SCOTUS: Gay Marriage Case Update

Than you have nothing to worry about.

It's not the ability to marry but the state recognition that id's being argued here.

Why are you playing dumb?

Again than you have nothing to worry about. It would be pointless even arguing if you already know the outcome.

 

What is it that's different about homosexual marriage that makes them immune to being something that states can decide while incest is not? What's the difference?

No see, that's your opinion. The reason that Loving was in question is because it's not an opinion that blacks and whites were being denied the right to marriage solely because of the promotion of white supremacy. The State didn't provide a defense for it and they exacerbated the problem by not caring if interracial couples that didn't involve a white person got married. And I quote:

While you may not like it and may not even agree with it... the idea that homosexuals are INCAPABLE of procreating in and of themselves IS a legitimate overriding purpose independent of homosexual discrimination.

We are not denying them the ability to marry. We are denying them the benefits that come from marriage. And if the state asserts the reason we are providing those benefits is to promote procreation because it is beneficial to society... it's completely logical to assume the state isn't going to want to provide those benefits to a group that doesn't provide that procreation benefit to society.

There were differences in this and Loving. In loving they were not simply being denied legal recognition of their marriage, but they were being denied the right to marry. They weren't allowed to marry... legal recognition or not. Further they didn't care if people other than whites were interracial marrying. This would be tantamount to allowing lesbians to marry but not gay men. We really don't care if the sexy lesbians want to get married but we ban those nasty gay men.

This case isn't even remotely like Loving v Virginia. And won't be treated as such.

 

All who choose not to marry are denied those benefits equally regardless of sexual orientation. The question is did you even think about this?

 

Some seem hellbent on pre-judging the judges, and imagining that those judges, despite their superior grasp of the constitutional niceties, will decide in a manner that reflects the blatant agenda of the presumptuous person with an inferior grasp of the constitutional niceties.

The reasonable folks will wait and see.

 

What do you suppose the SCOTUS is currently considering?

I don't understand this statement. The laws on the books prohibiting same sex marriage are exactly what is being litigated. This thread is about that litigation.

But in fact there are. Some have been put there by judicial decree, some have been put there by legislative initiative, some have been put there by referendum. They exist.

What are two separate concepts?

You quoted my answer to this question. Why not read what I wrote? I said that the degree to which states can regulate marriage is LIMITED. Incest is a matter of degree. I said that if any state decided to permit a marriage between mother and son, that law would not be allowed to stand. You QUOTED that. Didn't you read it?

One need not be a homosexual to understand legal equality and civil rights. But you are correct that many people reject arbitrary discrimination which hurts its victims and benefits nobody.

The reason this case is being considered is because so many states were utterly unable to provide a justification. Even today, the lawyer representing the states was asked how same-sex marriage harmed anyone. And he had no answer.

The states spent the day today doing their best to justify their position. If they were successful, then maybe states can have different laws with respect to same-sex marriage, and later on SCOTUS will have to address whether a marriage legal in one state must be recognized in another. This is the "full faith and credit" issue. I don't think this issue was before the Court today. If the states fail to justify their position, then same-sex marriage will be granted an ironclad Constitutional guarantee nationwide.

We know that Scalia/Thomas and Alito will deny civil rights, and we can be pretty sure Breyer, Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Kagan will favor civil rights. The wildcards, based on todays questioning, are Roberts and Kennedy. Kennedy has written a series of pro-gay decisions. Roberts seems concerned that the SCOTUS is viewed as deciding such cases strictly along party lines, so he might decide for civil rights as well. Roberts also seems to have enough sense to recognize that a 5-4 decision along party lines is an invitation to further nuisance litigation.

(It's also worth noting that the Court voted 7-2 NOT to stay the Alabama decision to permit same-sex marriages...)

 

One is incest and the other is not.

Logic isn't subjective to opinion.

Than once again you have nothing to worry about.

All humans are incapable of procreation in and of themselves. Humans are a sexual species.

Your insistence that it's legitimate doesn't make it so. If you could logically demonstrate this you could argue it.

No (*)(*)(*)(*). It's what they are being denied that they are fighting for.

Homosexuals do procreate.

Yet again, you don't have anything to worry about.

 

I wonder if people think that if they talk enough about something it will come true. I can think of no other reason to insist on what is going to happen if you already know it's going to happen.

 

No, they aren't betting denied anything, they are choosing not to exercise that ability.

Just like atheists aren't being denied the right to religious expression, they are just choosing not to participate.

 

I'd rather see change come from the heart and not from the barrel of a SCOTUS ruling. Interracial marriage and gay marriage is completely different. One took action within the present definition of marriage and the other will completely change the definition.

 

We both know you're being disingenuous here. By denying a group of people the ability to marry, you effectively target them and deny them benefits. Regardless if the exact wording of the law, bans of same sex marriage are de facto homophobic.

 

6-3; Breyer joins the Court's conservatives, leaving only Kagan, Sotomayor, and Ginsburg siding with same-sex couples. That's my prediction. Hope I'm dreadfully wrong.

 

When some hearts and/or heads are obdurate, our government has a judicial arbiter to settle constitutional questions, no barrels required.

Fortunately, in this case, most hearts and/or heads have already progressed.

 

Yes they have. But when you said, "Yet so many states have exercised the power of unilaterally abandoning gender discrimination in their marriage contract laws." My point was 24 of those states did not exercise their power of abandoning gender discrimination, the courts forced them to. Big difference. If left to the states alone, you would still be at 12 instead of 36.

 

And I see no reason for it's dismissal, if you apply the 14th in this case you can only apply it as a privilege, not as a 'right'. If a right, any definition of a privilege will become a right in the future. The difference between rights and privileges will be blurred and as a country we'll be fighting with this question for some time now.

The Status Quo isn't kept just because it's viewed as right by the majority, people keep the Status Quo to avoid difficult questions that might not be answered. In this case, we can answer this question legislatively, without the need for turning society over its head. We don't need nor want the Courts here.

 

Justices don't make a decision on how they are going to rule before hearing the case. If they did that would be a dictatorship.

If somebody can make a constitutional argument for their marriage bans, that will be the defining moment.

We have to wait and see.

 

What is disingenuous is the attempt to frame this as an issue of marriage being "discriminatory" when the real issue is that gays and lesbians don't want to enter into marriage. They want to change what marriage is in order to accommodate their special relationships. Some states have changed that definition, but states should not be compelled to do so.

 

Except that is not true. In fact the issue is that people want to marry the person they love legally and in many cases having their faith community's blessing of their union be legal. In fact it is discrimination when the state decides that only some marriages done by houses of worship get government recognition.

BTW the definition of marriage has changed many times over the years.

 

You are assuming that none of the states whose courts ruled to end gender discrimination in marriage contracts would not have subsequently achieved the same result legislatively, with the majority of its citizens likely supporting it? It stretches credulity to claim that, if Massachusetts had not progressed via the judicial route in 2004, it would still be discriminating in 2015.

Loving v Virginia ended anti-miscegenation laws in 1967. (Alabama was the last state to repeal its discriminatory statute in 2000.) Do you believe that, in the absence of the court's ruling, all the states that had anti-miscegenation laws on their books in 1967 would still have them 48 years later?

Support for gay marriage reached a new high in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, marking a dramatic change in public attitudes on the subject across the past decade. Fifty-eight percent of Americans now say it should be legal for gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That number has grown sharply in ABC News/Washington Post polls, from a low of 32 percent in a 2004 survey of registered voters.​

I would suggest that a court decision does not arrest social progress. It is far more likely to anticipate it.

 

Good morning and perhaps. My assuming that none of the 24 states who were forced by the courts into accepting gay marriages is about as bad or good as you assuming that all states would have reversed themselves without the court.

If that would have been the case, reversing themselves I believe it would have been better to let them do it on their own. Perhaps ending a long and enduring fight like abortion has caused which is still going on.

 

Nobody is stealing from you. And procreation is entirely irrelevant.

Kennedy is not going to vote against same sex marriage. Your delusions not withstanding.

14th amendment precludes gender discrimination.

 

It is when those benefits are tied to marriage.

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You have no idea what you're talking about. The 14th amendment precludes discrimination based on race religion and gender. Infectious couples and underage minors are able to be discriminated.

 

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Agreed. What this is turning out to be is another circle jerk thread with some of the lest qualified people giving their opinions on matters concerning jurisprudence. Right wing ideology v. the U.S. Constitution.

 

Roberts's comments yesterday changed my opinion a bit on this. Even the idea that marriage is about two people who want to publicly declare their love for each other - that's a fairly recent, Westernized take on the institution. It is not discrimination when the state does not recognize ceremonies that fail to meet the common understanding of what marriage is in the eyes of the state, especially when that definition, as Kennedy put it, has been around for millennia. Again, that means Mass. and others may decide to endorse such relationships and equate them to traditional marriage, but there is no basis for the federal government to compel all states to do so.

 

Of course, I had never stated that "all states" would have, by now, adopted the position of most Americans if the courts in those states had not fulfilled their constitutional function.

There may well have been some slackers.

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This doesn't make any sense. Marriage has been consistently ruled a right, and had rulings base on the 14th amendment violations of said right.

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Unfortunately we need the courts here because the states are violating the 14th amendment.