T1B

schmick wrote:Get rid of all governemt affiliation with the term "marriage" so there is no legal benefit to gays or straights to go to a church and get married.

poptart wrote:lol

What the hell are you talking about?

That may be your opinion, but there is no "separation of church and state" which can be cited which prohibits people in a state from deciding that they want marriage sanctioned by their state.

88 wrote: Most people do not like having things shoved down their throats.

BSmack wrote:To take discriminate against a citizen, the state must cite a compelling reason.

mvscal wrote:

BSmack wrote:To take discriminate against a citizen, the state must cite a compelling reason.

There is no discrimination. Any man can marry any woman.

Diego in Seattle wrote:

mvscal wrote:

BSmack wrote:To take discriminate against a citizen, the state must cite a compelling reason.

There is no discrimination. Any man can marry any woman.

Where does the Constitution require that marriage must be between two different genders instead of anyone of a person's choosing?

Left Seater wrote:Care to link us up to any mention of marriage in the Constitution? Thought so. States issue.

All Justices, past and present, start their assessment of a case about
the meaning of a constitutional provision by looking at how the provision was understood by the
people who ratified it. If we think of the Constitution as a covenant between the governed and
the governors, between the people and their political leaders, it is easy to appreciate the force of
this basic norm of constitutional interpretation—that the originally understood meaning of the
charter generally will be the lasting meaning of the charter. When two individuals sign a
contract to sell a house, no one thinks that, years down the road, one party to the contract may
change the terms of the deal. That is why the parties put the agreement in writing and signed it
publicly—to prevent changed perceptions and needs from changing the guarantees in the
agreement. So it normally goes with the Constitution: The written charter cements the
limitations on government into an unbending bulwark, not a vane alterable whenever alterations
occur—unless and until the people, like contracting parties, choose to change the contract
through the agreed-upon mechanisms for doing so. See U.S. Const. art. V. If American lawyers
in all manner of settings still invoke the original meaning of Magna Carta, a Charter for England
in 1215, surely it is not too much to ask that they (and we) take seriously the original meaning of
the United States Constitution, a Charter for this country in 1789. Any other approach, too
lightly followed, converts federal judges from interpreters of the document into newly
commissioned authors of it

A dose of humility makes us hesitant to condemn as unconstitutionally irrational a view
of marriage shared not long ago by every society in the world, shared by most, if not all, of our
ancestors, and shared still today by a significant number of the States. Hesitant, yes; but still a
rational basis, some rational basis, must exist for the definition. What is it? Two at a minimum
suffice to meet this low bar. One starts from the premise that governments got into the business
of defining marriage, and remain in the business of defining marriage, not to regulate love but to
regulate sex, most especially the intended and unintended effects of male-female intercourse.
Imagine a society without marriage. It does not take long to envision problems that might result
from an absence of rules about how to handle the natural effects of male-female intercourse:
children. May men and women follow their procreative urges wherever they take them? Who is
responsible for the children that result? How many mates may an individual have? How does
one decide which set of mates is responsible for which set of children? That we rarely think
about these questions nowadays shows only how far we have come and how relatively stable our
society is, not that States have no explanation for creating such rules in the first place.

Once one accepts a need to establish such ground rules, and most especially a need to
create stable family units for the planned and unplanned creation of children, one can well
appreciate why the citizenry would think that a reasonable first concern of any society is the need
to regulate male-female relationships and the unique procreative possibilities of them. One way
to pursue this objective is to encourage couples to enter lasting relationships through subsidies
and other benefits and to discourage them from ending such relationships through these and other
means. People may not need the government’s encouragement to have sex. And they may not
need the government’s encouragement to propagate the species. But they may well need the
government’s encouragement to create and maintain stable relationships within which children
may flourish. It is not society’s laws or for that matter any one religion’s laws, but nature’s laws
(that men and women complement each other biologically), that created the policy imperative.
And governments typically are not second-guessed under the Constitution for prioritizing how
they tackle such issues. Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 486–87 (1970).

No doubt, that is not the only way people view marriage today. Over time, marriage has
come to serve another value—to solemnize relationships characterized by love, affection, and
commitment. Gay couples, no less than straight couples, are capable of sharing such
relationships. And gay couples, no less than straight couples, are capable of raising children and
providing stable families for them. The quality of such relationships, and the capacity to raise
children within them, turns not on sexual orientation but on individual choices and individual
commitment. All of this supports the policy argument made by many that marriage laws should
be extended to gay couples, just as nineteen States have done through their own sovereign
powers. Yet it does not show that the States, circa 2014, suddenly must look at this policy issue
in just one way on pain of violating the Constitution.

The signature feature of rational basis review is that governments will not be placed in
the dock for doing too much or for doing too little in addressing a policy question. Id. In a
modern sense, crystallized at some point in the last ten years, many people now critique state
marriage laws for doing too little—for being underinclusive by failing to extend the definition of
marriage to gay couples. Fair enough. But rational basis review does not permit courts to
invalidate laws every time a new and allegedly better way of addressing a policy emerges, even a
better way supported by evidence and, in the Michigan case, by judicial factfinding. If
legislative choices may rest on “rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data,”
Beach Commc’ns, 508 U.S. at 315, it is hard to see the point of premising a ruling of
unconstitutionality on factual findings made by one unelected federal judge that favor a different
policy. Rational basis review does not empower federal courts to “subject” legislative line-
drawing to “courtroom” factfinding designed to show that legislatures have done too much or too
little. Id.

What we are left with is this: By creating a status (marriage) and by subsidizing it (e.g.,
with tax-filing privileges and deductions), the States created an incentive for two people who
procreate together to stay together for purposes of rearing offspring. That does not convict the
States of irrationality, only of awareness of the biological reality that couples of the same sex do
not have children in the same way as couples of opposite sexes and that couples of the same sex
do not run the risk of unintended offspring. That explanation, still relevant today, suffices to
allow the States to retain authority over an issue they have regulated from the beginning.

To take another rational explanation for the decision of many States not to expand the
definition of marriage, a State might wish to wait and see before changing a norm that our
society (like all others) has accepted for centuries. That is not preserving tradition for its own
sake. No one here claims that the States’ original definition of marriage was unconstitutional
when enacted. The plaintiffs’ claim is that the States have acted irrationally in standing by the
traditional definition in the face of changing social mores. Yet one of the key insights of
federalism is that it permits laboratories of experimentation—accent on the plural—allowing one
State to innovate one way, another State another, and a third State to assess the trial and error
over time. As a matter of state law, the possibility of gay marriage became real in 2003 with the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in Goodridge. Eleven years later, the clock
has not run on assessing the benefits and burdens of expanding the definition of marriage.
Eleven years indeed is not even the right timeline. The fair question is whether in 2004, one year
after Goodridge, Michigan voters could stand by the traditional definition of marriage. How can
we say that the voters acted irrationally for sticking with the seen benefits of thousands of years
of adherence to the traditional definition of marriage in the face of one year of experience with a
new definition of marriage? A State still assessing how this has worked, whether in 2004 or
2014, is not showing irrationality, just a sense of stability and an interest in seeing how the new
definition has worked elsewhere. Even today, the only thing anyone knows for sure about the
long-term impact of redefining marriage is that they do not know. A Burkean sense of caution
does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, least of all when measured by a timeline less than a
dozen years long and when assessed by a system of government designed to foster step-by-step,
not sudden winner-take-all, innovations to policy problems.

Consider how plaintiffs’ love-and-commitment definition of marriage would fare under their own rational basis
test. Their definition does too much because it fails to account for the reality that no State in the
country requires couples, whether gay or straight, to be in love. Their definition does too little
because it fails to account for plural marriages, where there is no reason to think that three or
four adults, whether gay, bisexual, or straight, lack the capacity to share love, affection, and
commitment, or for that matter lack the capacity to be capable (and more plentiful) parents to
boot. If it is constitutionally irrational to stand by the man-woman definition of marriage, it must
be constitutionally irrational to stand by the monogamous definition of marriage. Plaintiffs have
no answer to the point. What they might say they cannot: They might say that tradition or
community mores provide a rational basis for States to stand by the monogamy definition of
marriage, but they cannot say that because that is exactly what they claim is illegitimate about
the States’ male-female definition of marriage. The predicament does not end there. No State is
free of marriage policies that go too far in some directions and not far enough in others, making
all of them vulnerable—if the claimants’ theory of rational basis review prevails.

Diego in Seattle wrote:

Left Seater wrote:Care to link us up to any mention of marriage in the Constitution? Thought so. States issue.

Just because something isn't mentioned in the Constitution doesn't mean that states are free to create their own laws that deprive citizens of rights & privileges w/o a compelling reason (14th Amendment).

Jay in Phoenix wrote:Blimey, a nostra sighting! Good show. How goes it nos?

Sudden Sam wrote:

nostra wrote: I'll come over here for some "intellectual" insight into the world's problems

Left Seater wrote:

Diego in Seattle wrote:

Left Seater wrote:Care to link us up to any mention of marriage in the Constitution? Thought so. States issue.

Just because something isn't mentioned in the Constitution doesn't mean that states are free to create their own laws that deprive citizens of rights & privileges w/o a compelling reason (14th Amendment).

Privileges are which of the following:

Life
Liberty
Property

Marriage is none of those.

88 wrote:Here is the counter-argument by the dissent:

Today, my colleagues seem to have fallen prey to the misguided notion that the intent of
the framers of the United States Constitution can be effectuated only by cleaving to the
legislative will and ignoring and demonizing an independent judiciary. Of course, the framers
presciently recognized that two of the three co-equal branches of government were representative
in nature and necessarily would be guided by self-interest and the pull of popular opinion. To
restrain those natural, human impulses, the framers crafted Article III to ensure that rights,
liberties, and duties need not be held hostage by popular whims.

More than 20 years ago, when I took my oath of office to serve as a judge on the United
States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, I solemnly swore to “administer justice without
respect to persons,” to “do equal right to the poor and to the rich,” and to “faithfully and
impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me . . . under the Constitution
and laws of the United States.” See 28 U.S.C. § 453. If we in the judiciary do not have the
authority, and indeed the responsibility, to right fundamental wrongs left excused by a majority
of the electorate, our whole intricate, constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as
the oaths to which we swore, prove to be nothing but shams.

The majority in this opinion view their role as judges as making sure that the original contract, the Constitution ratified by the States with the consent of the People, is interpreted as was originally agreed, and that any changes that are to be made to the law must be done so in accordance with its terms by the people or the legislature(s) empowered to enact laws on behalf of the people.

The dissent in this opinion view their role as judges as the ultimate arbiters of fairness and justice, and believe they are empowered to twist old laws into saying anything they believe would be fair in today's climate to right whatever injustice or wrongs the judges believe is the case. The judge absolutely believes she is empowered to force the majority of citizens to accept new laws that she deems to be fair, whether they consent to that or not.

Someone ought to read her the definition of tyranny.

If we in the judiciary do not have the
authority, and indeed the responsibility, to right fundamental wrongs left excused by a majority
of the electorate, our whole intricate, constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as
the oaths to which we swore, prove to be nothing but shams

nostra wrote:you stalking me, homo?

all is well. most of the time I hang out with David in Tulsa and BT over at the other place and engage in mindless drivel, but from time to time I'll come over here for some "intellectual" insight into the world's problems

Diego in Seattle wrote: Wrong.

This is a clear violation of the 14th Amendment.

Diego in Seattle wrote:If you died tomorrow, would your wife be able to take possession of your house w/o a huge tax bill? A partner in a same-sex relationship wouldn't have the same privilege to transfer property sans inheritance taxes that you can. This is a clear violation of the 14th Amendment.

smackaholic wrote:Holy crap. I agree with shmick.

Left Seater wrote:If one state has to recognize something clearly not mentioned in the constitution

Goober McTuber wrote:

smackaholic wrote:Holy crap. I agree with shmick.

Not much of a surprise. You're both wet-brained fucktards.

Wolfman wrote:What gets me is the twisting of language by certain groups. For example, back in my younger years the word gay meant happy, carefree. No mention in a dictionary of an alternative sex life. Also looking back the word marry (marriage) referred solely to the wedding of a man and woman. No mention of two guys or two ladies. Now if you want to start calling cows horses, knock yourself out.It's the same way with marriage to me. Words used to have meaning. It's that easy to me. Guess not so much anymore.

Mgo wrote:Yeah, language evolving over time? I mean, what's the deal with that?

Sincerely,

the dawn of man through today

Wolfman wrote:What gets me is the twisting of language by certain groups.

Jsc810 wrote:The Constitution governs us.

Jsc810 wrote:Even the Pope says that the Big Bang and evolution are real.

Jsc wrote:pop, Genesis is fiction. Quit trying to take it literally.

poptart wrote: -- and relays that it's intention is to be taken literally.

Marty wrote:Which language? Which transcription?

schmick wrote:The point of the bible, when it was written by the elites 1500 years ago

Jsc wrote:pop, Jesus never lived