The Big Gay Marriage Thread

SCOTUS will have issues considering it's earlier sodomy ruling. They'd need to find some legitimate state interest in preventing gay marriage. This is assuming they want to be logically consistent (haha Scalia), but it's why Scalia was totally anti sodomy in the first place: because the logic used in striking it down is a back-door (haha) into allowing gay marriage.

If this wasn't about those icky gays, small government conservatives would be all over their logic: government regulation needs to present a legitimate state interest in doing something. Not "because we think it's icky".

I'd go 5-4 in favor of gay marriage. There's really no defense of it at this point beyond the "it's icky" view, and Roberts appears terrified that his court will wind up being the modern Dred Scot as far as "horrible decisions by the Supreme Court" references go.

He has been quite explicit on this point:

(Emphasis mine.)

Yeah, he's basically very blunt in pointing out that Lawrence v. Texas is impossible to reconcile with banning gay marriage while remaining logically consistent.

I disagree with his dissent in that per usual Scalia, he has an end desire (no gay marriage) and is trying to reason his way to it. He's not ruling on why a state should be able to ban a specific sex act, he's ruling on not wanting gay marriage via whatever logic gets him there. To admit that there's no reason the state should care about a sex act, he'd be admitting there's no reason for them to care about gay marriage either.

Basically: Fuck Scalia, he's a terrible Justice.

What justification indeed, Mister Justice? Only your bigotry, er, "moral approbation," apparently.

The coolest thing about the Prop 8 case is that there can be no new evidence introduced, and the evidence that ProtectMarriage has is practically nonexistent at this point, especially when you include one of their professional witnesses was basically discredited and another contradicted PM's claims. Basically it's been boiled down to PM saying the state has a vested interest because THINK OF THE CHILDRENS and the other side saying "look at all this shit that says children will be JUST FINE KTHX" (among all the other things about the law itself being discriminatory, the definition of marriage having no "true" traditional meaning, etc.).

Reading the court transcripts has been very amusing for me.

Hey, now.

HOLY SHIT FUCK THIS FUCKING FUCKER

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/12/antonin-scalia-gay-marriage-murder/59847/

via Lum

What a ridiculous bit of rhetoric. As Scalia well knows, the question isn't whether we can have "moral feelings against homosexuality," the question is whether laws against same serve any legitimate governmental purpose. Laws against murder, of course, have such a purpose. Surely he's trolling.

I think his argument would probably be closer to, "homosexuality is harmful, just like murder is harmful, just in different ways (similarly assault is "less harmful" than murder), so we have to protect families from homosexuality and sodomy and therefore keep it illegal." Or some shit.

Still makes me fuckin' rage.

More likely it will come down to "the original intent of the drafters was not to include homosexuals in the Equal Protection Clause."

I meant more if he were to elaborate on his "murder" statement, not his reasoning in either of the upcoming rulings.

I mean, even murder isn't expressly forbidden by our Great Constitution (the only crime specifically mentioned iirc is piracy). So if he's gonna go the morals route, he can't really rely on that.

I'm not saying that I agree with them, but wouldn't it be hilarious if the people who say homosexuality is responsible for natural disasters were right? As if that was the one historical fact that the Bible got completely right. Everything else was wrong, because clearly, you can eat pork and the LORD will not dress you in sackcloth and give your children the minds of beasts to tear at each other and wail. So if too many people have gay sex, the city where it happens gets turned to salt or melts or some other type of over the top violence. I would enjoy two things about this scenario. First, the studies revealing precisely how much butt stuff is too much butt stuff, and the effect of televised lesbianism on incidence of Cosmic Reprisal. Second, the inevitable nightcap and roughtrade system proposed by Democrats and rejected by Republicans not on First Amendment grounds, but on what is technically a protection afforded people against their government by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Ted Nugent.

Oh hey there Mr. Roberts

http://americablog.com/2012/12/justice-roberts-pro-bono-gay.html

That's as fabulous as rainbow glitter, yo.

He could make a valid argument with regards to things like outlawing assisted suicide and such, in which two parties are willing participants. Murder is a dumb fucking comparison because one party absolutely does not want the act to happen and thus the government steps in to say "uh, no." The funny thing is if you think about most laws involving consenting adults.. if it's illegal it's usually due to an outside threat to a non consenting party(driving laws, what little gun control we have, etc). Or it's already up for discussion to be burned to the ground(pot, same sex marriage, in my dream world the sex offender registry)

His argument is basically that something involving two consenting adults is just as bad as something involving a non consenting party. Man, I can do this, too! Sodomy is ethically the same as rape! I see no logical flaw in my argument at ALL! Fuck, Scalia's the only moron who would vote for Prohibition again, isn't he?

To repeat: Fuck Scalia, he's a terrible Justice. Not because he rules in ways I don't like, but because his rulings are completely void of any thought or logical consistency.

I don't care much for Scalia, but these criticisms are generally incorrect.

I think "void of any shred of humanity" would be a better way to describe Scalia.

I stick by my criticisms of him. He logically follows his own bizarre internal idea of how shit SHOULD work, and works his way back from there in his rulings. My accusation of being void of thought or logical consistency is that in working his way back, he takes different roads and winds up contradicting himself and generally waffling on honoring precedent based on if he cares for it or not (he's pro Wickard due to precedent even if he thinks it was a bad decision, but wants to overturn Roe because the court shouldn't be bound by mistakes, for example)

He's not our most terrible Justice, he's just a pretty consistently shit Justice and his judicial methodology has little to do with Origionalism, and more to do with "how can I make my ideal American happen in this case"

I'm reading up on what SCOTUSBlog has said about Prop 8 over time (and I'll look at DOMA next but that's seven cases as opposed to one).

In particular, I really like this summary of what the arguments against same sex marriage have been over the years.

Source.

Seriously, I could look at pictures of happy old people gettin' married all day.

Why can't people just let other people be happy when it has nothing to do with them?

So the UK is also finally getting on this Gay Marriage bandwagon at the minute. The government is prepping a bill in parliament right now and all signs point to it being passed in time for weddings 'on the ground' next summer. We've had legal equal to marriage civil partnerships for a while, and due perhaps to the generally lower level of religiosity in the UK there hasn't seemed to be as much of a clamouring for those to be upgraded to marriage.

Unfortunately for those who are looking forward to it, the implementation is being pushed through by the ever popular Tories which means them bending over backwards to try and appease the significant part of their activist base that is homophobic and crazy, for fear of losing them to the other more right wing nutty parties (UKIP principally). In the weird compromise they've put together they've constructed what they are calling 'the quadruple lock' that will provide four legislative barriers on anyone being forced to participate in gay marriage that doesn't want to. One of the perpetual terrors of the homophobes is that a cackling and fabulous bureaucrat from the EU is going to drag them from their homes and force them to participate in a gay wedding at which their skin will presumably melt off and their eyes fall out as the sanctity of marriage is defiled before them. Anyway, as part of the legislative lock the established Church of England will actually get a new law written just for them (on top of, and separate from, the regular gay marriage bill) that bars them from performing any gay marriages even if they want to. For other churches it will be up to them whether they want to conduct gay marriages or not.

I guess it goes without saying that these compromises aren't winning over many/any homophobes as their objections aren't based on reason but fear of catching the dreaded gay lurgy. I saw a Tory MP stand up in parliament and declare that the bill went against the teachings of jesus, which was something of a first for me in the UK. He probably won't have been pleased by the days other main news story, the release of the UK census data, showing that atheism had grown from 15% of the population in 2001, to its current all time high of 25% in 2011. Christian identification fell even faster down from 72% of the population to 59%. Jedi Knights are at 0.6% in case you were interested.

So Gay Marriage UK edition, it's happening but its happening in a bit of a weird way, and you are still shit out of luck if you want a big gay Catholic/CoE wedding.

Holy shit, the guy on the left is Jasper!

I Get To Determine Whether Gay People Can Marry

By Clarence Thomas

So basicaly, they're worried that the following could happen:

Did anyone ask him for a chapter and verse citation? Probably not, this is new for the UK as you mentioned. I recommend you all develop questions ready for next time such as: "Which parable talks about the buttseks?" or "To whom did Jesus preach the sin of manlove?" or "Jesus loved religious leaders who claimed to be the gatekeepers of righteousness to maintain their political power, didn't He?"

I am available for consultation by the way.

True, but presumably in the CA case at least, the question is not whether he can find an explicit constitutional prohibition against gay marriage, but rather can he articulate a legitimate state interest to which the law bears some rational relation to. It's clear from his opinions that he views the preservation of "traditional sexual mores" as qualifying, so his vote is in the bag. Or, stated another way, while most jurists have moved beyond this rather elementary form of reasoning to asking the hard questions about the underlying validity of traditional sexual mores, Scalia takes them at face value. That's just how he rolls.

BECAUSE SATAN

What I've never understood...

When there's so GD much you can hate people for, why hate/condemn/oppress them etc. for what they love? Looking at it through the religion lens, I think there's a LOT more rules you're skirting by when you condemn someone for just their sexuality than if you support them.

Because Jesus. Duh.

Court to Hear 2 Days of Arguments on Gay Marriage
http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics...days-of-arguments-on-gay-marriage-4172430.php

March 26 (prop 8) and March 27 (DOMA).

Jesus had nothing to say about sexuality. Interestingly, the anti-gay marriage don't cite Him either. So can we kind of, I dunno, evolve a bit here? Thanks.

The Washington National Cathedral announces that same-sex weddings may be celebrated at the Cathedral.

Good to see.

My grandparents (and thousands upon thousands of others) married at "The Little Church Around the Corner" (the Church of the Transfiguration, Episcopal) which has been known since the 1870s for providing services to people other churches deem unworthy (particularly actors). After reading this I got curious and took a look to see if they will perform same-sex marriages, and was pleased to see: "Continuing its long tradition of inclusiveness, the "Little Church" celebrated the first same-sex wedding in the Diocese of New York in July 2012 and is proud to have performed several since the formal rite of Blessing of a Lifelong Covenant was adopted by the General Convention."

http://www.littlechurch.org/

I really like this title/term. Really really.

Damn.

Slight digression, I guess. When Mr. W and I got married (20 years ago in June- damn), we asked a judge friend of my moms' to do the ceremony. Mind you, moms were lesbians active in the gay rights movement, and so was their judge friend. She had done lots of commitment ceremonies but if I recall right, we were the first hets she had hitched. We didn't have any particular preference for the wordage, so she just used her usual ceremony, which seemed fine to me. It had the benefit of lacking the sexist overtones of some ceremonies, as both parties were by definition equal. For instance, it had a pleasing bit of language about standing shoulder-to-shoulder through life. My mom later told me that she had to stifle giggles at that point, since Mr. W and I are about 13 inches apart in height, so it's more like crown-of-head-to-armpit for us.

(particularly actors)

Say what?

http://www.littlechurch.org/#/who-we-are

Oh yeah, I'd totally forgotten about that. Actors used to be considered scum.