Re: Is the legalization of SS marriage a cause for the decline of heterosexual marria
You didn't try at all to explain just where you think what I said about the point of constitutional law I was discussing is inaccurate. In fact you can't, and your condescending remark is a lame, transparent attempt to hide that.
What a shame. You're not going to be any fun. Read post 89. It'll answer all of your questions. Likewise, the court just refused to review the circuit court decisions, many of which did discuss higher levels of scrutiny. According to Deuce, some even applied those higher levels. Those are now the binding precedents. And while you're correct that Romer and Windsor didn't apply higher levels of scrutiny, Lawrence did. It applied a level that sits somewhere between intermediate and strict scrutiny, sometimes referred to as "heightened" scrutiny. Cases dealing with DADT also discussed applying this standard to protections for gays.
Meanwhile, you don't actually distinguish same sex marriage from interracial marriage. The reasons for preventing them are literally the same ones (tradition and religious objections) and the prohibition is equally arbitrary. Loving provides a fundamental right to marry, governed by strict scrutiny. You have to make an argument as to why that shouldn't apply to homosexuals, and "gayness and race aren't the same thing" doesn't address that.
I'm surprised you don't know what Brown is, since we already talked about separate but equal. Brown v Board of Education (the only case commonly given the shorthand name of "Brown") is where the court held that having a separate classification is, no matter how equal they seem to be, inherently unequal and a violation of the constitution. Again, they did not limit this decision to matters of race. That is why the lesser status of civil union, no matter how identical on paper, is an unacceptable and unconstitutional solution to same sex rights.
These are exactly the same kinds of arguments that circuit court judges have been making for years, and they are the binding arguments. Did you even read Perry? That is, Hollingsworth v Perry, the case that overturned Proposition 8? That's the informative ruling for the whole country right now, and it uses many of these exact arguments. The only thing it doesn't do is determine a constitutional standard. It does, however, show why higher ones are more appropriate without reaching a final conclusion. All you have are assertions, and if you supposedly made a decent distinguishing argument, you could at least link it. But I imagine it's not nearly as good as you claim.
And as to why you need to argue against yourself... you need to account for all the things your opponent will bring up. If you want to make a compelling legal argument, you can't simply just bring your part and let your opponent bring theirs and hope that yours is more compelling. You have to answer what your opponent will discuss. That's literally something covered in the first semester in a law school.
Treating two naturally unequal people as were they equals is frequently stupid and often grossly unfair. Think of a handicap.
The treatment of femininity as a handicap is pretty much the reason that heterosexual marriage is declining.
