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Appeals court upholds laws against gay marriage in Michigan, 3 other states

roguenuke said:
No. This was simply the mentality back then. That a woman that was unwilling to do her housework must be mentally disabled, the same mentality that said that someone who wanted to be in relationships with people of the same sex must be mentally screwed up. So much was seen as a mental problem back then that was simply a person who deviated from social norms.
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Please site the case and specifics.
 
WCH said:
That alone may have shifted with this last election.
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No, it didn't. Many republicans, especially young republicans support same sex marriage. It may not yet be a majority, but it's working it's way there. This election, same sex marriage itself isn't a major issue because it's in the courts hands now. There is nothing else legislatures can legitimately do to prevent it short of a constitutional amendment, which there isn't support for.
 
Deuce said:
Does the number of people desiring to participate really influence a decision on individual liberty? I mean, not many people like to dress up and go to a Clown Convention but nobody would consider that to be an argument against making Clown Conventions legal.
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Same thing with gay pride parades and bath house worker conventions. If they wanted a state sanction for their little get togethers, however, that would be a different matter. The fact that a state doesn't provide a state sanction for homosexual partnerships doesn't make them illegal. It just means there is no state stamp of approval as "marriage".
 
roguenuke said:
That started from the premise that there were lots of mentally ill released that then ended up in prison because they shouldn't have been released to begin with but were due to a philosophy of "they aren't mentally ill" being common. This argument hasn't been supported at all. How do you know how much housework she was or wasn't doing? Being depressed or even bipolar does not require hospitalization for most people.
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From the PBS documentary series, "Frontline":

Most of those who were deinstitutionalized from the nation's public psychiatric hospitals were severely mentally ill. Between 50 and 60 percent of them were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Another 10 to 15 percent were diagnosed with manic-depressive illness and severe depression. An additional 10 to 15 percent were diagnosed with organic brain diseases -- epilepsy, strokes, Alzheimer's disease, and brain damage secondary to trauma. The remaining individuals residing in public psychiatric hospitals had conditions such as mental retardation with psychosis, autism and other psychiatric disorders of childhood, and alcoholism and drug addiction with concurrent brain damage. The fact that most deinstitutionalized people suffer from various forms of brain dysfunction was not as well understood when the policy of deinstitutionalization got under way.

Thus deinstitutionalization has helped create the mental illness crisis by discharging people from public psychiatric hospitals without ensuring that they received the medication and rehabilitation services necessary for them to live successfully in the community. Deinstitutionalization further exacerbated the situation because, once the public psychiatric beds had been closed, they were not available for people who later became mentally ill, and this situation continues up to the present. Consequently, approximately 2.2 million severely mentally ill people do not receive any psychiatric treatment.

...

For a substantial minority, however, deinstitutionalization has been a psychiatric Titanic. Their lives are virtually devoid of "dignity" or "integrity of body, mind, and spirit." "Self-determination" often means merely that the person has a choice of soup kitchens. The "least restrictive setting" frequently turns out to be a cardboard box, a jail cell, or a terror-filled existence plagued by both real and imaginary enemies.
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Papa bull said:
It just means there is no state stamp of approval as "marriage".
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No. It goes much deeper. Even Judge Sutton admitted in the Majority opinion that there are real harms to existing families by choosing to deny marriage to same-sex couples.

The traditional definition of marriage denies gay couples the opportunity to publicly solemnize, to say nothing of subsidize, their relationships under state law. In addition to depriving them of this status, it deprives them of benefits that range from the profound (the right to visit someone in a hospital as a spouse or parent) to the mundane (the right to file joint tax returns)," Sutton wrote.

"These harms affect not only gay couples but also their children. Do the benefits of standing by the traditional definition of marriage make up for these costs?
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You cannot belittle marriage as just being a state stamp of approval.
 
Deuce said:
Yes really. They were dealing with the legal recognition of marriage.
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The question put before the court was not whether the state must recognize the marriage as a civil marriage, it was whether the state had a right to ban their marriage. The Lovings were sentenced to a year in jail for a marriage that had no legal significance in the state.
 
Taylor said:
The question put before the court was not whether the state must recognize the marriage as a civil marriage, it was whether the state had a right to ban their marriage. The Lovings were sentenced to a year in jail for a marriage that had no legal significance in the state.
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It seems that even the judges in this case could not agree what question they were addressing and for us what question they were or should have addressed will depend on how we feel about the ruling.
 
roguenuke said:
Yet her husband's chief complaint was "she isn't doing housework", not she isn't able to take care of herself. And she wasn't the only one.

And many of those people did not belong in mental institutions, but rather simply being taken care of by a mental health professional, getting the help they needed outside of a mental facility is possible, and much healthier for them.
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Probably so, but there are lots of variables at play when they are not. Within the SSI system we have replaced access to mental health with Payees many of whom exploit the mentally ill for a big cut of their pay check without ensuring that the person has and continues to take their medication properly. It a something I have seen a lot on my area. Someone will charge the mentally ill like 90% of their check for room and board and expect them to otherwise provide for themselves for less than $100 a month. I am sure a lot of people do right by the mentally ill in that situation, but a lot do not and those mentally ill people do often end up in petty troubles like shoplifting, loitering, drug and panhandling type crimes when they fall off their meds or need money for other things. When someone is broke and feels good on their meds, they are more likely going to leave their meds even at very low out of pocket costs so they can buy them a soda a day and stuff like that we take for granted.
 
CriticalThought said:
No. It goes much deeper. Even Judge Sutton admitted in the Majority opinion that there are real harms to existing families by choosing to deny marriage to same-sex couples.



You cannot belittle marriage as just being a state stamp of approval.
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It's a good question whether these so-called "harms" are overshadowed by the good that society receives from maintaining traditional marriage. I think the clear answer is "yes", despite his fears about the "harms" that affect the children of homosexual couples since homosexual unions don't produce children.
 
TurtleDude said:
Appeals court upholds laws against gay marriage in Michigan, 3 other states

this now creates a conflict with other circuits and pretty much guarantees a supreme court case.

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal, which upheld same-sex marriage bans in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, issued its decision three months after hearing same-sex marriage cases from all four states. In each of those states, federal judges had struck down same-sex marriage bans on constitutional grounds.
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One for the good guys.:applaud
 
If you people on the left don't want the people voting on the issues then we should completely do away with voting on anything......
 
Navy Pride said:
One for the good guys.:applaud
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This makes it more likely SSM will be the law of the land.

So yes... in that way it's one for the good guys.

Navy Pride said:
If you people on the left don't want the people voting on the issues then we should completely do away with voting on anything......
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You don't get to vote away other peoples freedoms.
 
WCH said:
Cancer appears naturally but, I'd hope it's not normal.
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Cancer appears in nature, but it's not normal, although it's normal in the sense many here are using the word normal because it isn't rare - it's actually an abnormality in the gene/cell structure that causes the body to attack itself. I don't think any scientist is working day and night to try to find a cure for homosexuality yet hundreds of thousands of medical researchers and doctors spend their entire professional lives trying to find a way to eradicate the various forms of cancer.
 
CriticalThought said:
You cannot belittle marriage as just being a state stamp of approval.
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In the legal sense, as it's currently being argued, that's exactly what it is. Marriage is marriage with or without the state stamp of approval. The only thing that changes is that wonderful package of goodies and political bribes that come to those who hold the state stamp of approval.
 
Jetboogieman said:
This makes it more likely SSM will be the law of the land.

So yes... in that way it's one for the good guys.



You don't get to vote away other peoples freedoms.
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If it's considered to be vile, disgusting and/ or criminal...we certainly do get to vote it away. That'z freedom.
 
WCH said:
If it's considered to be vile, disgusting and/ or criminal.
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Your reasons for viewing that way are your own.

There is nothing criminal about homosexuality.

You are still free to view it that way.
 
Papa bull said:
It's a good question whether these so-called "harms" are overshadowed by the good that society receives from maintaining traditional marriage. I think the clear answer is "yes", despite his fears about the "harms" that affect the children of homosexual couples since homosexual unions don't produce children.
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There are hundreds of thousands of children in this country CURRENTLY being raised by same-sex couples. You are causing harm to them by denying their parents the right to marriage for what perceived benefit?

I find it interesting how ignorant your side tends to be that the choice to deny same-sex marriage is not some abstraction. It has real effects on real people, their families, and their children. Help me understand how you justify to yourself this cost you put on their families.
 
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Navy Pride said:
One for the good guys.:applaud
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Why do you hate children?

You realize the plaintiffs are a same-sex couple raising kids who are denied the benefits of married parents. Why do you hate their family? What did they do to you to be classified as "bad guys"?
 
CriticalThought said:
It seems that even the judges in this case could not agree what question they were addressing and for us what question they were or should have addressed will depend on how we feel about the ruling.
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We were talking about Loving, and the opinion of that court was unanimous.
 
Jetboogieman said:
Your reasons for viewing that way are your own.

There is nothing criminal about homosexuality.

You are still free to view it that way.
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There are other so-called 'freedoms' that will not be tolerated by society.
 
WCH said:
If it's considered to be vile, disgusting and/ or criminal...we certainly do get to vote it away. That'z freedom.
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If you and enough like minded people wish to... yes you can vote away the entire Constitution and the entire concept of rights and freedoms.

Now all you need is to get 3/4 of the American voters to agree with your ideas of normal, vile, and disgusting.
 
Papa bull said:
It's a good question whether these so-called "harms" are overshadowed by the good that society receives from maintaining traditional marriage. I think the clear answer is "yes", despite his fears about the "harms" that affect the children of homosexual couples since homosexual unions don't produce children.
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What good does society receive by not allowing two men to sign a marriage contract?
 
Navy Pride said:
If you people on the left don't want the people voting on the issues then we should completely do away with voting on anything......
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Do you think 51% of the vote should be enough to ban all guns, if "the people" decide that's what they want?
 
WCH said:
If it's considered to be vile, disgusting and/ or criminal...we certainly do get to vote it away. That'z freedom.
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Finally, they admit that they think they have the right to take away someone else's rights based purely on disapproval.
 
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