- Oct 30, 2000
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No group that funds politics should be allowed to also be tax exempt.
No argument from me on that if it is for a political cause.
Groups like the DAR that fund political discussion fall under a different camp.
No group that funds politics should be allowed to also be tax exempt.
Of course lesbians can be artificially inseminated, and many heterosexual couples are no longer no longer naturally fertile (i.e. able to have children without medical help if they can at all) at least by the time they get married.The only reason given for opposing incestuous marriage is the possibility of genetically inferior offspring.
Unfortunately if you buy that argument you are basically saying that an important part of marriage is producing offspring. Something which a gay couple is incapable of doing.
Actually it is even more clearly discrimination since established court ruling on inter-racial marriage would seem to make it clear that there is no real difference between people of different races. ie they have ruled that distinctions on race are arbitrary.
Actually this ruling merely says the Federal government cannot define marriage, it being a state power. So if the state of Mississippi wanted to make it legal to marry a 10 year old girl the federal government couldnt pass a law denying benefits to such a marriage.
And established legal precedence does allow defining marriage as between a man and a woman precisely because it is not arbitrary.
You are the one opposed to legal precedence not me.
Of course lesbians can be artificially inseminated, and many heterosexual couples are no longer no longer naturally fertile (i.e. able to have children without medical help if they can at all) at least by the time they get married.
You can make some other arguments against incestuous marriages for the record, such as the potential inherent danger to society with the inherent power imbalances which could exist with such marriages and especially when between parents and their children it could effectively simply be a way to completely evade estate taxes.
So is doing so by gender; it does not harm anyone; nor does it harm society in general.
It only emotionally harms those that can find no other reason than because they do not like it.
Right, that's what I told you to begin with, that this ruling states the federal government cannot define marriage for states without a compelling federal interest. Your idea that the federal government cannot prohibit child marriage in the states is unproven however, so bad example.
If you are referring to established legal precedence as the 40 year old unexplained dismissal of Baker v. Nelson, good luck on that. It appears quite likely that the 9th circuit is about to strike down anti-gay marriage statutes and I fully expect the USSC will let them, as the USSC knows which way the cultural winds are blowing.
True for the first one, but that doesn't really come across as an actual argument to keep gay marriages banned. (You may be making at least a theoretical argument for incestuous marriages, but you are not explaining how current marriage policies actually make sense since they don't cover all the cases of naturally infertile couples who can get married regardless unless they are same sex ones.)An incestuous couple could also be artificially inseminated eliminating the possibility of genetically inferior offspring.
That would not apply to siblings. And power imbalances could exist if unrelated people are married with say a massive age difference. And both traditional and same-sex marriage can be sued to evade estate taxes now.
So it seems at best there will be disagreement on whether it is arbitrary. So why dont you explain why YOU think it is arbitrary instead of mindlessly appealing to a future court ruling.
And as for the USSC, you are basically saying it will strike down anti-gay marriage measures not because they are illegal discrimination, but because people have come to accept gay marriage. This is not the purpose of the court, but of state legislatures.
Yet you accuse me of being Right.
People know what is correct; it is not a political issue
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We are discussing whether it is arbitrary. Please explain why you think it arbitrary to limit marriage to between a man and woman.
I'm sure it is. This is also the same court that has made the Dredd Scott decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Brown v. Board. It interprets the Constitution based on evolving standards of what is decent and reasonable. Anti-gay bigotry is swiftly becoming unacceptable, and the court will follow.
eskimospy said:Why gay marriage bans are arbitrary has been done to death on here. There are many threads, some of which I have participated in, that spell it out in excruciating detail. Simply put, opposition to same sex marriage is based in arguments of tradition and moral objection to homosexuality. Neither of these is a constitutionally rational basis for discrimination.
It is arbitrary because there are two other combinations that can also happen.
And neither combination shows to be any danger to society.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.arbitrary
Defining marriage as between a man and woman is not homophobic bigotry and more than denying incestuous marriage makes you a siblingphobic bigot.
No. It is based on the fact that only a man-woman relationship can produce children as was the basis of past court rulings.
This is of course plainly wrong because there are clear additional legal problems with three people getting married, such as dividing assets during a divorce, possible additional child custody complications, and issues such a social security survivor benefits and other federal policies.There are more than 2 other combinations, unless you insist on restricting marriage to 2 people. But why not 1 or 3 or 4, defining marriage as between 2 people is completely arbitrary.
Without coming down on either side of the debate I will take a moment to say that nehalem's original point, that the ruling's basis of states' rights is interesting, does appear to be valid.
In this case the court has said the DOMA cannot restrict federal benefits to same-sex couples because the marriage is defined at the state level and the federal government must accept that. Yet in other cases courts have said that states cannot define marriage as between a man and a woman because states do not have that ability. Each ruling appears valid on its own but together they say that states have the discretion to define marriage yet states cannot exercise that discretion to define marriage.
It has been posited that states do have the discretion to define marriage but they cannot do so to limit the definition to one man and one woman, since that would be arbitrary and serve no purpose. Yet I would counter that any definition that was not "anyone can marry without restriction" would fail that same test of arbitrariness. In other words, only one valid definition would not be arbitrary and thus the states would have no discretion in defining marriage.
And yes, any other marriage limitation scenario fails the logic test:
Marriage can only be between people of the same race? Arbitrary
Marriage can only be between people of the same height? Arbitrary
Marriage can only be between people of the same political affiliation? Arbitrary
There is no limiting definition of marriage which is not arbitrary, so the only non-arbitrary definition is to be all-inclusive. If the definition must be all-inclusive then there is no discretion.
The current existing limiting factors are, contrary to popular belief, also arbitrary. The banning of polygamy was previously mentioned and accepted based on legal complications yet similar legal complications arise with same-sex marriage. Do the laws regulating the divestiture of assets need to be amended in a polygamous marriage? Yes they do. But in a non-polygamous same-sex marriage there are also legal hurdles to tackle. If two women are married, one donates an egg to be artificially inseminated, and the other carries the child to term, how does that fit into our legal framework? It currently doesn't and we know that because that scenario has already occurred. Tackling that legal obstacle is no more daunting than tackling legal obstacles surrounding polygamy, incest, or any other number of currently banned marriage scenarios. The difference is that society is willing to handle some scenarios and not others; but the fact remains that they are all still arbitrary.
So, regardless of whether I agree with DOMA or not, I do have to say that the legal reasoning in this particular case does not mesh with the reasoning in other, more established cases. That's why the USSC exists...
You're simply outright mistaken here. The court DID NOT rule on those grounds, (only the lower did basically did) but on the argument that the federal government lacked a sufficient legitimate justification to implement a policy which specifically targeted a minority group and therefore justified heightened scrutiny by the court. They noted that historically the federal government deferred to the states on this issue, but this was only a minor element of the case.In this case the court has said the DOMA cannot restrict federal benefits to same-sex couples because the marriage is defined at the state level and the federal government must accept that. Yet in other cases courts have said that states cannot define marriage as between a man and a woman because states do not have that ability. Each ruling appears valid on its own but together they say that states have the discretion to define marriage yet states cannot exercise that discretion to define marriage.
This is clearly a VERY badly flawed argument. With our current court system rules, who is the natural parent of the child actually has very little legal relevance anymore. (The only exception might be a case where a partner cheated, and even then it generally doesn't matter much.) Basically what matters is things like who participated in raising the child with regards to custody issues, along with the need of society and the child for the child to receive financial assistance regardless of whether both parents are considered the "natural" parent of the child or not. In the case in question, you could make an argument they should both be counted as the natural parents, but its practically a legal irrelevancy either way.But in a non-polygamous same-sex marriage there are also legal hurdles to tackle. If two women are married, one donates an egg to be artificially inseminated, and the other carries the child to term, how does that fit into our legal framework? It currently doesn't and we know that because that scenario has already occurred. Tackling that legal obstacle is no more daunting than tackling legal obstacles surrounding polygamy, incest, or any other number of currently banned marriage scenarios.
They really aren't arbitrary. You can't marry a 5 year old because they are unable to understand what is going on, among many other reasons. I don't see how such a restriction is arbitrary. Similarly the situation where both people must be of sound mind.
So sure they are able to define marriage, they just aren't able to do so irrationally.
You're simply outright mistaken here. The court DID NOT rule on those grounds, (only the lower did basically did) but on the argument that the federal government lacked a sufficient legitimate justification to implement a policy which specifically targeted a minority group and therefore justified heightened scrutiny by the court. They noted that historically the federal government deferred to the states on this issue, but this was only a minor element of the case.
This is clearly a VERY badly flawed argument. With our current court system rules, who is the natural parent of the child actually has very little legal relevance anymore. (The only exception might be a case where a partner cheated, and even then it generally doesn't matter much.) Basically what matters is things like who participated in raising the child with regards to custody issues, along with the need of society and the child for the child to receive financial assistance regardless of whether both parents are considered the "natural" parent of the child or not. In the case in question, you could make an argument they should both be counted as the natural parents, but its practically a legal irrelevancy either way.
It should be noted that regardless you can have a practically identical situation occur with a hetero couple where the sperm is from the husband, the egg is donated, but the wife is artificially inseminated and brings the child to term, so its not even clear how the same sex situation actually creates a legally different situation.
In other words, you're at best talking about an incredibly minor almost legal irrelevancy, versus VASTLY more serious complications from a legal perspective involving possible marriages involving incest or polygamy.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your argument in the first place, you're factually wrong. Read the actual decision yourself, it was not about the states rights argument with regard's to the court's specific justification. (That was at best a minor side consideration.)To which case are you referring? If you're referring to the recent DOMA ruling you're wrong. If you're referring to any of the state-level cases that have invalidated same-sex marriage bans based on Constitutional provisions you're also wrong.
You DIDN'T reference the specific case, you merely vaguely referred to it at best.Really? Because in the case I referenced the natural parentage of the child was the crux of the legal ruling. The same-sex couple got divorced and the woman who donated the egg was left out in the cold. The court ruled that the woman who carried the baby to term was the "natural parent" of the child and her rights superseded those of the other woman.
While there may be a little bit of arbitrariness to some decisions, the point is there is a considerable amount of reasoning behind the limits. The idea is the age of consent to marriage is generally supposed to be a good cutoff which balances protections and rights, with it for instance not being the end of the world if they have to wait one extra month before they get married. A sound mind provision also makes sense, with courts generally tending to side with the person wanting to get married if they are determined enough about it and its a borderline case.But it is arbitrary. The age of consent to marriage is an arbitrarily-defined phenomenon. Does it make sense that a five year old is incapable of understanding the ramifications? Yes. Does it make sense that someone one day, one week, or one month away from the age of consent is somehow incapable of understanding the ramifications of marriage but if they wait 24 hours or seven days they magically become capable? No, it does not. Even the soundness of mind test is arbitrary; two psychologists can easily disagree on the capacity of an individual.