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

You've got to stop lying to yourself. 2+2 will never equal 5, no matter how many times you repeat it.

20 years from now you will be afraid to admit you ever opposed same-sex marriage because nothing you feared will have come true and you will likely meet same-sex families and will feel embarrassed that you tried to denigrate them based on absolutely nothing. You are like those people who supported interracial marriage bans in the 60s. In the future people will see you the same way you see them.
 
Uhh, no, most social conventions are purely social conventions. Buying a girl dinner on the first date is a social convention. This isn't what we're talking about.

What we're talking about is the government making a distinction of gender based on "convention." And under an equal protection challenge "it has been convention to treat people differently" has never been a particularly good argument.

Buying dinner is a custom. Conventions are institutions.
 
I'm not debating whether something is discriminatory or not. Obviously holding same-sex couples to a different standard is unconstitutional and discriminatory. Please try to stick to my point.

My point is that legal kinship does not require a marriage license to be recognized. Even if you are not related by blood, you do not need a marriage license in order for legal kinship to be recognized. If legal kinship is granted by a marriage license, then it should be granted to opposite-sex and same-sex couples alike. But the fact remains that if there were no such thing as a marriage license, legal kinship would not suddenly be impossible. It could be recognized just fine through other means, none involving government issued licenses.

Sorry. It didnt seem relevant to the thread without my pointing it out but I didnt see the previous posts for context.
 
Re SSM bans, I agree and so does the SCOTUS. Otherwise, no. A decision about access to a traditional social convention cannot be a precedent for the validity of creating a new social convention.

How is it new? What is different? DOMA might have been specific but that was very recent.
 
All social conventions carry a broad range of legal and economic benefits and rights. That's why they're conventions and why access to them is important. That's why the question whether SSM should become a convention has been important.

Since there is no harm that has been proven or even historically demonstrated (gays living together, gays raising families), why would it be so 'important' or come under such rigorous scrutiny? If there is a need to show it's in the best interests of the states (yeah, not registering the correct phrasing there at the moment)....it can certainly be done by showing that the children in gay marriages would benefit from the same legal protections as those in straight families.
 
That is a bit more complicated than "people make mistakes." In this case, and many by the Federal courts, I'd have to call it more than a mistake. Actually, they had quite a while to work on it, so it's more like a colossal, egregious blunder. And that's the point I was making, that our Supreme Court has a history full of this, and will do so in the future.

It's about 'momentum' which is public opinion AND the recognition of the validity of rights for a minority.

It's very sad that it took 100 yrs after the Civil War for such momentum to be gathered at the federal level....and it certainly had NOT been in some of the southern states.

Jim Crow was WRONG. It's sad that it took 100 yrs to gain that momentum for blacks. If we recognize injustice for gays, isnt it the RIGHT thing to do to rectify inequality for them?

(Yeah, I know....you dont give a crap...oops, 'recognize the need for'...about equal rights for gays.)
 
There was no such thing as SSM.

Yes, it didn't exist before and now it does. But "it didn't exist before" is also not an argument that works in court.

I don't disagree that this is an important court case to rule on, it's just that the anti-equality folks really don't have an argument worth anything. I mean really, how many of their arguments have you found even remotely compelling?
 
Since there is no harm that has been proven or even historically demonstrated (gays living together, gays raising families), why would it be so 'important' or come under such rigorous scrutiny? If there is a need to show it's in the best interests of the states (yeah, not registering the correct phrasing there at the moment)....it can certainly be done by showing that the children in gay marriages would benefit from the same legal protections as those in straight families.

Since there was no SSM before, it took some getting used to. Evolution of attitudes on this question has been breathtakingly rapid. I believe you are right about the lack of harm but that's really not central to the shift in attitudes.
 
Yes, it didn't exist before and now it does. But "it didn't exist before" is also not an argument that works in court.

I don't disagree that this is an important court case to rule on, it's just that the anti-equality folks really don't have an argument worth anything. I mean really, how many of their arguments have you found even remotely compelling?

Which is why the SCOTUS declined to hear the appeals.
 
Yes, proposed in the last twenty years. That's a nanosecond in cultural development.

Everything's gotta start some time. Just think: before the wheel was invented there were literally billions of years in which there were no wheels at all (at least not so far as we're aware).
 
Everything's gotta start some time. Just think: before the wheel was invented there were literally billions of years in which there were no wheels at all (at least not so far as we're aware).

Yes. I agree.
 
A convenient argument if you think that allows you to just dismiss any ruling you don't like.

Overturning same-sex marriage bans is not a mistake. It's defending individual freedom. Homosexuals do not have to justify their individual liberty to you by proving this wont lead to some other, unrelated thing you also personally disapprove of.

That's not what I was talking about.
 
20 years from now you will be afraid to admit you ever opposed same-sex marriage because nothing you feared will have come true and you will likely meet same-sex families and will feel embarrassed that you tried to denigrate them based on absolutely nothing. You are like those people who supported interracial marriage bans in the 60s. In the future people will see you the same way you see them.

I'm quite sure I won't. I've opposed abortion longer than that, as have many. I have absolutely no fear in saying that. So you are wrong there. And again, another person jumping in late and not reading the previous posts. I have barely commented on SSM. I'm talking about Constitutional issues, try and keep up, you are off topic regarding my posts.
 
It's about 'momentum' which is public opinion AND the recognition of the validity of rights for a minorityand .

It's very sad that it took 100 yrs after the Civil War for such momentum to be gathered at the federal level....and it certainly had NOT been in some of the southern states.

Jim Crow was WRONG. It's sad that it took 100 yrs to gain that momentum for blacks. If we recognize injustice for gays, isnt it the RIGHT thing to do to rectify inequality for them?

(Yeah, I know....you dont give a crap...oops, 'recognize the need for'...about equal rights for gays.)

Your comparison of blacks' struggle for civil rights with homosexuals' efforts to get laws changed so they can marry each other is an insult to black Americans. Every grievance group that comes down the pike wants to hitch its wagon to the black civil rights movement. As if homosexuals were being lynched, or turned away from schools, restaurants, and hotels, or kept from voting, or denied jobs, or having fire hoses and dogs turned on them. For shame!
 
Your comparison of blacks' struggle for civil rights with homosexuals' efforts to get laws changed so they can marry each other is an insult to black Americans. Every grievance group that comes down the pike wants to hitch its wagon to the black civil rights movement. As if homosexuals were being lynched, or turned away from schools, restaurants, and hotels, or kept from voting, or denied jobs, or having fire hoses and dogs turned on them. For shame!

Are you saying that gays are not deserving of civil rights the way blacks and women are? Gays have been persecuted, killed, fired, turned away (hey...did you miss where the bakery didnt want to bake them a cake?)

They have certainly been denied jobs. "Dont ask, dont tell" anyone? Not tot mention in the private sector. Or how about the Boy Scouts? And they've had their share of hoses and dogs and beatings and being dragged behind vehicles. How about being denied custody of their own, biological kids?

Got anymore fantasies in your pocket?
 
Well it's not, so you have no point. You seem to be responding to the wrong topic.

Yes, it is. All you've got is semantics, moral disapproval, tradition, and slippery slope fallacies. "You can't have same-sex marriage because marriage means a man and a woman" is arguing semantics.
 
Yep, and if the state had a constitution that laid down one man and one woman definition of marriage they would only be in violation of the 14th if they didn't allow one man to marry one woman. That's equality under the law.

As for the rest, it's just nonsense in this discussion. You cannot claim with a straight face that homosexual marriage has anything to do with our need for survival.


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I'm quite sure I won't. I've opposed abortion longer than that, as have many. I have absolutely no fear in saying that. So you are wrong there. And again, another person jumping in late and not reading the previous posts. I have barely commented on SSM. I'm talking about Constitutional issues, try and keep up, you are off topic regarding my posts.

Meh. This is not abortion. You likely do not meet or encounter many people who are open about having an abortion. You will likely meet more families headed by same-sex couples in the future. You will know the real people. You will know their kids. You will witness their relationship and their choices. And when you get away from the abstract ideological crap and see the real people and the pragmatic effect I doubt you will feel the same way. I could be wrong but I sincerely feel with more experience you will one day feel very foolish for having opposed same-sex marriage.
 
Your comparison of blacks' struggle for civil rights with homosexuals' efforts to get laws changed so they can marry each other is an insult to black Americans. Every grievance group that comes down the pike wants to hitch its wagon to the black civil rights movement. As if homosexuals were being lynched, or turned away from schools, restaurants, and hotels, or kept from voting, or denied jobs, or having fire hoses and dogs turned on them. For shame!

...

Up until a decade ago gays could be sent to prison in many states for having sex with their partner. A couple decades before that being gay was recognized as a mental illness that people tried to cure with electro convulsive therapy. A few decades before that the Nazis killed tens of thousands of gays in concentration camps. A few decades before that it was considered liberal to castrate gays rather than put them to death in this country.

What history did you study?
 
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