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**BREAKING** U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Rule on Gay Marriage

Anthony60 said:
Thanks for the softball. First, there is no pro-discrimination side in this. Second, all men can marry women, all women can marry men. No one has to, many don't. That covers everyone. And third, I really don't like when people decide to use the government, unconstitutionally, to force their desires on everyone else. That has to be stopped, it undermines our society. If SSM happens, it needs to happen within the rules that we have set up. You can't have an entire State vote on an issue, and then when you lose, get one person to flip it. What the Hell was the vote for???
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You'd have to ask Alabama, they voted to ban interracial marriage and it was "flipped" by the federal courts when measured against the United States Constitution.

And ya, there is a "pro-discrimination side", it those that want to exclude same-sex couple from Civil Marriage.

BTW - It's not "one person", there is the District Judge, the Cirucuit Judges, and the Supreme Court.



But I notice you failed to provide an answer to the direct question. Have a nice day.



>>>>
 
Anthony60 said:
Thanks for the softball. First, there is no pro-discrimination side in this. Second, all men can marry women, all women can marry men. No one has to, many don't. That covers everyone. And third, I really don't like when people decide to use the government, unconstitutionally, to force their desires on everyone else. That has to be stopped, it undermines our society. If SSM happens, it needs to happen within the rules that we have set up. You can't have an entire State vote on an issue, and then when you lose, get one person to flip it. What the Hell was the vote for???

Oh, and as a little P.S. to this entire argument. The left couldn't give a rat's butt about gays and whether or not they can marry, if they could get more votes by being on the other side of the issue, they'd leave you all at the alter in a heartbeat. Don't kid yourselves.
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The problem is that not all men decide to spend their lives with a woman nor not all women with a man. Some choose to spend their lives with someone of the same gender. If the government is going to recognize for the purposes of extension of government defined benefits one type of (presumably) permanent living arrangement it must recognize all.
 
WorldWatcher said:
No it goes farther than that. He said that sexual orientation isn't covered so homosexuals aren't included under the "all citizens" part, so laws such as anti-sodomy laws that targeted homosexuals should have been upheld and that conduct remained illegal.



Of course Lawrence v. Texas and Romer v. Evans show that is incorrect.



>>>>
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You can play games with my arguments as much as you like, it's not a response to them. They are still part of "any person", however, they are not a protected class and the 14th just does not apply here.
 
Gaius46 said:
I didn't say that wasn't the intent. The 14th is a reconstruction amendment. It may have been prompted by slavery but it doesn't follow from that that it only applies to former slaves. Especially when the wording so explicitly says it applies to all people.

Are you speaking of women in terms of voting rights? I'd suggest that if the 14th amendment applied to voting rights there'd be no need for a 15th amendment.
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No, not just voting rights. Women were still second class citizens and the 14th did nothing to change that or the unequal application of law in their regard.
 
CriticalThought said:
All I can say is...

tumblr_mtk43gX7Fp1s7ikn2o1_400.gif
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YEP!!!!

TOTALLY AWESOME . . . . .

I want SCOTUS to rule already and just make equal rights national but this is a victory in itself for equal rights. It simply shows that SCOTUS found no reason to review the cases where the lower courts ruled that denying gay marriage is unconstitutional because thats obvious and their rulings were sound.

great day! Many bigots and haters and people against equal rights are going crazy and losing their ****, its awesome!

:2party:

#EqualRightsAreWinning
 
clownboy said:
Wow, I know you know more of our history than that displays. Tell me again the intent wasn't to deal with former slaves. It certainly didn't apply to women who, last I checked were persons.
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The 14th amendment was absolutely meant to grant citizenship to slaves (not just blacks), but Section 1 was broadly drafted to limit state powers, and those limitations were not limited to race but to any attempt for the state to circumvent equal protection of the laws. It has been used to protect against laws which used literacy, age, national origin, etc. to deny equal protection of the law.

Section 2 of the 14th amendment has your answer as far as women's suffrage.

"But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State."

The wording was deliberately chosen to keep women from using Section 1 to argue for the right to vote. Never before had the words "male" or "female" been used in the Constitution.
 
Anthony60 said:
And third, I really don't like when people decide to use the government, unconstitutionally, to force their desires on everyone else. That has to be stopped, it undermines our society. If SSM happens, it needs to happen within the rules that we have set up. You can't have an entire State vote on an issue, and then when you lose, get one person to flip it. What the Hell was the vote for???.
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You are literally advocating this, though, when you have people vote to force their desires onto the minority.
 
clownboy said:
You can play games with my arguments as much as you like, it's not a response to them. They are still part of "any person", however, they are not a protected class and the 14th just does not apply here.
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The 14th amendment has nothing to do with "protected class." That is the Federal Anti Discrimination law.

No offense, but you really are not showing a particularly good comprehension of the US Constitution or federal law.
 
clownboy said:
Where are you getting this?
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14th Amendment...

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The 14th amendment covers gays and lesbians because they are "citizens" and "persons".
 
Deuce said:
So they didn't want the 14th amendment to cover anything except former slaves/racial issues? Who said that? What lead you to believe this was the intent? What if I suggested they were wiser than this, and realized that there were other aspects of a person that might be cause for discrimination in the future that they wanted to preempt?
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Well, for one it was a reconstruction amendment, that should give you a clue right there. For another, it had no impact on women and wasn't even applied to them, plenty of law still treated them unequally.

Our amendment process was put into place for regular maintenance. It wasn't a set it and forget sort of thing (that was well known when the 14th was ratified, we forgot it later), nor is the Constitution some sort of living document whose meaning and intent changes with the times. That's precisely what I mean by maintenance. We haven't kept up and now we rely upon nine robed justices to do the end runs around the Constitution.
 
clownboy said:
No, not just voting rights. Women were still second class citizens and the 14th did nothing to change that or the unequal application of law in their regard.
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Actually, Section of 2 of the 14th amendment further enforced women not having voting rights.
 
Gaius46 said:
The problem is that not all men decide to spend their lives with a woman nor not all women with a man. Some choose to spend their lives with someone of the same gender. If the government is going to recognize for the purposes of extension of government defined benefits one type of (presumably) permanent living arrangement it must recognize all.
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So, now we have to allow polygamy?
 
CriticalThought said:
14th Amendment...

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The 14th amendment covers gays and lesbians because they are "citizens" and "persons".
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No, no. Funny how you post one thing and then rebut it. MALE person as per YOUR post. You deny the 14th was about now freed slaves and race after posting that was precisely what it was about. Hilarious.
 
clownboy said:
Well, for one it was a reconstruction amendment, that should give you a clue right there. For another, it had no impact on women and wasn't even applied to them, plenty of law still treated them unequally.

Our amendment process was put into place for regular maintenance. It wasn't a set it and forget sort of thing, nor is the Constitution some sort of living document whose meaning and intent changes with the times. That precisely what I mean by maintenance. We haven't kept up and now we rely upon nine robed justices to do the end runs around the Constitution.
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That's it? No particular statements by anyone involved in enacting the amendment? Courts were just slow to protect women, so that's it? Courts were slow to protect black people too, some of the early rulings had things like "It's ok to punish blacks more for the same crime as whites, as long as you punish all blacks equally." Nearly 60 years passed between Plessy and Brown. This isn't a particularly compelling argument, even if we're granting that the "intent" of the writers is critical. In general, I'd say that intent is ambiguous, and individual liberty trumps other concerns barring highly-compelling arguments to the contrary, and that is the real intent of the constitution as a whole.
 
clownboy said:
So, now we have to allow polygamy?
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In absence of a rational state interest to the contrary, yes. (rational basis test only, as polygamy is not a distinction of race, gender, or any other classification that requires higher levels of scrutiny)

However, the rational basis test is not a particularly high bar. I'm sure you can think of something if it's that important to you.
 
clownboy said:
No, no. Funny how you post one thing and then rebut it. MALE person as per YOUR post. You deny the 14th was about now freed slaves and race after posting that was precisely what it was about. Hilarious.
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When did I say the 14th amendment was not about granting citizenship to slaves? That was absolutely its purpose. But what did I say specifically about Section 1? Do you remember? Here I will help you out....

CriticalThought said:
The 14th amendment was absolutely meant to grant citizenship to slaves (not just blacks), but Section 1 was broadly drafted to limit state powers, and those limitations were not limited to race but to any attempt for the state to circumvent equal protection of the laws. It has been used to protect against laws which used literacy, age, national origin, etc. to deny equal protection of the law.
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Unfortunately, due to the political climate of the time, they decided to screw over women in the second section...

Section 2 of the 14th amendment has your answer as far as women's suffrage.

"But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State."

The wording was deliberately chosen to keep women from using Section 1 to argue for the right to vote. Never before had the words "male" or "female" been used in the Constitution.
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Does that help you at all?
 
clownboy said:
Well, for one it was a reconstruction amendment, that should give you a clue right there.
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Meaning what? Amendments issued after the Civil War are null and void?


Our amendment process was put into place for regular maintenance.
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So the addition of the Bill of Rights was merely "regular maintenance?" How curious.

There were no limits placed on the scope of the amendment process. We are more than entitled to use it to modify the Constitution as we see fit -- including empowering another Constitutional Convention to completely rewrite and chuck the whole thing, if we so choose.

It's also not a particularly easy process; in fact, the bar to amend the Constitution is fairly high. Unlimited scope, hard to enact -- that sure doesn't sound like "regular maintenance" to me.


....nor is the Constitution some sort of living document whose meaning and intent changes with the times. That's precisely what I mean by maintenance. We haven't kept up and now we rely upon nine robed justices to do the end runs around the Constitution.
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Oh, whatever

There is no reason why contemporary Americans need to be yoked to the political beliefs of a bunch of dead, white, aristocratic politicians. We are under no obligation whatsoever to reject gay marriage just because they did, or to accept slavery because they did, or deny women the franchise because they did.

And of course, the people who wrote -- and equally importantly, ratified -- the Constitution did not see eye to eye on lots of issues. They almost immediately split on topics like whether to have a standing army and a central bank.

Oh, and they are no longer alive. Not only are we just getting someone's biased and self-serving interpretation of their opinions, they are not living in the same world as us, experiencing the societal changes we are, and they don't have to live with the consequences of our policies.

A Constitution that cannot be modified or reinterpreted is not freedom. It's a straightjacket. Pass.
 
Taylor said:
Not a good enough reason. There are thousands of cases filed each year in federal court that involve fundamental rights.
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this is a fundamental right that is being denied to an entire group of people. that makes it a pressing issue.
 
Deuce said:
That's it? No particular statements by anyone involved in enacting the amendment? Courts were just slow to protect women, so that's it? Courts were slow to protect black people too, some of the early rulings had things like "It's ok to punish blacks more for the same crime as whites, as long as you punish all blacks equally." Nearly 60 years passed between Plessy and Brown. This isn't a particularly compelling argument, even if we're granting that the "intent" of the writers is critical. In general, I'd say that intent is ambiguous, and individual liberty trumps other concerns barring highly-compelling arguments to the contrary, and that is the real intent of the constitution as a whole.
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Once again, the 14th specifically cuts women out of the picture:

Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
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Helix said:
this is a fundamental right that is being denied to an entire group of people. that makes it a pressing issue.
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Show me this fundamental right in the constitution please.
 
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