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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

#891

Post by ebiggs »

lmm wrote: post #417
gherkin0 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The SCOTUS shouldn't wait on consensus. They don't need that. They need to decide if it is legal or not. This is a really bad idea, you're basically describing an oligarchy. The Supreme Court is really a consensus-enforcing machine, for the most part.

The Supreme Court is a literal oligarchy - it's 9 people who are accountable to no-one. The Senate is a more democratic body, since they can be held to account by voters.

I don't know if this was meant to be a joke but it's rather preposterous. Justices do not make laws, they interpret and apply them, and must do so while being rationally bound and yes accountable to laws and precedent under the framework of common law. Judicial activism is a pejorative term for good reason: they're not there to create or destroy laws. If they did start abusing their power to interpret laws they would be impeached: they actually ARE accountable to congress same as the president.

Also, if the equal protection clause was misinterpreted by the judicial branch, the legislative bodies of the federal and state governments have the power to revise and make it clear that the law was never to be interpreted that way.

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

#892

Post by SwellJoe »

ElComradio wrote: post #875
SwellJoe wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on the end goal, but perfect is the enemy of the good, and I could not more strongly disagree about waiting until that perfect solution is on the table. Having every gay couple wait another couple of decades until everybody gets their head out of their ass to have basic rights like visitation of their partner in the hospital, inheritance rights, co-parental rights of children, etc. is an unacceptable…

The perfect being the enemy of the good is one thing. It's something else when the compromise actually reinforces the root problem. We now have reinforced the idea that government gets to decide who can get married. Wrong direction.

And, so, until we correct the misunderstanding gay people should be excluded from being able to share custody of their children, be beneficiaries of social security, medicare, insurance, retirement plans, and visitation of the partners when in the hospital, etc., all things that heterosexual married couples currently enjoy under the law?

That's the wrong direction, and it is unconstitutional. The reality is that the world just got nicer for a lot of people. The theoretical "reinforced" root problem effects literally no one. Before today, that root problem existed. It still exists today. There is no scenario today for real people that is worse than yesterday.

I'm not willing to throw gay couples under the bus because it doesn't suit me that the government has a role in marriage. It has had a role in marriage for longer than you or I have been on this earth. This doesn't strengthen that notion in any way. The government has been granted no new power over your relationships than it had yesterday (just because you or I don't like that it has any say in relationships is not what is up for discussion), and it is disingenuous, or at least misdirection, to suggest otherwise.

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

#893

Post by baddox »

pohl wrote: post #877
baddox wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

The context that allows a system of laws to operate doesn't just spring forth spontaneously from a vacuum. Rather, it exists because we have a government based on the rule of law.

You didn't address any of the specifics in my comment.

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

#894

Post by ctdonath »

__z wrote: post #871
ctdonath wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some states have started looking at dropping the formal recognition of marriage entirely. Increasingly devoid of any meaning, and given enough harassment for limiting who it applies to (consider, say, 12 people and a goat), comes a point where the state decides there is simply no point in recognizing the institution at all.

WHICH states are considering dropping the formal recognition of marriage entirely? That sounds extremely implausible.

Louisiana for one.

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

#895

Post by bsder »

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…

> What should happen is the government should stop defining marriage of any form (leave that to religion or personal tradition), and simply define all these rights under civil union (or a similar phrase with no significant religious/cultural attachment).

Hopefully this ruling will cause exactly that.

If the churches don't want same-sex "marriage", they now MUST lobby their legislatures to separate marriage from the civil contracts that it is conflated with.

Until this ruling, nobody was going to take up the task. States that might have done this were already legalizing it anyway. States that would be opposed weren't going to spend the time and energy to fight their own constituents.

Now, there will be motivation in the most conservative states to actually get that done.

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

#896

Post by mayanksinghal »

tommorris wrote: post #713
pekk wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason why governments should be involved in it, except that people can't keep their grubby hands off of it. Doesn't make a lot of sense for us to subsidize people to do something which they are supposedly doing because they want to. The only reason there are all these fancy tax breaks is because politicians get ahead saying they are "for families". It isn't the government's job to "acknowledge" every rel…

> Doesn't make a lot of sense for us to subsidize people to do something which they are supposedly doing because they want to. Sure it does. Long-term couples tend to take care of each other's health and wellbeing. Marriage is a way of recognising that long-term care relationship. In countries with any kind of government funded or subsidised health system (or even a private health system based on insurance), those be…

> Long-term couples tend to take care of each other's health and wellbeing ... because it makes citizens happier, more productive, less likely to need public handouts ...

Citation needed. Plus, the benefits have to outweigh the costs: tax breaks, unhappy folks (would that cause health issues?) stuck in the bad marriages etc.

I am guessing availability for comparatively stable social unit for raising kids might be a large enough positive, but the benefits should then be for families who raise kids, potentially scaled with the number of kids (don't know if that's already the case). Even the other benefits you mentioned, have nothing to do with marriage - civil unions (or even group of not-romantically-involved-with-each-other friends) can make citizens happier, productive, less likely to need handouts, raise children well (if single parents can, why not multiple parents?) and produce taxable wealth.

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

#897

Post by sumedh »

agd wrote: post #4

Great decision. It's amazing how quickly gay rights have advanced in the western world. Unfortunately it's still legal in many states to discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation. Hopefully that's next to be fixed.

> It's amazing how quickly gay rights have advanced in the western world.

The irony is that in India right now we are using a very old colonial British India law to put gay people in jail.

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

#898

Post by analog31 »

kazinator wrote: post #744
analog31 wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's polygamous divorce work? Majority vote? A lot of what constitutes "marriage law" has to do with what happens when marriages fail in one way or another.

Polygamous divorce doesn't necessarily mean that everyone goes their separate ways. Rather, it could be that one person leaves (and generalize it from there). One or more people want out, and so execute some exit clause in the contract. What, if anything, they take away is settled at that time. Just like a partner leaving a three or four partner company. It's not a majority vote under monogamy, by the way, so why wou…

It could mean that one spouse gets voted off the island, as it were. Note that I'm not arguing against polygamy, but am only curious about this issue.

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

#900

Post by anti-shill »

api wrote: post #772
anti-shill wrote: post #35

good...now maybe the so-called "leftists" can put this issue aside and concentrate on issues that matter to more than about 1% of the population...I refer to these really "silly" issues like wages, single-payer healthcare (obamacare is a mess), trade, flooding of the labor supply, the drug war, worker rights and benefits, more time off and vacation, monopolies, regulatory capture, NIMBYized zoning/regs (aka affordabl…

Interesting how hard you got down voted. I don't disagree with marriage equality at all, but I also believe that the whole "culture war" has been horribly destructive to our ability to address more pressing issues. It's been a fantastic divide-and-conquer tactic to con lower income (and usually socially conservative) people into voting against their economic best interests, and to prevent the formation of any meaning…

the readers here are young and educated, which for practical purposes translates to being fascist.

Fascism is best defined by the degree to which the overclass controls the youth of a nation by propaganda. Because the youth of today have been pushed into college, that means they are highly propagandized.

And of course the overclass loves it when they can force the youth of the nation to focus on an issue such as gay rights. Not only is it a natural wedge issue, making it harder for the people to unite against the overclass, but by leading youth into social issues leftism and away from hardcore economic leftism, this is a win-win for the overclass.

Anyway, this dynamic in play here with gay marriage is a perfect window into american fascism.

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