gbaji wrote:
Paskil wrote:
Gbaji, your argument is unsound for one simple reason. Post menopausal women can still get married. If marriage was about children, there would be no reason to allow marriage after the age of possible child birth. As a fiscal conservative, you should logically support nullification of all such marriages.
So you're basically saying that since marriage restrictions aren't perfect now, we should just make them less perfect? How does that make any sense? What does this even mean? What I mean is that each ruling since Windsor has in some capacity pointed out that the only reason that laws barring marriage equality exist are because conservatives hate gays. These laws deny partnership benefits granted under marriage and make domestic partnerships separate and less equal. The laws go waaaaaaay above and beyond protecting the "institution of traditional marriage" by banning civil unions and any legally recognized contracts that are similar to a marriage.
Now why would they do that? Why gbaji? The result of these laws is simple. It doesn't only deny the apparent cash grab you expect from gay couples filing for dem govmint benefits (still waiting for the stampede you are apparently expecting), but they make these partnerships between same sex couples one major life event away from complete devastation for the surviving spouse/families life, in the event that something were to happen to one of the partners.
Here's a few examples for you:
Surviving same sex partners are not allowed to bring wrongful death suits on behalf of their deceased partner because their relationship is not legally recognized.
Cannot seek spousal maintenance if they divorce because their relationship is not legally recognized.
Do not have the right to make burial arrangements for their spouse because their relationship is not legally recognized.
Cannot solicit a court for equitable division of community property, including for pension or retirement plans because their relationship is not legally recognized.
Do not enjoy the zone of privacy privileges that heterosexual married couples enjoy in evidentiary proceedings because their relationship is not legally recognized.
Even when a living will exists or other legal documents exist showing power of attorney, hospitals will sometimes delay the visitation rights enjoyed by other married couples because their relationship is not legally recognized..
Shall I go on? Do you see a pattern? Oh, those are too high level? How about I Google a couple of real world applications:
In Alabama wrote:
Hard says he was treated cruelly after the death of his husband, David Fancher, virtually ignored at the Alabama hospital where Fancher was taken after the accident.
Hard said he also is fighting to be considered as the surviving spouse in ongoing litigation over Fancher’s death.
Fancher, 53, died within moments of the crash, but Hard said hospital staff refused to give him any information about his condition because the two weren’t considered legally related. An orderly later passed on the news that Fancher had died, Hard said. The pain was compounded when the death certificate listed Fancher as never married. Hard said he futilely begged to have that changed.
...
Part of the legal peg for the lawsuit is that Hard can’t be considered the surviving spouse and can’t collect any judgment in the ongoing wrongful death litigation over the crash.
In Michigan wrote:
In opposing gay marriage, the state has focused on the well-being of children, arguing that their interests are best served by having both a father and a mother, a position dismissed by gay rights advocates and their allies.
"No other group in society has to pass a parental competency test before they're allowed to marry," attorney Carole Stanyar, who represents the couple, said in an opening statement. "We would like this to be the last trial in America where same-sex couples have to defend themselves."
...
April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, who live in the Detroit suburb of Hazel Park, are asking Friedman to overturn a state law that prevents them from adopting each other's children in addition to taking on the state ban on gay marriage, which was approved as a constitutional amendment by voters in 2004.
In the event of one of their deaths, some states could easily remove the child of the deceased from the home because the other parent has no legal standing in the childs life BECAUSE THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS NOT LEGALLY RECOGNIZED.
gbaji wrote:
"It's a good argument for further restricting marriage requirements, but a crappy one for expanding them."
For what purpose? What needs to be further restricted for marriage? Are you telling me that you actually believe that marriage should be restricted only to couples that procreate? If so, there's really no arguing with you. Marriage (no matter how many times you say it) has legally never had a child requirement and you implying that the state is giving you a marriage contract while winking, nudging and whispering that you should now hurry up and have a litter is ridiculous.
The reason gay marriage should not only be encouraged and allowed, but legally available to all consenting same sex couples is because the fourteenth amendment of the motherfu
cking United States Constitution guarantees all individuals equal protection under the law. SCOTUS and lower courts have many times over the last 100+ years stated that marriage is a right, most famously in the
Loving opinion.
Warren wrote:
These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888). 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 discriminations. 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.
These convictions must be reversed.
So long as heterosexual couples are allowed to be married, without prerequisite, similar homosexual partnerships are inherently less equal under the law as long as they are denied a similar status under the law. This is unconstitutional and you should prepare yourself for the upcoming circuit court rulings that agree with the lower courts (except for maybe from that wacky panel in the 5th circuit).
gbaji wrote:
we should just make them less perfect?
In my opinion, allowing gay marriage makes marriage a more perfect institution. Marriage is a contract between two loving, consenting adults (usually, parental permission, other reasons) that is designed to legally join them together into what is essentially one person, in a way. If you allow heterosexual couples to have the government recognize their relationship but not homosexuals, you are saying that homosexual relationships are lesser. You are also saying that they are not capable of the same feelings and bond as the heterosexual couple.
I think that's disgusting and offensive.
Edited, Mar 13th 2014 11:57pm by Paskil