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Pundit changes view based on (*gasp!*) evidence

I'm going to go on record here by saying that there should be no legal benefits for marriage or civil unions period, regardless of the sexual orientation of the couple.

The decision to form a monogamous bond is a purely social one and and to provide legal privileges because of it is exclusionary to people who for various reasons are not in relationships.
 
Alareth said:
I'm going to go on record here by saying that there should be no legal benefits for marriage or civil unions period, regardless of the sexual orientation of the couple.

The decision to form a monogamous bond is a purely social one and and to provide legal privileges because of it is exclusionary to people who for various reasons are not in relationships.
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Still can't get a date, eh?
 
Brainster said:
Politically, deciding difficult issues judicially never solves anything; it just guarantees that opponents of the decision will pursue their grievances through changes on the court, as happened in Iowa:
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Not compelling - it is, rather, exactly the kind of check the people have over their elected officials. If they don't like their rulings, they can throw the bums out or rewrite their constitution. Justices should be interpreting the laws - not opinion polls.

Roe v. Wade came during an era when several states had already decided to allow abortion. Had that process been allowed to continue, abortion would probably be a settled question. Instead it has lingered for almost forty years.
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That is purely speculation on your part. One could say wouldn't have happened on its own, as evidenced by the fact that it still isn't a settled question in some voters mind some 40 years later.

All of this is beside the point - popularity (or lack thereof) shouldn't determine constitutionality.

There are certainly some situations where judicial activism is appropriate; Brown vs Board of Education is an example. You could show substantial harm to citizens with school segregation. It is difficult to show similar harm with a refusal to recognize gay marriage.
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I don't think it's that difficult - there is the social stigma that being "in a civil union" less than or otherwise unequal to "marriage." There are also benefits conferred to marriages that do not exist within civil unions (hospital visitations, adoption considerations, tax breaks, etc).
 
David Frum was fired from AEI for criticizing the Palin and the Tea Party (donors don't like paying the salary of a guy who criticizes an increasingly important wing of their movement). He was also a leading critic of the Harriet Meyers nomination.

I saw Frum some months ago on bloggingheads.tv and on the topic of gay marriage he said he was "trying to make peace with it," basically recognizing that it's going to happen.

The conservative criticism of him is that he's a vile New York "intellectual" (by way of Canada) invested in impressing his New York friends at New York cocktail parties. In the way Buckley purged the movement of the Birchers, Frum wants to purge the Palins, the people calling Obama a "Marxist." He reads Russell Kirk, probably listens to classical music. Though a neoconservative jackass, he's much, much, much better than the typical conservative. It was fun to see him criticize the libertarianish tea party people: "Can the government pass a law saying footy pajamas should not be flammable? Is that an unreasonable regulation? What should the government do?"
 
TraneWreck said:
I like the idea of the state getting out of the "marriage" business all together.
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I often hear this, but I don't know what it means in practice.

Does it mean that the state views all people as individuals and marriage (or divorce) has no legal effect? I don't see how they can "get out of the "marriage" business all together" without a radical change in the law and culture.
 
Brainster said:
But is marriage a "right"? Or is it a contractual obligation that society enforces in order to provide for the rearing of children?
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Then what about marriage of people who do not intend to have children? What about couples in which one partner is (or both are) infertile? What about couples where the woman is already too old to have children?

Should those receive benefits as well, even though they are not about rearing children?

And should unmarried couples with children and single parents not receive the same benefits as married couples, if rearing children is the point of said benefits?
 
Brainster said:
The idea that judges can suddenly find a right to gay marriage somewhere either in state constitutions or the US constitution is ridiculous.
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Does that go for all other judicial interpretations of rights under common-law systems? Or is gay marriage special in some way?
 
Re: Activist judges

Was there ANY judge in Iowa who actually ruled in favor of prohibiting gay marriage? I know the Supreme Court case was 7 - 0 (including all the right-leaning Branstad appointees). In order to get to the ISC, it had to go through lower courts. Did any of those judges rule oppositely?

It's really hard to claim that a ruling is due to "activist judges" when every judge that has heard the case agrees. Are they ALL activist judges?
 
Brainster said:
I reject your premise. Like President Obama, I don't know if state-sanctioned gay marriage is the right choice. However, I am respectful of the rights of individual states to decide that on their own. The idea that judges can suddenly find a right to gay marriage somewhere either in state constitutions or the US constitution is ridiculous.
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So do you reject brown vs board of ed and loving v virginia? If not why not?

The courts are there in part to protect minority rights.

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk
 
Puppycow said:
I often hear this, but I don't know what it means in practice.

Does it mean that the state views all people as individuals and marriage (or divorce) has no legal effect? I don't see how they can "get out of the "marriage" business all together" without a radical change in the law and culture.
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We're rapidly moving towards allowing gays to be married, so I'm not sure how "civil unions for all" is more radical.

Again, marriages are the union of two separate traditions: we have the legal aspect (tax breaks, inheritence laws, automatic rights in emergency situations...etc.), and a separate religious tradition. We've been steadily moving away from the more restrictive aspects of religious marriage--the proliferation of divorce and interracial marriage being two prominent examples--but we still have this legacy of priests having the authority to grant the legal benefits.

Right now the primary legal difference between a civil union and a marriage are federal and interstate laws. Because of the Defense of Marriage Act, same-sex couples cannot receive the federal benefits of marriage, and because not all states recognize same-sex civil unions, they do not travel accross borders.

The only remaining difference is the emotional baggage and religious tradition contained in the notion of "marriage" (set aside, for the moment, the silliness of claims about "traditional marriage").

One way to solve this problem is to pass laws to include same-sex couples within the "marriage" tent. Another solution is to allow "marriage" to be defined purely by religion, and give civil benefits, both state and federal, to anyone who applies.

On a certain level this is a semantic difference. Or, more to the point, for those of us who tend to find religious tradition ridiculous, the notion of "marriage" never held any spiritual or emotional significance, so it doesn't bother us to include homosexuals.

On a Constitutional level, however, this is a conjunction of state and religious function that, while not particularly significant, should be eliminated. The state should remain entirely neutral on the issue of "marriage," recognize none of them, and allow individual churches to decide how their fantasy world will recognize coupling (or polygamist relationships or whatever).
 
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Alareth said:
I'm going to go on record here by saying that there should be no legal benefits for marriage or civil unions period, regardless of the sexual orientation of the couple.

The decision to form a monogamous bond is a purely social one and and to provide legal privileges because of it is exclusionary to people who for various reasons are not in relationships.
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It has long been the case that married couples get preferential treatment in our society, especially when it comes to the income tax. If a single person lives next door to a married couple, and they have the same income, identical houses etc. The single will pay more taxes than the couple.

Young single males are the first to get drafted in war time. Married males are usually the last to go. While I admit there is some justification for this, it is still patently unfair to the guy who elects to stay single. He is in effect being punished for not being married.
 
The thing about having civil unions for homosexuals and marriage for heterosexuals becomes difficult as soon as you remember transexuals. Marriages have been annuled when challanged on that basis so why wouldn't we expect to see challanges based on the idea that they should have gotten the other kind of paperwork.

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk
 
Brainster said:
It is absurd to assume that we have already seen the full effects of gay marriage in our society, when only a few small states have had it for a few years.

Note that I am not saying I know what the effects will be--good, bad, major or minor. I am just saying that the idea that the results are already in is transparently untrue.
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What effects do you think we are not seeing, 7 years after same sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts?
 
Alt+F4 said:
What effects do you think we are not seeing, 7 years after same sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts?
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Ok, granted, it hasn't destroyed Real True Marriages in Massachusetts, but we don't know what will happen if it's allowed in, say, Texas; it'll probably destroy the entire state! We Just Don't Know!
 
elbe said:
Ok, granted, it hasn't destroyed Real True Marriages in Massachusetts, but we don't know what will happen if it's allowed in, say, Texas; it'll probably destroy the entire state!
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We can always hope.
 
WildCat said:
Do you think gays are enjoying the equal protections of the law wrt marriage?
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[engage right wing nut mode]
Of course they do, a gay man can marry any woman he wants to. A lesbian can marry any woman she wants to.
[canceling right wing nut mode]
 
TraneWreck said:
but we still have this legacy of priests having the authority to grant the legal benefits.
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Just a minor note here-----priests or other clergy have no authority to grant anyone any legal rights/benefits. They can only perform a religious ceremony of whatever brand they belong to. Only the civil authority can issue a legally binding marriage license. Without that it wouldn't matter if the Pope married you---it would have no legal standing. The state simply recognizes that clergy can perform as officiants after the license is granted.

When a recognized officiant and the witnesses, along with the couple, sign off on that license the marriage is legal, ceremony or no ceremony. At least in any state I know of. In Florida, you can be married by any Notary Public. They are legally recognized as officiants, as are judges.

In case anyone is interested-----------

http://marriage.about.com/cs/marriagelicenses/a/officiants.htm
 
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