Why stop at 2 people? If 3 people find a way to love each other who are we to judge?
Well, I'm fairly apathetic about how people choose to , so hopefully you won't come with this knee jerk response.Also, you're a gay-bashing bigot.
I also fail to see how what XStout wrote is tantamount to 'gay bashing'.
I wish you all would read all the goddam posts before posting. When I called him a gay-bashing bigot, it was a joke (which I stated) and in response to his post where he said that people assumed he was gay-bashing.
, he got the joke, but none of you seem to.
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Last edited by Mr. Peabody; 08-23-2011 at 06:51 PM.
Because the law recognizes that the State can articulate a compelling interest in limiting marriage to two people and that laws so limiting marriage are narrowly-tailored to fulfilling that interest. When that happens, the law says that the State can cons utionally impose that limitation on a fundamental right.
The test for limiting the right of sexuals to marry one another is one requiring the articulation of an important state interest that the discriminatory law is substantially related to achieving that interest.
Again, what exactly is the important interest in limiting marriage to one man and one woman (not necessarily to one heterosexual man and one heterosexual woman) and how exactly does limiting same-sex marriages substantially relate to achieving that interest?
I'm with you on that, but understand that Peabody was joking.
Nah. Discrimination. Two is arbitrary.
Are sexuals a protected class?The test for limiting the right of sexuals to marry one another is one requiring the articulation of an important state interest that the discriminatory law is substantially related to achieving that interest.
XStout articulated it above.Again, what exactly is the important interest in limiting marriage to one man and one woman (not necessarily to one heterosexual man and one heterosexual woman) and how exactly does limiting same-sex marriages substantially relate to achieving that interest?
I presume that to be sarcasm.
Laws discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation are subject to intermediate judicial scrutiny in equal protection cases. Thus, sexual orientation is a protected status to the same extent that gender is.
sexuals aren't in a suspect class, but that doesn't mean that sexuals aren't en led to equal protection.
Sure -- an interest. But I would disagree -- as I posted above -- with the idea that discriminating against sexuals is substantially related to the achievement of that interest. The mere fact that an important interest exists doesn't justify discrimination.
Two is arbitrary. It is a relic of the past. Open relationships, sharing, threesomes, orgies, etc...are the reality today. Personal relationships are far too varied to set an arbitrary number.
Sure, when Congress gets around to making sexuals a protected class, then they'd be so.
sexuals need not be included to achieve that goal.
sexuals are already a protected class, in the same sense that women or men are a protected class. There's no need for Congress to make them a protected class because they already are a protected class; not a suspect class, but a protected class.
Under federal civil rights law?
^^You dont even know the meaning of protected class. A protected class has two qualifyers. one is that it has gone through systematic oppression, and two, that the class has not recovered financially and emotionally. Gays only barely fit one of those clauses.
MB, i meant FWDT as the one i was talking about not knowing.
grovel, grovel
Is that from your extensive experience in reading equal protection cases or is that something that you just made up to justify your position?
Cons utional law recognizes no such thing; you're talking about a suspect class, gtown. But while all suspect classes are protected classes, all protected classes are not suspect classes.
that's cool. he thinks the IRS marries people
sexuals don't have to be a protected class under statutory civil rights law to be a protected class for the purposes of the equal protection clause.
Federal civil rights law deals with the ability of certain groups to impose cons utional requirements on private groups (like employers) to whom the Cons ution would not otherwise apply. Those laws are, essentially, cons utional enablers or extensions.
that's not the province of the legislature you dolt
In some instances it is -- particularly with extending cons utional and quasi-cons utional protections to private settings.
In other news, Marcus is far from a dolt.
I disagree with him on a lot of things, but I certainly respect his intelligence and the opinions and arguments that he brings to the table; same is true for Extra Stout. Discussion and principled disagreement is always a good thing to me. They disagree but discuss.
As I understand it, Lawrence v Texas did not find that sexuals were a suspect class under the 14th amendment, only that there was a right to privacy in sexual relations.
you're just saying that so he doesn't hand your ass to you on a platter
Quiet. The adults are talking.
like the civil rights act or the 13th amendment?
regardless, the court is the one who created the tests for scrutinizing EPC claims
I agree that sexuals are not a suspect class. But that does not mean that they are not a protected class. Again, all suspect classes are protected, but all protected classes need not be suspect classes.
I think Lawrence is different in kind from what I'm talking about. My recollection is that Lawrence is a privacy case. As I recall, Lawrence dealt with whether state law could criminalize sexual sodomy. The Court, dealing in the privacy context (and tangentially in the equal protection context) said that the State could not intrude upon that sort of a private matter by criminalizing the conduct because individuals have a privacy interest in their own sexual relations, and the State's intrusion upon that interest could be justified only in extraordinary cir stances (rape, incest, child molestation, etc.). There was no compelling interest in criminalizing sexual sodomy.
The question at hand deals more with the Court's holding in say Romer v. Evans.
I would largely agree with ExtraStout except for the part about "liberals" being the ones who throw money at problems. It is all too clear that "conservatives" are just as good, if not better, at that skill.
However, there are several trends that will make it difficult to keep "traditional" marriage.
1) Separation of having sex from having children. This assumes we teach something about this somewhere at schools or at home.
2) Separation of being married from having children. Marriage implies children less and less which makes it less imperative for the state to support marriage.
3) Earning power of women. A woman don't need a man anymore to avoid poverty.
I'll go one step further, having been directed back to Lawrence. I'm convinced that this argument is even more nuanced than I had appreciated, because I hadn't really considered the nature of the cons utional protection of privacy interests, including the right to marriage, contraception, and sexual relationships.
The Due Process Clause serves to make marriage a fundamental right, not the Equal Protection Clause. Functionally, this is important because the question in any cons utional challenge will involve two inquiries: (1) is the right to marriage (recognized in Lawrence to be within the purview of the right to privacy) a fundamental or significant right under the Due Process Clause? (I'm fairly certain the answer is that it is fundamental); and (2) does the Equal Protection Clause permit the State to discriminate on the basis of either gender or sexual orientation in determining who may or may not be legally married.
The second inquiry is the point at which intermediate scrutiny comes into play and asks what the State's interests are in discriminating based on gender (which is actually how the law discriminates, I think; the law, again, doesn't prohibit sexuals from marrying -- it prohibits men from marrying men and women from marrying women, regardless of their sexual orientation), whether those interests are important to the State, and whether the limitation created by the law is substantially related to limitation on individual rights.
In that sense, Marcus, I'd say that Lawrence only goes to the first inquiry and would seem to answer it affirmatively.
Gay marriage, as part of a progression including no-fault divorce, the welfare state, and in the future, plural marriage, is indeed undermining the social construct of marriage. Look at Europe. Look at their demographic time bomb.To insinuate that two people committing to spending their lives together and caring for one another somehow undermines the social construct of marriage and minimizes the notion of responsibility among males in society is ridiculous.
I think that our contemporary ideas about divorce indeed do damage marriage. But the breakthrough it creates in women's ability to get out of abusive or neglectful relationships probably outweighs that.If you truly believe that marriage between two heterosexuals is essential to keeping a society intact, we should criminalize divorce or make it harder to get.
That's exactly what I'm saying. And, ultimately, what I think it will mean is that our society itself as we know it will fade away and be replaced by another that does not make these choices.The whole idea of marriage as a life-long commitment for the purpose of raising a family is a concept that is fading from society.
Not by themselves, no. As part of a larger trend, yes.And this has nothing to do with sexuals or gay marriage.
The drive to procreate does not need marriage. Correct. That's exactly the problem. The man can drop some sperm and leave. The woman doesn't have that choice. She bears the baby.It's obvious that the social construct of marriage is not necessary to encourage procreation. People would procreate whether marriage existed to it didn't. The drive to procreate is natural and does not need the assistance of marriage.
According to evolutionary psychology, the male maximizes his chances of spreading his genes by moving around to several sexual partners. The female maximizes her chances by attracting a mate that will stay to help rear the child.
Unless the female "wins" out in the evolutionary game, you can't have a civilization. Marriage is the social construct that developed to make sure the woman wins out. We're doing away with it because we have a welfare state to take the place of the male.
For some individuals, this may work out great. But over an entire population, we end up with this huge underclass of single mothers mired in poverty.
Well, because only with a heterosexual couple can sexual intercourse result in the creation of a child. Gay couples have to adopt or resort to AI. People who can do that are likely going to be affluent folks to begin with. And they're going to be very few in number.If this is the case, why does the gender of either party matter?
For folks not so well off, if there's not some prevailing social customs giving them some suggestions about how to structure their lives and become responsible, then you're going to end up with social chaos and the concomitant poverty. They don't have the experiences and the education to come up with these brilliant ideas about self-determination.
Marriage has for millenia worked very well at creating the kind of familial networks that promote the necessary social infrastructure to maintain civilization and progress into the kind of affluence we consider to be normal life. I don't believe that the welfare state has come anywhere near that level yet, and that this cavalier at ude some of the elite have about the obsolescene of marriage is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
I don't see the oppression in maintaining this distinction for the reasons I have stated. To whatever degree this proposition creates real legal obstacles for people's relationships in guardianship or custody or insurance or benefits or what have you, it is unjust. But defining marriages as a particular subset of committed intimate relationships, as a particular kind of family, I don't find to be oppressive.Your argument is that it keeps people responsible and that this responsibility is essential to our society. Again, I ask, aren't there means of keeping people responsible other than oppressing a minority? There has to be.
You know what? With my upbringing and education, I've been equipped with the werewithal to make rational and inductive decisions about marriage. That probably makes me an elite. You're probably elite too. But most people have done it because it is the prevailing social custom. Liberal elites like to break free from these social customs and use their creativity to find new ways of doing things. But when these customs are broken for everyone, for the majority it means chaos, not freedom.
(By the way, our differing opinions on this are a sparkling example of the difference between liberalism and conservatism on the most basic level.)
Now some sexuals may feel oppressed. Likewise, some transsexuals feel oppressed because they cannot use the restroom that corresponds to their own sexual iden y (an actual issue right now in places like SF). However, the social damage to the vast majority of people that would result from accomodating them I think far outweighs their greivance.
Perhaps that is an extreme example, but it's the first one that came into my head.
To be honest, I really think that marriage ultimately will be a lost cause for black and for Anglo-white America, as well as white Europe.
And the result will be a Latin, largely Catholic United States of America, which really won't be that much different, and a Muslim Europe, which will represent the end of the era of enlightenment and liberalization that began with the Renaissance.
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