Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses[W:178]

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

matchlight said:

The tendency to personalize debates, instead of discussing the issues, is usually a sign the person with that tendency has a weak game.

Obergefell was NOT a gender-discrimination case, as would be clear to anyone who understood it. I've studied it thoroughly, and I know damn well what the majority did. It used a widely criticized doctrine called "substantive due process," which the Court itself abandoned as to economic regulations about 1937 and has since strongly criticized, to cook up a "right" out of thin air. When a state chose not to grant homosexuals the privilege of marrying each other, it was no more violating their right to due process than states now violate that right by denying that privilege to bigamists, polygamists, or partners more closely related by blood than some specified degree.



I got a good laugh out of your calling another poster's arguments "comically stupid." The poster's comment about the Fourteenth Amendment and the definition of marriage relates to the Supreme Court's lawless decree in Obergefell, that states violate the Due Process Clause of that amendment by defining marriage in a way that excludes same-sex partners. The majority's decision was not based on equal protection. This flap about state licenses is secondary, because but for Obergefell, it would not be taking place.

Click to expand...

I know, your case is pretty weak. You should try pulling your nasty personal prejudice out of that whatever web of truths you have in your mind.

The equal protection clause and due process clause of the fourteenth amendment were both specifically cited in the courts opinion. Your ridiculous speculation has an exactly appropriate amount of weight in my mind, which is to say none.

They guarantee that all citizens have equal rights. It sounds like you want gays to not have the rights of citizens. I think you should make your own bigoted sovereignty and see how many people rush to join you.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

Absentglare said:

No one's forcing you to celebrate homosexuality.

I might think the thought of you and your spouse having sex is absolutely revolting. That wouldn't allow me to abuse a government office to discriminate against you.

All the supreme court did is say the government doesn't have the right to disqualify people based on their genders.



Good contribution. Maybe you should keep garbage like this to yourself ?



First of all, if it's not in the fourteenth amendment, you don't have that right ?

The fourteenth amendment actually guarantees equal protection under the law. That absolutely applies to marriage licenses.

Sometimes your arguments are just comically stupid.

Click to expand...

And all of your arguments are utterly idiotic. There already was equal protection under the law. The court had no right to redefine marriage, which has now resulted (as predicted) in the literal persecution of Christians. This will not end well, I promise you that.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

Absentglare said:

I know, your case is pretty weak. You should try pulling your nasty personal prejudice out of that whatever web of truths you have in your mind.

The equal protection clause and due process clause of the fourteenth amendment were both specifically cited in the courts opinion. Your ridiculous speculation has an exactly appropriate amount of weight in my mind, which is to say none.

They guarantee that all citizens have equal rights. It sounds like you want gays to not have the rights of citizens. I think you should make your own bigoted sovereignty and see how many people rush to join you.

Click to expand...

Your peevish little rodomontade is revealing. As I noted to someone else, the tendency to personalize a debate, instead of making reasoned arguments about the issues, is usually a telltale sign that the person with that tendency has a weak game.

The fact Anthony Kennedy contrived to tack a brief, incoherent equal protection argument onto the end of the jumble of gobbledygook that is his majority opinion will only fool those who want to be fooled. As the Chief Justice remarked, the majority had already fully decided the question on due process grounds, and where that is true the Court's longstanding rule is not to confuse things by adding excess baggage. Of course confusing things was just what Kennedy had in mind. He knew very well that his substantive due process argument was a complete fabrication that had nothing to do with the Constitution, and he was trying to put some lipstick on the pig.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

countryboy said:

And all of your arguments are utterly idiotic. There already was equal protection under the law. The court had no right to redefine marriage, which has now resulted (as predicted) in the literal persecution of Christians. This will not end well, I promise you that.

Click to expand...

The government doesn't define marriage. The government recognizes marriage. The government is not allowed to selectively define marriage so-as-to avoid offending your delicate sensibilities.

Boo hoo gay dudes can get married. Christians aren't being prosecuted, they're being prohibited from prosecuting others through the government which is a firmly secular body.

It's like you're stuck in the dark ages. Wake up.

Gay people aren't trying to stop you from having a Christian marriage. They just want to get married themselves. That's their business. If you don't want to play a part in it because you'd rather pout and whine like a 2 year old, then don't accept a government job where you hand out marriage licenses. Fair?

matchlight said:

Your peevish little rodomontade is revealing. As I noted to someone else, the tendency to personalize a debate, instead of making reasoned arguments about the issues, is usually a telltale sign that the person with that tendency has a weak game.

The fact Anthony Kennedy contrived to tack a brief, incoherent equal protection argument onto the end of the jumble of gobbledygook that is his majority opinion will only fool those who want to be fooled. As the Chief Justice remarked, the majority had already fully decided the question on due process grounds, and where that is true the Court's longstanding rule is not to confuse things by adding excess baggage. Of course confusing things was just what Kennedy had in mind. He knew very well that his substantive due process argument was a complete fabrication that had nothing to do with the Constitution, and he was trying to put some lipstick on the pig.

Click to expand...

Why do you feel the need to whine about this being personal and follow up your crying with ad hominem?

I firmly believe that the supreme court has a better understanding of constitutional law than you do. You seem to be confused about equal treatment under the law- it's a constitutionally guaranteed right.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

I firmly believe that the supreme court has a better understanding of constitutional law than you do. You seem to be confused about equal treatment under the law- it's a constitutionally guaranteed right.

Click to expand...

The four Supreme Court justices who understand constitutional law the best agreed with everything I said. So do a lot of constitutional law professors and lawyers who have commented on Obergefell. The thing the five legislators in Obergefell knew best about the Constitution in that case was how to ignore it. The decision has nothing to do with the Constitution.

The confusion about what the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does and does not guarantee is yours, not mine. All sorts of laws, ones involving economic matters for example, treat people unequally every day without being the least unconstitutional. Your view of how equal protection works in constitutional law is uninformed and very simplistic. In any case, Obergefell was a substantive due process decision, as the Chief Justice discussed at length in his dissenting opinion.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

countryboy said:

And all of your arguments are utterly idiotic. There already was equal protection under the law. The court had no right to redefine marriage, which has now resulted (as predicted) in the literal persecution of Christians. This will not end well, I promise you that.

Click to expand...

There was not already equal protection under the law.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

countryboy said:

1.)And all of your arguments are utterly idiotic.
2.) There already was equal protection under the law.
3.) The court had no right to redefine marriage
4.) which has now resulted (as predicted) in the literal persecution of Christians.
5.) This will not end well, I promise you that.

Click to expand...

1.) and yet his defeat yours
2.) factually not true as 25+ cases and 40+ judges point out
3.) marriage was factually not redefined, Its still a legal contract
4.) this factually is not going on either
5.) well since nothing is actually happening theres nothing to end so your promise is pretty empty. Equal rights and the Constitution is simply going to continue to win.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

matchlight said:

The four Supreme Court justices who understand constitutional law the best agreed with everything I said. So do a lot of constitutional law professors and lawyers who have commented on Obergefell. The thing the five legislators in Obergefell knew best about the Constitution in that case was how to ignore it. The decision has nothing to do with the Constitution.

The confusion about what the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does and does not guarantee is yours, not mine. All sorts of laws, ones involving economic matters for example, treat people unequally every day without being the least unconstitutional. Your view of how equal protection works in constitutional law is uninformed and very simplistic. In any case, Obergefell was a substantive due process decision, as the Chief Justice discussed at length in his dissenting opinion.

Click to expand...

Oh the losing side, with fewer justices, was the correct one ?

There's no guarantee that you can afford every good or service. There is a guarantee in the spirit of "all men are created equal," in the fourteenth amendment. That means that, even if you're born gay, you have the same opportunities to buy goods from the market. Not a guarantee that you can afford them, but if you have legal tender, they cannot disqualify you for being gay, or being black.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

Absentglare said:

Oh the losing side, with fewer justices, was the correct one ?

Click to expand...

Yes, that's right. Just as it was in Dred Scott, Lochner, and Roe, just to cite a few notorious decisions.

There's no guarantee that you can afford every good or service. There is a guarantee in the spirit of "all men are created equal," in the fourteenth amendment. That means that, even if you're born gay, you have the same opportunities to buy goods from the market. Not a guarantee that you can afford them, but if you have legal tender, they cannot disqualify you for being gay, or being black.

Click to expand...

What does any of that have to do with the right of states to define marriage, which as Justice Kennedy himself discussed at length two years ago in Windsor, was never questioned in this country?

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

matchlight said:

Yes, that's right. Just as it was in Dred Scott, Lochner, and Roe, just to cite a few notorious decisions.



What does any of that have to do with the right of states to define marriage, which as Justice Kennedy himself discussed at length two years ago in Windsor, was never questioned in this country?

Click to expand...

States don't have the right to define marriage in a way that disqualifies someone for reasons they inherited from birth.

Of course SCOTUS has been wrong- when it limits civil liberty for no justifiable reason such as discrimination on the basis of gender/orientation.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

Absentglare said:

States don't have the right to define marriage in a way that disqualifies someone for reasons they inherited from birth.

Click to expand...

That is your personal opinion--not a reasonable interpretation of anything in the Constitution. The notion that the Fourteenth Amendment was ever intended, or had ever been understood, to prohibit states from excluding partners of the same sex from their marriage laws is ludicrous. Justice Scalia had it exactly right when he noted this is Obergefell:

[W]hat really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases. When it comes to determining the meaning of a vague constitutional provision—such as “due process of law” or “equal protection of the laws”—it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification. We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment’s ratification................................................

The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003. They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since. They see what lesser legal minds—minds like Thomas Cooley, John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly—could not. They are certain that the People ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to bestow on them the power to remove questions from the democratic process when that is called for by their “reasoned judgment.” These Justices . . . are willing to say that any citizen who . . . adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution.

Of course SCOTUS has been wrong- when it limits civil liberty for no justifiable reason such as discrimination on the basis of gender/orientation.

Click to expand...

In what decisions, specifically, are you claiming the Supreme Court has done what you describe? I can't think of any.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

matchlight said:

The four Supreme Court justices who understand constitutional law the best agreed with everything I said.
....

Click to expand...

Your whole argument boils down to -- the guys I agree with are smarter - so there!

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

Paperview said:

Your whole argument boils down to -- the guys I agree with are smarter - so there!

Click to expand...

I haven't seen you make any argument at all. Nothing boils down to--nothing.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

Paperview said:

Your whole argument boils down to -- the guys I agree with are smarter - so there!

Click to expand...

That is pretty much what all his posts boil down to.

Further to the point - a government worker cannot use their religion to trump the rights of a citizen, if that country has adopted a non-establishment clause. The United States has, since 1787.

Re: Supreme Court says Kentucky clerk can't deny same-sex marriage licenses

matchlight said:

That is your personal opinion--not a reasonable interpretation of anything in the Constitution. The notion that the Fourteenth Amendment was ever intended, or had ever been understood, to prohibit states from excluding partners of the same sex from their marriage laws is ludicrous. Justice Scalia had it exactly right when he noted this is Obergefell:

[W]hat really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases. When it comes to determining the meaning of a vague constitutional provision—such as “due process of law” or “equal protection of the laws”—it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification. We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment’s ratification................................................

The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003. They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since. They see what lesser legal minds—minds like Thomas Cooley, John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Henry Friendly—could not. They are certain that the People ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to bestow on them the power to remove questions from the democratic process when that is called for by their “reasoned judgment.” These Justices . . . are willing to say that any citizen who . . . adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution.

In what decisions, specifically, are you claiming the Supreme Court has done what you describe? I can't think of any.

Click to expand...

Who can hermaphrodites marry? Should they just die alone to satiate your bizarre need to live in an idealized tradition that never actually existed ?

When the second amendment was drafted, no one thought it would be used to justify the possession of the AR15. That's not a reason to think that the AR15 isn't covered by the second amendment. What you suggest is being intentionally trapped in the past and never questioning it.