Explaining Same Sex Marriage

He is saying it's an important factor considered in the adjudication procedure.

You said:

No one mentioned requirement. This is an example of a senior government official caring enough about whether the couple genuinely love each other before making a decision which affects them legally.

They could have lived together 50 years and hated each others guts and he would probably have passed their application so it isn't a blanket requirement but we are talking about people not pure, cold, policy and most new marriages are recognised as sincere if there is an element of love involved.

 

UK law is a lot different to US law we have things like common-law marriages, civil partnerships which establish kinship and are equivalent in all respects.

Because we don't have a constitution and a clearly enumerated process it makes it much harder to argue.

 

of course it's a protected class. you can't be fired for being a homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual.

 

I believe in many places you can indeed be fired for simply being a homosexual. This among other things is what's leading them toward being recognized as a protected class but not there yet.

 

A mariage is not a license or endorsement to procreate. If you genuinely feel the government needs to involve itself in eugenics, then propose appropriate laws and I'll be glad to debate those. Frankly, the idea of a parenting license and taking some steps to address overpopulation has some appeal (although I doubt you'd get far with it). But those arguments have no place here.

Marriage is a legal institution made available to groups with historically poor and even non-existent child bearing rates for reasons that have nothing to do with procreation. Granting access to that institution to heterosexual octogenarians while denying it to same sex couples who may have two uteri demonstrates that your basis for discrimination is not potential procreation and that your motivation for sexual discrimination is either arbitrary or something you don't want to share.

 

Cheapened is an emotionally charged way of saying that you think folks should stay together even though they hate each other.

Do you want to go back to the days where women were property and had to stay with their husbands no matter what even thought the husband could have sex on the side or take other wives ?

Back in the OT day, a man needed only to write his wife a letter.

As for abortion .. the OT version held that Abortion was Gods law in cases where the pregnancy was felt to have come about from improper circumstances.

As for the modern case, why do you think a woman should create a child that is not wanted ?

 

How so? According to what you earlier submitted, if two groups are equally advantaged or disadvantaged, then neither has a valid claim of discrimination. What distinguishes the Loving case in exception to this? If black people can't marry white people, and white people can't marry black people, how is that an unequal situation that the court would seek to remedy by declaring the law which prevents them from marrying unconstitutional?

I'm not persuaded that you understand what that actually means. The acts that make race a federally protected class are not blanket protections, they address specific things, such as voter registration, public accommodation, the segregation of public schools, access to public facilities, discrimination by government agencies receiving federal funds, etc. They do not address the question of marriage. The Loving case came after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So the idea that being a federally protected class somehow overrode laws that prevented interracial marriage is rather laughable.

It would seem that you're confusing "federally protected class" with "suspect class". They aren't the same thing. One can be a member of a suspect class without being a member of a federally protected class, and being a member of a federally protected class does not automatically make one a member of a suspect class with regard to other laws.

 

You're quite mistaken. There is no federal law protecting orientation. Attempts to pass one have been unsuccessful thus far.

Some states have adopted such protections, but mine has not. It is perfectly legal in Michigan to fire someone just because you suspect they're gay.

 

That's an important distinction, thanks for pointing it out.

 

It's the difference in the types of groups and the application of whatever law is at question.

Because the application of the law based on race is arbitrary due to race having nothing at all to do with the institution of marriage. In fact, the institution of marriage has been interracial forever since it was used to make social compacts among peoples of different nations and tribes.

If you are citing the 14th amendment as the basis for suggesting that the fact that people of the same sex cannot marry each other is discriminatory (which is what was done in this thread), than the question is indeed a Federal one. The 14 amendment was enacted shortly after the Civil War, and after slavery was abolished--it is absolutely related to (but not limited to) the race of individuals.

See above. The Civil Rights Act is not the basis upon which Loving was decided--the 14th Amendment was. Your claim that "suspect class" relates to "specific things, such as voter registration, public accommodation, the segregation of public schools, access to public facilities, discrimination by government agencies receiving federal funds, etc..." refers to the Civil Rights Act--and the 11 "titles" indicating its application.

Actually that is not accurate--(my emphasis):

There is a means determine if a group is a "suspect class" --and it is federally outlined. The means by which this is determined is "Strict Scrutiny" and it is EXACTLY what I have been harping on since the beginning of this thread!

Hence, my continually asking "What INTEREST does the government have in endorsing same sex unions?"

It is the means of determining whether the unions meet the criteria of "strict scrutiny"


Specific to the difference between race and gender as "suspect classes" see below--note that it references Loving v Virginia;

Read more: Oxford Companion to the US Supreme Court:
Suspect Classification
http://www.answers.com/topic/suspect-classification#ixzz1dlpZF6KT http://www.answers.com/topic/suspect-classification#ixzz1dlngoKXl


There is a test to determine whether a group is called a suspect class:
So the U.S. Supreme Court has a four-part test to determine if a group is a suspect class.

(1) the group is “discrete and insular” (i.e., identifiable) minority?
(2) the group has a history of discrimination?
(3) the group is politically powerless so as to be in need of assistance?
(4) the attribute in question that defines the group is an immutable (i.e. unchangeable) trait?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny#Suspect_classification

Homosexuals may meet SOME of those criteria, but Strict Scrutiny requires that ALL be met.

 

No--I mean they should be pretty (*)(*)(*)(*) sure of who they are marrying--and that even if their romantic inclinations fail--there is more to the commitment than mere feeling.

This is off topic and irrelevant.

This is off topic, too--but i am interested in the citation for this claim. book and verse, please.

 

Vague dodge. The basis of your claims is equal advantage/disadvantage. Now you apparently want to claim that it only applies in some cases. How convenient.

And this brings into focus the crux of our disagreement. I would argue that the use of gender to restrict access to legal marriage is also arbitrary.

The 5th and the 14th generally form the basis for cases challenging marriage restrictions by gender.

??? Clearly there is a problem with reading comprehension in evidence here. This is not at all what I said, and not what I claimed. In point of fact, I was challenging the implication you brought forth in your mention of "federally protected class". In other words, you're basically restating my very point - that the Civil Rights Act, which created federal protections against race-based discrimination - is not the basis for the Loving v. Virginia decision.

It is the creation of a federally protected class via the various civil rights acts that is related to the things I listed (see underlined portion you quoted above) - not "suspect class".

It is accurate. The fact that you can quote definitions doesn't mean you understand them. A "suspect class" is something determined by a court in its examination of the law. While a federal court's finding that a group of people qualify as a suspect class can accurately be said to offer that group a form of federal protection (hence, "protected class"), it's not the same thing as a federally protected class created by legislation:

Being a member of a suspect class would only offer protection/relief from discrimination by the law examined by the court in making such a classification.

Being a member of a federally protected class created by legislation only provides relief from discrimination in the areas specifically addressed within the law creating that class.

They are not necessarily synonymous terms. If you say "federally protected class", I'm going to assume you mean one created legislatively, rather than a "suspect class" determined by the court.

And you were answered. You just don't like the answer.

Actually, it doesn't. While the Supreme Court has developed these criteria to aid them in determining whether a group qualifies for suspect classification, it has not said that all must be met, nor that any particular set is required (or even suffices) for consideration as a suspect class. Generally, meeting one of the criterion is not likely to lead to suspect class qualification. It's usually some combination.

What is true, is that the Court has not yet held that orientation qualifies as a suspect classification. Emphasis on "yet". It depends on the facts of the case before them, and they may eventually take one whose facts lead them to such a conclusion. One of the cases challenging marriage restriction by gender as a means to express animus toward gay people may end up being the one that gets them over the mountain. But it's a steep climb, and I personally am not very optimistic that it will happen during my lifetime.

 

Sorry if the facts of law are not to your liking.

There is no gender restricted access to marriage. Both males and female can marry!

Due process? Really? You're chopping up the Constitution and taking the word "liberty" out of context.

The 5th Amendment relates to criminal prosecution and public domain. It is not a ticket for a free for all on anything one wants. That's why Strict Scrutiny matters.

The Civil Rights Acts didn't give black rights--it clarified what was the inalienable TRUTH all along--all men are created equal. Technically, even the 14th amendment was for clarification of what should have been understood from the beginning. It was in reaction to the Dred Scott case and Black Codes and it was the only way to force the right thing to be done in many southern states after the Civil War. Context matters.

Okay. For heaven's sake...a suspect class is indeed a protected class--if a group is found to be a suspect class (under the four-part analysis I already described) then it IS a protected class and federal law supercedes any state law that might be counter to that finding.

To try and claim through your own assumption that I meant federally protected class means that some legislation created that class, is just trying to confuse the discussion. I NEVER was discussing specific laws that defined a particular class--I was every time discussing findings of the federal court. Obfuscation is cheap.

Which lame non-answer are you referring to? The "gender discrimination" claim? The "true love" claim? The "social stability" claim (that was shown to be false). Or the kicker: the "because we're America and we like freedom here" claim?

Well--technically you are correct, but that is like saying, "Mom told me I couldn't have cookies before dinner, BUT SHE DIDN'T say I couldn't have a Snicker's bar!!!" The 4 part analysis is the process.

Good luck. There is no government interest in opening that messy can of worms.

 

The facts of law were not what was in question - your act of moving the goalposts was.

There is very clearly a gender restriction imposed upon marriage, since people of the same-sex can't marry. How is that not a gender restriction?

And before anyone goes there: Don't confuse gender restriction with gender discrimination. On the latter, the courts have been quite clear that for gender to be suspect, there has to be a favoring/disfavoring of one gender in comparison to the other - not equal disadvantaging of both.

Which brings us full circle back to the question why equal disadvantage is considered a bad thing where race & marriage are the context, but not when that context is gender & marriage.

You were correct that the reason is not an issue of equal disadvantage, but one of race being irrelevant to the issue of marriage. Yet you jump right back to equally advantaged/disadvantaged claims when the issue is gay couples marrying. Such inconsistency bespeaks animus. You'd be better off trying to show how gender is relevant to marriage than squawking out the equally advantaged/disadvantaged claims. I just happen to disagree with the assertion that gender is relevant to marriage, so neither argument is persuasive to me.

Like it or not, it was the 5th amendment arguments that were persuasive to the court in one of the marriage cases in federal court.

You're welcome to your opinion, but it doesn't count for much. There is nothing new in pairing due process and equal protection claims when fighting unduly discriminatory laws. Gay people didn't invent that tactic - they're lawyers are just pursuing what is known to work based on precedents.

Another strawman. I never argued anything of the sort. I said the Civil Rights Act created federal protections. I did not say it gave black people rights.

None of which I find to be a source for disagreement.

No source for disagreement with this, either.

Not my fault that you said "federally protected class" when you clearly meant "suspect class". You're the one who muddied the waters with your poor choice of terms, so blame yourself.

I've addressed the "gender discrimination" claim earlier in this post. I likewise agree that "true love" is not the basis of marriage law. While valuing freedom is admirable, it's an incredibly vague claim.

That leaves social stability, and you did not show it to be false. You quoted stats from foreign countries, which means we're already not comparing apples to apples. You also ignored the item from your own source stating that the divorce rate was lower among same-sex couples in Denmark. And you of course avoided statistics from the U.S. even though a handful of states here have same-sex marriage - probably because they negate rather than support your argument.

As for your fidelity argument, you make an assumption that infidelity creates instability. While I'm inclined to agree for the most part, I would not say it's an absolute. I also take issue with the notion that gay people have a different definition of fidelity. Some clearly do, but I wouldn't say all or most. My husband and I have been faithful to each other from the beginning - 11 years - and I do mean under traditional definitions of fidelity and monogamy. Moreover, with the divorce rate among opposite-sex couples being so high, it would be hypocritical to require a higher standard for same-sex couples. While some same-sex marriages will certainly fail, that doesn't mean the rate will be worse than for opposite-sex couples, once marriage is available to them on a broader scale and enjoys federal recognition.

Comparing failure rates needs to consider the context of the current situation in the United States, where same-sex marriages aren't generally portable from state to state and do not enjoy any federal recognition. For the benefits of marriage as a stabilizing force to be truly realized from same-sex relationships, they need full and equal recognition, not an inferior status.

In sum: I'm not persuaded that you've shown what you think you have.

I'm correct, period. The 4-part analysis is indeed the process, but it remains true that not all 4 parts have to be met. That isn't a mere technicality - it's a firm refutation of your earlier mistaken claim.

Once again, this is nothing more than your opinion. The courts have begun to hold a differing one.

 

No one wants the government to endorse same sex unions. That question is entirely irrelevant.

Strict scrutiny is applied to laws that impinge on civil rights. Like a policy that denies the right to vote or to marry. The question on the table is whether the government may restrict marriage to mixed sex couples. For the government to restrict civil rights based on the sex of the couple, the government carries the burden of proving that this discriminatory policy is necessary to achieve a compelling state interest. I have seen no evidence that it is necessary to deny a marriage certificate to a same sex couple to accomplish anything.

Asking couples to demonstrate a government interest in not discriminating against them is as much a perversion of intent and wording of the law as asking women to demonstrate a government interest in not restricting the right to vote to men.

 

I am not completely sure what societal benefits you are referring to. Please explain. Due to lack of an explanation I will assume that you are talking about family values? or presumed fidelity? or economic health? Not sure. But I think that whatever you are referring to could also be accomplished through same sex marriage. I can't imagine an argument wouldn't support this. Also, the government is designed to support the people of this country. It is made up of the people of this country. This is an issue of rights, not unlike the rights of people of color, women, religious rights, etc. The government is supposed to protect the rights of it's citizens. Giving equal rights to it's citizens benefits the government in just that. Why should the government need more incentive?

 

You sound like a Communist.

 

I was going to quote exactly this but you beat me to it. There is no way it is "necessary" to deny a marriage certificate to a same sex couple to achieve a compelling state interest. It might be desirable for some and the promise of such a good vote winner for others but given the similarity of non-related couples to each other regardless of gender there really is no necessary or compelling argument to be made.

 

Oh, I think they've seen plenty but i wouldn't say it's helping your side.

You were given a straight answer. YOU are the one trying twist things around, and it's a strategy that has failed you miserably.

 

There was no moving of the goalpost--why don't you consider that perhaps you misunderstood the point I was making rather than try to marginalize with false claims of fallacious argumentation.

See--I could accuse you of moving the goalpost right there. You first claimed, " the use of gender to restrict access to legal marriage is...arbitrary." And NOW you have nudged that a bit differently and focus on simply the restriction rather than the supposed "arbitrary" nature of the restriction. This obfuscates where the discussion was going and uses the word "restriction" to mean ANY restriction and also "arbitrary" restriction. Play fair--especially if you're going to be accusing me of logical fallacies (and even more especially if you're going to be guilty of them yourself!).


The WHOLE debate is whether the restrictions are arbitrary or not (since as noted numerous times in this thread) all kinds of things are restrictions in laws regarding marriage.

Marriage is HISTORICALLY, CULTURALLY, SOCIALLY, INTERNATIONALLY, and LEGALLY (in most places), an institution for the purpose of procreation and providing for progeny.

Same sex unions do not meet the definition of what marriage is and has been for since before recorded history.

I did answer that:

Originally Posted by Felicity
There is nothing about being gay that relates at all to being a particular race. Using race as a determiner as to who qualifies to marry whom is absolutely arbitrary, whereas it is NOT arbitrary in the case of the governmental endorsement of hetero-sex marriages due to the fact that homosexual unions are not procreative. Marrige is a procreative social institution. Blacks and whites can procreate--therefore race is an arbitrary determiner. The FACT that the homosexual union itself can never be in and of itself procreative is not an arbitrary reason to deny access to endorsement by the government.

Gay unions are not procreative.

AND...
Originally Posted by Felicity
Because the application of the law based on race is arbitrary due to race having nothing at all to do with the institution of marriage. In fact, the institution of marriage has been interracial forever since it was used to make social compacts among peoples of different nations and tribes.

Gay couples do not meet the criteria of what a marriage is--and they never can.

OOOHHHH Here it comes--I'm a hater because I don't agree and cave to illogical emotional pressures.

Already did...repeatedly.

it doesn't really matter if YOU agree, now does it?

Likewise.



Too much re-tread.

 

Give an example where all 4 parts of the 4 part analysis do NOT apply to a group that is considered a suspect class.

If...when the Prop 8 case gets to the US Supreme Court, and if it is decided that being homosexual is then viewed as being a suspect class (which is at issue in Perry v. Schwarzenegger ), THEN, perhaps you'd have a point. Short of that, it's just wishful thinking.

FURTHERMORE...because being classified as a suspect class requires the most stringent judicial review known as Strict Scrutiny, the other parts of my argument that same sex marriage is not ...frankly...even possible (except through aberrant state statutes) becomes apparent.

Please note the elements of the arguments I have been making in the explanation of strict scrutiny below (my emphasis).

 

Well, I had a post all typed up in reply and the forum ate it. So very frustrating.
So I'll sum up:

Any misunderstanding is your fault for your own poor choice of terms.

I'm not dodging the issue of the law being arbitrary or not. Context matters, and I was specifically addressing your ridiculous assertion that marriage laws restricting eligibility to "one man, one woman" don't encompass a restriction on gender.

Beyond that, there's a whole lot of appealing to tradition, repetitiveness, claims of victimhood, and the egoism of thinking your opinions matter more than mine.

I see no point in rehashing the many responses that have been made in the thread to challenge the opinion that you so stubbornly cling to. You have yet to offer anything persuasive as to the assertion that your opinion is based on anything other than your own personally held beliefs and prejudices.

 

No need. You already admitted that I was right, so I see no point in wasting my time to belabor the point.

The elements you quoted are about government's obligation in the face of strict scrutiny, not that of plaintiff's to show that they qualify for strict scrutiny. So nothing there to address, except to further note that the ability to copy and paste doesn't mean that you understand any of it.

 

They would have to make a "law" to extend marriage rights for same-sex couples across the nation. It won't happen because the proposed law cannot meet strict scrutiny.


So--because it's the government's burden to determine gay marriage laws can't pass strict scrutiny, the proponents of such will keep wasting tax-payer's money on a fruitless , self-indulgent money pit.

Thanks-a lot! There's another way this gay marriage fiasco "harms" me--it WASTES a tone of money collected from citizens that could better serve the populace elsewhere.