US Court finds AL marriage laws unconstitutional

[WarTim 3,457]

Since AUfan59 said my post was stupid, I wonder why? Who are we to judge someone who falls in love with their sister or brother? Why is that considered wrong if two men or two women can marry?

You would think we would have LAWS that....oh...nevermind.

[Aufan59 80]

Since AUfan59 said my post was stupid, I wonder why? Who are we to judge someone who falls in love with their sister or brother? Why is that considered wrong if two men or two women can marry?

I beleive I called it mindless.

It is mindless because it ignores the reason why gay marriage should be legal, because it is unconstitutional to ban it. States banning gay marriage are violating the equal protection clause by restricting marriage based on gender.

Banning polygamy or incestuous marriage doesn't restrict marriage based on gender, or race, or religion. It isnt unconstitutional. This is why it is a mindless arguement.

We aren't judging right or wrong. We are judging the constitutionality of it. Banning gay marriage is unconstitutional by a standard that we almost all agree on: laws shouldn't be applied based on gender.

[Weegle777 78]

Ok.

[Aufan59 80]

Ok.

Yep. Comparisons to beastiality, incest and polygamy are just that, mindless arguments. Straw men. I did not expect a thoughtful response.

[homersapien 11,450]

Ok.

Yep. Comparisons to beastiality, incest and polygamy are just that, mindless arguments. Straw men. I did not expect a thoughtful response.

Maybe he got your point?

[Aufan59 80]

Ok.

Yep. Comparisons to beastiality, incest and polygamy are just that, mindless arguments. Straw men. I did not expect a thoughtful response.

Maybe he got your point? :dunno:/>

Lol good one.

[Weegle777 78]

Ok.

Yep. Comparisons to beastiality, incest and polygamy are just that, mindless arguments. Straw men. I did not expect a thoughtful response.

Or maybe you are just wrong, and I didn't feel like wasting my time with you, being that you are an a....... eh, still not worth it.

[Aufan59 80]

I understand that it is not worth it to form a coherent argument, because simply comparing homosexuality to beastiality, incest or polygamy without any basis is easier.

[Weegle777 78]

Your bigotry is showing, 59.

[Weegle777 78]

I'm not comparing these to each other, if I were, I would have said so. My argument is that if we are going to redefine what marriage is, if we include homosexual marriage, then you shouldn't limit it to just that genre because if you do then you are excluding the others, which is bigotry. Just because you think marrying your cousin or sister or four women is wrong, doesn't mean that everyone feels as you do about that. Make sense now?

[homersapien 11,450]

I'm not comparing these to each other, if I were, I would have said so. My argument is that if we are going to redefine what marriage is, if we include homosexual marriage, then you shouldn't limit it to just that genre because if you do then you are excluding the others, which is bigotry. Just because you think marrying your cousin or sister or four women is wrong, doesn't mean that everyone feels as you do about that. Make sense now?

Including homosexuals carries no obligation to include other, unrelated classes of people. That's a strange notion.

[Weegle777 78]

I'm not comparing these to each other, if I were, I would have said so. My argument is that if we are going to redefine what marriage is, if we include homosexual marriage, then you shouldn't limit it to just that genre because if you do then you are excluding the others, which is bigotry. Just because you think marrying your cousin or sister or four women is wrong, doesn't mean that everyone feels as you do about that. Make sense now?

Including homosexual carries no obligation to include other, unrelated classes of people. That's a strange notion.

It does if you are redefining marriage. Why not make all marriage open to all classifications?

[Aufan59 80]

I'm not comparing these to each other, if I were, I would have said so. My argument is that if we are going to redefine what marriage is, if we include homosexual marriage, then you shouldn't limit it to just that genre because if you do then you are excluding the others, which is bigotry. Just because you think marrying your cousin or sister or four women is wrong, doesn't mean that everyone feels as you do about that. Make sense now?

Again, my opinion on whether gay marriage, bestiality, or incest is wrong is irrelevant.

What is relevant, is that the Constitution has an equal protection clause. Not allowing people to marry based on gender is not equal protection. It is treating one couple different than another due to the genders of the couple.

Treating a dog/human couple differently than a human/human couple is not a violation of equal protection. That couple, regardless of race, gender, religion, etc. is treated the exact same way as any other couple would be.

Treating a two person couple differently than a three person couple is not a violation of equal protection. The three person couple not being allowed to marry is independent of anyone's race, gender, religion, etc.

You are treating this as a moral, right/wrong, redefinition issue. I see it as a constitutional issue. If we don't want to abide by the constitution, then we might as well be Obama supporters because he ignores the constitution too.

[Aufan59 80]

It does if you are redefining marriage. Why not make all marriage open to all classifications?

Why would we?

We are FORCED to redefine marriage to include gay marriage, because it is unconstitutional to ban certain marriages based on gender.

Just as we were FORCED to redefine marriage to include interracial marriage, because it is unconstitutional to ban certain marriages based on race.

[Weegle777 78]

Fair enough. Well stated.

[homersapien 11,450]

I'm not comparing these to each other, if I were, I would have said so. My argument is that if we are going to redefine what marriage is, if we include homosexual marriage, then you shouldn't limit it to just that genre because if you do then you are excluding the others, which is bigotry. Just because you think marrying your cousin or sister or four women is wrong, doesn't mean that everyone feels as you do about that. Make sense now?

Including homosexual carries no obligation to include other, unrelated classes of people. That's a strange notion.

It does if you are redefining marriage. Why not make all marriage open to all classifications?

First, this idea of "redefining" is subjective. There is no official registry that establishes definitions.

I would imagine that gay people see it more as a matter of being included into a civil institution. (And I say civil, because they are already free to participate in the social sense.)

But if you have to address the issue in terms of old and new definitions, I suppose one could say that marriage has been re-defined from the union of a (mature) man and woman to the union of two (mature) adults.

[TitanTiger 20,511]

It does if you are redefining marriage. Why not make all marriage open to all classifications?

Why would we?

We are FORCED to redefine marriage to include gay marriage, because it is unconstitutional to ban certain marriages based on gender.

Just as we were FORCED to redefine marriage to include interracial marriage, because it is unconstitutional to ban certain marriages based on race.

Even thinking liberal writers who support gay marriage understand this is a simplistic comparison:

Why Opposing Gay Marriage is Different From Racism

By William Saletan

Is gay marriage just like interracial marriage? If you’re against gay marriage, is that the same as racism?

Hundreds of Slate readers have made that argument in comments posted over the last few days. They’ve raised the analogy in the context of a New Mexico couple who refused to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. That’s a complex case. But the race analogy is worth addressing on its own.

In many ways, today’s debate about same-sex marriage resembles earlier debates about interracial marriage. I’ve drawn this analogy myself. In at least two ways, however, the situations differ. From the discriminator’s standpoint, opposing same-sex marriage is more defensible. At the same time, from the target’s standpoint, it’s more oppressive.

The central, categorical objection to gay marriage is that same-sex couples can’t produce biological children together. Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Ryan Anderson emphasize this distinction in their recent essay and book, What Is Marriage? My colleague Mark Stern challenged their case in Slate last year, and I agree with his critique. The procreation argument focuses too much on sex and too little on love and commitment.

Just because I don’t agree with an argument, however, doesn’t mean it’s irrational. Marriage has historically been a sexual institution. A rational person can maintain that a relationship between two people categorically incapable of producing children together—that is, two people of the same sex—can’t be a marriage. That argument doesn’t justify denying them the right to love one another openly, nor does it justify denying them the benefits and honors we bestow on couples for making lifetime commitments. But it can justify a person’s refusal to accept a same-sex relationship as a marriage.

The argument has plenty of problems. We let old people marry. We let infertile people marry. We don’t insist that married couples produce kids. We welcome adoption and stepfamilies. Gay couples can have kids using donated eggs or sperm. Many gay people are already raising children, and doing it just as well as straight people.

All of that is true. But I’d be remiss to omit the rejoinder from George and his colleagues: Sex is a much brighter line than fertility or intention to bear children. It’s certainly a less intrusive distinction to enforce.

Many people think that this distinction is important enough to withhold the word “marriage” from same-sex couples; I think those people are being unjust and obtuse to the moral reality of homosexual love. But I can’t dismiss them as irrational.

I can, however, dismiss as irrational any objection to interracial marriage. Stern points to Ian Millhiser’s useful summary of religious arguments that were once made against interracial marriage. They include:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

“Purity of race is a gift of God.”

“[T]he good Lord was the original segregationist.”

“God made racial differences as He made sexual differences.”

These statements are objectively false. Every scientific review of human history has found that racial distinctions are not categorical and continue to change. People of different races produce kids together all the time. There’s no biological basis for refusing to accept an interracial relationship as a marriage.

That’s why, from the discriminator’s standpoint, it’s more defensible to oppose gay marriage than to oppose interracial marriage. But why confine ourselves to that standpoint? Why not consider the perspective of the person targeted by the discrimination?

From the perspective of a would-be spouse, being denied the right to same-sex marriage can be, in some ways, worse. If you’re attracted to someone of another race, and the law won’t let you marry anyone of that race, you can find someone of your own race to marry. You shouldn’t have to do that, but you can. But if you’re exclusively attracted to people of your own sex, and the law forbids you to marry such a person, then everything conservatives praise about marriage—the sharing, the happiness, the fulfillment, the solemnity, the respect—is denied to you.

Many useful comparisons can be drawn between between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. But let’s not pretend they're exactly the same. For better and for worse, they aren't.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/saletan/2014/03/12/homosexuality_and_racism_why_gay_marriage_and_interracial_marriage_are_different.html

And there's a more conservative objection to this false equivalency:

...the equation is false.

First, there is no comparison between sex and race.

There are enormous differences between men and women, but there are no differences between people of different races. Men and women are inherently different, but blacks and whites (and yellows and browns) are inherently the same. Therefore, any imposed separation by race can never be moral or even rational; on the other hand, separation by sex can be both morally desirable and rational. Separate bathrooms for men and women is moral and rational; separate bathrooms for blacks and whites is not.

The second reason the parallel between opposing same-sex marriage and opposing interracial marriage is invalid is that opposition to marriage between races is a moral aberration while opposition to marrying a person of the same sex is the moral norm. In other words, none of the moral bases of American society, whether religious or secular, opposed interracial marriage -- not Judaism, not Christianity, not Judeo-Christian values, not deism, not humanism, not the Enlightenment. Yes, there were religious and secular individuals who opposed interracial marriage, but by opposing interracial marriage, they were advocating something against all Judeo-Christian and secular norms, all of which saw nothing wrong in members of different races intermarrying (members of different religions was a different matter).

On the other hand, no religious or secular moral system ever advocated same-sex marriage. Whereas advocating interracial marriage was advocating something approved of by every religious and secular moral tradition of America and the West, advocating same-sex marriage does the very opposite -- it advocates something that defies every religious and secular moral tradition. Those who advocate redefining marriage are saying that every religious and secular tradition is immoral. They have no problem doing this because they believe they are wiser and finer people than all the greatest Jewish, Christian and humanist thinkers who ever lived.

But as objectionable as hubris is, false comparisons are worse. And there is no comparison between different races and the different genders. There are no inherent racial differences; there are significant differences between the sexes. To the extent that racial groups are different, they are only because their cultures differ. But a black man's nature is not different from that of a white man, an Asian man, an Hispanic man.

The same is not true of sex differences. Males and females are inherently different from one another. We now know that even their brains differ. And those differences are significant. Thus, to oppose interracial marriage is indeed to engage in bigotry, but to oppose same-sex marriage is not. It simply shares the wisdom of every moral system that preceded us -- society is predicated on men and women bonding with one another in a unique way called "marriage."

Comparing the prohibition of same-sex marriage to prohibiting interracial marriage is ultimately a way of declaring the moral superiority of proponents of same-sex marriage to proponents of keeping marriage defined as man-woman. And it is a way of avoiding hard issues such as whether we really want all children to grow up thinking it doesn't matter if they marry a boy or a girl and whether we really want to abolish forever the ideal of husband-wife based family.

Those who wish to redefine marriage for the first time in Jewish, Christian or secular humanist history may offer any honest arguments they wish. Comparing the prohibition of same-sex marriage to prohibiting interracial marriage is not one of them.

http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2008/07/15/false_equation_opposing_same-sex_marriage_and_opposing_interracial_marriage/page/full

[Aufan59 80]

I am not arguing that they are the same. I am arguing if banning interracial marriage is discrimination based on race, then banning gay marriage is discrimination based on gender.

The 14th amendment protects us from laws that discriminate based on gender. Maybe our laws should be open to gender based discrimination, and the constitution be amended to reflect the differences between the genders?

[TitanTiger 20,511]

I realize this is your argument and that of some proponents. It is not however the arguments the courts have been making. Only one court in all these cases so far has mentioned sex discrimination as a rationale for striking down laws banning gay marriage: Utah.

The rest of the cases that have been asked that question have answered the opposite: it is NOT discrimination based on sex/gender. I imagine whatever the SCOTUS rules, if it's in favor of gay marriage being legal, their rationale won't be with the outlier in the group.

[WarTim 3,457]

What IF the SCOTUS goes in the other direction?

[TitanTiger 20,511]

What IF the SCOTUS goes in the other direction?

I doubt they will honestly. I think the other side has done a good job of pushing the false equivalency of this and racial discrimination. And I think that society has been eroding what marriage is supposed to be for decades now and this is just the latest, and furthest out, manifestation of that erosion.

That said, the media will lose its collective mind, the Democratic Party will become a single issue party overnight and God will kill a kitten or something.

[WarTim 3,457]

What IF the SCOTUS goes in the other direction?

I doubt they will honestly. I think the other side has done a good job of pushing the false equivalency of this and racial discrimination. And I think that society has been eroding what marriage is supposed to be for decades now and this is just the latest, and furthest out, manifestation of that erosion.

That said, the media will lose its collective mind, the Democratic Party will become a single issue party overnight and God will kill a kitten or something.

Huge LOL!!! Correct on all as well.......

[homersapien 11,450]

I realize this is your argument and that of some proponents. It is not however the arguments the courts have been making. Only one court in all these cases so far has mentioned sex discrimination as a rationale for striking down laws banning gay marriage: Utah.

The rest of the cases that have been asked that question have answered the opposite: it is NOT discrimination based on sex/gender. I imagine whatever the SCOTUS rules, if it's in favor of gay marriage being legal, their rationale won't be with the outlier in the group.

So what is the legal basis of the federal court rulings? Frankly, I haven't been following it all that closely.

[Aufan59 80]

I realize this is your argument and that of some proponents. It is not however the arguments the courts have been making. Only one court in all these cases so far has mentioned sex discrimination as a rationale for striking down laws banning gay marriage: Utah.

The rest of the cases that have been asked that question have answered the opposite: it is NOT discrimination based on sex/gender. I imagine whatever the SCOTUS rules, if it's in favor of gay marriage being legal, their rationale won't be with the outlier in the group.

id like to those cases.

From what I've seen the justification as been just that: treating a same sex marriage different than an opposite sex marriage is a violation of due process and equal protection

[TitanTiger 20,511]

The New Mexico and Oklahoma decisions have represented the norm on this topic, while the Utah decision—finding that there is in fact sex discrimination at play here—is the outlier. The rationale that most courts have adopted in rejecting the sex discrimination argument is that bans on same-sex marriage aren’t sex discrimination because they apply to both sexes equally—gay men cannot marry one another just like lesbian women cannot marry one another. Because, the argument goes, the laws treat men and women equally in this manner, this is not sex discrimination.

Oklahoma: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1005598/us-district-judge-rules-oklahoma-gay-marriage.pdf

New Mexico: http://www.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Griego_v_Oliver_NM_2013.pdf

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/01/same_sex_marriage_bans_courts_should_strike_them_down_as_sex_discrimination.html

One correction, Hawaii apparently made their gay marriage case based on sex discrimination. So out of the 36 states that now have legalized gay marriage (or rather, they've had the federal courts force them to legalize it in most cases), there are two that agreed with a sex/gender discrimination argument. But as the Slate author above says (and he favors your argument), the courts overall have not agreed with him or you. They specifically rejected it in fact.