The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

[Foxton]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

I give up. These exchanges do no good at all.

About time.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

I quoted the actual definition of homophobia to you. You're definition of "phobia" is about as relevant as if you quoted the definition of "ant" when being accused of being an "informant."

I give up. These exchanges do no good at all.

I just pulled the standard definition of phobia from Webster's online. If you don't like that, take it up with Webster's. Sheesh!

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phobia

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

About time.

Don't rub it in. It sucks.

 

[alfablue]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

I'm still trying to understand the calamity that gay marriage will cause.

And how the 14th Amendment, which protects all being equal, will mean that we can have more than two marry, or someone marrying pet or an object, etc. All it does is mean that the government can not restrict two people, of consenting age, from getting married.

Here's a benefit- a whole new set of couples will be capable of adopting children. And since we seem convinced that it takes two parents... well, there you go. (BTW, if you think that those two people should be a man and woman, why do we allow people to get divorces?)

 

[unofan]

I'm not ageist but I believe marriage should be between 2 consenting adults that love each other.

I'm not biphobic (couldn't find a better word) but I believe marriage should be between 2 consenting adults that love each other and aren't married to other people.

Are those statements ageist and biphobic?

Yes, but acceptably so. We treat children differently than adults, and for good reason. It's ageist, but no one cares.

The latter I don't care about. I also think there are distinct power issues that come into play with polygamy that aren't in play in a two person relationship, which gives the state more power to restrict such marriages - just as they do incestuous ones. Let the polygamists argue otherwise and prove those concerns aren't valid, and maybe I'll change my mind.

 

[unofan]

I just pulled the standard definition of phobia from Webster's online. If you don't like that, take it up with Webster's. Sheesh!

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phobia

As you yourself have stated, words evolve. Homophobia no longer means solely "fear of gays," so hanging your hat on that canard doesn't fly. Homophobia is now also the term that means "discriminates towards gays" - it's the sexual orientation equivalent of "racist" or "sexist."

No one is saying you fear gays, Bob. No one is even saying you hate them. But denying them the right to marry the person they love is discriminatory, and hence a homophobic act, just as anti-miscegenation laws were racist.

The two are completely analogous.

 

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

Yes, but acceptably so. We treat children differently than adults, and for good reason. It's ageist, but no one cares.

The latter I don't care about. I also think there are distinct power issues that come into play with polygamy that aren't in play in a two person relationship, which gives the state more power to restrict such marriages - just as they do incestuous ones. Let the polygamists argue otherwise and prove those concerns aren't valid, and maybe I'll change my mind.

As you yourself have stated, words evolve. Homophobia no longer means solely "fear of gays," so hanging your hat on that canard doesn't fly. Homophobia is now also the term that means "discriminates towards gays" - it's the sexual orientation equivalent of "racist" or "sexist."

No one is saying you fear gays, Bob. No one is even saying you hate them. But denying them the right to marry the person they love is discriminatory, and hence a homophobic act, just as anti-miscegenation laws were racist.

The two are completely analogous.

How can we say these two things and not wonder the implications of incestuous marriage or a person who is already married marrying another person if they love them and both parties want to get married...and it he case of the latter, the extra person consenting?

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

I'm still trying to understand the calamity that gay marriage will cause.

There's three different sets of arguments, none of which seems very calamitous.....


One is that, to some people, it just seems "weird" and they are uncomfortable dealing with that feeling internally, and so they project it outward instead. That's human nature. People can grow out of it over time, and as it gets safer for people to "come out," and those folks discover that friends and family members are "out," they will modulate those feelings over time. Eventually it won't seem quite so "weird" to them after all, it just takes some getting used to....


Another is that, for millennia, the family unit was based on biological reproductive capacity. Maybe we should be a bit cautious in changing away from that model too quickly and too suddenly. Evolution not revolution.


The third is that marriage is a state issue and the feds should not be involved at all, and / or marriage is a matter for state legislatures and the courts should not be involved at all. Utah is a model for these folks, the LDS Church and gay-marriage advocates sat down together and worked out a compromise that both sides could live with: gay marriage occurs in civil jurisdiction without dissent from the Church, and the state cannot force the Church to preside over a gay marriage ceremony.



Naturally, the loudest voices come from the extremes on both sides...the fewer there are who support your extremism, the louder you have to shout to be heard.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

How can we say these two things and not wonder the implications of incestuous marriage or a person who is already married marrying another person if they love them and both parties want to get married...and it he case of the latter, the extra person consenting?

It may be the case that the "problem" with polygamous marriage may be more practical than philosophical, so much of the fabric of our legal system is based around the marital unit being two adults, no more and no less. this concept is amazingly widespread and embedded in all sorts of places. Imagine for example someone retires and goes to collect their pension. Typically the options are life income or life income with a survivor's benefit. Would we have to change to life income, life income with a survivor's benefit, life income with a dual survivor's benefit, life income with a treble survivor's benefit? and that is just a trivial random example.

Similarly, right now we recognize "marriage" as a lifetime commitment. Why? Why not a "marriage" as a contractual partnership that is term-limited at the outset? naturally at the expiration of the term, the partners could renew it for a new term, but why is "lifetime" the only allowable duration? ("until divorce do we part...")


It all boils down to whose needs are more important? Society's need for a stable family unit? or the participants' need for individual life fulfillment? for much of history, the former consideration mattered quite a bit; these days, it seems, only the latter really counts.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

How can we say these two things and not wonder the implications of incestuous marriage or a person who is already married marrying another person if they love them and both parties want to get married...and it he case of the latter, the extra person consenting?

The former runs into consent issues except weird cases like siblings separated in their infancy like Luke and Leia. The latter is probably an issue 40 or 60 years down the line, yeah. I'd argue it's almost impossible to successfully pull off a poly relationship unless it's couples coupling with couples, because otherwise any girl who was in a high school clique can tell you what happens with n > 2.

 

[unofan]

How can we say these two things and not wonder the implications of incestuous marriage or a person who is already married marrying another person if they love them and both parties want to get married...and it he case of the latter, the extra person consenting?

The government can restrict rights when it has a valid reason for doing so. The strength of the reason necessary depends on the classification behind the initial restriction.

So, for instance, the government desires to restrict a person's freedom if they commit a crime. The reasoning behind it is often categorized as the triumvirate of public safety, rehabilitation, and restitution. Those reasons are sufficient to justify incarceration. (I'm skipping over about ten pages of legal analysis to get there, but that's the 10-second version).

In the case of marriage, let's jump ahead and assume SCOTUS makes gay marriage possible nationwide. So there is now generally a fundamental right for any two consenting adults to marry one another regardless of gender. Let's look at your parade of horribles.

Children: Legally people have to be of the age of consent or majority to enter into contracts, which is what civil marriage is at its heart. A ruling allowing gay marriage would not change this. Lots of laws treat children differently, and they've always been constitutional where the ability to consent, as in marriage, is required. Short, short version: children are legally incapable of consenting.

Pets/inanimate objects: They inherently cannot consent either, so this is no danger. I suppose if we ever get to a point that we develop a conscious AI that is sufficiently intelligent to consent, then it would need to be revisited. Likewise if a dolphin, chimp, or other animal either evolved enough or is genetically enhanced enough by humans to have sufficient intelligence to consent, it would need to be revisited. But that is the stuff of sci-fi, and nothing that will happen in our lifetimes.

Incest: there are several concerns that aren't present in a standard marriage. There is the risk of genetic disorders in offspring, which is why states like Arizona don't allow first cousins to marry unless they are incapable of producing offspring due to age or medical condition. There is also the potential for power imbalances in the case of say a father marrying his daughter that aren't present when two unrelated people marry. The states interest in restricting such marriages is almost certainly sufficient.

Polygamy: in addition to the potential power differentials as with incest, there is also simply the logistical matter that the system is not set up for it. Do you divorce one spouse or both? How is property divided? Parental rights? In contracts, do all three need to sign off it just a majority? The state has many more legal arguments against polygamy than it does against gay marriage, which simply involves changing a couple words on the license.

Note also that none of these reasons are: tradition, "because it's icky," or "because God said so."

 

[unofan]

Utah is a model for these folks,

And by Utah, you mean the entire farking country. No church is required to perform any marriage ceremony they don't want to perform. That whole 1st Amendment freedom of religion thing. Churches could still prohibit interracial marriage if they wanted to; I wouldn't be surprised if some back woods hillbilly church did that still.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

It's pretty easy to argue against both polygamy and incestuous marriages. For starters, human society has a vested genetic interest in prohibiting them, and the two tend to go hand-in-hand. Not to mention that abuse of power and women almost always follows in the cult-like communities where said relationships take place.

 

[alfablue]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

There's three different sets of arguments, none of which seems very calamitous.....


One is that, to some people, it just seems "weird" and they are uncomfortable dealing with that feeling internally, and so they project it outward instead. That's human nature. People can grow out of it over time, and as it gets safer for people to "come out," and those folks discover that friends and family members are "out," they will modulate those feelings over time. Eventually it won't seem quite so "weird" to them after all, it just takes some getting used to....

That can be dealt with, just like accepting two races getting married.

Another is that, for millennia, the family unit was based on biological reproductive capacity. Maybe we should be a bit cautious in changing away from that model too quickly and too suddenly. Evolution not revolution.

But that argument means that any pair of people not capable of reproducing should not wed. There are quite a few men and women out there who can not reproduce.

As it turns out- those two common complaints can be held against straight people that I know who are married. So if they are not equally applied, then....

The third is that marriage is a state issue and the feds should not be involved at all, and / or marriage is a matter for state legislatures and the courts should not be involved at all. Utah is a model for these folks, the LDS Church and gay-marriage advocates sat down together and worked out a compromise that both sides could live with: gay marriage occurs in civil jurisdiction without dissent from the Church, and the state cannot force the Church to preside over a gay marriage ceremony.



Naturally, the loudest voices come from the extremes on both sides...the fewer there are who support your extremism, the louder you have to shout to be heard.

Thing is, that ship sailed quite some time ago. The feds, including the SCOTUS, have recognized marriage as a federal issue. One that can not be taken back.

Also, noting that the this case passes as allowing gay marriage- then it basically tells us that the 14th Amendment trumps the states ability to restrict something based on who a person is. We've been down this path before, quite a few times. This would be nothing new.

None the less- people are claiming some kind of gloom and doom. None of that is terribly bad.

I don't see how this means people can marry pets or object, and it still allows the number of people to be married at a time to be legislated. And age limits are still ok.

 

[busterman62]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

The government can restrict rights when it has a valid reason for doing so. The strength of the reason necessary depends on the classification behind the initial restriction.

So, for instance, the government desires to restrict a person's freedom if they commit a crime. The reasoning behind it is often categorized as the triumvirate of public safety, rehabilitation, and restitution. Those reasons are sufficient to justify incarceration. (I'm skipping over about ten pages of legal analysis to get there, but that's the 10-second version).

In the case of marriage, let's jump ahead and assume SCOTUS makes gay marriage possible nationwide. So there is now generally a fundamental right for any two consenting adults to marry one another regardless of gender. Let's look at your parade of horribles.

Children: Legally people have to be if the age of consent or majority to enter into contracts, which is what civil marriage is at its heart. A ruling allowing gay marriage would not change this. Lots of laws treat children differently, and they've always been constitutional where the ability to connect, as in marriage, is required. Short, short version: chosen are legally incapable of consenting.

Pets/inanimate objects: They inherently cannot consent, so this is no danger, either. I suppose if we ever get to a point that we develop a conscious AI that is sufficiently intelligent to consent, then it would need to be revisited. Likewise if a dolphin, chimp, or other animal either evolved enough or is genetically enhanced enough by humans to have sufficient intelligence to consent, it would need to be revisited. But that is the stuff of sci-fi, and nothing that will happen in our lifetimes.

In the case of incest, there are several concerns that aren't present in a standard marriage. There is the risk of genetic disorders in offspring, which is why states like Arizona don't allow first cousins to marry unless they are incapable of producing offspring due to age or medical condition. There is also the potential for power imbalances in the case of say a father marrying his daughter that aren't present when two unrelated people marry. The states interest in restricting such marriages is almost certainly sufficient.

Completely agree

Polygamy: in addition to the potential power differentials as with incest, there is also simply the logistical matter that the system is not set up for it. Do you divorce one spouse or both? How is property divided? Parental rights? In contracts, do all three need to sign off it just a majority? The state has many more legal arguments against polygamy than it does against gay marriage, which simply involves changing a couple words on the license.

Note also that none of these reasons are: tradition, "because it's icky," or "because God said so."

Incest can, IMO, be prohibited based on the Genetic/public health issues you have alluded to. This seemingly would not be the case in polygamy unless it involved relatives.

If marriage requires consent by adults, why then should it be restricted to only 2? Because it always has? Sounds similar to the argument against gay marriage. Power differentials? If the parties are of legal age and competent to provide informed consent, I don't see the state's interest here in restricting it. Can you please explain further?

As to the "system" not being set up for it, inconvenience to the system is not a rational for discrimination. Any lawyer worth his/her fee should be able to address these types of concerns. Overall, I don't see how the basic principle for allowing gay marriage differs much from allowing polygamy except for the numbers of involved parties. If two or more adults love each other and consent to be married, why should the state interfere?

 

[joecct]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

As to incest - if the couple love each other and agree to no kids, what can be wrong with that?

Agree on polymory. The camel's nose is under the tent flap and there is no turning back (save a global catastrophe).

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

No church is required to perform any marriage ceremony they don't want to perform.

Yet if a church were having a bake sale, in your world, they'd be required by law to put a gay couple atop a wedding cake?

 

[alfablue]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

If marriage requires consent by adults, why then should it be restricted to only 2? Because it always has? Sounds similar to the argument against gay marriage. Power differentials? If the parties are of legal age and competent to provide informed consent, I don't see the state's interest here in restricting it. Can you please explain further?

How? I don't understand the argument that 2 or more than 2 people is similar to restricting based on who they are.

One can argue under the 14th that the states have to treat each person equally under the law. It does not open up a numerical restriction.

The same argument for gay marriage is inter-racial marriage- that a state can not restrict the action based on who they are. Nothing to do with the number of people getting into the agreement.

Put in a different question- how is restricting marriage to 2 people similar to the argument of gay marriage?? I don't understand that implication.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Power of the SCOTUS Part VII - The Bedrock of the Republic!

As to incest - if the couple love each other and agree to no kids, what can be wrong with that?

I learned from the interwebz (so we know it's pure fact) that your family needs to really get deeply into multi-generational incest before the genetic back wash hits. So as long as you don't come from the Ptolemaic royal family, if you want to do a one off with your sis, you're probably OK. Plus, gay couples don't have to worry about birth defects.

Do incest rules extend to adopted siblings? That's a clear case where all the developmental issues are there but none of the biology.

 

[unofan]

Incest can, IMO, be prohibited based on the Genetic/public health issues you have alluded to. This seemingly would not be the case in polygamy unless it involved relatives.

If marriage requires consent by adults, why then should it be restricted to only 2? Because it always has? Sounds similar to the argument against gay marriage. Power differentials? If the parties are of legal age and competent to provide informed consent, I don't see the state's interest here in restricting it. Can you please explain further?

As to the "system" not being set up for it, inconvenience to the system is not a rational for discrimination. Any lawyer worth his/her fee should be able to address these types of concerns. Overall, I don't see how the basic principle for allowing gay marriage differs much from allowing polygamy except for the numbers of involved parties. If two or more adults love each other and consent to be married, why should the state interfere?

Someone below mentioned the cult aspect, which is a good place to start. That's part of what I was going for with the "power imbalance" - though who knows how much of that is simply because polygamy is illegal and therefore only practiced by cults.

But anyone who's ever lived with 2 or more roommates at a time knows what I mean to some extent. The way problems are handled in a one-on-one situation is different than a three-way (or more) negotiation. As the number of people in a relationship goes up, there is an increased likelihood that some person in the relationship is less a willing party than someone coerced, at least for some actions. Maybe that goes to the consent element, but I think it's a legitimate concern. If a polygamist could show that concern is not real, I'd be willing to listen to it.

As far as the practical matters, it's not "because this is how it's always been done" but "because the it would cost a boatload of time, money, and legislation to work this out, because the current system is not setup to handle multiple spouses." The government clearly has an interest in its own finances. Whether that interest is sufficient to stave off polygamy likely depends on how it would be classified. It's doubtful polyamory would be classified as a sexual orientation rather than a preference (just as preferences for blondes, or cougars, or poolboys are not classified as such), though obviously that could change over time. In that case, the government wins because it would have a legitimate interest, and under the rational basis test that's sufficient.

And part of the point of civil marriage is that it covers all those rights and responsibilities without needing to consult a lawyer. If I'm in a coma, my wife has the power to make medical decisions. It's simple and efficient. If there are two spouses, what then if they disagree? If there are three others, does majority vote rule or does it have to be unanimous?

I'm sure there are people out there that could make a strong argument for a return to the Biblical days of Solomon and his 700 wives, but I'm not one of them because I simply don't care. I happen to think the government could win court cases against it without resorting to the lame reasons put forth in the gay marriage cases, but I'm not invested in that.