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There are other legalities besides marriage. But I grant a handful of gays MIGHT consider other issues a higher priority than their own rights, I have yet to met any, but it is possible.
They already have all their civil rights. No one is rolling queers, or hanging them in the town square, by a rope.
They are free to be with who ever they wish. No one has denied anyone their freedom and liberty.
You are not talking about their civil rights. Marriage is a civil right. Relationships aren't.
All of us are free to have relationships with both sexes of all kinds with nothing written into our laws about that. But marriage between two people is still restricted in 16 states.
You can't have it both ways, Bent. Either 2 people have the liberty to choose who they want to marry and live in peace with no harm to others, or they do not.
Marriage carries legal entitlements that are presently awarded to some of us, but not all of us. By your own reckoning, then either all marriages should be devoid of these entitlements or everyone should have the same entitlements equally.
Free for one is free for all, right? Anyone can do as they please as long as they cause no harm to others. Right? That's what you say, over and over again.
You are not talking about their civil rights. Marriage is a civil right. Relationships aren't.
All of us are free to have relationships with both sexes of all kinds with nothing written into our laws about that. But marriage between two people is still restricted in 16 states.
You can't have it both ways, Bent. Either 2 people have the liberty to choose who they want to marry and live in peace with no harm to others, or they do not.
Marriage carries legal entitlements that are presently awarded to some of us, but not all of us. By your own reckoning, then either all marriages should be devoid of these entitlements or everyone should have the same entitlements equally.
Free for one is free for all, right? Anyone can do as they please as long as they cause no harm to others. Right? That's what you say, over and over again.
If government controls marriage at any level, there is no way it can be a right.
Rights are not granted by the government. Only privileges government allows are.
What that means is that you used examples that are basically strawman arguments that are easily refuted.
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I'm just trying to make the point that the 14th does not prescribe perfect and unlimited equality.
Not exactly, parts of the CRA do like affirmative action. The fourteenth amendment just gives everyone the sane rights under the law barring a few circumstances in the law like you mentioned that are needed by necessity.
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A drunk can be a drunk in the US without violating the laws. A junkie can't. Is that a violation of the 14th amendment requirement of equality? At least in my state, a cop can drive in the HOV lane at any time, whether responding to an emergency or not. Is that a violation of the 14th?
These are forms of inequality, but I don't think that they are unconstitutional.
They are inequalities but they are situational. A cop don't typically ride HOVs alone without emergency. A junkie vs alcoholic is an immediate danger to oneself and others. Remember Richard Pryor burning himself while free-basing cocaine in 1983 or perhaps the bath salts zombies of a few years ago? The only time a drunk is an immediate danger is one who drives.
But on both of these, you knew that.
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Here is maybe a better example. In Iran they have a concept of temporary marriage, which is actually used to facilitate legal prostitution there. The john and prostitution go through a temporary marriage before their session, which terminates upon the end of the session. The Mullah gets a cut, the prostitute doesn't have to worry about arrest, and the john gets laid...everybody's happy. Married for a Minute | Mother Jones
Does it violate the 14th that a john and hooker in the US do not have such provision for temp. marriage?
Not really because you are comparing one country that allows that (a somewhat surprising one) to another that doesn't (a somewhat surprising one as well.) Also the laws of adultery are much worse than the US. US don't have religious based law like dining adulterers and instead we jail pimps and hookers for prostitution and johns for buying sex.
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Originally Posted by jacqueg
That's true. A lot has changed since then.
I think the founders, all exceptionally well-educated for their time, knew that societies change over time, and in fact, they were open to that change - obviously. They were not trying to preserve their new nation in amber, they were trying to lay down principles which would form a bedrock around which change could occur. The 14th, I think, is based on the constitutional principle that all citizens are legally equal. The 14th does not set up a new citizenship category, it widens who may be considered a full citizen, and says that citizens must be treated equally whichever state they find themselves in.
Whatever the sponsors of the 14th thought in their hearts, I find it hard to believe that among those who voted to ratify it, there were none who realized that the language could accommodate greater suffrage than it presently allowed.
Which is why they allowed it to be amended and have the elastic clause. The issue is some people have the strict constructionist argument that for something to be constitutional, it must be in The Constitution in big bold letters.
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The principle that you are seeking is simple and well-known. The government can constrain individual behavior if there is a compelling public purpose for doing so. I don't think that any branch of government is infallible in this regard, but that is the standard for which they ought to aim. And of course, this means that public purpose is allowed to change as times change. I highly doubt that "this behavior is non-traditional and/or icky" meets the public purpose standard for constraining individuals. There has to be a more substantive reason than that. An opinion article on Salon focusses on this aspect of the arguments made yesterday - Traditional marriage gets a SCOTUS smackdown: The incomprehensible right-wing logic that’s poised to go down in flames - Salon.com (The headline is inflammatory, the article is not.)
They do know that any marriage by law don't make marriage by Good any less right? I mean Muslims and Mormons both believe you COULD have multiple wives. That don't make Catholic, Protestant or Jewish marriages any less.
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I don't view it that way at all. It's an argument about citizenship, and that is the basis on which the SCOTUS granted certiorari for this case. The reason why I am so interested in this issue even though I have no personal stake in it at all is precisely that it gets to the issue of what it means to be a citizen of a free country. It seems a no-brainer to me that the trend should be toward as much inclusiveness and equality before the law as possible.
The problem is people think their rights include discriminating against others. But any one knows that true rights don't skew you to infringe on anther's rights.
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