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Re: Do you support legalizing gay marriage?
What's the difference? I don't see what legitimate government interest would be served, for example, by a state law that included same-sex couples who were not related by blood, or only distantly, but continued to exclude closely related same-sex couples. If laws that exclude same-sex couples are motivated only by naked hostility toward homosexuals, what reason is there to doubt that laws that exclude them on consanguinity grounds are motivated by the same hostility toward would-be practitioners of homosexual incest?
Why only certain ones? What about the rights of partners more closely related than first cousins? To the extent that consanguinity requirements in marriage laws are meant to avoid the increased risk of genetic defects in offspring, these requirements serve no legitimate government interest when applied to partners of the same sex.
Voluntary permanent sterilization is something many people have chosen. What legitimate government interest is served by a law that denies a brother and sister, or a father and daughter, or a mother and son, or any other heterosexual incestuous combination of partners the right to marry each other, if at least one of the partners had already undergone this procedure?
Why just "base protections" for plural marriage partners? Given how long and how harshly polygamists have been discriminated against throughout the U.S.--and almost entirely out of moral disapproval rather than for any practical reasons--they would have a even stronger claim than homosexuals that marriage laws excluding them were motivated by nothing but the naked hostility of the majority.
How so? What practical problems would adult incestuous marriages of the kinds I described present that same-sex marriages would not, that would give the state a legitimate interest in allowing the one, but not the other? What practical problem would a marriage between two female first cousins present, that would not be presented if everything else were the same, except that they were second cousins?
That's great, except that there are all sorts of acts there is no constitutional right to engage in--prostitution, bigamy, public masturbation, the recreational use of heroin, public nudity, bestiality, adultery, fornicating at high noon on the bandstand in the town park, and a thousand other things.
That statement is flatly false. Of course that is exactly what the Constitution of the U.S. does--that very division of power is one of its basic features and what the term "federalism" refers to. These principles of federalism are implicit in the structure of the Constitution, including the Tenth Amendment, as the Court discussed in New York v. U.S. in 1992 and in Printz v. U.S. in 1997. If you'd like to debate the point, I will take the time to quote from those decisions or other authorities to prove it.
That's only partly true. As John Marshall made clear in his opinion in Barron v. Baltimore in 1833, the Bill of Rights originally applied only to the United States, and not to the states. It was only about 1900 that the Supreme Court first applied any part of the Bill of Rights to the states, and in a long series of decisions it has applied one part of it after another to them. It didn't get to the First Amendment's Establishment Clause until 1947; before that, any state that had wanted to could have had its own official religion.
The most recent part was the Second Amendment, which the Court applied to the states in McDonald v. Chicago a few years ago. The rationale for doing all this has been the "doctrine of incorporation," which holds that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates various parts of the Bill of Rights and applies them to the states.
Just because a bunch of dim bulbs screech in unison that they have a right to do this or that doesn't make it so. Just to cite one of many possible examples, it's common to hear someone prattle about how everyone has a right to an education--and yet the Supreme Court has made clear the Constitution does not guarantee any such right.
What's the difference? I don't see what legitimate government interest would be served, for example, by a state law that included same-sex couples who were not related by blood, or only distantly, but continued to exclude closely related same-sex couples. If laws that exclude same-sex couples are motivated only by naked hostility toward homosexuals, what reason is there to doubt that laws that exclude them on consanguinity grounds are motivated by the same hostility toward would-be practitioners of homosexual incest?
Why only certain ones? What about the rights of partners more closely related than first cousins? To the extent that consanguinity requirements in marriage laws are meant to avoid the increased risk of genetic defects in offspring, these requirements serve no legitimate government interest when applied to partners of the same sex.
Voluntary permanent sterilization is something many people have chosen. What legitimate government interest is served by a law that denies a brother and sister, or a father and daughter, or a mother and son, or any other heterosexual incestuous combination of partners the right to marry each other, if at least one of the partners had already undergone this procedure?
Why just "base protections" for plural marriage partners? Given how long and how harshly polygamists have been discriminated against throughout the U.S.--and almost entirely out of moral disapproval rather than for any practical reasons--they would have a even stronger claim than homosexuals that marriage laws excluding them were motivated by nothing but the naked hostility of the majority.
How so? What practical problems would adult incestuous marriages of the kinds I described present that same-sex marriages would not, that would give the state a legitimate interest in allowing the one, but not the other? What practical problem would a marriage between two female first cousins present, that would not be presented if everything else were the same, except that they were second cousins?
That's great, except that there are all sorts of acts there is no constitutional right to engage in--prostitution, bigamy, public masturbation, the recreational use of heroin, public nudity, bestiality, adultery, fornicating at high noon on the bandstand in the town park, and a thousand other things.
That statement is flatly false. Of course that is exactly what the Constitution of the U.S. does--that very division of power is one of its basic features and what the term "federalism" refers to. These principles of federalism are implicit in the structure of the Constitution, including the Tenth Amendment, as the Court discussed in New York v. U.S. in 1992 and in Printz v. U.S. in 1997. If you'd like to debate the point, I will take the time to quote from those decisions or other authorities to prove it.
That's only partly true. As John Marshall made clear in his opinion in Barron v. Baltimore in 1833, the Bill of Rights originally applied only to the United States, and not to the states. It was only about 1900 that the Supreme Court first applied any part of the Bill of Rights to the states, and in a long series of decisions it has applied one part of it after another to them. It didn't get to the First Amendment's Establishment Clause until 1947; before that, any state that had wanted to could have had its own official religion.
The most recent part was the Second Amendment, which the Court applied to the states in McDonald v. Chicago a few years ago. The rationale for doing all this has been the "doctrine of incorporation," which holds that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates various parts of the Bill of Rights and applies them to the states.
Just because a bunch of dim bulbs screech in unison that they have a right to do this or that doesn't make it so. Just to cite one of many possible examples, it's common to hear someone prattle about how everyone has a right to an education--and yet the Supreme Court has made clear the Constitution does not guarantee any such right.
