Federal judge strikes down AL marriage ban :) (Amish, Obama, independence)

[SilverBulletZ06]

Originally Posted by jjrose

1. Wrong. A man can abort a fetus if it is in his body. A woman can abort a fetus in her body. No one can abort a fetus that is not in their own body. Abortion laws are based on privacy in medial decisions. Both men and women have the same legal privacy in their medical decisions.

2. Wrong. This argument was tried during the Loving V Virginia trials. "both blacks and whites are affected equally since no one can marry outside their race" Didn't work then either.

3. There IS a constitutional right to equal protection of the laws. Marriage has legal protections. Men can marry women but women can not marry women that is not equal protection.

The gun rights threads are further down the list. I suggest going there if you want to discuss gun rights.

1) Hypocracy. To abort or not to abort affects both parties thereby nullifying "privacy" concerns. See also: mental health, knowingly spreading communicable diseases, community health concerns, ad infinitum.

2) Marriage laws are not "constitutionally protected" no matter how many times the court spews the idea. Constitutional protections are spelled out clearly within the constitution and its subsequent amendments. Loving was actually a reversal of a previous decision so it isn't like there was not back and forth regarding the issue.

3) Correct. Marriage does have legal protections. And correct, people do have a right to equal protection. You are arguing that the cases should mix marriage (not a constitutional protection) should require constitutional rights status based on an emotional argument, not a legal one.

I like to expand my horizons beyond firearms threads, my issue with bringing that up is that people I find to be remarkably pro-homosexual marriage or pro-choice (again, I am for both) forget that constitutional issues are spelled out and while they will vote a certain way (way left that is) because of the aforementioned two issues they have no problems with overrunning actual spelled out constitutional issues by way of those votes.

Should gays have the ability to marry, sure. Should polygamists, sure. Should hetero couples, sure. But to put the face of a constitutional violation in any way, shape, or form is an argument I cannot agree with.

[Ceist]

Originally Posted by BentBow

By all means, government has made marriage a business agreement, with a contract. Nothing else. The contract can be broken at anytime.
A godly man and woman, taking an oath to their GOD and in fear of accountability when the time comes, holds more water than a paper that can be shredded at any moment.

Then they can just have a religious ceremony in a church and leave civil marriage licenses to those who want them.

[SilverBulletZ06]

Originally Posted by Ceist

Then they can just have a religious ceremony in a church and leave civil marriage licenses to those who want them.

Yes, they absolutely should have.

Let the religions call it marriage and let the government call it a civil asset union.

[hammertime33]

Originally Posted by SilverBulletZ06

2) Marriage laws are not "constitutionally protected" no matter how many times the court spews the idea. Constitutional protections are spelled out clearly within the constitution and its subsequent amendments. Loving was actually a reversal of a previous decision so it isn't like there was not back and forth regarding the issue.

Marriage laws absolutely are "constitutionally protected":

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

And the earlier decision in Loving that was overturned by the US Supreme Court didn't say that marriage laws are not constitutionally protected. The earlier decision said that interracial marriage bans, while falling under a constitutionally protected area, nonetheless survived a strict scrutiny analysis because such bans effectuated the important and legitimate State purposes of "preserv[ing] the racial integrity of its citizens," and preventing "the corruption of blood," "a mongrel breed of citizens," and "the obliteration of racial pride."

[Ms.Wolf]

Originally Posted by SilverBulletZ06

Yes, they absolutely should have.

Let the religions call it marriage and let the government call it a civil asset union.

Why? My church calls marriage "holy matrimony". There is no one group or religion that owns the rights to the word marriage.

[Dane_in_LA]

Originally Posted by SilverBulletZ06

1) You just struck down your whole equal protections argument! You cannot say that it is unequal that gays cannot marry another gay person when avenues for marriage are available just not taken and then support the fact that men cannot get a child aborted when no avenue is available for this. According to you, men must be able to push an abortion as well.

If a man gets pregnant, he is perfectly entitled to terminate the pregnancy according to the laws regulating that.

There is no equal protection clause to come in because the gay folks could marry, they just couldn't marry the same sex. An equal protection case would occur if they were unable to marry at all.

And there is no religious discrimination in Saudi Arabia, because everybody is equally free to worship Allah.

Correct, but there is no constitutional right to marry, therefore it is up to the individual legislature's to enact same sex marriage laws or the federal legislators to do the same.

Loving v. Virginia disagrees with you.

[SilverBulletZ06]

Originally Posted by hammertime33

Marriage laws absolutely are "constitutionally protected":

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

And the earlier decision in Loving that was overturned by the US Supreme Court didn't say that marriage laws are not constitutionally protected. The earlier decision said that interracial marriage bans, while falling under a constitutionally protected area, nonetheless survived a strict scrutiny analysis because such bans effectuated the important and legitimate State purposes of "preserv[ing] the racial integrity of its citizens," and preventing "the corruption of blood," "a mongrel breed of citizens," and "the obliteration of racial pride."

Only by incorrect, read: not constitutional, redressing of the laws.

There are no priveledges or immunities of citizenship being denied. No life, liberty, or property being taken. No protection from any undue government sanction being prohibited.

Again, there is no constitutional right to get married. There is a requirement for states to accept licenses from other states as equal in many circumstances, this being one of them, which should be promoted by the pro-gay groups but we've long since run past the field goal of equality and now are running straight to the next field of militant acceptance.

I can remember being in College when Gay Marriage became a real national hard-hitting agenda in 2000ish and having discussions with a very openly gay friend. He had a very long rant about the gay community activists rebuking 'civil unions' while pushing for 'marriage'. He had a very deep understanding that no matter what, some people aren't going to accept his lifestyle and that the best way to gain majority acceptance was to show gays as a version of normalcy. Instead of pushing the agenda, he advocated to take the union option so there were no religious toes being stepped on but you gained the equivalency, stop the "gay idiot parades" (something like that, very against flamboyance for the sake of flamboyancy and shock), and instead make sure that you showed an example of a loving same-sex couple. Our talks on the subject, having grown up in a religious household, colored my viewpoint and as I took a more adult perspective on things I find I agree more with him then with the gay advocacy groups that gain national headlines.

[Dane_in_LA]

Originally Posted by SilverBulletZ06

Marriage laws are not "constitutionally protected" no matter how many times the court spews the idea.

Ehm - it's the Supreme Court's job to decide what is and isn't constitutionally protected. Sorta the final arbiters.

[Dane_in_LA]

Originally Posted by SilverBulletZ06

He had a very long rant about the gay community activists rebuking 'civil unions' while pushing for 'marriage'.

He sounds poorly informed, because the LGBT community didn't have to "rebuke" civil unions - civil unions were never offered them. I am not going to post the laundry list of state constitutions that specifically banned not just same-sex marriage, but any sort of same-sex union sharing the privileges of marriage. (The usual suspects are there, of course.)

The idea that the gays "rebuked" civil unions and insisted on marriage" is - well, it smacks of revisionism. It makes people feel better to think that they offered a compromise and were "rebuked", but the fact of the matter is, the offer was never made.

It is cute to see how all of a sudden everyone on the losing side are claiming they would have been just fine with civil unions. Like a chess player suddenly saying "I would have offered a draw" when he realizes the game is no longer going his way.

[Dane_in_LA]

Originally Posted by BentBow

By all means, government has made marriage a business agreement, with a contract. Nothing else. The contract can be broken at anytime.
A godly man and woman, taking an oath to their GOD and in fear of accountability when the time comes, holds more water than a paper that can be shredded at any moment.

And if the union dissolves and the assets have to be distributed, God will show up to oversee the proceedings, right?

Even ol' Hammurabi had to write page up and page down on marriage - on pure earthly matters having to do with inheritance and infidelity and protection of widows and children outside wedlock etc. etc. It has always been a government task to oversee what happens to assets in marriages.

Originally Posted by jazzarama

Though I haven't heard of it happening yet, I can picture laws being proposed to prevent anyone, including a member of the clergy, from completing a civil marriage license for anyone if they refuse to perform a ceremony based on the sexual orientation of the couple.

Perhaps making up things to be afraid of isn't the best use of your time. Churches are perfectly free to refuse to marry mixed-race couples. Or divorcees. They're free to stop a funeral 15 minutes in, in front of the bereaved, if the pastor learns of the sexual orientation of the deceased.

They can shut out anyone they like from hearing the Good Word, just as Jesus would have done.