Koki on 9/5/2012 at 17:00
Quote Posted by BEAR
Sorry to rant. I think things are going to have to get much worse before they can get better, as intelligent people still can't see through this bullshit.
I thought intelligent people could always see through bullshit. That's what made them intelligent.
jay pettitt on 9/5/2012 at 17:43
Dear Mr Easterling,
The Laws of Nature are consequences, not instructions.
All the best,
Me
p.s. If that's too complicated try this rule of thumb - if it needs legislation, it's not a Law of Nature.
Do you think he reads TTLG?
BEAR on 10/5/2012 at 04:37
Quote Posted by Koki
I thought intelligent people could always see through bullshit. That's what made them intelligent.
Not really. I know a lot of highly intelligent people that simultaneously believe totally absurd bullshit. I know several engineers that are conservative Christians or raging libertarians. They can be very intelligent about things they know about. My thesis adviser is like that, very "show me the proof" and down to earth about most things, but will turn around and accept some things entirely on faith with zero proof whatsoever.
Faith and ideology trump intelligence when faith and ideology get there first.
As for the topic at hand, the most frustrating part of this whole thing is the amendment does absolutely nothing to prevent gay marriage more than it already is. It failing to pass would still leave gay marriage illegal, but it wouldn't have done the many other bad things the amendment did.
demagogue on 10/5/2012 at 05:49
I posted this on another forum and thought I'd post it here too. It's my basic criticisms against what NC did from a legal perspective:
I have two types of criticisms against North Carolina's decision.
(1) even taking the pro-democracy decisionmaking position that a states' citizens can and should decide this issue for themselves (which I have issues with, see #2, but assuming it arguendo), even that position should still admit that democracy works best through normal, democratically-approved legislation. The lesson we learned from prohibition is it's *awful* to try to "lock in" substantive legislation in a constitution. Constitutions are for the mechanics of law making and general rights, not substantive laws; that's for normal legislation & the normal democratic process. Constitutional "lock in" ends up being anti-democratic in the end because it's taking the democratic process away from future generations to decide for themselves their own approach democratically.
Then (2) under the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, marriage is a fundamental right that requires strict scrutiny, that means the government must have a compelling justification to discriminate groups from the right, allowing some groups the right but not others. This is why states cannot ban interracial marriages. For banning gays from marriage, it's hard to see what possible compelling governance reason the state could have. Usually it's things like "We have to stop X people from Y'ing or people die, but for Z people it's ok" or "real differences in the group make it necessary to treat them differently (e.g., women can have more bathrooms in public buildings then men because physically they need to go to the bathroom more, although having equal bathroom access isn't exactly "fundamental" so the scrutiny is lower)"... The first is out. The second? It's not clear what's different about two men that justify different treatment for the traditional purposes of marriage; they cohabitate, raise a family, mutually support one another, etc... Where's the "real difference" that justifies different treatment? If there isn't one, then the 14th Am EP test strikes the state law as outside the state's power (applied to state govt's through "incorporation", little legal detail).
..............
Edit: Looking back over it, I think the case for #2 is even stronger than I worded it there, because for a fundamental right, the scrutiny is very strict, which means the government justification has to be astoundingly compelling, and IIRC in the entire history of Supreme Court decisions there's only one case where there was a state justification that met strict scrutiny, although now I can't remember what the case was, but it was a very special case anyway. But the point is, even if there were some "real differences" between hetero & homosexual cohabitation for the purposes of marriage (which I'm not sure there even are), but even that might not be enough to overturn strict scrutiny unless the state interest were really over the top.
icemann on 10/5/2012 at 06:19
Well it doesn't matter where you go in the world, there will always be ignorant people.
heywood on 10/5/2012 at 07:40
Quote Posted by demagogue
Ugh, haven't these people learned the lesson from Prohibition? Constitutions are about mechanical procedures & general rights. You don't go around throwing in specific legislation like it were a municipal ordinance and flap your arms: we *really* mean it this time!
Quote Posted by BEAR
As for the topic at hand, the most frustrating part of this whole thing is the amendment does absolutely nothing to prevent gay marriage more than it already is. It failing to pass would still leave gay marriage illegal, but it wouldn't have done the many other bad things the amendment did.
The purpose of the amendment is to prevent NC state courts from over-ruling the legislation. Same-sex marriages were first granted by state courts over-ruling statutes in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, and Iowa.
There's probably a bit of anti-judicial backlash involved in it. I remember when same sex marriage rights were first granted in Massachusetts by the state supreme court. At the time, civil unions were preferred by the majority of people in the state and by the legislature, and a lot of people (libs included) were angry that the court stepped in and cut that option off. There was a big push for a constitutional amendment then too, but it was to replace marriage with civil unions.
Related to the above, guess who ordered the first marriage licenses to be granted to gay couples in the US?
Mitt Romney.
Not saying he was a proponent, but he stepped in and gave the order to start issuing licenses anyway after the legislature refused to comply with the court's order to amend the marital laws. It's something I'm surprised wasn't used against him in the primaries.
I'm proud of my former home state of New Hampshire, for being the first state to legalize civil unions through the normal legislative process without involvement of the courts, and the first to grant same sex marriages also through the normal legislative process, and for having a Republican dominated legislature that struck down the repeal attempt. When the majority of Republican legislators in NH voted to uphold same-sex marriage rights, that's a good sign.
EDIT: And kudos to Obama for finding his back bone.
Sombras on 10/5/2012 at 11:01
Quote Posted by demagogue
Looking back over it, I think the case for #2 is even stronger than I worded it there, because for a fundamental right, the scrutiny is very strict, which means the government justification has to be astoundingly compelling, and IIRC in the entire history of Supreme Court decisions there's only one case where there was a state justification that met strict scrutiny, although now I can't remember what the case was, but it was a very special case anyway. But the point is, even if there were some "real differences" between hetero & homosexual cohabitation for the purposes of marriage (which I'm not sure there even are), but even that might not be enough to overturn strict scrutiny unless the state interest were really over the top.
Really interesting, demagogue. Didn't know that marriage was considered a fundamental right in the legal sense.
Vasquez on 10/5/2012 at 11:25
Quote Posted by Chimpy Chompy
What's bad about gay marriage? How does society suffer?
This is what I'd like to know, too. The arguments are always totally vague like "It will crumble the whole society" - but if you ask "How?", you never hear a sensible answer, only the tired old babble of how God made it so etc.
I guess the most rabid homophobes fear that if homosexuality is ok'd by the society, gay people turn just as fanatic as the anti-gay brigade, and demand everyone must turn gay :rolleyes:
SubJeff on 10/5/2012 at 11:48
I think the predominant argument is that its not conducive to a stable family core with appropriate gender role models. Which is kind of true.
The question then is whether or not you need defined gender role models in parents. Because this is all fairly new it'll be a couple of generations before we have any evidence to show whether two gay parents messes you up or not.
Briareos H on 10/5/2012 at 13:35
Even then, just like with modern heterosexual or monoparental families, saying something beyond an individual case basis study will probably prove rather difficult.
And anyway, this is not about adoption by homosexual couples --which is bound to polarise many people, even among the open-minded-- but simply about marriage. Quite frankly I don't see a single argument against.
