Gore sexual assualt Follow

Gay marriage would make a lot of people happy while giving up basically nothing. I'll let others take it from there.

Yes, I did. Which is how I know that the stance of marriage being a fundamental right comes before the part you claim was instrumental in making that statement. Here, let's try quoting a broader portion rather than the bit you selected:




He first derives it from an earlier ruling regarding the due process cause in a case regarding education. You're acting as though he is taking his concept of marriage as a fundamental right from Skinner when this is not the case. Had you actually read the case rather than looking for snippets to take out of context, you'd have known this and saved yourself just another embarrassing episode of Gbaji Looks Like An ***.

This is also setting aside the fact that the importance of Perez isn't merely the statement that marriage is a fundamental right (as that can be taken from other decisions as well) but rather the recognition that the status of marriage observed by the courts is one that includes state recognition.

Look, I think it's great that you're now frantically looking at these cases and Googling, trying to slavage some sort of a point. Given your performance over the last three or four pages, it's painfully obvious that you hadn't done so yet so at least you're starting to at least try.


Actually I gave quite a few examples before. I'm not sure who you're trying to convince here -- others have already recognized that I've done this. I'd guess that anyone bothering to follow these threads also knows that I have. I suppose this leaves the possibility that you're trying to convince yourself. Which certainly seems plausible.


Not really and I'd hope that before you started denying people their rights you had a better argument for it than "Sounds good to me".


Wow. Just wow. You don't even read these things, do you? I mean, you not only skim the court cases but you obviously just skim the posts as well. I have repeatedly (and as recently as my last post to you) acknowledged that marriage can be denied to people (just as any right can and is denied to people given sufficient reason) based off this very passage and now you think you've got some big "Gotcha!" I haven't seen before? Really?? Are you that stupid that you're actually taking a passage I've referenced at least a half dozen times in this thread and saying "Ah ha!! You never read THIS, did you?!"

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha....


Thanks for that. I'm leaving on vacation tomorrow so probably won't be responding much to this thread, if at all, after this but that was awesome! You've absolutely shown everyone that you don't have a clue.

Thank you.

Yes, Joph. I did read that part. I rejected it as meaningful because while it happens to be mentioned first in the opinion, the case he quotes doesn't shed any light on the issue. It just happens to include "to marry" in a list of other rights.

I think you're getting to caught up on the order of the words. Do you think that he wrote the opinion while forming the opinion itself? I'm pretty sure he'd thought through the whole thing and did the research and derived his position *before* putting pen to paper. And just as you often write what you're going to argue first and *then* list the reasons why, it appears as though this section of the opinion is written with that stylistic approach.

He put the weakest supporting case first in what is essentially the thesis paragraph of that section. He ends the paragraph with the thesis (that marriage is a fundamental right). Then he follows with more solid reasoning to support his opinion.


Is that really the best you can do? You're going to counter a paragraph which very specifically correlates the right to marry with the right to procreation with a statement that another quote happens to list it as a right and appears earlier in the opinion? Let me say again: Weak.

Here's a benefit to the state.

Homosexuals who marry should have the right to adopt or foster under most state laws (unless a law was written explicitly to prevent married gays from adopting, which has been discussed in a few states already.)

That means more children will be taken out of the state orphanages and into the foster system and into loving homes, leaving less of a burden upon the state, and thus less of a tax burden upon the citizens of the state.

You were doing so good. You agreed that marriage is a fundamental right, per Perez v. Sharp. You agreed that a marriage is not recognized by the state if it doesn't come with these benefits. Thus, by removing the benefits, you eliminate the marriage and infringe on the right. How can that not be the case? You are absolutely infringing on these rights by not offering them the same benefits, because as far as the state is concerned, a marriage without these benefits is not legally a marriage.


Doesn't matter. Perez v. Sharp does not state that a right must be granted only if it can be shown that it advances society to do so; it stated that a right can be infringed only if this advances society's purpose. That is not the case here. It's a very clear distinction made in the ruling.

The rest of your post is equally wrong because the whole logic train is derailed at that point. I'd elaborate but I need to leave for the night.

No. It's a subtle distinction, but what you're saying would require that the actual "infringement" be shown to advance some social purpose. But that's not what the test requires. If it did, a whole lot of things would not be seen as constitutional but are.

The test is that the law must advance some social purpose and that if that law includes some infringement that said infringement is a reasonable component of the law working to the social purpose. Remember that in this case, we're talking about a relative issue. By creating state defined marriage contracts for straight couples, and providing a set of benefits if they enter into them, we've made it easier for them to enter into said marriage contracts. We haven't made it "harder" for gay couples to do so except in a purely relative way. If we hadn't done any of that for straight couples, gay couples would be no worse off today on the issue of marriage, right?

The incredibly minor infringement thus levied on gay couples is certainly "reasonable" in the context of the significant social purpose of encouraging straight couples to marry. In the same way that the okra farmer is harmed in a very minor way by not receiving the same subsidy that the wheat farmer gets (actually, this is a more significant harm in fact), we would still allow the wheat subsidy to stand because it's purpose is to encourage the production of wheat, not okra.

If you can argue that the purpose of marriage laws is to get gay people to marry, then you'd have a point. But that would be a particularly hard argument to make, and there are reams of evidence pointing in the other direction. Common law marriage laws for a start. If gay marriages were the intent of our marriage laws, why have we never applied common law marriages to gay couples? Clearly, the "purpose" of our marriage laws was specific to straight couples. Everything else follows from that point.

The benefits are not the fundamental right. The right to enter into a marriage contract is. Not providing a set of benefits and a pre-defined contract to just sign does represent a minor infringement of that fundamental right, but it's incredibly minor.

The "fundamental right" of marriage presumably existed prior to the US creating a set of benefits. Thus, the benefits *cannot* be the right. They can affect and influence the rate at which one might choose to enjoy that right, but that's not the same thing. I've explained this several times in this thread. A benefit cannot ever be a right. Period. End of story.




I'm not denying that people want that. People want lots of things. Ponies for example. What I'm denying is that by not getting what they want, their constitutional rights are being infringed. See how that works?



Of course they are. They're being convinced that they must fight for something which 90% of them don't want, and then further convinced that their rights are being infringed because they aren't being encouraged by the government to do that thing which 90% of them don't want to do anyway. Think about that for a moment.

A marriage contract is a significantly binding document. Most people would not choose to enter into it unless they felt they had to. For most of history, we've had to create really strong forces to make people enter into them (to one degree or another). Social stigma, creation of the importance of family names, lineage, labels for people who didn't follow the rules, and today a set of benefits to try to convince people to do so with positive reinforcement. And despite all of that, we've still only been moderately successful historically at convincing people to do this.


And here comes the gay rights movement insisting that it's somehow a violation of their rights that no one thought to pressure them to marry? Lol. It's funny if you stop and think about it. We've spent centuries trying to come up with methods to force straight couples into marriage, and gay people are pissed because we aren't forcing them? Ah... But we got rid of all the "force". We use a carrot instead of a stick, don't we?

Let's pretend for a moment, that tomorrow we eliminated all the benefits granted via the state status of marriage. Let's say we re-institute all the traditional social rules and stigmas we used through most of history to coerce people into marrying. But since this is modern times and we're all socially aware and open and whatnot, lets give the gay people the choice to fight to be treated exactly the same as straight people. So they'll be subjected to shotgun weddings. They'll be labeled with scarlet letters. Their parents will arrange their marriages without their say. They'll be called old maids and scorned socially if they don't marry by a certain age. Whatever historically used social pressure you can think of, let's apply it to gay people.

How hard would gay people be fighting for marriage if that was the case? I'm thinking not so much...


They fall for it because it has been made to appear to be something positive which they are being denied, and for which no negative appears to be applicable to themselves. The reality is quite different.




Not at all! I fully agree that most people involved in any sort of movement are ignorant of more than basic surface aspects of the issue themselves. That's why I don't tend to judge the validity of political positions based on what the members of those movements believe or what they are being told, but based on my own assessment of the issue itself. The mere fact of misunderstandings among the masses about the issue doesn't make the issue itself a good or bad one to follow. That would be a dumb way to make up one's mind, right?

It's funny, because I'm often attacked for doing this. Which I find strange. Varus will spout some stereotypical rhetoric and I'll respond with something like "His reason is wrong, but the position is correct, and here's why..." and I get a chorus of "But that's not why most people believe that", as though that somehow invalidates my own argument. Of course the majority argument in almost any issue is going to be an overly simplistic and often factually incorrect one. That's because most people are persuaded by emotion and aren't very good at critical thinking. Again though, that has no bearing on whether the thing they are supporting is a good or bad idea.

Finishing up a final script run, so I'll be heading out for the weekend. I'll say one more thing though:



I would wager good money that if we could talk to the guy who wrote that and asked him if by "marriage" he meant "marriage between a man and a woman" and did not intend it to be applied to gay couples, he would think we were crazy even for asking the question and of course he meant marriage as he and everyone else understood it to be at the time.

That's a separate point of course, but it does bear being said. I've already shown how later in the opinion he clearly associates marriage and procreation. I guess the problem is that when most of us hear the words "fundamental right" we assume it applies to "everyone". But it doesn't apply to single people, right (the benefits at least)? And it doesn't apply to siblings, right? And it doesn't include multi-partner marriages either (I believe a justification for denying polygamy appears in Perez). Clearly, there is an intended context within which "marriage" is intended here. I just think reading the words "marriage is a fundamental right" and taking that as an absolute, even though it clearly was not meant to be at the time those words were written is the wrong way to read the opinion.



Wrong way to look at it. Extending those rights does not further the social objective and failing to do so does not significantly infringe on the rights of gay people. I know you disagree with that, but what are they really being denied here? I'll ask you to again go back to the basics. Ignore the labels and look at the facts. What are gay people being denied? A pre-written contract to sign, and a set of benefits which they largely don't need.

I'll point out the farm subsidy analogy. You have yet to respond to that. If the okra farmers rights are not being infringed sufficiently to make the subsidy unconstitutional, then how can you argue that the gay couples rights are in this case? It's the same thing. Gay couples do not lose anything (much of anything anyway) because straight couples gain. It's a purely relative thing.



Let's get away from the labels. I absolutely can show that by increasing the number of people competing for the same government benefit that it decreases the relative value of the benefit and therefore it's incentive effects. If everyone gets a free pony, and not just good girls, then the use of a free pony as an incentive for girls to be good is clearly reduced. That's the logic of this argument. By extending the qualifications the value of the benefits themselves are reduced as an incentive.

The social purpose for the laws are harmed by extending them. And this is before we even consider the slippery slope aspects of this. The shift of purpose required in order to justify the inclusion of gay couples into state marriage benefits requires that we eliminate and/or ignore any procreation aspect. I know that many of you argue that this is already the case, but I don't agree with that argument at all. Furthermore, if we accept that procreation, or at least the potential for procreation isn't a key component of marriage (the contract in this case, for which we use government benefits at an incentive), then most of the other restrictions disappear as well. There's no reason to limit it to adults. There's no reason to deny it to close relations. Take away the procreation angle, and why deny those groups as well?

Polygamy becomes an obvious next target as well. If it's a fundamental right to marry the "person" of your choice, why be restricted to just one person? Isn't that unfair?


I'm not arguing for or against any of those. But I am saying that once you open that barn door, don't be surprised when all the horses run out. And that's a lot of horses. We'll be left with a whole bunch of people getting those benefits and not so many people not getting them. Which absolutely does weaken the incentive effect.



I just did. Of course it weakens it. It weakens it unnecessarily as well. Let's apply the test again, shall we? Is there some other way in which we could provide for the contractual marriage needs of gay couples without harming the incentive value of the state marriage benefits currently applied to heterosexual couples? Why yes! We can codify a marriage contract which isn't connected to the state status, and which anyone could enter into! Eureka! We have a solution which does everything we want and meets all the "tests" we need to pass.

Doesn't it? Why is that not the correct solution?

Your entire argument is idiotic and baseless to begin with, but this statement right here nullifies any credibility you may have had. You just as well might have said "I'm retarded" and moved on.

He's philosophically invincible!

I guess this was totally ignored because it's hard to argue with.

I love how gbaji wants us to pick a decide and defend it "not based on emotion." Even though we've been telling him the point all along is emotion. Normal people (whether gay or straight) do not get married for any supposed financial benefit. They do it because they love the other person, and in our society the symbolic sanctifying of that love is marriage. Money is not the issue, and never has been. Every time gbaji or varrus or any other conservative drags us into a 12 page debate about the financial aspects of marriage, all they're doing is obfuscating the point: we should allow homosexuals to get married because they love each other the same way a man and woman in heterosexual marriage love each other, and our society recognizes the bond between two people through the ceremony of marriage.

There is no other reason.