Same Sex Marriage Thread - Part III

[Galeongirl]

Sigh, my country sends the prime minister, minister of sport and both our king and queen to the olympic games. Way to send a sign guys...

[Irvine511]

helpful point-counterpoint:

Utah, in Opposing Gay Marriage, Finds Three Arguments Are Better Than One
JAN. 13, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s order last week halting same-sex marriages in Utah was two sentences long. It was provisional and cryptic, and it added nothing to the available information on where the Supreme Court stands on the momentous question of whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Utah’s briefs were another matter. They were expansive, and they set out the current arguments for denying gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.

In the trial court, the state had argued that restricting marriage to a man and a woman would make heterosexual couples act more responsibly when they had sex. In the Supreme Court, the state threw that “responsible procreation” argument overboard in favor of one focused on “optimal parenting.” By the time it filed its final brief on Jan. 6, the state had introduced a fresh argument, drawn from the Supreme Court’s decisions on affirmative action.

The state’s first argument, made before Judge Robert J. Shelby of the Federal District Court in Salt Lake City, was that “the traditional definition of marriage reinforces responsible procreation.” The government benefits that come with marriage, the state said, encourage opposite-sex couples to form stable families “in which their planned, and especially unplanned, biological children may be raised.”

Judge Shelby agreed, saying the argument was true as far as it went. Encouraging marriage would make it more likely that the children of heterosexual couples would have parents who were married.

But there was no reason, the judge went on, to think that allowing same-sex couples to marry would change that. To the contrary. By forbidding gay and lesbian couples to marry, he wrote, “the state reinforces a norm that sexual activity may take place outside of marriage.”

In the Supreme Court, state officials changed tack and pressed a different argument, one built on a contested premise.

“A substantial body of social science research confirms,” the brief said, “that children generally fare best when reared by their two biological parents in a loving, low-conflict marriage.”

Lawyers for the couples challenging Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage responded that the assertion “is not true.” For evidence, they cited “the scientific consensus of every national health care organization charged with the welfare of children and adolescents,” and listed nine such groups. The view of the groups, the challengers said, “based on a significant and well-respected body of current research, is that children and adolescents raised by same-sex parents, with all things being equal, are as well-adjusted as children raised by opposite-sex couples.”

Utah responded that it would not be swayed by “politically correct trade associations,” referring to, among others, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association. “We are not ruled by experts,” the state’s brief said.

As with the argument about responsible procreation, it is possible to accept the state’s position that it is best for children to be raised by their biological parents and yet wonder how that would be more likely to happen by denying gay and lesbian couples the right to marry. Utah argued that the two things are linked.

“By holding up and encouraging man-woman unions as the ‘preferred’ arrangement in which to raise children,” the state said, “the state can increase the likelihood that any given child will in fact be raised in such an arrangement.”

Judge Shelby had rejected the argument as illogical and counterproductive. Utah’s ban, he wrote, “does not make it any more likely that children will be raised by opposite-sex couples.” But it certainly demeans and humiliates the thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples in the state, he said.

In the Supreme Court, Utah refined its argument.

“The state does not contend that the individual parents in same-sex couples are somehow ‘inferior’ as parents to the individual parents who are involved in married, mother-father parenting,” the state said.

But, drawing on Supreme Court decisions endorsing the value of diversity in deciding who may attend public universities, the state now said it was pursuing “gender diversity” in marriages. “Society has long recognized that diversity in education brings a host of benefits to students,” the brief said. “If that is true in education, why not in parenting?” The Supreme Court did not take a position on Utah’s several shifting arguments, saying only that it would stay Judge Shelby’s decision while an appeals court considers the case. That will happen over the next couple of months, and the state’s position may evolve further.

Or perhaps it will return to the candor of Stanford E. Purser, a lawyer with the state attorney general’s office. Judge Shelby asked him on Dec. 4 whether letting same-sex couples marry was of “any relevance at all” to the state’s interests in encouraging opposite-sex couples to marry.

“It may end up that there is no difference,” Mr. Purser said. “It may end up that there is. We just simply don’t know.”

[trojanchick99]

I think that they are insinuating that if a gay man cannot marry his male partner, that he will instead marry a woman which is ridiculous. Um, it's not the 1950s anymore.

I seriously cannot wrap my head around the argument that if gays and lesbians can marry who they want, then all of a sudden heteros will stop getting married. Does. not. compute.

[Irvine511]

O! K! L! A! H! O! M! A!

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/14/justic...-gay-marriage/

More like Oklahomo.

[martha]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

More like Oklahomo.

[deep]

judicial activists can go to hell
I refuse to make them a red velvet wedding cake

[Galeongirl]

But there was no reason, the judge went on, to think that allowing same-sex couples to marry would change that. To the contrary. By forbidding gay and lesbian couples to marry, he wrote, “the state reinforces a norm that sexual activity may take place outside of marriage.”

Yeah because nobody, gay or straight, has sex outside of marriage these days...

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by Galeongirl

Yeah because nobody, gay or straight, has sex outside of marriage these days...

What people do to realize is that it isn't "gay activists" or the "media academia urban Left" that has brought us to this moment where legal equality for gay couples is a near reality.

It's women. And how women have asserted their social, political, sexual, and personal humanity over the past 50 years.

The enemy is misogyny.

[LuckyNumber7]

Damn women. Especially the lesbian ones. Ruining moral America for the rest of us.

[Pearl]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

What people do to realize is that it isn't "gay activists" or the "media academia urban Left" that has brought us to this moment where legal equality for gay couples is a near reality.

It's women. And how women have asserted their social, political, sexual, and personal humanity over the past 50 years.

The enemy is misogyny.

Yep. Women and the LGBT community know what it is like to have a large portion of the population narrowly defining you and confining you to a box that, until recently, was hard to get out of.

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

O! K! L! A! H! O! M! A!

Federal judge: Oklahoma ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional - CNN.com

More like Oklahomo.

Disgusting!! Regardless of one's beliefs on SSM marriage the fact that, once again, a single judge has overruled the will of the people (75% of voters in OK) and asserted the power to redefine marriage is another blow against the separation of powers, state's rights, religious conscience and self-government.

Oklahoma only codified in its constitution the definition of marriage that had existed since its founding as well as the same definition that existing when the U.S. Constitution was written. Has the constitution changed? Has the U.S. congress passed new civil rights laws regarding marriage? If society has truly changed then let those changes be reflected in the written law, not the "look what I found that no one noticed before" newly interpreted law. Process matters.

Panem et circenses while the Republic crumbles under debt, lawlessness, corruption and apathy.

[Irvine511]

gosh, an awful lot of activist judges out there!

or maybe it really is unconstitutional to deny rights to a group of people based on their sexual orientation! maybe it really is unconstitutional to decide civil rights by majority rule!

maybe!

[anitram]

Once again, INDY shows he has no comprehension of how the common law works.

[Irvine511]

but he sure knows more than this so-called judge who says non-constitutional things like:

“moral disapproval of homosexuals as a class, or same-sex marriage as a practice, is not a permissible justification ... [the ban is] an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit ... Excluding same-sex couples from marriage has done little to keep Oklahoma families together thus far, as Oklahoma consistently has one of the highest divorce rates in the country ... Equal protection is at the very heart of our legal system and central to our consent to be governed."

and what with OK's sky-high divorce rate, heteroes need all the help they can get, and we do that by punishing gay people!

i wonder if the INDY of 1967 would have said the same thing when another "disgusting" activist judge overturned OK's interracial marriage ban? all this talk about Constitutional purity, and natural rights, and maximizing freedom ... NOT IF YOU'RE GAY!

[PhilsFan]

Yes, but in INDY's defense, consequences.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by PhilsFan

Yes, but in INDY's defense, consequences.

i don't want to live in a world where i'm not allowed to vote away the rights of other people.

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

but he sure knows more than this so-called judge who says non-constitutional things like:

“moral disapproval of homosexuals as a class, or same-sex marriage as a practice, is not a permissible justification ... [the ban is] an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit ...

"arbitrary and irrational"? Talk about self-righteous. Ok Irvine. What's "rational" about limiting marriage to two people? Seems rather "arbitrary" given history and other current cultures around the world.

Excluding same-sex couples from marriage has done little to keep Oklahoma families together thus far, as Oklahoma consistently has one of the highest divorce rates in the country ...

Non-sequitur, divorce rates are dependent upon marriage rates for one thing. And how will SSM improve divorce rates among heterosexuals?

Equal protection is at the very heart of our legal system and central to our consent to be governed."

Equal protection before the law, while a basic human right, is not an unlimited blanket right anymore than religious conscience is an unlimited blanket right. Do you know the history of the 14th amendment? Do think it was ratified as a constitutional imprimatur of any behavior?

[PhilsFan]

Originally Posted by INDY500

"arbitrary and irrational"? Talk about self-righteous. Ok Irvine. What's "rational" about limiting marriage to two people? Seems rather "arbitrary" given history and other current cultures around the world.

Marriage, as the government is concerned, is primarily a financial institution. So limiting marriage to two people is mostly tied to that.

Originally Posted by INDY500

Non-sequitur, divorce rates are dependent upon marriage rates for one thing. And how will SSM improve divorce rates among heterosexuals?

How will it hurt divorce rates among heterosexuals?

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by INDY500

"arbitrary and irrational"? Talk about self-righteous. Ok Irvine. What's "rational" about limiting marriage to two people? Seems rather "arbitrary" given history and other current cultures around the world.

yup, arbitrary and irrational. this is what we've seen in court cases across the country, including the SCOTUS. it is arbitrary to single out gay people for marriage discrimination, and there is no rational basis for such discrimination.

what public good is served by preventing gay people from getting married?

Non-sequitur, divorce rates are dependent upon marriage rates for one thing. And how will SSM improve divorce rates among heterosexuals?

more people will get married, for one. i also think the discussion on SSM has been of enormous benefit to society.

read this: The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss - Liza Mundy - The Atlantic

i know you won't read the whole thing, so here's the conclusion:

So yes, marriage will change. Or rather, it will change again. The fact is, there is no such thing as traditional marriage. In various places and at various points in human history, marriage has been a means by which young children were betrothed, uniting royal houses and sealing alliances between nations. In the Bible, it was a union that sometimes took place between a man and his dead brother’s widow, or between one man and several wives. It has been a vehicle for the orderly transfer of property from one generation of males to the next; the test by which children were deemed legitimate or bastard; a privilege not available to black Americans; something parents arranged for their adult children; a contract under which women, legally, ceased to exist. Well into the 19th century, the British common-law concept of “unity of person” meant a woman became her husband when she married, giving up her legal standing and the right to own property or control her own wages.

Many of these strictures have already loosened. Child marriage is today seen by most people as the human-rights violation that it is. The Married Women’s Property Acts guaranteed that a woman could get married and remain a legally recognized human being. The Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia did away with state bans on interracial marriage. By making it easier to dissolve marriage, no-fault divorce helped ensure that unions need not be lifelong. The recent surge in single parenthood, combined with an aging population, has unyoked marriage and child-rearing. History shows that marriage evolves over time. We have every reason to believe that same-sex marriage will contribute to its continued evolution.

The argument that gays and lesbians are social pioneers and bellwethers has been made before. Back in 1992, the British sociologist Anthony Giddens suggested that gays and lesbians were a harbinger of a new kind of union, one subject to constant renegotiation and expected to last only as long as both partners were happy with it. Now that these so-called harbingers are looking to commit to more-binding relationships, we will have the “counterfactual” that Gary Gates talks about: we will be better able to tell which marital stresses and pleasures are due to gender, and which are not.

In the end, it could turn out that same-sex marriage isn’t all that different from straight marriage. If gay and lesbian marriages are in the long run as quarrelsome, tedious, and unbearable; as satisfying, joyous, and loving as other marriages, we’ll know that a certain amount of strife is not the fault of the alleged war between men and women, but just an inevitable thing that happens when two human beings are doing the best they can to find a way to live together.

more concretely:

If you doubt that straight households are paying attention to same-sex ones, consider Danie, a woman who lives with her husband and two children in Bethesda, Maryland. (Danie asked me not to use her last name out of concern for her family’s privacy.) Not long after she completed a master’s degree in Spanish linguistics at Georgetown University, her first baby was born. Because her husband, Jesse, works long hours as a litigator, she decided to become a full-time parent—not an easy decision in work-obsessed Washington, D.C. For a while, she ran a photography business out of their home, partly because she loves photography but partly so she could assure people at dinner parties that she had paying work. Whenever people venture that women who work outside the home don’t judge stay-at-home moms, Danie thinks: Are you freaking kidding me?

She takes some comfort, however, in the example of a lesbian couple with whom she is friendly. Both women are attorneys, and one stays home with their child. “Their life is exactly the same as ours,” Danie told me, with a hint of vindication. If being a stay-at-home mother is “good enough for her, then what’s my issue? She’s a huge women’s-rights activist.” But while comparing herself with a lesbian couple is liberating in some ways, it also exacerbates the competitive anxiety that afflicts so many modern mothers. The other thing about these two mothers, Danie said, is that they are so relaxed, so happy, so present. Even the working spouse manages to be a super-involved parent, to a much greater extent than most of the working fathers she knows. “I’m a little bit obsessed with them,” she says.

Related to this is the question of how gay fatherhood might impact heterosexual fatherhood—by, for example, encouraging the idea that men can be emotionally accessible, logistically capable parents. Will the growing presence of gay dads in some communities mean that men are more often included in the endless e‑mail chains that go to parents of preschoolers and birthday-party invitees? As radically as fatherhood has changed in recent decades, a number of antiquated attitudes about dads have proved strangely enduring: Rob Hardies, the pastor at All Souls, reports that when his partner, Chris, successfully folded a stroller before getting on an airplane with their son, Nico, he was roundly congratulated by passersby, as if he had solved a difficult mathematical equation in public. So low are expectations for fathers, even now, that in Stephanie Schacher’s study of gay fathers and their feelings about caregiving, her subjects reported that people would see them walking on the street with their children and say things like “Giving Mom a break?” Hardies thinks that every time he and Chris take their son to the playground or to story hour, they help disrupt this sort of thinking. He imagines moms seeing a man doing this and gently—or maybe not so gently—pointing it out to their husbands. “Two guys somehow manage to get their act together and have a household and cook dinner and raise a child, without a woman doing all the work,” he says. Rather than setting an example that fathers don’t matter, gay men are setting an example that fathers do matter, and that marriage matters, too.

it's good for gay people. it's good for straight people. it's good for children.

it's so win-win-win it's hard to know where to start.

Equal protection before the law, while a basic human right, is not an unlimited blanket right anymore than religious conscience is an unlimited blanket right. Do you know the history of the 14th amendment? Do think it was ratified as a constitutional imprimatur of any behavior?

behavior? marriage is just a behavior? surely you're not calling a sexual orientation a behavior, since we all know better than that, and it would demonstrate the fact that you have no argument beyond "it's a choice!"

the 14th amendment denotes life, liberty, and property, which is understood to include rights and freedoms as well.

here's what the unanimous Loving v Virginia decision made clear:

"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

[martha]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

what public good is served by preventing gay people from getting married?

You keep asking this like you're going to get an answer.