Nope, very different because both strait couple and gay couples will both have civil unions. Those that choose to be married by the church will have marriages.
In the end, there's not much question this makes it to the Supreme Court; the Supreme Court will chuck this flawed decision (60-40 odds); and we'll be rid of this nonsense about "equal rights" for another decade or so. It will be up for local states to decide. As it should be.
It's not about equal rights. Or, rather, it is, but it shouldn't be. Discrimination isn't necessarily unconstitutional. It's not even wrong. People are allowed to have preferences. There's nothing wrong with one state deciding it likes gay marriage and another deciding it doesn't. That's how it's supposed to be. So, when a court decides to create a new category of federal civil rights, I'd say that's nonsense. There's only one SC Justice whose vote is in question - Justice Kennedy. Last time the issue of gay rights was in front of him, he went out of his way to say that he butt secks was constitutionally protected, but he wasn't going so far as to say his decision didn't include anything beyond that, such as the right to same secks marriage.
Because the state has an interest in fostering a social construct that among other things but very importantly is the preferred social construct for bearing and raising children. That is the rational basis the judge completely ignored, and his ignorance will not stand. Jack, I didn't follow the due process argument, but I will look into press reports. as you may know the New York Court of Appeals considered this issue a few years ago and did not sustain the gay agenda, but I do recall them saying equal protection analysis came closest to sustaining their claim. But not close enough. Not a big fan of your states rights analysis either. Heh.
Sounds like the same kind of reasoning to deny interracial marriages before Loving v. Virginia. Defense of his decision made by Virginia Judge Leon Bazile in 1965: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." Supreme Court ruling in 1967: "Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State." The Supreme Court condemned Virginia's anti-miscegenation law: "There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy." Notice the parallels between then and today?
That's a crock of shit and you know it. If that's the only argument you can come up with, your position is fucked.
Yeah, great. Those are wonderful arguments posited by people looking to equate being gay with being black because they don't have any other good Constitutional arguments. There's a HUUUUUUGE difference, and if you don't understand it then I'm not sure I can explain it quickly, but I'll try. Race is a constitutionally significant characteristic that enjoys special protection carved out by the Post-War Amendments. Gayness doesn't enjoy that same protection, and no court has ever said that it does. Not even the California Court, although Judge Walker did a cute end run to reach the same result without actually creating a new classification. Does that help you?
Oooh, I seem to have hit a nerve. You take this issue personally, I see. Why is society's interest in how children are raised a crock?
States are perfectly free to enact them. If I oppose gay marriage, it won't be because I hate gay people. It will be because I want them to enact gay marriage in constitutionally proper and democratic way instead of crafting new rights out of thin air.
And there's also the distinction between laws against immutable characteristics and laws regulating behavior that we talked about yesterday and before. THe attempt by people like Wildthing to draw analogies to race discrimination is not merely the usual form of arguing by analogy. It is also an attempt to draw in the moral analysis relating to this country's long history of dealing with slavery and the awful effects it left with the aims of the gay agenda and thereby attain the high moral ground that the good fight against race discrmination involved. It also fits with the interest group dynamics within the Democratic Party - you scratch my back, I will scratch yours. Only problem is they are not the same, and it is of no small interest that polls showed that blacks in Califrornia, despite being overwhelmingly Democratic voters, voted for Prop 8 by significant margins.
So you are OK with dopehead Cindy and Ray raising 7 kids in a trailer park, because they at least consumated them together?
I think there is an advantage to having the parents of the child raise the child. That takes nothing away from adoptions. It's just a fact. And I also think a child benefits from having parents one from both sex. Arguing from specific examples as you are suggesting does not mean that adopting society wide principles of general application is inappropriate. That there are bad apples does not change the benefit of the overall policy's application. In any event this is what the state of California's voters chose. It is rational even if you disagree with it, and under democratic, constitutional principles I have real problem with unelected judges overturning a law like that. Conservative judges can do the same thing, and do, and I don't like that, either.
