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Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

nytimes.com

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Re: Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

#721

Post by jrs235 »

nmrm2 wrote: post #539
jrs235 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Contitution, the Bill of Rights in particular, protects minority rights"... "minority" should be replace with "individual". An individual is the greatest minority.

No, "minority" is correct here. Individuals who happen to be members of a majority do not need a Bill of Rights. Individuals who are a member of a minority do. (edit: Holy cow this post got downvotes! If you think this is wrong please go read pretty much literally anything on the topic of the bill of rights by literally any of the founding fathers. Protecting the rights of democratic minorities was a very, very, VERY…

"Individuals who happen to be members of a majority do not need a Bill of Rights."

Do you understand what you are saying? So if you are in the majority, the government can suppress your speech?!?!?

Re: Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

#722

Post by IanDrake »

nutate wrote: post #711
IanDrake wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How could it be consensual between all adults? Quite literally, I imagine it would go something like: Do you take this woman to be your wife? I do. Do you take this woman to be your husband's second wife? I do. Do you take this man and woman to be your husband and second wife? I do. That's how three adults could all consent. You can argue that someone is being forced to say yes, but you could argue that in any type…

That's a polyamorous (group) marriage, not a polygamist one (at least as per my definition of those somewhat amorphous terms) That said all of the legal agreements become far more complicated and likely null and void if one person drops out or is added. I think an argument could be made, but with the complication you're basically saying polymarriages would be like corporations, with their associated complexity. Polyg…

>That's a polyamorous (group) marriage, not a polygamist one

Hmmm, please excuse my ignorance in such matters. I only married one woman and that is quite enough.

>you're basically saying polymarriages would be like corporations

Yes, exactly. Well put.

>with their associated complexity

I can't even begin to imagine the complexity, legal or relational. However, I can imagine situations where such an arrangement could be beneficial to the individuals involved.

Re: Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

#723

Post by 0x5f3759df-i »

DannyBee wrote: post #482
quizotic wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad that my LBG friends can now marry anywhere. But damn, Scalia's counter opinion (and Roberts' opinion) strike me as well-considered and well-argued in the 2nd half of http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf . In brief, their view was that resolving this issue in the courts erodes the democratic process. Can anybody counter Scalia, and say why the issue of gay marriage couldn't wait to be re…

Sorry, but as a lawyer totally in favor of gay marriage, Roberts, at least, is completely right on the legal theory. There has been basically nothing, in the history of our country, considered more of a state right than defining marriage. The supreme court is not a ruling council. Our constitution is about freedom from government intervention, not guaranteed government benefits. The debates over everything in the pas…

>There has been basically nothing, in the history of our country, considered more of a state right than defining marriage.

Sorry, this statement just isn't true:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia

>The debates over everything in the past that led to amendments looked roughly the same as the debate over same sex marriage. For example, people beat each other on the floor of the senate chamber over slavery. The only difference to this debate is that a court ended it by deciding to change the constitution.

So you are saying that every social issue must end with a constitutional amendment? The 14th amendment is already there. Why must we repeat the mistakes of the past every time a new issue comes along? Are you suggesting we should go to war to settle same sex marriage?

>This is not how the process is supposed to work.

You have not established this conclusion with anything you said. Nothing in this comment strikes me as from a "lawyer" but what do I know, I'm just an astronaut doctor lawyer in space.

Re: Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

#724

Post by AnimalMuppet »

giaour wrote: post #352
gadders wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incest amongst consenting adults.

IIRC, New Jersey allows this, and consenting, incestuous couple have moved there in droves. I would try to look up the reference but I don't want to do a search for "legal incest New Jersey" on my work computer.

Allows this? Or recognizes it as marriage? (I'm assuming that it's closer than first cousins.)

Re: Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

#725

Post by mark-r »

lukifer wrote: post #483
jasonjei wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's shocking to me is that we need permission from the state to marry, whether gay or straight. Why do we need the blessing of the government to marry anyway? We can have kids without permission from the state (so long as you aren't in China), why do we need to ask for permission and "apply for marriage"? In theory, applying for marriage implies the government could deny a marriage, gay or straight. Why do we impl…

One of the most brilliant ideas I've heard on the subject is a couple of proposed constitutional amendments stating that (a) your body is your personal property, and (b) you have an inalienable right to define who is a member of your family. When framed in that way, even most social conservatives would agree with the underlying principles.

You underestimate social conservatives. They're perfectly capable of working out the consequences of such a change.

Re: Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

#726

Post by baddox »

pohl wrote: post #689
baddox wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marriage need not be a "government thing" in the modern sense, with all the legal distinctions we currently have. Marriage is inherently a legal thing, in the sense that it's a contract between people.

State is a prerequisite for law, except in a libertarian's dorm-room fantasies.

It depends on your definitions. If you consider all legal systems to be "states," including primitive tribal ones, decentralized ones, etc., then yes, "state is a prerequisite for law" is a tautology. But today, "state" usually refers to a relatively large and relatively centralized organization governing a well-specified region that is recognized by other such states. Using that definition, a state is very clearly not a prerequisite for law.

Re: Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

#727

Post by baddox »

tommorris wrote: post #617
baddox wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that was not in the cards. What you want is not on the table and likely never will be. How do you figure? Nothing is objectively on or off the table. Nothing is on the table until people make it on the table.

Because switching to a system where everybody has to get unmarried in order to satisfy the ideological preferences of people who want to get the government out of the marriage business is something that's going to be a really hard sell to all the existing straight married people. I wrote a long post about it a while back: https://tommorris.org/posts/2555

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Why would people have to get "unmarried"?

Re: Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

#728

Post by intopieces »

mkr-hn wrote: post #17

For me and a lot of friends and family, marriage equality. Yay. "It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality . . . Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this…

The four dissenting opinions in this case are interesting. They deal mainly with the fact that, strictly, such pronouncements are not within the authority of the Supreme Court. They are correct, in a sense. But by that logic, Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. V. U.S. (1964) should not be; by that logic, we should have waited for America to realize, of its own volition in 50 states, that allowing a business to deny a black man a hotel room is fundamentally wrong. But for the group wronged -- consider the same-sex couples facing the death of a spouse, the endless and expensive legal hurdles, or the millions of black Americans who couldn't sit at a lunch counter -- waiting for all 50 states to come to the right conclusion is cruel. No, the court has a moral obligation, where it can, to stand up for the people for whom justice for all would come too late. It's certainly not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. But the Founders were not infallible, were not seers of the future; it is just as incongruous to hold them responsible for their failures as it is to hold us responsible for our failures we have not yet realized.

Re: Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

#729

Post by vilmosi »

ctdonath wrote: post #580
curiousgeorgio wrote: post #451

Well, I know I'm probably a minority in saying this, but I'm disappointed - not because I don't think everyone should have access to the government rights attached to marriage, but because it seems our country doesn't actually want to fix problems at the root. What is the root problem? People on both sides of the debate agree (if given the option) that the government probably never should have messed with marriage, a…

The state has a vested interest in procreation (i.e.: creation of new citizens & taxpayers as others die off), so takes an interest in "marriage" as a means for facilitating the most efficient & effective means of promoting procreation, doing so by giving special benefits in return for parents taking on special obligations. Expanding the beneficiaries of those benefits to those to whom there is absolutely no chance (…

Marriage has nothing to do with procreation.

The government doesn't care if you plan to have kids when you get married, there's no tick box saying "You agree that this marriage license is only valid if you have kids.".

Marriage is about a union, that's it.

Re: Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

#730

Post by chc »

0x5f3759df-i wrote: post #723
DannyBee wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but as a lawyer totally in favor of gay marriage, Roberts, at least, is completely right on the legal theory. There has been basically nothing, in the history of our country, considered more of a state right than defining marriage. The supreme court is not a ruling council. Our constitution is about freedom from government intervention, not guaranteed government benefits. The debates over everything in the pas…

>There has been basically nothing, in the history of our country, considered more of a state right than defining marriage. Sorry, this statement just isn't true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia >The debates over everything in the past that led to amendments looked roughly the same as the debate over same sex marriage. For example, people beat each other on the floor of the senate chamber over slavery…

The Loving v. Virginia parallel is interesting, but the ad hominem and sarcasm against DannyBee are uncalled-for.
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