statutes assume a single inheritor or legal proxy. Accordingly, a gay couple is situated similarly to a heterosexual couple, but a group of people are not situated similarly to a couple. In equal protection law, it is unconstitutional to treat people situated similarly in different ways without a sufficient justification. It is not however unconstitutional to treat people situated differently in different ways.
And what law would the LGBT crowd need to write? None, as noted above. Literally nothing changes in existing laws when there are two spouses, regardless of their genders. Not one single law is different. If you don't believe me, then go find one that has to be changed. I'll wait.
You obviously have no clue about marriage law. Many states still have plenty of laws on the books and legal precedent that is based on gender assumptions, particularly involving child custody (and often favoring the mother). Gradually, these have been changing and sometimes actually ruled discriminatory... but there is still stuff out there.
As noted above, those are already unconstitutional. And despite your "you obviously have no clue" protestations, you haven't named a single law that has to change. Instead, you just backpedal:
And regardless of laws existing NOW, I can tell you things were a VERY different story a generation or two ago.
We're talking about NOW, not a generation or two ago (you know, back when marital rape was legal and interracial marriage was not). And actually, since this is in the context of legalization of polygamy, we're talking about the FUTURE.
But your argument that we should restrict fundamental rights based on the fact that it would be too hard to change all the damn marriage laws is not only
a complete and utter strawman that was not my argument. You're trolling. Enjoy having an argument with yourself, since it's clearly not based on anything I said (hence why you don't actually quote me, but merely say "your argument".
(By the way, I'm NOT taking a stand in favor of polygamy/polyamory, though I don't much care what people want to do with their lives. But that doesn't make your argument any less wrong.)
Correction - your argument that you claim is my argument. If you can't quote me, then stop pretending you are.
Some nerds are interested in hacking government/society.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
You're still arguing convenience over rights.
Nope. Not once. Note that you can't actually quote me ever saying that. That should be enough to show that you're not actually arguing with me, but rather with the voices in your own head. You should really get that checked out.
3>2 was addressed well by another user, but it's a classification not unlike "one man and one woman". Your equal protection argument breaks down because "one man and one woman" always held true for every adult, whether man or woman.
Again, with no quoting. Do you even know what "my equal protection argument" is? You can't very well refute it if you have no idea what you're arguing about. Let's start from the beginning, but this time without you trying to put words in my mouth, okay?
Because this is a standard contract that also has implications for taxation, inheritance, joint finances, benefits, immigration, and a load of other things that require government cooperation.
Where the Constitution is silent, so should be the court. They have abdicated their responsibility to apply the Constitution, and now sit as philosopher-kings. This is tyranny, pure and simple. You might love this particular decision, but, as surely as the night follows the day, out of this tradition of activism will spring other decisions you will hate. Just sayin'.
Doesnt seem to solve the GGP's problem tho, which is that our government is in the business of giving special rights to people that enter a particular kind of contract.
Until you take a stand and say that the government shouldnt be doing that, you are just perpetuating oppression in my book. Sure, add homosexuals to your precious special rights group. Doesnt change the fact that the reason homosexuals want to get married are those special rights, nor does it change the fact that those that would prefer not to get married are forever an underclass without those special rights.
"His name was James Damore."
I actually think that polygamy would be mostly accepted now, except that most widespread cases of it in the US (see the Mormans) have been about rewarding powerful older men with new pretty young wives, generally without considering the opinion of any of the women. For some reason that has turned public opinion against polygamy, but I expect that to change over the next few decades.
Also, property rights are tightly tied to marriage and would need some major rewriting if you could transfer property tax-free by "marrying", transfer, "divorcing". I'm actually surprised nobody has tried this yet.
The restriction to look at now is whether the marital status of each spouse in the marriage at hand is single. Today it has to be. But there's not a good reason for it. (As already mentioned, administrative convenience is not a good reason). So why can't Alice, who is married to Bob, now also marry Carol? Bob isn't marrying Carol; the A-C marriage would be between two people only. You're treating Alice differently merely because she is already married.
So what happens to Alice's stuff when she dies? How are property rights naturally divided? I can tell you there would be different interpretations of what happens and that's a problem. You need new law or legal precedent to establish how that works.
Sure, it's not intractable, it's also not even something I'd be against. Equal protection, however, is based on "protected classes" and the state of "being married" is not one of those. Why should it be? Someone who is married is denied the joys of ... being married? That doesn't compute.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
"Note that you can't actually quote me ever saying that."
That's my summary of your opinion. Gays can marry because it's easy and we don't have to change much of the law. Polys and singles and any other arrangement can continue to be discriminated against because it'd be too difficult to afford them the same rights as others. Is that not your opinion? I'm not hearing voices, I'm reading your comments. Please clarify if I missed something.
"You can't very well refute it if you have no idea what you're arguing about."
Probably because you're as much of a bigot as the traditionalists are accused of being and you refuse to acknowledge it.
I saw this in another of your comments:
"Polygamy does not have such a place in our traditions or collective conscience, and therefore is not a fundamental right."
Do you realize how many times traditional marriage proponents used that exact same justification? Traditional marriage. Tradition. "Polygamy does not have such a place in our traditions". By that quote, you would refuse gay marriage because it was not a tradition nor was it ever a significant part of our "collective conscience". Your reasoning here is absurd!
"That's not true for gay marriage, where literally nothing but the label on a line on a form changes."
Nothing but a label.
Fair enough, I have a couple more labels I would like to change:
owner/pet to spouse/spouse
no other changes needed.
This is an even better match because just as sodomy is/was illegal in many jurisdictions, bestiality is often illegal now.
And for some of those in the BDSM community:
Spouse/Spouse to owner/slave
or even
Spouse/Spouse to owner/pet
That is just as easy
You are not going to claim that a dog does not love their owner are you? Or an owner that claims to love their dog?
If Christians actually read their bible, polygamous marriage would have been legal from the beginning.
If this was about Equality, than civil unions would be enough. Fixing the disparity between marriage and civil union would have been the proper path, rather than taking a religious ceremony and perverting it to no longer have a religious element.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You may not have used the word convenience. But when you say that because new laws need to be passed it should not happen, you leave other people trying to determine why and the simplest is that it would be inconvenient to make new laws.
Even to unmarried couples?
While I do not necessarily disagree with you, how is the constitutionality of same sex marriage related to expanding the constitution to include a right to drugs?
Polygamy will be legal around the same time Robot marriage becomes acceptable.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Marriage is not exclusively about property and inheritance. I can sign a property deed along with someone I'm not married to and I can do the same in my will for inheritance.
While I agree in principle and I'd love to see states get rid of marriage legally, I do think that it will take a lot more reworking of laws to make it happen.
For example, in Pennsylvania any number of random people can buy a house together and each own a portion of the property. However, only a married couple can buy it such that they each own 100% of it. The practical difference is that if one property-owner has a lein in the first case, then the lein remains against their share of the property up to the value of that share even if that owner dies. However, in the case of a married couple if one member of the couple has a lein against the house and the other does not, then upon their death the lein does not remain against the house because the other owner already owned 100% of it and the dead owner is simply struck from the deed.
So, there are likely situations where marriage does get special treatment that need to be resolved.
However, I do agree that there isn't any situation handled by marriage that could be legally handled in some other way, and I'd love to see marriage become purely a cultural/religious/etc arrangement with no legal basis at all. You could still have standard contracts for property ownership among couples just as there are standards for contracts for buying/selling houses, and individuals could enter into these or modify them as they see fit.
The federalist papers go into quite a bit of detail on the subject I have heard. I have not personally read them, but the explanations I find online for the 2nd amendment have allowed me to understand why gun rights are protected pretty well.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
People write laws that are interpreted and used in ways they don't expect all the time. That doesn't make them any less the law. If you write something that basically says, "The government will treat people equally," and privately assume that the people you're not treating equally will probably continue to be treated unequally, you'll probably be surprised to find that the rules you actually wrote down outlast the social norms of your time.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
The fact that I got modded down for flamebait just reinforces the notion that the issue of same-sex marriage is about something other than equal protection under the law. That is fine, but the reality is the court was supposed to address equal protection under the law, not the changing morals of society as it relates to marriage.
For the record, I'm not opposed to same sex-sex marriage. I just think the SCOTUS should stick to its intended purpose versus being a vehicle for social change. Ironically, many states already made the argument for them on how the 14th amendment was being violated. Not one of them included concepts of the expression of love (probably, because no state laws on marriage require the expression of love as a requirement). SCOTUS however has now made that part of the definition of marriage.
The problem is that if SCOTUS can define marriage one way, then in the future, it can define it a different way, depending on how public opinion changes. If they had relied on the 14th amendment argument, the burden of changing the definition would be on those wanting to change it and showing it wasn't a violation. But, then, that is not what the SCOTUS did.
It's also not a fundamental right, as polygamy is not part of the traditions
You've got to be fucking kidding. How does being "part of the traditions" have any relevance to something being a fundamental right? Most fundamental rights that we enjoy these days were never traditional, starting with pretty much all women's rights.
Says the one not knowing history. Ever herd of greek men mariage in ancient greece ? Or in China ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Gee it is not as if a ready to grasp encyclopedia *with* reference you can check, was not available.
Ohhh look at that snippet
This is your "never was a gay mariage". Sure christian ordered them killed and forbid that. Hurhur.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
From the decision:
"They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right." - Justice Kennedy
You make my point. There is no constitutional right to dignity under the law. There is a constitutional right to equal protection. I wonder, if the Boston Bomper can now appeal his case based on this new constitutional right of dignity?
"Note that you can't actually quote me ever saying that."
That's my summary of your opinion. Gays can marry because it's easy and we don't have to change much of the law. Polys and singles and any other arrangement can continue to be discriminated against because it'd be too difficult to afford them the same rights as others. Is that not your opinion? I'm not hearing voices, I'm reading your comments. Please clarify if I missed something.
Yep, you missed something. Please go back and reread my posts. If something still doesn't make sense, please cut and paste or use the "quote parent" button. I feel no need to keep restating something over and over when you clearly aren't reading it.
By that quote, you would refuse gay marriage because it was not a tradition nor was it ever a significant part of our "collective conscience". Your reasoning here is absurd!
Nope, marriage is part of our traditions and collective conscience. As a fundamental right, it can't be denied to gay people. Polygamy is not, and therefore is not a fundamental right. The reasoning is consistent.
The comparison you're trying (and failing) to make is that people were denying gay marriage because, as they said, "gay marriage" is not a fundamental right and not in our traditions, as if it was something different. It is not: gay marriage is marriage. There is nothing different about it, except for the genders involved. Therefore, it's not a "new" right outside of our traditions, but the same exact and existing right. One can say "marriage is a fundamental right, and gay marriage is marriage, so therefore gay marriage is also a fundamental right."
Polygamy, however, is different than marriage. As noted above (remember, the part you keep trying to dismiss as administrative convenience?), there's a whole bunch of substantive issues that are different when there are two people compared to when there are three or more. It's a different institution than marriage, with more than just a simple gender difference. Accordingly, one cannot simply say "marriage is a fundamental right, therefore polygamy is a fundamental right" any more than one can say "marriage is a fundamental right, therefore driving a car is a fundamental right." They're different things.
And finally, before you continue throwing around that "you're a bigot" name calling bullshiat personal attack, realize that I haven't said anything against polygamy. In fact, I think it would be a fine thing to legalize. All I've said is that there is not an equal protection or due process analogy between gay marriage and polygamy because - as repeatedly and thoroughly noted above, despite your inability to read - they are not the same institution, any more than driving a car is the same institution as marriage.
You may not have used the word convenience.
Great, thanks! Glad someone is reading my words and seeing what's there and what's not.
But when you say that because new laws need to be passed it should not happen
/facepalm
So close, and yet so far.
It's also not a fundamental right, as polygamy is not part of the traditions
You've got to be fucking kidding. How does being "part of the traditions" have any relevance to something being a fundamental right?
Let me Google that for you.
[T]he court used the remaining 14th Amendment protections for equal protection and due process to "incorporate" individual elements of the Bill of Rights against the states. "The test usually articulated for determining fundamentality under the Due Process Clause is that the putative right must be 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty', or 'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition.'" Compare page 267 Lutz v. City of York, Pa., 899 F. 2d 255 - United States Court of Appeals, 3rd Circuit, 1990.
HTH. HAND.
Can a virgin technically be considered straight?
What upsets many people about this is that they view marriage as a religious institution and feel the government shouldn't be involved with it at all. What other instances are govt benefits tied to a religious ritual? IMHO, a better way to settle this issue would be to purge Federal law of anything related to marriage and have the government institutions only recognize civil unions. That allows the govt to define who is eligible for civil unions, lets the religions decide terms of what they call marriage, and eliminates any potential church/state contention which is the root of most of the opposition. It's what Mexico does: people can get a civil union, religious marriage, or both (potential for two anniversaries and two parties).
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The courts when presented with a dispute have rendered a decision. Not giving a decision would have been just as much a form of judicial activism. Remember that judical activism is what happens when the courts disagree with you, and judicial wisdom is what happens when they agree with you.
I don't care what the court or the constitution say on this matter. Fundamental rights are not defined by the constitution, merely documented (or not) by it. That's why they're fundamental.
Whom, of course, the moment that polygamy becomes legal will immediately surrender their autonomy, careers, voting rights, and free will in general in order to cater exclusively to the nearest available rich man they can find, under the notion that a rich and powerful man can be a better arbiter of their own fate than their own selves. We will suddenly see a rush of beautiful hot women at every man worth 100K, eagerly negotiating with each other who gets to be first wife, second wife, etc, abandoning everything they've built in their lives just to get a slice of a rich man's pie, leaving all the not-so-rich and poor men to handle the ugly leftover dregs of femininity.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
And why should they discriminate against me being single? Granting protection to married couples only makes sense if those protections make it easier for procreation. Same-sex couples cannot procreate, so they should be granted no protections. If same-sex couples are being given those protections, I should be legally allowed to marry myself and have them too.
There are no benefits for ones ability to procreate -- same sex, different sex or single. There are benefits for the results of procreating and raising a child, whether biologically or through adoption.
Same sex couples already have access to those protections, as do single people. (You don't have to be married to get the child tax credit, you just have to have a child).
With regards to marrying yourself, the whole issue is that marriage brings a number of rights to the spouse by law without having one spouse specifically grant them to the other. Marrying yourself to get these rights doesn't make sense, as you already have them.
Hardly, since it just upheld equal rights for all. That gay couples can enter into a legal contract, i.e, marriage. Until now they were denied that simply because they wanted to marry the same sex. That was clearly unconstitutional.
Then the court should have simply stated that marriage, in the eyes of the law is a legal contract that same sex couples were denied from entering into. This is a violation of the 14th amendment.
But they didn't. Instead the SCOTUS said that there is a new right called dignity and that marriage is about love and mutual respect and support of the family, yada, yadad. While I do not necessarily disagree with those sentiments, love et al is not what the court was asked to address as it is not protected under the 14th amendment.
My point being, the court, in its majority opinion, should have dealt with matters of law, not sociology.
Civil unions would have been one option. Most of the rest of the world went that route. However, that only solves the issue of equal protection under the law. There were/are other agendas involved in this decision, which is why there is all of the talk about love and family and the two becoming greater than the whole.
As Justice Roberts stated in his dissenting opinion, it's fine to celebrate this decision, just don't celebrate the constitution for it, as the decision, as written has nothing to do with the constitution. (paraphrased)
"The comparison you're trying (and failing) to make is that people were denying gay marriage because, as they said, "gay marriage" is not a fundamental right and not in our traditions, as if it was something different. It is not: gay marriage is marriage."
There it is finally. That's the point of contention. The last sentence is wrong. If it were true, then there never would have been any argument to the contrary. I can make the exact same statement: poly marriage is marriage. It's not just Mormons. How many married people end up cheating on their spouses? It's not always just a fling. How many have "open marriages"? How many have had multiple marriages in different locations simultaneously? Poly may not be done in the open all that often, but there are certainly many partnered adults out there with multiple partners. They have to be secretive because society doesn't want to talk about them or acknowledge that they exist. "In the closet."
I used the term bigot because I don't know how else to explain your position on this. You seem to have a very strong desire to separate one type of arrangement from another, not unlike the traditional marriage folks insisting that gay marriage is something separate. If they're called bigots for that, then I think what you're trying to do with your "logic" is the same exact thing. People establish relationships. It can't be confined to a race, we've been there. It can no longer be confined to specific genders, we're there now. Why on Earth would we limit it to a specific number of individuals? Tribalism has existed for a very long time.
You say you haven't said anything against polygamy but you won't acknowledge that it's the same thing. It is no less a fundamental right. Race isn't, gender isn't, count shouldn't be either going by the same logic. I don't know how you can rationalize your stance to yourself, it doesn't make sense. All the naysayers said that race or gender or what-have-you was not the same institution. It's the same argument.
Amazingly, Thomas actually went against Scalia this week on the Texas Confederate license plate case.
I don't care what the court or the constitution say on this matter. Fundamental rights are not defined by the constitution, merely documented (or not) by it. That's why they're fundamental.
So you think a right is only fundamental if it's listed in the Constitution? I take it you never read the 9th Amendment?
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Because a) polygamous marriages are usually an excuse for some guy to build a harem, or there is often some kind of brainwashing or mistreatment going on; and b) there would be a huge legal mess about ownership of property and rights over children and so forth.
But if someone wants to start trying to push it through the courts they can go ahead.
Property, power of attorney and inheritance are pretty much it as far as I'm aware. But that ain't nothing. What happens to your property when you die, who can make decisions on your behalf if you're incapacitated, who has a valid right to raise your children, etc. are all pretty important issues. Having everybody more or less agree on how it's done through marriage and family lines was pretty convenient. If we do away with it, we'll have a lot of issues to work out, since the government ends up in the middle of all of those disputes once they go to court.
Gay marriage fits pretty neatly into those paradigms, so it seems like a no brainer. I'd be all for legalizing polygamy as well, but the 11 algorithms that are assumed in the law don't necessarily scale to 1N or NN. It seems like it would be worth coming up wtih some more baseline principles that would allow us to define who is "family" in a general way.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
"They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."
He would have been more proper in saying, "The Constitution does not grant the government the power to abridge the right in question which they already hold".
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
White dudes had the right to marry white women and black dudes had the right to marry black women before Loving v. Virginia, but the court still ruled that prohibiting white dudes from marrying black women and black dudes from marrying white women was an equal rights issue. Now it seems like a no brainer, but at the time the same logical argument was made. I'm guessing we'll have the same perspective on it in another 20 years.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
"The comparison you're trying (and failing) to make is that people were denying gay marriage because, as they said, "gay marriage" is not a fundamental right and not in our traditions, as if it was something different. It is not: gay marriage is marriage."
There it is finally. That's the point of contention. The last sentence is wrong. If it were true, then there never would have been any argument to the contrary.
Not so, plenty of people can argue that things are wrong when they are not. For example, you're arguing with me right now. The mere fact that people disagree doesn't mean something can't be true.
I can make the exact same statement: poly marriage is marriage.
Sure, you can make that statement. The difference is that I can support mine with logic, and you cannot. For example, in the post you're replying to:
gay marriage is marriage. There is nothing different about it, except for the genders involved. Therefore, it's not a "new" right outside of our traditions, but the same exact and existing right. One can say "marriage is a fundamental right, and gay marriage is marriage, so therefore gay marriage is also a fundamental right."
Polygamy, however, is different than marriage. As noted above (remember, the part you keep trying to dismiss as administrative convenience?), there's a whole bunch of substantive issues that are different when there are two people compared to when there are three or more. It's a different institution than marriage, with more than just a simple gender difference. Accordingly, one cannot simply say "marriage is a fundamental right, therefore polygamy is a fundamental right" any more than one can say "marriage is a fundamental right, therefore driving a car is a fundamental right." They're different things.
Now, feel free to try to poke some holes in that. As of yet, you've simply ignored it.
I used the term bigot because I don't know how else to explain your position on this.
No, you used the term bigot because you're projecting. Let's see if I've got this right:
1. You are against gay marriage. Evidence for this is you saying my statement that gay marriage is marriage "is wrong".
2. You think that the arguments against gay marriage and polygamy are identical. Evidence for this is the fact that you've been arguing they're identical.
3. You think that I am against polygamy. Evidence for this is you calling me a bigot for being against polygamy (despite the fact that I've never said anything of the sort).
(and finally)
4. You think you can catch me being hypocritical because I'm against polygamy, but not against gay marriage, and the arguments are the same. Evidence for this is you saying that if anti-gay marriage people are called bigots, then you think that I should be called a bigot with my 'logic'.
But no. You're wrong on every count. 1 - gay marriage is marriage; 2 - it's not an identical argument with polygamy; 3 - I have no problem with polygamy; and 4 - I'm not a hypocrite.
Sorry, bub, but you're transparent. It's like you got your talking points from Rush Limbaugh.
You say you haven't said anything against polygamy but you won't acknowledge that it's the same thing. It is no less a fundamental right. Race isn't, gender isn't, count shouldn't be either going by the same logic.
Not at all. Here's the logic, broken down into short bits so you can understand it:
It's unconstitutional to treat groups that are similarly situated in different ways.
Blacks and whites are similarly situated. Race does not affect their ability to contribute to or participate in society.
Homosexuals and heterosexuals are similarly situated. Sexual orientation does not affect their ability to contribute to or participate in society.
Men and women are similarly situated. Gender does
So you think a right is only fundamental if it's listed in the Constitution? I take it you never read the 9th Amendment?
How could you possibly read what I wrote and came to that conclusion?
Like I said, I don't give a fuck about what's written in the Constitution when it comes to determining which rights are fundamental. The Constitution merely documents such rights, it does not create them. Just because something is not listed there doesn't mean it's not a right.
This goes for SCOTUS, too. Just because they come up with some retarded notion that a fundamental right is something "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" doesn't make it so. There are plenty of rights which weren't that are still important.
You don't think there's any gay nerds?
The conservative media take on the Supreme Court is that it has become "technocratic."
Meaning it has become aligned with the dominant forces of the 21st Century economy. Hollywood in entertainment, Silicon Valley in tech, Amazon in retailing, and so on.
Conservatives need such an explanation for why the wheels have fallen off their little red wagon.
After a momentous week, same-sex couples can now marry in all 50 states, the Confederate flag's historic hold on the political institutions of the Deep South is fraying by the hour and Obamacare, after defying another attempt to dismantle it, is now reaffirmed as the law of the land.
The week that changed the nation
I'm an asexual nerd. Where are equal rights for unmarried people?
Want to see people bent out of shape, you should go to one of the hype-social conservative Catholic forums on the web. Holy smokes, you've got people telling how God smucked down a tree in their neighborhood because He's so pissed off, and predicting that several states will secede. Someone on one forum even started blaming Neopagans (that one I confess I can't quite figure out).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The GP said: "The reality is that for thousands of years and across all known cultures marriage has been defined as a relationship between different sexes". I pointed out one simple example which shows that the assertion is false -- ironically, an American example. :-)
No one is proposing using primitive cultures as a model for American society, except the GP, who brought up the subject in the first place.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
But why are there legal issues? My girlfriend tells everyone we're married, we've been together longer than most marriages last (at least among all of our friends who got married) and yet we don't have the same rights as married people I can't get on her work insurance or file taxes jointly. How is this fair or equal?
There are certain benefits granted to married couples. Many
And why shouldn't unmarried couples or singles have those same rights?
Special rights to special groups is how the government divides the people and enslaves us.
Like the married group and the unmarried groups?
Sure, I can get down with that, as long as you are willing to give up all the government benefits of being married.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
you mean the civil unions none of the states were willing to give?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
So, the government's role in marriage goes beyond merely enforcing contracts.
Not in any way that makes a difference, the rest is just details of various bureaucracies most of which shouldn't be involved in the first place.
It actually is not a new right. This right has long standing in the law. You are also forgetting that the constitution does not enumerate all of the rights, just the ones felt to be most important at the time.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Might I suggest The Database Engineering Perspective on Gay Marriage, which humorously explores the formal, structural similarities and differences between different kinds of marriage (straight, gay, poly, intransitive... asymmetrical? reflexive? etc) in a milieu that readers of this site should appreciate.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Explain the continued ban on polygamous marriage.
A ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional because a ban serves no good purpose, hence the fake studies on the welfare of children and the doom & gloom scenarios about the collapse of the family trying to invent a purpose so they could justify a ban.
But polygamous marriages are very widely one man with multiple women. They create a destabilizing gender imbalance in those communities leading to young unmarried men being excluded and they create domestic situations where women have very little power and are subject to abuse.
While there are some rare instances where polygamous marriages would be fine there are plenty of good reasons for the government to ban the practice and that makes it constitutional.
I stole this Sig
...taking a religious ceremony and perverting it to no longer have a religious element.
To the state, marriage has never had a religious element to it. It is a legal contract pertaining to rights and obligations between two parties.
Churches are merely granted the *privilege* of performing official marriage ceremonies.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
"Now, feel free to try to poke some holes in that. As of yet, you've simply ignored it."
I addressed that already, as have others. Inheritance, child custody, hospital visitation, all of that, all of your "substantive" issues can be addressed in a manner not unlike what is done for couples. We could have group tax filings. It's just more names on the forms and more W2s and/or 1099s. Estates can be split as with children when there are no surviving parents. Etc. Those are implementation details, those are not justifications for continued discrimination. That's like saying, well.. a lot of forms already have Mr and Mrs on them and we'd have to change them, or child custody in many/most states favor the female/mother.. so it's just not the same thing as marriage. Don't you understand that?
"No, you used the term bigot because you're projecting."
Projecting what? I'm suggesting that we treat all groups the same. That's the opposite of bigotry. What the hell?
"1. You are against gay marriage. Evidence for this is you saying my statement that gay marriage is marriage 'is wrong'."
Out of context. My point was that if that were the consensus, there wouldn't have been any issue for the court to consider. Clearly there was. You can't just say "x is marriage" and use that as a persuasive reason why it should be so. As I stated in that context, I can also say "poly is marriage" but you'd refute that apparently. The argument I'm making is that discrimination continues, I'm not arguing against the court decision.
"2. You think that the arguments against gay marriage and polygamy are identical. Evidence for this is the fact that you've been arguing they're identical."
The justification that traditionalists were using, yes.
"3. You think that I am against polygamy."
No. I think you're against acknowledging that poly marriage is as much marriage and as deserving of the right to be recognized as marriage as the way that hetero or gay couples are considered married.
"4. You think you can catch me being hypocritical because I'm against polygamy, but not against gay marriage, and the arguments are the same."
Against poly marriage, yes.
"It's like you got your talking points from Rush Limbaugh."
I don't listen to his show, but I'm pretty sure he's not in favor of anything except traditional man and woman marriage. Are you not paying attention? I'm calling out the fact that while gays can now marry, the law still discriminates. Why do you keep ignoring that?
"Large groups and couples are not similarly situated. The number of people in a group directly affects its ability to contribute to or participate in society. Large numbers of people have more votes than small numbers. They consume more resources. They can be in more places at once. "
Wow! Polygamists don't contribute to society the same way that a couple can? That's pretty much hate speech right there. They're people, just like anyone else. I can't imagine what's going through your mind to come up with that gem. Again, that sounds an awful lot like the rhetoric against gay marriage. Two guys could never raise a family, therefore they're not contributing to society the same way. That's my beef against your "logic". It's bigoted. There's no way you can justify making a statement like that.
"They consume more resources."
Actually, it's probably the other way around. Let's say it's a group of four. Those married four are likely to live in the same dwelling whereas two married pairs are almost certainly going to be in two separate dwellings. Again, I can't imagine what you're thinking.
"They can be in more places at once."
Are they cloning themselves?
You've got something going on, but it's not logic.
The state has plenty of reason to be involved. There's tonnes of property rights, power of attorney rights, responsibilities in regards to children, etc. It's almost childishly simplistic to say the State has no business there. You might as well endorse anarchy and call it a day.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"Now, feel free to try to poke some holes in that. As of yet, you've simply ignored it."
I addressed that already, as have others. Inheritance, child custody, hospital visitation, all of that, all of your "substantive" issues can be addressed in a manner not unlike what is done for couples. We could have group tax filings. It's just more names on the forms and more W2s and/or 1099s. Estates can be split as with children when there are no surviving parents. Etc. Those are implementation details, those are not justifications for continued discrimination.
Weird. You quoted me and then you responded to something completely unrelated. You were supposed to try to poke holes in the logic of "marriage = gay marriage; marriage != polygamy". Instead, you responded that there are tax filings and estates and such. That's not in dispute - the issue here is (i) is gay marriage just "marriage" and (ii) is polygamy just "marriage". In fact, as you note, there are a whole bunch of "implementation details" that have to get worked out for polygamy but don't for gay marriage, which is why polygamy is not the same as marriage. But let's try again, just in case you got your wires crossed:
gay marriage is marriage. There is nothing different about it, except for the genders involved. Therefore, it's not a "new" right outside of our traditions, but the same exact and existing right. One can say "marriage is a fundamental right, and gay marriage is marriage, so therefore gay marriage is also a fundamental right."
Polygamy, however, is different than marriage. As noted above (remember, the part you keep trying to dismiss as administrative convenience?), there's a whole bunch of substantive issues that are different when there are two people compared to when there are three or more. It's a different institution than marriage, with more than just a simple gender difference. Accordingly, one cannot simply say "marriage is a fundamental right, therefore polygamy is a fundamental right" any more than one can say "marriage is a fundamental right, therefore driving a car is a fundamental right." They're different things.
Now, feel free to try to poke some holes in that.
That's like saying, well.. a lot of forms already have Mr and Mrs on them and we'd have to change them
And once you do, there are literally no other changes to the laws. Not so with forms that you have to add "spouse 1", "spouse 2", "spouse 3", "spouse 4", etc.
... or child custody in many/most states favor the female/mother.
Nope. It favors the primary caretaker. That frequently happens to be the mother, but not always. The laws themselves, however, make no distinction between stay at home dads vs. stay at home moms. The "stay at home" is the important part, not the genitals.
You can't just say "x is marriage" and use that as a persuasive reason why it should be so.
Maybe you missed the two paragraphs explaining that. Not sure how, considering I've now quoted them twice so they've appeared in their entirety in three separate posts now. I have some theories, but... well... they're not kind.
As I stated in that context, I can also say "poly is marriage" but you'd refute that apparently.
"Apparently" you didn't read the post you replied to, twice. It's not that I would refute that, apparently, but that I did. Twice. It's quoted above a third time. Will you respond to it FINALLY or just admit you're a troll?
Large groups and couples are not similarly situated. The number of people in a group directly affects its ability to contribute to or participate in society. Large numbers of people have more votes than small numbers. They consume more resources. They can be in more places at once. "
Wow! Polygamists don't contribute to society the sam
did you read what you replied to?
read. then reply
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
10%? Are you suggesting that Slashdot has a population of homosexuals that exceeds the general population ratio of 1.6-3%?
No, I'm suggesting that the general population ratio is 10% and in some reports say it's closer to 20%.
There are no credible reports that estimate anything above 8%. There are very very few that find above 4%. I generally round up to 10% when talking about the homosexual population. In general, any "report" that finds above 4% (including bisexuals) is suspect.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Legalizing Robot-Human marriages.
So, the whites could vote to enact slavery again?
They can. All it takes is a constitutional amendment. If you have enough lousy people in your country, there is no law, no constitution that will protect you.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
respectfully disagree, good sir. I come to /. for the political discourse because it is far above and beyond the vile discourse you find on most news sites. Here, people know how to debate. And while we aren't above getting personal and rude, generally the analysis here in the comments is insightful on both sides. Don't knock the political discourse on here, it's one of the best kept secrets on the internet.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I think you should keep up with genetic research. I know a same-sex couple that will have a baby together, and have it arranged as such that neither can be denied their parental rights because biologically and legally both will be the parent.
Right here in the USA in a state that could thus far legally deny the rights of same-sex parents.
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Does this mean I can force a baker to make me a cake with a Confederate flag on it?
Thanks to the Internet, the nearest hippie is only a few milliseconds away. What was it he wanted to ask, again?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Well said. They also fail to address why incestuous relations can't "marry" under such a scheme of equality and indeed why non-sexually involved pairs of people can't "marry" if it is expedient to them.
It was never about legal rights, because an equivalent civil union would have solved such inequalities. It was always about taking marriage and redefining it, in an act of cultural imperialism.
The Bible (supposedly the word of Abraham's God) specifically says that this god wiped out almost all of humanity in a flood, and destroyed two cities (in separate events). It doesn't necessarily claim direct responsibility for diseases or other natural events. There is of course the argument that he should have prevented such events, but there's a difference between causing something and not preventing it.
An alien species that sees an asteroid heading towards Earth might decide not to interfere with the natural progression of events (even if a bunch of dinosaurs die as a result) without committing a crime, but altering the atmosphere to cause a massive flood in order to wipe out most of the life on the planet would certainly be genocide.
If the Bible is literally true, then it would appear Abraham's god is guilty of enough crimes against humanity to warrant permanent imprisonment.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
You really should read them. Everyone should. It's some of the most thoughtful and intelligent writing that has ever been done. Even non-US citizens who've read it have told me this. Sadly, it's beyond most people with a lowest common denominator education.
>Now go forth and read Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe before you climb up on that horse again. //
How about instead you provide examples of states [established in the Western tradition] adopting a common definition of marriage that encompassed homosexual couples? I'm sure we can rule out fringe cases of emperors dressing up boys as the concubine they murdered and insisting on having a wedding feast to celebrate their nuptials too, just to help you in choosing examples.
According to the court's majority decision marriage is not about property and inheritance rights, but about love, spirituality, etc.
The majority opinion most certainly states, numerous times, that this is about equal protection under the law. (the 14th amendment). It is the entire basis of the opinion. You are falling for the snowjob Scalia tried to pull (he does so in nearly every fucking ruling he dissents on) and you didn't even bother to read the verdict.
Stop trusting what the press is telling you the ruling says and read it for yourself for once.
DOMA was unconstitutional. It might have been passed by the legislature but it wasn't the law.
Haven't Gay's suffered enough?
As a gay person, I can tell you that debates of these statistics - "How many people are actually gay?" - is a popular discussion in gay circles. Many gay people think that the number is closer to 20% because, frankly, they've experienced things that lead them to believe that, such as having sexual encounters with self-identifying straight people, and confessions of people that they wouldn't tell anyone else.
But what is gay? Just one same-sex encounter out of ten thousand opposite-sex encounters? What if you like it sometimes, or at one point in your life, but not others?
In this, I defer to the Nazis as always. They were very very meticulous about their sociographic statistics, what with their racial theories and all. They found that around 8% of the German population was gay. That number seems about right to me.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
my eyes dimmed with skepticism then completely rolled over here
why is it that you ignorant hysterical fucks just lie?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The constitution does not endow rights. The constitution delineates most rights mainly by restricting the government's ability to interfere.
Reconcile your argument with the 19th amendment: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
What's your reading? Did women always have the right to vote but the government was interfering with that right until the 19th amendment restricted the government from doing so? Just because the amendment used a double negative doesn't mean the right existed beforehand hand.
That's was a warm-up. Now, reconcile your argument with the 13th amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
I'm sure that amendment didn't give anyone rights -- rights that were never explicitly banned before...
For all intents and purposes, those two amendments enshrined rights in law. Before them, slaves were and universal suffrage was not. If that's not endowing rights, I don't know what is.
Maybe you just want to argue about some sort of relativism -- that rights float in the ether independent of government. Regardless, there's a bonus question: if the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment is so powerful, why was the 19th amendment needed? Do you see where I'm coming from?
So your argument is that the 19th amendment shouldn't have been necessary, and it was only needed because the courts wouldn't apply the 14th amendment properly?
That's a self-consistent reading, and I'm all for giving people more rights, but I just don't see it in the text of the 14th amendment. Does the "privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" really mean "any right [that doesn't violate the golden rule]"? It would be nice if it did. I'm not holding my breath for the courts to enforce it that way.
I agree with the raisin ruling, but that really seems like a 5th amendment thing to me ("nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation"). I also agree that there are many laws that should go, but just like for the raisins, I think a lot of the fire power comes from other amendments -- without the need for everything under the sun to be a privilege or immunity.
I think the government works too capriciously as is -- because of the inflexibility I mentioned. It seems counter-intuitive, but it wouldn't be the first time that a well-intentioned, strong rule backfired -- causing the rule to be strong in principle but weak in practice (because everyone ignored it).
Passing laws is a real hassle in the US. They have to get a majority of votes in the house, 60% of votes in the Senate, not be vetoed by the president, and not be struck down by the courts -- and that's not even counting hurdles within congress (committees, leadership support, etc.) And you know what? It isn't needed. Many governments operate just fine with a parliamentary system that only has one real legislative body and a judiciary. In fact, well functioning presidential governments are quite rare -- and now we're seeing why.
What's the effect of a screwed up legislative branch in a presidential system? The executive branch taking more power (e.g. Obama's executive order wrt illegal immigration). That's now how it's supposed to work, but sometimes things need to get done, and if the legislative branch sits there, one of the other branches will take its power. In the longrun, it's dangerous. It's exactly the thing the checks and balances (inflexibility) was meant to prevent. Oh well.
Ditto with the constitution. The interstate commerce clause is used as the justification so much federal legislation, but it wasn't meant to be that way. The issue is that the constitution was not written with the needs of a modern government in mind. Rather than update the constitution (which is a pain in the ass), we warp the constitution to fit our -- often legitimate -- purposes. However, once we start bending the meaning of the constitution like that, it stops blocking the bad things it was meant to block.
Like all things, there's a happy medium between to weak and too strong. I just think that we're on the too-strong side.
Point being that the government should get out of defining marriage, to do so it needs to adjust all those laws that make assumptions about marriage.
This. The Government has no business telling the citizens what contracts they can or cannot make with each other. Legally, marriage has a host of baggage (inheritance, visitation, taxation, etc) that legitimizes the Supreme Court's actions. The 14th Amendment applies to the legal aspects of marriage, not to marriage itself, but because of those connections, it affects much more than who gets the house when one spouse dies. Married or not married doesn't define classes (the sexual revolution shot that to hell), but when there's money on the line, people get all kinds of upset if a piece of paper (marriage contract) keeps them from it.
Instead of "legalizing gay marriage" or "outlawing gay marriage", the people (who hold all the rights not specifically identified in the constitution) should remove the legality from marriage and return it to what it was intended for: to build strong family relationships and teach children how to be productive, balanced citizens. Essentially, marriage should stop being a contract requiring courts to begin and end and return to being the building block of society.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
How about instead you provide examples of states [established in the Western tradition]
What does that mean? By fire and force?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
well marriage is supposed to be a lifetime thing but thanks to things like religions and other people brainwashing poor saps into thinking they must get married for insert long list of bs reasons hear as quickly as possible is why most fall apart after a few years. many mary people they don't really like when kids are thrown into the mix due to the same mindset i listed before they think they have to to be socially accepted.
i never got married pretty sure none has forced me. but it quit being a religious thing when laws where made for divorce etc. now its a legal contract.
if this was just a religion issue the government would have no say but its not. marriage is a contact with laws etc.
6 months from now you know a gay couple getting divorced well be asking themselves we really fought for this.
theirs a few bible thumpers but this is a nerd site lol you wont find to many.
Actually if you'd read my subject instead of just the comment you would have seen that I said I was glad to hear the news (implied: because it's good news for somebody else) but it was not terribly relevant to me. Sorry if I'm not out actively celebrating this ruling any more than I am that raisin farmer in Oregon who doesn't have to give the government his raisins, or the family in Ohio who now gets to sit through a third murder trial.
But I suppose it's just easier to shoot from the hip at someone who's not cheering with the expected level of enthusiasm.
It's also a giant government waste issue, to the tune of $40 billion a year.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
You might want to read some history.
The states have a poor record on the subject of minority rights. Such as slavery. And segregation. And so forth.
Might I suggest the same to you? The Federal government hasn't exactly always been a shining light itself. How many states waged Indian Wars? Any thoughts about the existence of black regiments in the Army? There may be a few more examples....
You need to read about Westboro Baptist Church. They've already proven the you are wrong. And they did it at the Supreme Court.
I'm pretty sure that 10-20 people doesn't constitute a meaningful portion of the religious experience of the US. And not all government officials are all sweetness and light in their treatment of members of America's religious communities.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
For those not in the know, refer to the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
It sounds attractive, but actually there is much good that comes of it.
Visitation rights and natural assumption of your spouse's property for starters.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
All forms of group marriage should be legal as well, as should time limited marriages and any other variants people want to come up with. The governments only legitimate role in marriage is as the enforcer of contracts.
So are you in for child brides too? There are people in the US that want that. Actually we'll probably end up fighting that battle in 50 years or less.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Hardly activism to support the equal protection clause.
It's activism if you are distorting the meaning and intent of the amendment to reach a desired end by illegitimate means, by intellectually dishonest means.
The Supreme Court did something similar regarding the understanding of the amendment intended to define slaves as full citizens of the US. They stretched that so that anyone born inside the US now is automatically a citizen, even today, so the US is practically unable to control its citizenship that unlike (IIRC) pretty much every other country. Congress's intent was clear, but that didn't stop them.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
You mean when wealthy men could take multiple 13 year old brides?
Equal Protection Clause. Just Google it.
Why is this Concern only mentioned in the context of marriage equality? Marriages have been a civil contract for a very long time - religion only gets involved if a church is hosting a wedding.
Because everyone has thousands of dollars to spend on attorneys to do the same job of a $30 marriage license from the local courthouse?
While this decision to allow homosexual people to marry is to be praised, there are groups of other people still being discriminated against and prevented from marrying even though they love and commit to each other.
A good example of a group still being discriminated against are consenting adults who wish to marry into polygamous relationships. Why do these people not deserve the same rights and protections as homosexual and heterosexual people?
#EqualRightsForAllHumans
Because churches refused to wed the elderly or infertile couples? Concern trolls never did figure out an answer for that one, did you? Well, you wont have to worry about that any more.
Because most people aren't idiots.
Using that logic, polygamy should also be legal again. Just because a state decides that multiple marriages are illegal, this ruling implies that ANY marriage, legal or not in that state, would have to be recognized by every state based on this interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
After polygamy, what's next? Marriages to pets? (you know there are a few that would do it.) Marriages to inanimate objects? Marriages to deities?
--
Except they aren't. Remember your grade school civics and that "separate but equal" is never actual equal?
I believe he was using it as an example showing that those people who claim marriage has always been one man/one woman are actually just lying little bitches.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
According to the court's majority decision marriage is not about property and inheritance rights, but about love, spirituality, etc.
From the opinion:
Indeed, while the States are in general free to vary the benefits they confer on all married couples, they have throughout our history made marriage the basis for an expanding list of governmental rights, benefits, and responsibilities. These aspects of marital status include: taxation; inheritance and property rights; rules of intestate succession; spousal privilege in the law of evidence; hospital access; medical decisionmaking authority; adoption rights; the rights and benefits of survivors; birth and death certificates; professional ethics rules; campaign finance restrictions; workers’ compensation benefits; health insurance; and child custody, support, and visitation rules. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 6–9; Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 8–29. Valid marriage under state law is also a significant status for over a thousand provisions of federal law. See Windsor, 570 U. S., at ___ – ___ (slip op., at 15–16). The States have contributed to the fundamental character of the marriage right by placing that institution at the center of so many facets of the legal and social order.
While Christian religion may hold that there's a god controlling all of nature, I was focusing on the events that god explicitly takes credit for. Basically, I was assuming that if this god existed he would be an alien, rather than a being responsible for every single event in the history of the universe.
My point wasn't the death toll from a flood thousands of years ago, my point was that in the Bible, God actually claims to have caused the flood. Now, I don't think he exists, and if there was a flood it was probably a natural phenomenon over a much smaller area. However, if some all powerful being suddenly showed up and claimed to be the god of the Bible, I think I'd want to know how many people he had killed.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
It's always Sharia with you morons.
Yes, pretty sure allowing gay people to marry is a major step toward enslaving us. Moron.
They aren't without these special rights, absent marriage, they don't NEED these special right, now are they applicable.
Until the government stops discriminating against polygamy, and the asexual, it is still unfair.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
And yet Scalia didn't have a problem determining that the constitution gives corporations the same rights as people when, in fact, it says no such thing.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
People gravitate to where they feel comfortable. I don't know anyone who is gay, so does that mean there are no gays in my town? A gay friendly area is going to have more gays.
Turn on the television, at least one ten is gay. On HGTV every third couple buying a home is gay. Will more children experiment with gay sex because it's deemed normal now? Not that there is anything wrong with that.
It's not. You have it backwards in thinking. The federal government used to believe it never had the power to regulate drugs, that in order to prohibit them, it would take a constitutional amendment to grant them the power to do so. This is most obvious with prohibition, they had to create a constitutional amendment in order to ban alcohol and another in order to allow it again. But now it seems that anyone claims 14th amendment or interstate commerce clause and all the sudden the US government has the power to do anything it wants.
It's rather simply. Roosevelt is what happened.
Before the New Deal and expansion of the interstate commerce clause into some umbrella concept that grants the federal government powers unlimited jurisdiction, the US seemed to be a small constitutional government that acted as if the constitution mattered. Then with Roosevelt's fight over the New Deal legislation and the courts opening the commerce clause, its now the federal jurisdiction on about anything they can casually connect to any other power they constitutionally have. This is what big government does for you.
I agree. The problem I have with the gay marriage opponents is that their arguments seem to boil down to either a) It was always done this way so we can't change it or b) My religion says this is a marriage so we can't go against that.
In the case of A, we change things all the time. At one point, "people were always kept as slaves" but we realized that was wrong and changed that. At one point "women and non-whites were always kept from voting", but again that was changed. In addition, things weren't "always" the way people think they were always. Taking multiple wives and having concubines was pretty standard practice (if you could afford them since women were basically regarded as property) for much of history. Just try arguing "but it always was this way" when you try to apply to marry a second wife without divorcing the first one.
In the case of B, a person can't use his or her religion to impose restrictions on another person. I don't say that nobody else can eat bacon because I'm Jewish and bacon isn't kosher. Go ahead and eat all the bacon you want - or don't eat any. It's none of my business. Similarly, a person can't say "my religion forbids gay marriage and therefore even people who don't observe my religion must obey this rule."
As a side note: nobody is saying that priests and rabbis HAVE to marry any two people who walk up to them. If a rabbi doesn't want to officiate in the marriage of a Jewish man and a non-Jewish woman, he doesn't have to. He's free to decline and someone else will officiate. The same will go for priests who don't want to officiate in marriages between two men or two women. However, this ruling does mean that somebody acting as an agent of the government can't say "I don't believe in gay marriage and thus won't recognize it as real." A Justice of the Peace can't refuse to marry two men. An IRS official can't deny that a woman and her wife are filing jointly. They need to follow the government's rules, not their own personal religious rules. Then again, this is true for a lot of their job so anyone who can't deal with this should probably find some other line of work.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Gay couples could always enter into the same contracts that straight couples could. They could all get married to someone of the opposite sex. But they didn't want to do that, they wanted to marry someone of the same sex.
Now here is the problem with that. A legal contract that requires a license from a state. Concealed carry is the same thing, a legal contract that requires a license from the state. Many states already have reciprocal agreements with other states but under this same principle, the 14th now allows concealed carry permit holders in Ohio to conceal carry in New York City, Maryland, or anywhere else that makes it inconceivably impossible if not outright bans the act. Furthermore, it means they cannot ban it now either- because it is entering a legal contract that others can enter into the same as marriage.
and before it is somehow claimed it is different, you actually have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. You do not have the same for marriages. There is the problem with this wording.
How so? While polygamous marriage happened, the bible starts off saying man will leave his father and mother to be with his wife and the two will become one flesh.
Seems pretty clear to me, two into one.
Racist much?
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Well, first, the spouse is generally only entitled to 1/3 of the assets and in some cases, up to a certain dollar amount in an intestate death. Wills and contracts normally supersede all that unless the widow(er) receives less than that amount in which they can contest the will (though usually not the contract).
But to answer the question, it would be the unit "spouse" that receives the inheritance. If there was three spouses, they would all have to act as one unit for the transfer then figure out what to do after that. It's no different than a company being owned by 20 people that dissolves or is somehow transferred. In fact, I have two minor stakes in partnerships that one says upon my death the companies will be sold and 30% of the value will go to the first heir in the estate of the deceased and the other says my stake is to be transferred upon death to the partners. Both of those will happen before any inheritance or probate takes place.
That's not the policy rationale for the prohibition on bigamy, and while it is perhaps a little better of a reason than administrative convenience, it boils down to the same thing, since the question of marital property is one of the issues that legislatures will have to address when the ban is overturned as it inevitably will be.
Yep, that's the bullshit argument that people were rolling out against same sex marriage all right. That because it wasn't traditional, it wasn't fundamental.
The core mistake with that argument, whether in the context of same sex marriage or marriage among persons already married, or in larger numbers than two, is that what's fundamental is not opposite sex marriage, or same sex marriage, or polygamous marriage, but simply marriage, without qualification of any kind.
Issues like gender, race, consanguinity, marital status, and number of spouses are all restrictions on that singular fundamental right. Whether they stand hinges on whether they can be justified. Two of them, it transpires, cannot be. Ultimately I think the only restriction that will hold up will be consent, and perhaps consanguinity will have to be reframed in terms of consent if it's to be salvaged.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
lol.. They did not give us a living document that can change with society. That is completely absurd. They gave us a document that society can change as enough of it deems necessary.
If the document was living and changed with society, then the first amendment would have lost it's power a long time ago. Society at one time in numbers larger than those who want gay marriage, wanted to ban Muslims but couldn't even try because of the freedom of religion. In the 1960's, society wanted to bar black Americans from all sorts of things and if the constitution was a living document that changed with society, the amendment passed just 100 years before would have changed to not allow the challenges that eventually gave us the civil rights act. To think, 9 justices with the ability to declare the civil rights act unconstitutional despite the 14th amendment specifically giving congress the power to create law covering it- just because the constitution is a living document and can change with society.
No, it can be amended, but until such time, it's meaning and interpretations are pretty static.
Children can't consent, so no, that can't happen.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The expression 'one flesh.' Doesn't have any deep spiritual meaning. It's used in 1 Corinthians 6 to refer to prostitution. It's just an ancient expression, in the same way we would refer to a couple 'sleeping together.' We don't mean actually sleeping, and everyone knows this, but it's not polite to directly say what it meant.
If you're not free to marry nobody, and are unhappy about this, I'd be honoured to get behind your cause.
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Its used in genesis way before Corinthians. It's mentioned in the new testament several times too. In fact, The new testament mentions that god made woman from man therefore when a man takes a wife the two become one.
It has enough meaning that at least two books were clear in this interpreting.
Well, first, the spouse is generally only entitled to 1/3 of the assets and in some cases, up to a certain dollar amount in an intestate death. Wills and contracts normally supersede all that unless the widow(er) receives less than that amount in which they can contest the will (though usually not the contract).
But to answer the question, it would be the unit "spouse" that receives the inheritance. If there was three spouses, they would all have to act as one unit for the transfer then figure out what to do after that. It's no different than a company being owned by 20 people that dissolves or is somehow transferred. In fact, I have two minor stakes in partnerships that one says upon my death the companies will be sold and 30% of the value will go to the first heir in the estate of the deceased and the other says my stake is to be transferred upon death to the partners. Both of those will happen before any inheritance or probate takes place.
That is a fine and workable solution but it can't be done by simply changing the word "wife" or "husband" to "spouse". It would require a new statute that is similar to the above (or likewise based on the Uniform Partnership Act, which covers your other situation). That's different from simply enabling gay marriage..
Yep, that's the bullshit argument that people were rolling out against same sex marriage all right. That because it wasn't traditional, it wasn't fundamental.
The core mistake with that argument, whether in the context of same sex marriage or marriage among persons already married, or in larger numbers than two, is that what's fundamental is not opposite sex marriage, or same sex marriage, or polygamous marriage, but simply marriage, without qualification of any kind.
Yes and no... Opposite sex or same sex marriage is the same institution, marriage, and nothing changes when you change the genders of those involved. Polygamous marriage is a different institution, as you admit when you said "the question of marital property [in polygamy] is one of the issues that legislatures will have to address when the ban is overturned as it inevitably will be".
As a different institution, the fact that marriage is a fundamental right is irrelevant to whether polygamy is a fundamental right, any more than a right to marry being fundamental means that driving a car is a fundamental right.
The old testament, where polygamy is commonplace? Not much of a 'one man, one woman' thing there. The interpretation seems obvious: It's just an ancient way to describe the act of sex. It doesn't have any profound consequences.
No, not really. And besides, if it is a fundamental right guaranteed by the constitution, then any additional legislation should not be a barrier to it. If it was, then it would have been a barrier to gay marriage just the same.
Here we are in a unique circumstance where because of an argument about constitutionality, laws have to be changed and the argument for not changing them to cover the same argument over a different set of people is you would have to change laws. It's like logic is thrown out the window or something.
Yes, the old testament where the bible says do something this way which is repeated in the new testament where the same occurs. The bible recognizes outsiders and unfaithful so the fact of it happening outside of religious demands is meaningless when checking to see if the bible allows polygamous marriages. It says to have one man and one women and the two become one.
That defeats the comment that if someone reads a bible, polygamous marriage would have been legal from the beginning. It clearly instructs the Jews and Christians to not participate in it and that it is wrong to do. The fact that it happened is a bit like ignoring what it says.
Whoooosh
It would be great if that were true, but it probably isn't in the long run. Children don't have to consent to lots of things that happen to them now. There are other societies that have or have had child brides, so there are obviously social mechanisms to enable that. With diversity and immigration policies brining in more and more people from those societies I wouldn't be surprised if they considerably outnumber the gay population now. That is before you even consider traditional pedophiles. Over time advocates for minor-adult sex will have more political power. Speaking of political power, I hear there is a former Speaker of the House paying millions in hush money over sex with a minor decades ago. Besides, there are 50 years of prep coming to enable it, academicians working on normalizing minor-adult sex now, just as there were people doing that for homosexuality decades ago. In some parts of society, such as Hollywood, powerful people are known as child abusers, and nothing is said. Fifty years ago homosexual marriage couldn't happen. Today child marriage "can't happen," but that isn't likely to remain true as things stand. Standards were destroyed to enable homosexual marriage, they won't magically reappear when needed to stop child marriages.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Things HOSTS solutions can't do:
1) Selective application of blocking
2) Inline blocking
3) Keep APK sane
I haven't read the article, so I may be totally off here; but isn't it about couples? If you are not engaged in a relatioship comparable to marriage, how is it even relevant to talk about equal right? Usually, when the talk is about equal rights for same sex couples, it is about the right to be legally married, so that they have the same sort of status in case of death, divource and so on.
But, if you change, "spouse and spouse" to "a group of spouses", then how do you change "upon death of a spouse, the remaining spouse shall inherit 100% of communal property before probate"? As in, you die, and your three widows each inherit 100%? That's 300%. Where do you get two more identical houses?
Leaving to one side all the emotional bluster that accompanies this subject, I think it is a very interesting, intellectual challenge. One thought that springs to mind is that a group marriage would be similar to a limited company, or possibly a cooperative, and we already have legal experience with that sort of construct. I imagine the romance and intimacy you can find in a 1-1 relationship might be somewhat sparse in such a 'group marriage', but then I've always been a rather old fashioned sort of person. Other cultures provide examples of both polygyny and polyandry, so it isn't unknown.
Perhaps you can sign up for the "dependency" package of contract rights only when you can prove it -- thus a four-some of polyamorists only get tax benefits if they can prove dependency according to the laws we already have. If you want to sign up for the "procreation" package, then all the marital rights involving children apply. We can have the "cohabitation package" and the "estate-planning" package, etc.
Did you work for the Windows Vista product team?
I know you're joking, however the decision does bring up some questions about marriage, what it is, and why government is involved with it at all. So far as I can tell the only reason government is involved at all, is because marriage does a number of things for you financially and your rights. First you get a bunch of income tax breaks, and second, some rights in court in terms of finance and possessions. Presumably these laws exist for pretty much two reasons, 1) To promote and to help families who would theoretically have kids, and 2) to "protect" the spouse that decides to be the primary person to raise those kids, who really may not make much external money.
Which is the first problem, is that even a traditional marriage, the couple may not want kids, or are unable to have any. Why are they afforded the same benefits as everyone else? Why do non-married people not get the same benefits?
Anyway congrats to all the folks who can now get legally married in the US. However getting the tax advantage is a bit balanced by the protection piece. When marriage works, the people are all very rosie about it, however I'm pretty sure just about every single divorced friend has said, never ever get married, just don't do it! So I guess some more people have some decisions to make, hopefully they make some right ones. Somehow with all the celebration about this decision, I can somehow see a lot of couples getting married that maybe shouldn't, and then a rash of court cases and divorce proceedings in a few years... we'll see how much they think of marriage then.
Yes. Desperation has caused these new couplings in a Jurassic Park "Life finds a way" scenario. If the women have already given a pass on them, this is the last great hope.
...you kidding? I'd kill to get rid of the IRS marriage penalty!
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It's activism if you are distorting the meaning and intent of the amendment to reach a desired end by illegitimate means, by intellectually dishonest means.
Perhaps, but that's not what is happening in this case. The equal protection clause was specifically designed for cases like this where a minority group is given less rights than everyone else.
So are you in for child brides too?
Marriage can only take place between consenting individuals. Children can't consent, so they can't get married. In some cases parents are allowed to consent for their children, so there might be some space to argue about whether arranged marriages of pre-adults are kosher. Personally I'm a bit skeptical, but that's a matter for public debate.
You probably overlooked my nym before you clicked Reply. :-)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
You know, I'm starting to wonder if you actually make this stuff, or if you're just claiming to be APK and acting extremely unhinged in order to deter /.ers from buying his stuff. Are you one of his competitors?
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Fixing the disparity between marriage and civil union would have been the proper path, rather than taking a religious ceremony and perverting it to no longer have a religious element.
We've been down this road before, while you can take a civil institution (marriage), hang your religion on it, and claim you own it, it doesn't make it true.
Frankly, it's astonishing how often this profoundly ignorant line of argument comes up. What? Are you going to also declare that Jewish, Muslim and Atheist marriages shouldn't be allowed either? What about the other branches of Christianity that don't agree with you? Are you going to allow Catholics to get marriage? Protestants? What about the Christian churches that want to marry gay couples? Would you bar them because you disagree with their interpretation of the Bible? Why should we limit marriages to only the ones you specifically approve of, because some marriages don't confirm to your particular interpretation of a 2000 year old book?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Except when the argument is actually right. But I guess you already knew that right?
Jewish and Muslim Marriages are fine, they are all the same religion. Atheists don't need to get married as they can get a civil union, and that is what you get when you stand in front of a judge and say I do. If the Atheists really want to get married in a church, I imagine a priest, rabbi, or imam somewhere would marry them. If another religious denomination wants to marry a homosexual couple, good on them. The government needs to stop trying to control every damn thing. Marriage comes from religion, the word originated in Latin, the language of the Catholic church to describe a ceremony that they performed called Holy Matrimony. If you don't like that it originates in the Catholic church, invent your own damn word for it.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Well, it isn't even that complicated.
By default everyone is supposed to have equal rights under the law. But we do take away or restrict certain rights to benefit society or prevent harm. (Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose).
There is no logical case that gay marriage causes any harm. So you can't take away that right. But things like incest or polygamy have been shown to have negative effects in society historically.
People who want even more forms of marriage, like polygamy, are welcome to take their case to court and attempt to explain why their marriage type causes no harm or that it provides a benefit to society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Except when the argument is actually right. But I guess you already knew that right?
Really? the article you linked says the opposite of what you claim:
Jewish and Muslim Marriages are fine, they are all the same religion.
I'm not sure a lot of Jews and Muslims would agree to that classification, but sure, they're all descended from the same god. But I guess that means Buddhists and Hindu are barred from marriage, instead?
Atheists don't need to get married as they can get a civil union, and that is what you get when you stand in front of a judge and say I do.
Actually, it doesn't actually matter who you stand in front of, what you get is a marriage when you sign the piece of paper that the government issued you. You can go in front of a priest and say your vows, but if you don't sign the paper you're not married. Priests get no say in who marries and who doesn't, they can only choose to perform or refuse to perform a ceremony (of course, in so far as they own private property they are also allowed to deny use of such space for the same purposes).
The government needs to stop trying to control every damn thing.
Frankly, maintaining the registry of people who are legally married seems like exactly what the government should be doing. Maybe you want the damn government to keep it's hands off the legal system too?
Marriage comes from religion, the word originated in Latin, the language of the Catholic church to describe a ceremony that they performed called Holy Matrimony. If you don't like that it originates in the Catholic church, invent your own damn word for it.
Except you are 100% wrong, marriage predates the concept of Holy Matrimony which was introduced as a Catholic sacrament in 1184, we know that the earliest recorded marriage contracts are from around 660 BC. So that's over 1,800 years before it was associated with Christianity.
If another religious denomination wants to marry a homosexual couple, good on them.
Then we are agreed, the government should not be enforcing a ban on same-sex marriages. Whether it's because you believe that everyone should be treated equally or because you don't think the government should be preventing the Episcopalians, the Unitarians, the Anglicans, and the Presbyterians (among many others) from performing same sex marriages, the end result is the same.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I'm not omnichad, but I do have a relatively new account.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
Well, for one thing, the equal protection clause is part of the 14th Amendment, and has nothing to do with the Founding Fathers, as it was ratified in the 1860s or thereabouts - about a century after the Founding Fathers did their thing.
But why would that matter, just because it invalidates your whole statement?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
What you are missing in your whole attempt to tear apart what I said with your nonsensical responses is one singular word "marriage". Hindus and Buddhists have their own ceremony that they call something else; they don't call it marriage.
The word marriage does not predate Christianity, it comes from Christianity.
Call your union whatever you want, stop trying to steal a religious ceremony (holy matrimony) for your own purposes. Marriage is another name for Matrimony, with the same roots in Latin, they are not separate things. But I guess you are going to provide citations to dispute what Wikipedia says is the root of the word marriage? Other cultures have other names for it, and the theft of the name marriage for a civil union by the US is predated by the religious ceremony, so trying to claim that the "Marriage License" that is the discussion of this string of comments predates marriage as as ceremony in the christian church doesn't make sense. The US wasn't formed until 1776, so 1184 is clearly before that.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Funny. An article on mass delusion that skips the biggest delusion of all, and perhaps the most damaging one: Christianity. Oh well...
Marriage is not, have never been and will never be a religious institution. Marriage is a legal, and ONLY a legal contract. You are confused.
Bzzzzzt! Wrong. Let me use an example. Marriage gives you certain rights and privileges if your partner is hospitalized or even dies. They have nothing to do with procreation at all. Also, they do not pertain to singles since singles have no.partners. You are hiding your bigotry behind your ignorance. Get educated!