Because, how dare we deny love and dignity to those families who love “plurally”
The question presents itself: Where does the next advance come? The answer is going to make nearly everyone uncomfortable: Now that we’ve defined that love and devotion and family isn’t driven by gender alone, why should it be limited to just two individuals? The most natural advance next for marriage lies in legalized polygamy—yet many of the same people who pressed for marriage equality for gay couples oppose it.
This is not an abstract issue. In Chief Justice John Roberts’ dissenting opinion, he remarks, “It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage.” As is often the case with critics of polygamy, he neglects to mention why this is a fate to be feared. Polygamy today stands as a taboo just as strong as same-sex marriage was several decades ago—it’s effectively only discussed as outdated jokes about Utah and Mormons, who banned the practice over 120 years ago.
Yet the moral reasoning behind society’s rejection of polygamy remains just as uncomfortable and legally weak as same-sex marriage opposition was until recently. […]
Marriage is not just a formal codification of informal relationships. It’s also a defensive system designed to protect the interests of people whose material, economic and emotional security depends on the marriage in question. If my liberal friends recognize the legitimacy of free people who choose to form romantic partnerships with multiple partners, how can they deny them the right to the legal protections marriage affords?
Polyamory is a fact. People are living in group relationships today. The question is not whether they will continue on in those relationships. The question is whether we will grant to them the same basic recognition we grant to other adults: that love makes marriage, and that the right to marry is exactly that, a right. […]
To be clear: our lack of legal recognition of group marriages is not the fault of the marriage equality movement. Rather, it’s that the tactics of that movement have made getting to serious discussions of legalized polygamy harder. I say that while recognizing the unprecedented and necessary success of those tactics. I understand the political pragmatism in wanting to hold the line—to not be perceived to be slipping down the slope. To advocate for polygamy during the marriage equality fight may have seemed to confirm the socially conservative narrative, that gay marriage augured a wholesale collapse in traditional values. But times have changed; while work remains to be done, the immediate danger to marriage equality has passed. In 2005, a denial of the right to group marriage stemming from political pragmatism made at least some sense. In 2015, after this ruling, it no longer does.
That didn’t take long, did it?
Insert all the I-told-you-so’s here.
Not that I expect any apologies from the #LoveWins crowd — history begins with them and being a Social Justice Brownshirt means never being held accountable.
Accepted.
I told you that all the arguments you made against same sex would fail against polygamy. First, note that the quote indicates that polygamy was banned 120 years ago (outlawed by the state, banned by the church). Why? Because it was practiced openly and with support of the community and the church. A stance common in the Old Testament, and still practiced by Muslims – with state sanction (not OUR State, but the ones mostly dominated by Islam). The point, traditional marriage WAS polygamist in much of the world. So, your arguments against gay in traditional don’t work against polygamy.
So, #lovewins is the mindless drones cheer, the mob. Amazing how 2% of the population can form a mob….
So, while guns can be used to destroy a Bible Study, we support guns and the right to own them. Because 99% of people with guns are responsible people. While gay marriage could be used to destroy marriage, 99% of married people are responsible….or is it 50% or 60% or 40%…..whatever the divorce rate is, they don’t count….
I’ll be Slot B for your Tab A “I-Told-You-So”
Yep. Me too.
Polygamy was never legal in the United States or anywhere in Europe
banning it was a condition of Utah becoming a state. They didn’t have to, you know.
And as far as the OT goes, polyamory was cultural and the stories therein rarely come to good ends, whether it was Abraham or David.
SSM isn’t the endgame here, it is the destruction of the family in favor of The State.
Tracy’s misrepresentation of the arguments against garriage here is typical Tracy.
Based on the courts reasoning, ie marriage is about love, not procreation, why is it wrong to marry a first cousin? Or
a parentSpouse B on your birth certificate?LBascom. And your misrepresentation of my arguments?
Darleen: Define legal? There wasn’t state recognized marriage in the beginning of this country. Or should I say ‘sanctioned’. If it was a condition on Utah becoming a state (I recall that was the issue, thank you for reminding me), then it was permitted in the TERRITORY…as a ‘sovereign’ entity that became part of the States. Oh, so because polyamory, the part where there was only one husband but many concubines, was culture doesn’t in fact mean that it existed or wasn’t tolerated. As for not ending well, was it the act that was offensive or just the ending. Cause, Abraham’s blessing seems to still be in play.
SSM is MY end game. I strongly support the family. I participated in 3 of them. Still think they are important. So, while you might dismiss as a useful idiot, we are as quick to dismiss claims by the Left about abolishing the Confederate Flag or banning guns because we support gun rights…..that doesn’t make us racist haters….
LBascom: I know, it is all about procreation. How nice that the entirety of your contribution to your position can be accomplished in 30 seconds.
tracy
What you want, and I’ll hazard a guess at what most people of gay persuasion want, is irrelevant to what the advocates want and THEY are in the driver’s seat.
*I* want you to have that nice house in my neighborhood and support your efforts in saving for it, planning, taking all the small steps necessary to get there.
But don’t expect me NOT to point out that if you received that house through illegal means, it has serious consequences for other people.
and, I’ll add, I hold true for that for people who are illegally receiving subsidies for ObamaCare (even as I support other means for them to get medical insurance) and for any person who will gain property “rights” at the expense of other people due to “unintended discrimination”
ALL three of these SCOTUS decisions make a mockery of the Constitution.
Darleen, what we want, is irrelevant to the Roofs of the world and what they want. No, WE are in the driver’s seat, if we’d bother to get up off our asses. 98% are straight. Think for a second gays could get ANYTHING passed in a City Council if they were met with 98% opposed?
Think for a second abortion would still be legal if 98% of straights opposed it? If 40% self-proclaimed conservatives opposed it? Someone pointed out to me that 12% of the voters, if voting Conservative in the 38 states currently controlled by Republicans filed an amendment to ban abortion, it could pass.
Think for an instant if people stood up for marriage and I am NOT talking about opposing gay marriage, how criminalizing adultery again, getting rid of ‘no fault’ divorce. How about 40% of people not getting divorced? How about women not having babies out of wedlock. My ONE and only favorite politician raised a daughter…that had a child out wedlock. Want to support marriage? We got bigger fish than 2% of the population – half of which DOESN’T want marriage to begin with.
As to the gay marriage ruling, I’ve read chunks of it and the biggest part of the dissent seems to be mocking and dismissing an interpretation as flawed from the beginning. As if an ‘interpretation’ is anything more than one opinion. I’d be happy to have a substantial discussion on that when I and others have completed their reading of it in it’s entirety.
As to the Obamacare ruling: Where was Robert’s position on the ‘gay marriage’ argument during the Obamacare argument? I think there are two different guys there. Because Robert’s is looking for black letter law in gay marriage while COMPLETELY ignoring it in obamacare. You want judicial activism…there it is. Scalia was right on that case by calling it SCOTUScare….it should scare anyone that 5 others supported it.
I am only now parsing the Texas Housing ruling, and well, I’ve called for an end to anti-discrimination laws, so it appears to be just another idiocy taken to it’s illogical conclusion.
Think for a second abortion would still be legal if 98% of straights opposed it?
vast majority of people want abortion legal WITHIN the first trimester. Support after that falls off precipitously.
But the advocates who make money off it, like Planned Parenthood, NARAL and the Democratic Party won’t accept ANY restrictions. They rally lawyers by the truck load to fight it.
The vast majority of people are unhappy, but they just don’t know how to fight such a vicious mob and their tactics.
Remember, the vast majority of Germans were NOT Nazis.
I agree with you on Roberts — but I will say on the ObamaCare thing I’m not surprised after he called a tax not a tax.
He seems determined not to tinker with it at all … blackmail? Or not wanting to put the GOP in the position of being charged with cruelty towards people who would suddenly lose their subsidies??
You know, any time social security reform is brought up, we are tossing grandma off the cliff.
Think for a second gays could get ANYTHING passed in a City Council if they were met with 98% opposed? –
ever attend a city hall meeting? school board?
How many of effected residents are in attendance?
There you go.
Darleen, I’ve argued for a ban after 24, 22, 20 weeks. The Left hates ANY ban. I get nowhere with them. The Right calls me a murderer and hates ANYTHING less than a total ban. I get nowhere with them. There are LOTS….60% in the middle…that support a ban. There is a state…Oklahoma or Nebraska that just passed something along this line. If accurate, GREAT! All for it. We are distinctly in the minority.
vox day is fighting a small battle – I support it. Count me as a rabid puppy. We have been called racist. I certainly have and I mock anyone that tries. I’m willing to stand up to it. I stand up here..! I stand up in a lot of places. People are afraid for their livelihood. The Plumber guy. I certainly held my tongue for the sake of Victoria’s practice, our livelihood. So, I get that most people can’t fight…openly.
As to a City Hall Meeting. Yep, once (so far) here in San Diego and in Madison Wisconsin, 5 or 6 times over 10 years. School Board in Madison: Twice, got boo’d the one time I talked in opposition to more money. I was run out of the PTA at CJ’s school for blasting someone that said ‘we deserved it’ post 9/11. I continued to be a ‘volunteer’ in her classroom. I go to Duncan Hunter’s town halls when he has one, I visit with my city council rep when he has one.
I’ve been trying to herd cats for 7 years. Now I just go to be a presence or to speak my piece regardless of the attendance.
What you want, and I’ll hazard a guess at what most people of gay persuasion want, is irrelevant to what the advocates want and THEY are in the driver’s seat.
Indeed. It’s akin to the difference between the ‘feminism’ of straight hollywood airheads (“equality is good, m’kay!”) and the radical feminism of the “heterosexuality is a culturally driven tool of the partriarchy to keep women subservient and raped” crowd that writes the books and teaches the courses in the Women’s Studies departments – as adequately documented in RSM’s book.
The “equal pay!” canard is both false and a strawwoman – who’s out there arguing that women should be paid less for the same work? As such, it’s a great rallying cry for the LIVs, but they’re not the one driving the bus.
And they’d get off the bus if they knew where it was headed.
V wanted single payer, and was for Obamacare, until she was in the last year living day to day in the medical system. THEN she saw what I was saying – that people like her were going to be let die rather than saved because it was not economically feasible to support her medically forever. Then, she saw.
I’m not ignorant of the Left’s radical agenda. I can’t have a gun without risking the Roof’s in the world. I’m not willing to give up my gun because HE makes anyone with a gun look like a rabid animal. That cuts both ways though.
“LBascom: I know, it is all about procreation. How nice that the entirety of your contribution to your position can be accomplished in 30 seconds.”
See. Right there is the problem. I see fatherhood as a lifetime thing. Eventually branching out into Grand Fatherhood. Great GrandFatherhoid Lord willing. Do you also imagine a husbands part in marriage is accomplished at ‘you may kiss the bride’?
Oops, husband and bride are banned words, being all micro aggressive and shit. Sorry…sorry…
Anyway, I forget who first meantioned it here, but I will steal it for me and my family; two people of the same sex can get ‘garried’. ‘Married’ is the still the Union of man and woman.
Tell your friends…
LBascom: No, the parent’s of the bride’s part of the marriage is accomplished at ‘you may kiss the bride’ part. Why would ‘fatherhood’ have anything to do with ‘procreation’? Do you mean there is something MORE to the process than making a baby? Whatever could that be? And why would you do anything more? Can’t imagine…..
See, anyone can be a sperm donor. Anyone can ‘procreate’. Even gays. Says so right there in the ‘anti-gay manual: gays have equal rights, they can marry opposite sex partners and procreate’. You don’t actually mean there is more to ‘family’ than making a baby….procreating? Really?
Could it have to do with all those subjective characteristics you so completely dismissed over the last couple of months? NAH! Of course not! It is all about procreating. About making babies. You didn’t say anything about making future men and women, about future fathers or mothers. You didn’t say anything about WHY those sperm and egg donors might want to go to all the trouble of sticking around after the procreating part. You know, after the 40% of women that give birth without a husband, the father, to hang around. There might be some subjective reasons, but those are irrelevant…..right?
The problem is that YOU might see fatherhood as a lifetime thing which has NOTHING to do with the procreation which can be 30 seconds of drunken stupidity. It might be about the commitment, the love, the trust, the respect, the desire to keep safe, protect… All those subjective things that might, just MIGHT, be described with a single word…..
Sacrifice. That might be a short-hand word.
oh LBascom: I am sure your wife sees your devotion to fatherhood in the best possible light. That she is just the means by which you can practice the fatherhood part…..the ‘motherhood’ part being done….
Nah, that is not fair. I am sure that she fully agrees that marriage is about procreation and your contribution is just PART of the process of raising children…..along with her part of the process of raising the children. That of course completes the marriage: you being a father, her being a mother. You doing your fatherhood part, she doing her motherhood part.
calling a lemon an orange doesn’t make it an orange
> On Friday my phone was blowing up with messages, asking if I’d seen the news. Some expressed disbelief at the headlines. Many said they were crying.
None of them were talking about the dozens of people gunned down in Sousse, Tunisia, by a man who, dressed as a tourist, had hidden his Kalashnikov inside a beach umbrella. Not one was crying over the beheading in a terrorist attack at a chemical factory near Lyon, France. The victim’s head was found on a pike near the factory, his body covered with Arabic inscriptions. And no Facebook friends mentioned the first suicide bombing in Kuwait in more than two decades, in which 27 people were murdered in one of the oldest Shiite mosques in the country.
They were talking about the only news that mattered: gay marriage. . . .
The barbarians are at our gates. But inside our offices, schools, churches, synagogues and homes, we are posting photos of rainbows on Twitter. It’s easier to Photoshop images of Justice Scalia as Voldemort than it is to stare evil in the face.
You can’t get married if you’re dead.<
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/209561/#respond
“See, anyone can be a sperm donor. Anyone can ‘procreate’. Even gays.”
You got no sperm. Is why you adopted. Is why garried people must procreate from outside the garriage. Is why it’s not and never can be marriage.
Ain’t life a bitch?
“See, anyone can be a sperm donor. Anyone can ‘procreate’. Even gays.”
we be dealing with ideological idiots/proggtards.
LBascom: Actually, I have no eggs – hysterectomy at 33. V was diabetic. And what difference does it make if I don’t have eggs? Is not an adopted child by heterosexual parents part of a family? But not if adopted by lesbians? Is there anything that stops you from spreading your sperm around like a garden boy with a spreader?
Do you suggest fertility tests for marriage licenses? Only the fertile can wed? So much for the elderly women. Men have proved they can get a 20 year old pregnant when they are in their 90’s. Do you suggest that if a man gets a vasectomy, does he lose his ‘manhood card’?
the flag of fascism
> Do you suggest that if a man gets a vasectomy, does he lose his ‘manhood card’<
why should i let stupid folks like you force the rest of us to do stupid things?
More people are noting that the dissents were less about the law and more stomping of the feet proclaiming ‘wrong, wrong, wrong’. However I thought at least Justice Thomas was addressing the legal issues….but I read it and just blasted past it….but when someone pointed it out….well, yikes….
>Yes, you read that correctly. He said that slavery did not have any impact on enslaved people’s dignity.” <
see the problem of arguing with idiots? the fed gov't can't give you dignity:
a way of appearing or behaving that suggests seriousness and self-control
: the quality of being worthy of honor or respect
you proggtarded bastards live in effin' make believe world. eff u and your buds #isisisislam
That’s a clever ploy. Changing “government cannot take a persons dignity” to ” has no impact”.
Just saying…
>V wanted single payer, and was for Obamacare, until she was in the last year living day to day in the medical system. THEN she saw what I was saying – that people like her were going to be let die rather than saved because it was not economically feasible to support her medically forever. Then, she saw.
I’m not ignorant of the Left’s radical agenda. I can’t have a gun without risking the Roof’s in the world. I’m not willing to give up my gun because HE makes anyone with a gun look like a rabid animal. That cuts both ways though.
<
scatterbrain. really try to FOCUS
LBascom: so, are you saying that government CAN take away dignity or that it has no impact?
Thomas said ‘can’t give, can’t take’, so that suggests ‘no impact’. On it’s face, Thomas’ point is wrong.
newrouter: sorry you can’t keep up….I started raising my hand when I changed paragraphs….not enough?
Marriage did not become an institution for adoption or lesbians or any other outliers.
It’s like the automobile; its purpose is transportation. It is the marriage of a power train and the cargo area from which it is controlled. Anyone can buy a car for whatever purpose they want, investment, art, status, etc., but the purpose of the automobile is still transportation. Two engines bolted together is not a automobile , neither is a bucket seat with a steering wheel and two trunks. One must have both elements necessary for transportation before it is recognized as an automobile, even if it never makes it out of the garage, or it’s got flat tires and can’t travel.
The reason automobiles exist is for transportation, and the reason marriage exists is the propagation of humanity.
>Thomas said ‘can’t give, can’t take’, so that suggests ‘no impact’. On it’s face, Thomas’ point is wrong. <
yo loser the effin' gov't can't take away sumthing it doesn't posses. you own your "dignity" clown. arguing with idiots/proggtarded.
>newrouter: sorry you can’t keep up….I started raising my hand when I changed paragraphs….not enough? <
you seem to be a stupid person adamant about your stupid "convictions/religious beliefs"
>newrouter: sorry you can’t keep up<
not when you clowns keep moving the goal/ghoul posts.
I agree with Thomas. The Bible specifically teaches how slaves can live with dignity, and when the Jews were slaves in Egypt they kept their identity and dignity.
Government can attack a persons dignity, but it can only be surrendered, not taken.
Watch the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart. It’s all about that.
Lee, I believe I may have coined the word “garriage”. In response to some happy feet nonsense.
Tracy, apple still doesn’t equal orange, even after the lights go out.
All, SCOTUS has driven the nail in the coffin of a nation of laws, not men. As a lawyer , that really tears me up.
And so it ends.
Hey, I’m a believer in the innate quality of dignity….though I doubt that the Jews of Poland in 1939 felt they were dignified going into the ovens. And I can tell you that most blacks will feel that there was no dignity in being a slave. As to the Bible….yes, it was used to support slavery for many years. As to Braveheart…I took a different word from it. Freedom. But that was just me.
As to the automobile. Let’s see, we had horses and carts for transportation. Then boats, ships. Then trains. Automobiles were play things for the rich. Ford thought different. But it was for transportation. We had lots of other things for that too. Some didn’t have engines or much cargo space, but I guess the point, is that an automobile has one purpose – transportation. But it comes in lots of different shapes, sizes and styles. I can make one without a gas engine, or even an engine. I can make one that only goes down hill, one controlled by an external device. One that has no cargo space. But then is it really ‘transportation’? I guess it has to ‘transport’ something even if only the person controlling it. Like a horse, or camel. It has to move something from one point to another, even if those points are the same. V and I called it toodling. A trip in the car for the sake of taking a day trip. It moved us back to where we started.
Still, I get the point, power train and cargo space from which is controlled. Boat. Train. Plane. Rocket. We have lots of ‘transportation’ that has a power train and cargo space to get us and things from one place to another. We call it different things. But the purpose is the same. The automobile might have one purpose, transportation. But that purpose is not unique to the automobile. And the automobile was not the first thing created to ‘transport’. We as humans have innovated, evolved new means and methods of transportation. Even the automobile has undergone dramatic ‘innovation and evolution’.
Yea…I like your analogy. I don’t think it works for you as much as it does for me though. I love RVs too! Rich people play things meant to just ‘transport’. :)
Assuming that’s what was meant, I think we have a winner for the oxymoron of the day award.
RI Red: yep, lots of people still believe that an apple isn’t an apple unless it’s red. fortunately we aren’t talking about fruit or cars, we are talking about people and while I get many can’t even imagine the concept of ‘gay’ and what it means….marriage means more than reproduction. Even to heterosexuals.
Ernst I prefer the kind with the little safety pin in the back to the one that sits on a shelf….
Think for a second gays could get ANYTHING passed in a City Council if they were met with 98% opposed?
Sure you could. Just find a judge to impose it on the 98%, just like is happening today.
Think for a second abortion would still be legal if 98% of straights opposed it?
Ibid.
The reason automobiles exist is for transportation, and the reason marriage exists is the propagation of humanity.
Precisely. Laws are made for majority cases, not the exceptions. As long as people are treated equally under them, then no one has a bitch about “unfair treatment”. And there is not a single State in the US that has, pardon me, HAD… a requirement for marriage licensing that says anything about “love” or “sexual preference”, merely “gender” and “number of participants”. There is a wide variation regarding ages, consanguinity.
Lucky for everyone, that’s all going to go away. The lawsuits against churches and religious officiants are already written, waiting for a defendant to show him- or herself.
Chaos is never pretty, but this particular iteration of Pandora’s Box doesn’t even have Hope left at the bottom.
>.though I doubt that the Jews of Poland in 1939 felt they were dignified going into the ovens. <
oh fuck you using jews to make a stupid argument about a individual's dignity. you are proggtarded idiot. you clowns are so over.
Is dignity inherent or ascribed? is the question.
After, of course, the question of what principal is it “that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government” is corollary to.
Because it’s my guess that the oh no he di’n’t finger waving is so much shuck and jive.
Red, when you’re right you’re right. This will be my last comment regarding garriage.
I can’t wait to see what new and exciting fundamental right was hidden in the constitution to be discovered by the philosopher kings that rule us. Maybe I’ll get a snazzy new car out of it!
pssst newrouter…..Justice Thomas did…..just sayin’ you know….keep up.
Ernst, I prefer to ignore the word ‘dignity’ in Kennedy’s last sentence. Equal treatment was sufficient for his purpose…he just muddied it up.
I still think Thomas’ argument, there, was the least useful. He was parsing an opinion, not a legal argument.
LBascom: No rights in the Constitution. None. Powers, authorities, no rights. However, when a right is recognized…well, that is different.
tracy
dignity, like rights, is inherent in the individual. It is an internal thing.
Government can TREAT you badly, oppress you, enslave you … but only YOU can give up your dignity (aka self-respect)
The dissents point out how unConstitutional and contrary to Rule of Law Kennedy’s “I feel it is good, therefore it is ordered” fiat is. It’s on the same scale as Dredd Scott or Roe v Wade. Like SCOTUS’s “State exchanges are now being rewritten by us to include fed exchanges because we FEEL it is a good thing” this makes a mockery, at best, of what SCOTUS’s role is.
THEY ARE NOT TO LEGISLATE.
but that shipped has sailed … and the future belongs to the SSM thugs who will televise the heresy trials.
>pssst newrouter…..Justice Thomas did…..just sayin’ you know….keep up. – <
yo idiot/proggtarded: dignity is owned by you singular, individually. the effin' fed gov't can't "take from you". dense pos.
Gee….can marriage then be changed by a word? Even if the word is marriage itself?
He was parsing an opinion
An opinion that Kennedy hung his whole argument. It is the ultimate in hippie dippie California self-esteem crapola. That individuals are quivering masses of delicate emotions that must be succored and supported by The State… that all rights, respect, and chocolate chip cookies (gluten free no nuts) come from The Government.
We.All.Belong.To.The.Government
Life of Julia is the template you will be made to conform to.
>I still think Thomas’ argument, there, was the least useful. He was parsing an opinion, not a legal argument. <
here is a stupid person doing full stupid for the masses. this clown is saying the fortune cookie of kennedy's "opinion" is the go to to guide. eff off loser. stop "debating" these clowns they are the: "isisisislam" proggslams
>Gee….can marriage then be changed by a word? Even if the word is marriage itself? <
ask kennedy clown. if there are no more standards then things get dicey troll/clown!
so tracy : how much does the O! pay you to troll this site? like clockwork you show up today. you go faggot/transpervert/brucejenner.
Darleen, you missed Lochner. Robert’s was all over Lochner. But I will go and use someone else’s list:
If Robert’s had voted against Obamacare, the Left would have accused the Court of overturning the legislature. They would have been right, and wrong in that it is not the Court’s responsibility to fix badly crafted laws that produced such a result. We want the 5 guys in black robes to do what the Legislatures won’t do – save us from ourselves. When they don’t, we’re pissed. But it goes back to the legislatures and ultimately the voters.
Did anyone here actually support Romney? I sure didn’t. I didn’t support McCain either. Really, could either of them have produced something better than Roberts? If we have to rely on the SCOTUS to save us….we lost before we got there.
The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance.
Those civil consequences — and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences — can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact — and the furthest extension one can even imagine — of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves. — Justice Antonin Scalia, in dissent
Loving was specifically covered by the 14A
ANY law you have must be equally applied to a black man as it is to a white man. Ditto Brown.
RACE is a social construct. There is no substantive difference between a black man and a white man.
There ARE fundamental differences between men and women.
SCIENCE you cannot get around.
Want same sex couples to contractual rights/obligations of marriage? Fine. Have the proper legislative bodies write it and pass it. But same-sex couples are NOT THE SAME as opposite sex couples any more than a man is the same as a woman.
“mother and father” “husband and wife” just become, at best, irrelevant terms. In reality, they are now terms of HATE and privilege and must be banned cuz trigger alert.
Darleen. I want to get into Kennedy’s opinion and Roberts and Scalia’s take on it. I’d love to spend tomorrow doing it. I doubt Jeff would appreciate the resulting epic-long posts. And no one else here seems of the mind that there can be more than one interpretation of words. We can agree that dignity is inherent, but millions will disagree that government can’t take it away. Is spirit = dignity? Can a spirit be broken? Can dignity?
“Gee, look at that slave, walking so upright, carrying themselves with dignity.”
Yea….I can see where people don’t see anything wrong with that picture. :(
concern troll says:
>Darleen, you missed Lochner. Robert’s was all over Lochner. But I will go and use someone else’s list By David Bernstein June 26
As I pointed out earlier, Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent today ignores the last thirty years of scholarship and uses Lochner as a bogeyman to reject a due process challenge to states’ refusal to recognize same-sex marriage. Roberts’s description of Lochner is embarrassingly ahistorical.
By contrast, Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett’s concurring opinion today (joined by two other Justices) in Patel v. Texas Dept. of Licensing, blogged in detail by Eugene below, explicitly rejects what he calls “the Lochner bogeyman.”<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/26/texas-supreme-court-justice-willett-rejects-the-lochner-bogeyman/
>Darleen. I want to get into Kennedy’s opinion and Roberts and Scalia’s take on it. I’d love to spend tomorrow doing it.<
why would you argue with a troll?
Yes.
My copy of the The Random House College Dictionary, Revised Edition(Copyright, 1988) is clearly homophobic in this brave new world where love conquors all.
>Darleen. I want to get into Kennedy’s opinion and Roberts and Scalia’s take on it. I’d love to spend tomorrow doing it.<
yo d O! malware. be paranoid.
tracy
it has not a flippin thing to do with “walking upright.”
internal dignity is what keeps people going even in the face of horrible odds. Of course Jews in death camps didn’t believe going into ovens was “dignified”… but that didn’t take away their DIGNITY.
Please use the word correctly.
Watch Schindler’s List and tell me those Jews were broken, wretched and soulless creatures with no humanity.
Ernst
Slash fiction won’t be a niche genre, it will be mandatory.
Any list of policy making opinions really ought to begin with Dred Scott.
please stop addressing the O! bot.
>Darleen. I want to get into Kennedy’s opinion and Roberts and Scalia’s take on it. I’d love to spend tomorrow doing it.<
but not the proggtarded like: kagan ginsburg breyer sotobigpanic
Dear Judge Scalia,
Part of your job, a job we created and gave to you, is to offer your considered judgment upon the most divisive of issues of our day. The substance SHOULD matter to you. It matters greatly to me, to the other 320 million people that count on you to be one of nine voices to offer a check against the excesses of a legislature ruled by a mob, of an Executive with delusions of grandeur. It matters that me that you don’t seem to care one way or the other. That it means nothing to you whether the liberty of one group is being infringed upon another, or one group is suffering at the hands of others. Such callous disregard for the basic understanding of your JOB scares me almost as much as Chief Justice Roberts’ callous disregard for the black letter law in the Obamacare, sorry SCOTUScare opinion the day before. YOUR opinion matters if it is on the issues of the day.
What truly scares me is that you think our government RULES me. Or that the mob should. You want the legislatures to pronounce edicts that matter not a wit to you. As long as you and your eight comrades are not tasked with parsing them. If not them, if not you, then who?
The fact, and this has been clearly stated by you in the past, that the Constitution fails to mention a right is not evidence that it doesn’t exist. We face an ever changing world unimaginable by our Founders who in their wisdom did not try to imagine. They left us the tools to take the world as it changed and adapt to it. That it should change is not the result of YOUR musings! Nor the musings of your eight coworkers. Change is happening at breakneck speed and our society with it. And however imperfectly we try to manage that process, we have a government that must at least TRY.
That you don’t care,
“So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage.”
…as long as you don’t have to be responsible to actually, doing your job, state an opinion on it.
So, the short of it is: You don’t really care as long as you are not tasked with offering an opinion. Gee. Thanks for bringing such a well developed legal mind to the task.
Sincerely…..
tracy
you are free to point out the dignity in the Folsom Street Fair.
>Any list of policy making opinions really ought to begin with Dred Scott. <
yea demonrat justice: you could look it up
jeff davis president of the confederacy – demonrat you could look it up
bull conners hitting black folks? – demonrat you could look it up
WRONG!
The only job of a justice is to offer his or her considered opinion on the Constitutionality of the matter before the court.
Rendering judgement on divisive issues of our day ensures that those issues will be the devisice issues of our children’s day.
Since your initial premise is garbage, the rest of your comment need not be remarked upon.
>. It matters greatly to me, to the other 320 million people that count on you to be one of nine voices to offer a check against the excesses of a legislature ruled by a mob, of an Executive with delusions of grandeur.<
here is fucking stupidity for all to see. nine voices ruling. fuck you asshole.
Gee newrouter! thanks for posting David Bernsteins take on Roberts dissent. I read it too!
>We face an ever changing world unimaginable by our Founders<
more stupid. you haven't a fucking clue WHAT THEY THOUGHT
Darleen, and slavery is a condition of choice. People choose to be slaves, or not. So what if the only alternative is death. They meet it, go out with dignity! Yea, I watched Schindler’s List. The vast majority were broken drones, moving because the alternative was death. That some maintained dignity is HORRIFIC as an example of why we shouldn’t worry about it. People can be dignified and slaves….what’s the issue?
REALLY??
that was my problem with Kennedy’s use of the word dignity when ‘equality’ was all that was necessary. Because people can be massacred and keep their dignity, we don’t have to be concerned with the petty detail….of treating people equally.
>We face an ever changing world unimaginable by our Founder<
so why are you assholes trying to shut it down with your climate scam?
Yes Ernst. I was wrong. The issues before the court are brought before them by CNN and Gordon Ramsey. Those ‘divisive issues of the day’ are LEGAL ISSUES. But I guess I failed, my entire thought and comment explodes as the dreaded X is hit by our Judge!
>that was my problem with Kennedy’s use of the word dignity when ‘equality’ was all that was necessary. <
1+1=2 and 1+2=3 "equality" you go moron
yes newrouter, our Founders imagined I-Phones and driverless cars….
Has it occurred to you that Kennedy had to resort to dignity because the textbook definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman satisfies the argument from equality?
>. Those ‘divisive issues of the day’ are LEGAL ISSUES <
oh good to know O!bot that you are in our face about social issues. duly noted.
But I guess I failed
You still are, since my point was to constitutionality, not legality, per se.
Darleen, Folsom Street Fair….don’t know what it is, but by context, I am sure there are is a booth with a banner and people wearing everyday normal clothing. The banner being PFLAG.
So….even in THAT PLACE…..
>yes newrouter, our Founders imagined I-Phones and driverless cars<
or railroads, or indoor plumbing or bessemer steel or zippers. no really you are an idiot/proggtarded loser.
Ernst. No. But then I am not locked into ‘marriage = one man + one woman’ , so I guess I can go there freely.
Given that it IS a legal question of Constitutionality, ergo
newrouter, you have the attention span of a gnat’s ass crack.
If we’re going to do this mathmatically, the formula ought to be A + B = C
A + A does not = C (sorry, don’t know the code trick to get the slashed through equal sign)
B + B does not = C
except that the dignity of some values of A and some values of B require that A + A = C, B + B = C and A + B = C
>Darleen, Folsom Street Fair….don’t know what it is<
here clown:
http://www.crowdalbum.com/album/541f39511f68efa295006a12/Folsom-Street-Fair_20140921
is it worth while to expend energy on a dolt like this tracy thing?
>newrouter, you have the attention span of a gnat’s ass crack. <
troll or O!bot why bother?
ergo there’s a third, de facto, way to amend the Constitution that’s nowhere to be found in Art. V
Ernst: Nice math, . Watch carefully: 1+1 =2. Now here is the tricky part 1+1 =2 . See what I did there. That’s called the commutative property
> See what I did there. That’s called the commutative property<
a credentialed idiot. could be a vox clown
Ernst. Non sequitur. The Court is to rule on issues it agrees to offer their opinion on. Hence, their job is to offer their opinion, judgment. It is a function of the job. That Scalia calls it something else is of course, his opinion. He is one of nine.
We’re all a little more post-human today than we were yesterday.
hey newrouter, my comment on the Fair was consistent with the actual fair. Which is why I said booth…. really, KEEP UP!
peeps like tracycoYle ONLY produce BULLSHIT. you go genital worrier
>hey newrouter, my comment on the Fair was consistent with the actual fair. Which is why I said booth…. really, KEEP UP! <
you keep spewing will work
hey tracy you are as stupid as val and O!. good “work” clowns
Maybe I wasn’t being fair re A + B = C. Does .5A + .5B = C? I mean, if you can’t….you know…..do you still get C?
Or does A = a woman and B = a Boy and C = a Child? because then .5A + .5B = .5C ?
if 0A + .5b = .5C?
My math is rusty.
That some maintained dignity is HORRIFIC as an example of why we shouldn’t worry about it. People can be dignified and slaves….what’s the issue?
REALLY??
and again a perfect example of putting words in my mouth
I was discussing the nature of dignity, with examples in the worst of conditions, and you PRETEND I said “the horror doesnt matter”
disagree with me all you want, DO NOT invent things I never said to make you the angel in this discussion.
Marriage is the union of complements. Men and Women are complementary. You can’t substitute one for the other, any more than you can substitute yellow for blue and still expect to get green.
Darleen. I am not trying to get around science. I agree there are fundamental differences between men and women. I’ve seen BOTH up close. I can also tell you that there is not such a fundamental difference in marriage between same and opposite sex.
here’s stupid:
>The Court is to rule on issues it agrees to offer their opinion on. Hence, their job is to offer their opinion, judgment. <
nah whether said laws abide the us constitution. otherwise we get the clusterfuck of proggtardia idiot.
tracy
what is the job of an Appellate Court — ruling on procedure or facts of a case on appeal?
I see Appellate Opinions a few times a week. “Opinion” does NOT mean “make it up based on how we feel” but A LEGAL JUDGEMENT based strictly on the laws governing procedure.
Appellate courts CANNOT rule on facts because the law holds that JURIES are the triers of facts. They have to confine their analysis & ruling on whether the procedures were proper and fulfilled.
SCOTUS also has to confine their analysis to 1) does the issue deal with an enumerated Constitutional issue 2)therefore is the law/issue follow/not follow the Constitution?
They have great power with being the final court and that is why they have appointed life-time terms. But that power comes with a price .. the have a very narrow field to work in.
Or they used to. Now 300 million people can just jettison our school boards, city councils, state legislators, House of Reps because we are ruled by a tribunal of 5, up to 9, monarchs.
tell you that there is not such a fundamental difference in marriage between same and opposite sex.
You’re lying to me or yourself. If men & women are different, than two men or two women couples are just as different from man/woman couple.
Either there is no difference between the sexes or there is.
>My math is rusty.<
you are stupid but credentialed.Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe.
Darleen. My apologies. Your examples of humans maintain dignity are examples of humans under the most extreme of conditions, surviving.
Ok. So, Thomas’ point, that government can not take away dignity is valid from your point of view. I think government can take it away. I think it can degrade and dehumanize people. I think some people can’t be broken no matter what. They will die first. I think it is possible to have a government act, the act of people in government, to give dignity. I think of the efforts of our troops at Andrews, at Arlington. I think that people are born with dignity, but that government, the people of it, can be dignified in it’s actions towards people. I think it, the people of it, can be degrading and dehumanizing, like in Abu.
There is the inherent dignity of the person. And there is the treatment, with dignity or without it, by government and others. You want me to use the correct term. Maybe, maybe Kennedy was hoping that the government could treat people equally, with dignity. But I might be just parsing his terms….
You really wouldn’t know that though, would you?
Now, if I’ve missed that part of your oft-shared biography where you and your husband had a child together, then I withdraw the question.
Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe.
http://vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=eseje&val=2_aj_eseje.html&typ=HTML
>that government can not take away dignity is valid from your point of view. I think government can take it away <
yo ahole the fed gov't can't take MY bowel movement OR my fucking dignity. HOW MUCH DID YOU PAY FOR YOUR PIECE OF LOSER PAPER?
And government would be in the right to do so if our dignity and our value and humanity came from government.
But that’s getting into that Natural Law stuff you don’t particularly care for because there’s nothing there for courts to discover in response to changing social fashions or material “progress.”
Darleen. I am neither lying to you or myself. I have seen and see that there is this HUGE spectrum of behavior by men and women that cross any artificial lines drawn between them. Masculine women, effeminate men, domineering women, passive me, submissive women, dictatorial men. When two men or two women of roughly similar traits get together, it doesn’t last. But when one is stronger – pick a characteristic that suggests ‘in charge’ – and one accedes to that, then things tend to mesh.
Men are not just men, women are not just women. f*k newrouter is just going to go apes8t over that. The characteristics of each make Ernst’s math look like a simpletons game.
The same process by which men and women play musical chairs until they find the right ‘match’ happens in homosexual couples too. It is why the simplistic one man + one woman = marriage is so ludicrous. Marriage is infinitely more complicated than that.
>Maybe, maybe Kennedy was hoping that the government could treat people equally, with dignity. <
yo faggot biological science deniers shut the fuck up?
> I have seen and see that there is this HUGE spectrum of behavior by men and women that cross any artificial lines drawn between them.<
yo idiot #isisisislam will fuck you up clown!!11!!
tracy tell doj et al fuck you
Ernst. No, my ex and I did not have children. So, in withdrawing your question, you don’t think that my marriage was a marriage because we had no children? Oh….
To be fair, from Tracie’s P.O.V, if I understand it, we’re talking about human dignity as a social construct. And practically speaking at that narrow level she’s correct, as any number of examples from history show. Generally however, this is something we tend not to approve of,* which suggests that dignity comes from somewhere else ontologically or metaphysically speaking.
*in the future, who can say? Disapproval might be too judgey in the multi-culti new world.
No, I think Darleen’s right and you’re lying to yourself about what you think you know about marriage. Because for you marriage is just one type of relationship on a spectrum of relationships full of artificial lines.
> we’re talking about human dignity as a social construct <
nah collecting data for the
The Clash – Clampdown
Complicated is another word for haaaaard. Marriage is hard, but it’s only as complicated as we make it.
Ernst, I don’t have a problem with Natural Law. I just don’t think it means the same thing to me as it might to you. Shall we start with Locke?
He made the same observation Hobbes declared as a natural state of man:
He came to a similar conclusion – government was necessary
It is a natural progression from individual to family to community to society but at no point is government as an entity either natural or preordained despite the claim of Hobbes. In the far past, man was a beast and needed to be tamed. The American Revolution said no longer. Man could order his affairs. Individuals had the right to do so. Government was but a tool of society, not the pinnacle of it.
[You are going to love the last part!]
Thomas Aquinas states that law is a rule and measure of acts that man must take or be restricted from taking. The acts in question are those necessary to human happiness.
“Consequently the law must needs regard principally the relationship to happiness” [I’d be happy to offer the footnotes]
Aquinas spends time on the nature of law and reaches the conclusion that natural law supports the needs of individual. And therefore natural law is based in our needs.
See! Told ya you’d like the last part.
Hobbes, then Locke:
Me:
In all of the discussions, what each of the writer’s note is that we are part of nature but with the ability to reason and that sets us apart from the animals. I don’t disagree, but if reason sets us apart, it does not remove us from a state of nature.
Of the state of nature
Nature has no reason, it does however have purpose. We know that in each species, there is a set of characteristics that apply to all offspring. We know there is a considerable range of possibilities within those characteristics: weight, height, potential for intelligence, propensity for exceeding – for better or worse – the parents. As Hobbes noted, despite the range of possibilities, there is not a significant difference between humans.
These natural variations give rise to diversity in the population. It is the purpose of nature to encourage this diversity. However, nature does not need that all individuals survive or that any one should prevail. The goal of nature is to give each species the chance to grow and thrive, but it is indifferent to individual life. To Nature each individual is as good for it’s purpose as any other is.
Each species however has a great desire that each individual survive. Unlike Natures indifference, each species seeks to nurture those individuals most likely to help carry the species into the future. For the weak, infirm, and elderly incapable of perpetuation of the species, there is no future. Species seek the strongest at the expense of the weakest and will cull the non-performers. Each species has a biological imperative that force beneficial (to the species) behaviors on individuals. In humans we call it morality.ii
For nature, moral behavior perpetuates diversity and promotes healthy competition between species. Moral behavior that perpetuates the species is ‘right’ and behavior that fails to support the future is ‘wrong’.
Nature may be indifferent to the individual, but we are not. Unlike other ‘species’, we have free will. We can ignore the imperatives and support the weak, the infirm and the elderly. We have the ability and liberty to choose for ourselves; individuals can choose to ignore or conform to the purpose of nature.
Sure, I’m up for a discussion on Natural Law….
Good. Let me know what Hobbes, Locke and Aquinas have to say about marriage.
> Marriage is infinitely more complicated than that [simplistic one man + one woman = marriage ludicrousness]. <
yo idiot building shit is hard. keyboard clown!!11!! ask westinghouse or cassat you complete moron.
>Nature has no reason,<
ok go up 300' and dive. you throw up stupid diversions O!clowns
>Nature has no reason,<
so fuck "global/climate change"?
You should also see what Aquinas has to say about unnatural acts. Those are the ones that are neither the means of preserving life nor the warding off of life’s obstacles.
Like homosexual acts.
Ernst: “No, I think Darleen’s right and you’re lying to yourself about what you think you know about marriage.”
Because I have had two intimate, committed relationships, I don’t know much about marriage? Because it failed, because it didn’t produce offspring I can’t know what a ‘real’ marriage was about? And yet, everyone seems to be able to tell me that their….
Ok. I see. I haven’t got a clue what marriage is because it wasn’t successful and productive. Therefore, any claim to understanding human marital relationship is irrelevant as uninformed ramblings. Wow. Who knew? Gee, talk about being dismissive and condescending.
[delete comment on hard v complicated]
> Species seek the strongest at the expense of the weakest and will cull the non-performers. <
thanks pw for margret sanger
>Because I have had two intimate, committed relationships, I don’t know much about marriage? <
yes credentialed but stupid. they give minorities degrees see O!. how's/your world doing?
Two things before I go to bed:
1) You’re the one who argues from personal experience. I don’t recall anyone else making an argument pro or con based upon subjective personal experiences.
2) I’m trying to suggest that your own experiences aren’t the best basis for constructing an argument for social arrangements affecting everyone.
>2) I’m trying to suggest that your own experiences aren’t the best basis for constructing an argument for social arrangements affecting everyone<
nah the troll likes roberts on thurs and despises on fri. me fuck the hardon clown and tracy
Dignity is basically self respect, yes? That is not a social comstruct, it’s human nature. We are ego driven creatures. Everybody has some dignity, but many have damn little. Ho’s for instance. But government didn’t not give the ho dignity, and no one can take away what was lacking.
I think the ever increasing leftward pressure on the Americam culture has basically devalued dignity to the extent it is a liability rather than a virtue, a la Miley Cyrus and the Kardashion clan. Again, this is done voluntarily, no government policy’s required.
Ernst: Yep, he had a few words for adultery and divorce too….
And nocturnal pollution is a sin too.
lying pos/tracy news
>Jesus’ Teaching about Divorce
(Mark 10:1-12)
1And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judaea beyond Jordan; 2And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.
3The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? 4And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 5And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 7They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. 9And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.<
fuck you clown
I have a question Tracy. Before you were married the first time, when you were dating your future husband and then engaged, was having children a consideration in your life? Or did you get married just for the companionship and those sweet government bennies?
hey tracy
a great man named O! told me to get “IN THEIR FACES” so i say hi
Sex Pistols – Anarchy in the U.K.
Ernst: for your morning coffee:
1) You’re the one who argues from personal experience. I don’t recall anyone else making an argument pro or con based upon subjective personal experiences.
Yep, I have personal experiences I think are relevant. I am not seeking to make law based on them – the laws already exist: marriage licenses proceeded my existence. 14th Amendment proceeded me. I am seeking to have government act according to the rules we have established. I don’t always agree with those laws; I oppose anti-discrimination laws. I think there are thousands of nanny-state laws that need to go away. I further want government to spend less time in my life, so I prefer that EVERY law undergo strict scrutiny, if not prior to passage, certainly before the Supreme Court – acting in it’s capacity to determine Constitutionality. If as you suggest, and Scalia does also in the part Darleen posted, the Court can only rule on the Constitutionality, then the law conforms or it does not. In Kennedy’s opinion, the law does not conform – despite all the flowery uselessness he seeks to cloak it in – a ban on gay marriage is unConstitutional – it violates the 14th Amendment. I’ll look at Scalia’s dissent more in depth, but others have and have suggested he didn’t even bother addressing it. Thomas does, but only (apparently) superficially. All the arguments as to why gay marriage should be banned are not about Constitutional provisions. They are about historical dominance of OSM, about procreation. Those are the reasons for the ban, they say nothing about if the ban is Constitutional. That is the problem with ‘the majority said’. So what? The majority can vote for an unConstitutional law, and it’s still unConstitutional. That is the root of Kennedy’s opinion. Say why the ban is consistent with the 14th Amendment. Kennedy said due process, I think it is equality before the law…but have at the due process.
(BTW, in case it was missed NEWROUTER, I think Roberts was full of shit on Obamacare AND gay marriage)
2) I’m trying to suggest that your own experiences aren’t the best basis for constructing an argument for social arrangements affecting everyone.
Ok. If you don’t want to get married to a same sex partner don’t. If someone wants to marry a same sex partner, that’s their choice.
Your argument, if I might dare to paraphrase, is that human history has shown that marriage is the best institution for raising children, therefore, marriage should be about raising children. Whether you have ever been married or had children is irrelevant. That is what history has shown. The absence of any variation is proof that everything else has been tried and failed.
I assume that anyone not planning on children would be precluded from marrying. Any incapable of producing children would likewise be precluded. Except that they are already included. So, anyone else not planning on children, or not capable of producing children, should be included also. If not, why? No one is precluding those that can produce children, or planning on children. They can still marry. All your A + B = C is irrelevant. Courts have said that ‘the definition’ is not probative. History is the past. In the now, what is the character of marriage such that gays can’t be married?
for purposes of this thread:
I concede 100%, male/female married couples are the best environment for raising children.
I concede 100% that male/male and female/female couples are incapable of producing offspring.
I concede 100% that male/male and female/female couples are LESS than optimum for raising children.
Male/female couples are not required to marry before procreating.
Male/female couples are not required to marry before raising children.
Females are not required to marry before having children.
Males are not required to marry before having children.
Allowing gay couples to marry will not fix all or any of the above. Nor will it make it worse.
Due process:
straight couples that are not capable of producing offspring are allowed to marry
gay couples are not capable of producing offspring are allowed to marry
Is getting married being in a marriage? You can call it garriage or cohabitating or shacking up, but government says marriage = male/female getting married. The law doesn’t say ‘man and woman getting married to have babies and raise children’. As to the government, there is no difference between male/female or male/male or female/female. And it has to show that there is some compelling reason to exclude same sex couples. Straight couples will continue to get married, have babies, raise children. And do all the other bad stuff like divorce, abuse, out of wedlock….. all even if gays can get married.
I don’t need me. There have been half a dozen cases of people arguing about compelling interest, they lose because they can’t show any evidence that gay marriage stops heterosexuals from getting married, having babies and raising children. And given that gays are having babies and raising children, if marriage is good for raising children, extending it to gay families is…hasn’t been shown to hurt THEM!
so. enjoy your day.
LBascom. I’m the eldest of six kids. I expected that when I got married, I would have kids….maybe not 6, but 3 or 4. My ex however had some issues that were not specifically apparent prior to getting married. I decided about 6 months in that having a child would be very bad idea. I left when I realized I was hoping he would die in a car accident so that I didn’t have to get divorced. We were married 4 years.
V was already trying to adopt when we partnered. She called it a package deal. V was 10 years after my divorce.
My math contribution for the thread: 46& 2…
Ernst: “Good. Let me know what Hobbes, Locke and Aquinas have to say about marriage. ”
Sorry, I gave you my starting position. If you think Hobbes or Locke had something to say about marriage within the parameters of Natural Law, bring it up. But I offered their definition and my take on it. So, you are either accepting that as the ‘premise’ of Natural Law, or you can offer something else. Aquinas had words about marriage, and ‘unnatural acts’, I’m sure you can find something that supports a position you might want to stake out.
Tracy, while I admire your attempts to state the conservative case for marriage equality and possibly change some hearts and minds, you need to realize that it’s a lost cause over here. These people are ideologues on the issue and you can never convince an ideologue that there will be a ‘good outcome’ if they are wrong. That is what they fear the most.
You cannot convince a radical Islamist that eliminating Sharia law from the world would result in a better, nicer world – because the Islamist’s goal is not a better world. His goal is – Sharia law.
You cannot convince a radical vegan that the optimal human diet might reasonably include a certain percentage of animal proteins – because the vegan’s goal is not to discover the optimal human diet. His goal is – veganism.
By the same token, you cannot convince homophobic bigots that either you or your society will be better off with marriage for all. Their goal isn’t a better society. Their goal is – no gay marriage. Thankfully these people have lost. In ten years, being opposed to married gays will be about as acceptable as opposing school desegregation in the 1980s.
Augustus. thanks. But for all of their positions, I like them. 95% of the time, they are my kind of people. A few are off the charts, but generally I am treated well. And the mental exercise is good for me.
Is true. You will never convince a Christian that homosexual behavior is not a sin. May as well tell me adultery is no longer a sin. I think the SCOTUS decision is going to tear up this country much more than v.Roe even. Mostly because opposing the decision is becoming dangerous in a way opposing abortion never was.
Interesting times ahead…
Lee
You’re right. No matter how I can be happy on a personal scale for individual gay people who want that piece of paper (that the cool and hip leftists use to mock as unnecessary and oppressive), on the macro-scale not one NOT ONE that I’ve asked “so what about Brendan Eich” can I get an answer.
I’m a silly ninny, or maybe just a hater, if I say churches, synagogues, religious affiliated schools, etc, will now be targeted — but no one can tell me how it will NOT happen.
As pointed out in Robert’s dissent, Kennedy spent barely a few paragraphs in a 103 page decision address conscientious objectors — and his the kind of bone he threw to that community was they would still have the freedom to teach & advocate.
But you notice, he didn’t say EXERCISE, completely ignoring the words of the First Amendment.
The heresy trials will be televised.
Augustus
So outcomes alone are the measure of good? By any means necessary?
Where will you be when the heresy trials begin, which is much more like ISIS than those of us who believe in Rule of Law and live/let live.
BTW, 1980’s busing was shown to be a complete failure and was as opposed by black communities as white because it was based on racist principles and deprived parents of their rights.
Interesting you pick that example. SSM is a stalking horse, regardless of the good intentions of people like Tracy.
I want my rainbow back – Og the leprechaun
please, can’t we remember the effect this has on the little people
Darleen, we could sit here all day and argue about what we ought or ought not do to achieve the mythical “greater good,” but that would be futile. Every single human subscribes to a unique mix of “for the greater good” and “for the sake of my own soul.” The truth is that no one can be sure how their actions truly matter in the grand scheme of things.
As for the acceptance of gay marriage, it’s a simple matter of fairness that makes sense in our society. And it moves us one step farther away from the Muslim savages and one step closer to the deck of the Enterprise. See, our modern society decided long ago that the archaic dictates of ancient Abrahamic religions are a mere matter of personal choice and not to be dictated by any rational government. We don’t force people to go to church on Sunday, we don’t stone adulterers, and we wear blended fabrics and eat shellfish – and no vengeful God smites us. In our modern world, being gay is a personal lifestyle choice. All sexual endeavors, whether homo or hetero, are messy and carry some risk. The same could be said for eating meat, smoking, drinking, or driving motorcycles. We must treat it like any other behavior, because we no longer accept the alternative – to treat it as an act with cosmic significance that might anger some imaginary deity. Our laws are slowly adjusting to this emerging secular reality. The religious nuts will be left to mutter and shriek in their filthy caves. In ten years, you will wonder why you ever worried.
As for your mention of busing, that’s just a logistical annoyance that is incidental from the moral principal. I’m referring to those folks who, following Brown v. Board of Education, bitterly clung to the core belief that the races were destined, either by God or by ‘nature,’ to live separately. They were bigoted fools. Sadly, most people here are determined to follow in their footsteps.
I do laugh at the wild inconsistency at the value that conservatives place on ‘the children.’ From what I’ve read here, most of you have a definite ‘sink or swim’ mentality when it comes to the young’uns. You don’t think the kids necessarily need proper nutrition, or education, or to simply not be humiliated if they don’t have the ten dollars for a school carnival. Sink or swim, kids. And yet, you insist that every child in America must be guaranteed a country that stigmatizes gays, so their fragile little minds won’t be confused. That bird has flown, so lets work on getting them some lunches instead.
Time was “a simple matter of fairness” was to be found established in the Constitution of the United States, which delineated the architecture of procedures by which justice would be best obtained, or where not obtained, repaired and rectified. That architecture assumed the people sovereign, imparting some small portion of their natural powers to the use of their governments, local, state, and federal, but retaining to themselves all powers else, as well as the distinction as the sole natural beings possessed of right as their natural property. Government of whatever species, they understood, had no natural right, but only powers derived from the consent of the governed people.
Time now is when the consent of the governed sovereign people has been usurped by instituted government through force and fraud, instituted government assuming to itself (i.e., themselves, government also consisting of people who commit the force and fraud) powers it was not given, and procedures not contemplated as “simple matters of fairness”.
Again, I wish that trollhammer still worked.
In case you didn’t understand who I meant
I meant the fascist.
In our modern world, being gay is a personal lifestyle choice.
If that were the case, there would not be the howling mobs eager to force acceptance onto everyone, at the cost of reputation, livelihood and property. Failure to be anything short of loudly supportive is cause for becoming the new Emmanuel Goldstein. Doesn’t matter if it is even a lie, the accusation is sufficient for full punishment to be imposed.
Sexist.
Racist.
Homophobe.
Bigot.
“H8R”.
Being gay may be a “personal lifestyle choice”, but not being gay isn’t. Not any more.
In ten years, you will wonder why you ever worried.
How well is that working out for Canada? Lawfare will be made to trump Constitutional protections.
LBascom: Right, because Christians still think cloth made of two different fibers, touching the skin of a dead pig, are sins. Christians still think a woman is unclean for 7 days after the birth of a son but 14 days after the birth of a daughter. Christians still think lots of things a lot of other people don’t.
Darleen: What about Brandon Eich? Christians boycott. Christians demand the firing of people for their thoughts. Leftists, and I can add whatever appellation before that you want: black leftists, gay leftists, atheist leftists, LaRAZZZZA leftists, in the end they are just power hungry leftists that will use whatever YOU are against to be FOR in order to beat you into their submission. What about Westboro? I can find ignorant, dangerous, hateful people supporting ANYTHING. They don’t define you or me unless we let them. Easy for me to say, I no longer have anything left to lose. We are quick to point out that someone using a gun to rob or kill is not what the rest of us gun owning people are. The Left looks for easy targets. A gay couple gives Cruz a fund-raiser. The Left has a hissy fit and the Right just left them out to dry. Why? Oh, because they were gay…..eck.
I prefer not to be defined by the fringe that happens to be in the general direction of ‘my side’ of the debate.
Darleen: I just had a client ask me, ‘now that I have filed will people stop harassing me?’ I said no. But it is illegal for them to do so, but we can’t stop stupid any more than we can legislate safety. Will people target religious institutions? Duh. And what happens THEN will determine the long term. If people flock to the defense, then others will get the hint it is not a soft target. A baker in Oregon, a florist in Florida, a pizza parlor in Indiana. these are not big targets….really, really ‘tiny’ targets to see if the Right will defend the smallest or just the BIG BOYS like Chik-Fil-A. Which is it? Will people wring their hands and say ‘we told you so’ or will we fight back. I’ll bet it will NOT be Southern Baptists. Or Episcopalians. Or Lutherans. Catholics? It will be something small with no apparent defense.
black leftists, gay leftists, atheist leftists, LaRAZZZZA leftists….. What about Westboro?
All Democrats. Imagine that.
“Christians demand the firing of people for their thoughts.”
Liar.
Darleen: It was the Supreme Court’s job to rule on the law, not on how it might be applied or misapplied. Isn’t that the complaint about Roberts’ opinion on Obamacare – he sought a result based on how the result might play out rather than the law? That Kennedy at least acknowledged it rather than spending 30 pages wringing his hands is probably a good thing….considering how much hand wringing he DID do. The First Amendment was not in dispute or involved. It might be as a consequences, but judges are to rule on the law, not the consequences – that is for the Legislature to deal with. And if the law was unConstitutional, then it is the Legislature, not the Court, to blame for the outcome.
Darleen: Outcomes. Do you think there should be something like ‘hate speech’ or ‘hate crimes’? Are we going to get into the heads of people and attack them for what they think? I can THINK about killing someone all day long, but as long as I just give them a dirty look, I’ve committed no crime (sin might be another thing…) that was a GOOD outcome from a bad thought. Lots of people have good thoughts and BAD outcomes…..leftists mostly. So, yea, good outcomes are better than just good thoughts.
Oh, LBascom….sarcasm….because I can’t seem to be not misinterpreted.
Augustus: Being gay is not a lifestyle choice for 99% of those that live as gay. They are born that way. The Right doesn’t think so, the Left doesn’t care – choice being their mantra except when someone chooses differently than their holy script. People try to live ‘normal’ and at some point realize it is either hopeless or they are being self-destructive to satisfy the expectations of others. I’m one of the odd ones, the rarest of the rare, the .001% of the 2%. I made a choice different from my inherent preferences. See, I have free will. I am not an animal that just follows genetic instinct. I’ve decided that the ultimate expression of me is not in creating mini-me’s. though, I have to admit to a huge amount of pride about CJ, so….well, my mother said the maternal instinct was buried down there somewhere.
But my CHOICE should not be subject to the approvals of others. To the extent my choices do not infringe upon others, I am free to act. That is the fundamental nature of our Republic. My government is here to protect my rights not your (the generic) sensibilities. If my appearance or actions (like holding hands or kissing in public) confuses your children, then that is YOUR problem as their parent, not mine. Raising kids is hard, hiding them from the real world, by trying to make the real world conform to your view of how it should be, is chickenshit. My choices are part of the liberty we have. Even if that liberty is in your eyes used badly.
LBascom: for the expression of those thoughts: Irene Gallo. She happens to be a piece of shit leftist with delusions of grandeur, but….nonetheless. BTW, I support the call for her job.
Darleen: Brandon Eich. The marketplace demanded his head. No one showed up at his place of work with a rope or a sword or a gun. The mob voted. How very ‘democratic’ of them. Now the right is doing the same thing. Which by the way, is just fine with me. Fighting back is better than just sitting around wringing hands…
“Being gay is not a lifestyle choice for 99% of those that live as gay. They are born that way. ”
Liar.
LBascom: If you can’t stand for what I say, you are welcome to disprove it. Calling me a name doesn’t bother me as much as what I say appears to bother you.
Hardly surprising given the Court’s narrow definition of what can be freely exercised without prohibition.
Then Christians, even the crazy ignorant dangerous hatey ones (nominally) like Westboro are doing it wrong. Must be that “wall of seperation” they can’t seem to scale.
Ernst: If an institution needs the state in order for it to continue, then it isn’t much of an institution. I have often said you don’t need the state to support procreation because people will do it just fine without it. However, given the declining birthrate….maybe even that is wrong….
I’ve come around to vox day’s point of view – though we disagree on some things, aggressive ‘fighting back’ using the same tools is not ‘stooping to their level’, it is survival.
The marketplace demanded his head.
No, leftists and SJWs demanded his head, because he DARED to believe something other than they did. Never mind that he never discriminated against anyone, enforced same-sex policies in his company, and that he basically invented the marketplace his business occupied, he donated less than a week’s pay to a cause, and that was all that was needed.
Never mind that you cannot show a single case where Christians have done anything even remotely similar, it’s all about what you assert. Liar. H8R. Heterophobe.
Except for some parts of tax law which work the “wrong way,” I can see brothers and sisters, especially seniors, “marrying” to get certain better benefits.
Who could stop them ?
The JavaScript “marketplace” is every damned page on the web.
A boycott of JavaScript would have meant boycotting the whole internet.
procreate, yes. But what about rearing the offspring of all that procreative recreational activity? Because it seems to me the state subsidizes that, in spades. Almost as if the state were seeking to supplant the natural family, By design or the necessity of happenstance?
And what do we conclude from that? What’s the impact on society at large of all that nonprocreative recreational activity?
LBascom: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/06/tor-boycott-announced.html
Dicentra! Which is why I wondered about it. I have to wonder why so many people just throw in the towel so fast….
Ernst: subsidize what you want more of, tax what you want less of. Social engineering via tax law.
You do understand the difference between individuals boycotting a business, and a mob ruining an individual, right?
Yeah.
If you want your boycott to succeed, find an individual and ruin him.
I mean hell, I’m boycotting half the actors in Hollywood, refuse to pay for anything with Matt Damon in it, but I don’t have enough of the tyrant in me to attempt using political power to take away his career unless he gets his mind right.
LBascom: Yea, one is when you do it to someone, the other is when it’s done to you. So, I guess that is NOTHING REMOTELY like the other?
Sorry, if you can’t get 1000 of your friends to join you, well, then no one bothers with you. And really, were there 10,000 screaming rioters outside Eich’s offices? Or Memories Pizza? 1,000? 100? Or were there 10? Or was it all social media shit storm?
And because Ernst doesn’t have the ‘tyrant’ to ruin someone doesn’t mean others will stay their hand….unless there are consequences for their not doing so. Memories was open 8 days after closing with $800k in the bank. That was an exception, but the point was people jumped all into that crap.
So, I know there was a larger mobing of people on the Prop 8 support, but I wasn’t paying much attention to it. But what is interesting is that we are seeing 4? 5? examples out of potentially tens of thousands of businesses? What is clear is that the rarity is part of the response.
Sorry, but crying the other side is mean and vicious and wants to destroy people….using social media….just doesn’t get my dander up. Given what happened to gays in the past. Fortunately, not much of that now….but people lose jobs when they come out. Kids end up on the street when parents find out…
Ernst: I wanted to wait until late in the evening, assuming you had better things to do that sit at a computer typing, to see if you bothered to pick up your side of the discussion you suggested would be avoided by me, but wasn’t. Natural Law. I really didn’t think that you would, you have not shown any propensity for doing more than jab and duck in the past. Maybe the size of my posts puts you off. Or maybe you don’t think that it would actually amount to much. That might be correct. The advancement of knowledge has done more to dismantle Christian philosophy than any dialogue. Humans have free will, and while being part of Nature, we are not bound by the genetic/instinctual imperatives it provides. That IS the Christian argument against a ‘nature made gays’ position – they can choose to not ‘act gay’ ie participate in ‘unnatural acts’. Yea, they can. So can heterosexuals, ie avoid
Aquinas:
This is very easily read as against homosexuality, but the bold section could easily be read in the context that no other species murders one another, or goes to war with itself. I’ll leave it as addressing homosexuality given he is speaking of sexual violations. But I did hear, back in the day, a long talk one exactly what was Sodom’s since and it wasn’t homosexuality. So maybe others see something else there too. Still, the point I wanted to make was that Nature was at best minimally understood both in the Early Church and Aquinas’ time. Nature is more complex, not the least of which many primates will go to war and kill members of their own.
LBascom. You said no examples existed, I gave you one. That is not the hysteria the Left whips up, it is the effort by Christians to demand the firing of someone based on what she said….not did. I doubt you’d even concede that there was ‘ONE’…..
“Time to legalize polygamy”
Hear tell the pederasts figure they’re next in line.
Welcome to Gomorrah.
i’m worried about all this polygamy
what is interesting is that we are seeing 4? 5? examples out of potentially tens of thousands of businesses?
wow … so if a tiny minority is destroyed, especially if you get a high value target like Eich, it will have no effect on how other businesses will conduct themselves?
btw… I don’t want Gallo fired for her political beliefs, I want her fired for her BEHAVIOR – Sad Puppies has easily demonstrated she ACTED on those beliefs on-the-job.
Now if TOR’s mission statement is to publish only left-wing authors who make message-fiction with leftwing views, then she should keep her job.
btw tracy
the florist is Washington, the photographer were destroyed by their GOVERNMENT not by the marketplace – no amount of fund-raising can counter that.
Darleen: If a tiny majority is being affected, why all the hand wringing? Seems to be the point of people decrying the change. If it IS just a few, doesn’t that say that there isn’t some huge effort? Or is the fact is rare make each case seem more important than it is? We had the first killing of a black person in a black church in over 50 years and you’d think the South was erupting!! Meanwhile in Chicago, that many people are killed in the average WEEK. So, hmmmm, if what happened at Memories Pizza is making pizza owners worried, or church goers scared because what happened in So Carolina, then people are over-reacting….much like the harridans that got their panties in a wad in the first place.
Gallo’s BEHAVIOR was SPEAKING ill of her authors and customers. She gets to pick and choose who she wanted to publish. And if it was based on politics, that is her liberty – if her employer had issues with it…well, that’s up to them. I SUPPORT the call for her ouster. I think if anyone badmouths customers they should be fired. I don’t care if it is political or not – it is irrelevant if it was political. Just like Eich. I think he should have told them his has a right to his opinion and to take it up with the First Amendment. We don’t know if it is TOR’s mission…it might be. It certainly can be if it wants.
the florist is Washington? The photographer violated NM law. I have stated that of all the businesses, HER position was strongest because she actually had to attend and YES I think that makes a difference. Making a wedding cake was the business of the couple in Oregon. They didn’t attend the wedding. Memories was just plan stupid and it should have been treated as such. I am tired of people apologizing for offending people.
I DO NOT WANT ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAWS. They are bad. They violate freedom of association. I think anti-drug laws are bad also. I don’t oppose the police for arresting stoned people. It is against the law. No one is advocating for getting rid of anti-discrimination laws, they are just proposing anti-anti-discrimination laws.
So, if people voice an opinion and a fury erupts over it, the person cowering should have 1) not said it if they weren’t going to stand up for it, or 2) stood up for it. I don’t think I have ONCE said everyone here should not speak their opinion on subjects. I think it is admirable that everyone stand up for their opinions here – I hope you all are doing so in your daily lives. I am.
Let’s say the strongest pro-freedom of religious expression law is passed at the Federal level AND the State level, far better than RFRA currently – can Bed Bath and Beyond refuse to sell gays bed linens? Can Ashley Furniture refuse to sell bedroom furniture to gays?
Holy Incest, Batman! I just realized that the Nine (well, the Six) just got rid of that pesky consanguinity restriction!
Riddle me this, Tracy: A human divorced father and his adult consenting son, not being able to intermingle genes, can sprinkle a little of that magic Love on their relationship and get “married.”
Any problems with that? Intellectual honesty for extra credit; show your work, please.
RI Red: Yes. Though a child (even of adult age) can be under undo influence of a parent, making contractual ability suspect.
Of course you didn’t say the Father was divorced from the mother of the son….given polygamy, it might not be his biological son. But given I thought Woody Allen was creepy but he married his adult adopted daughter. Which though gross did not bring up the ‘genes’ issue.
I’d be eck about it, but not legally opposed.
RI Red: Certainly you can ignore it, but how about some reciprocation and answer my question……?
How right you are. Gay marriage isn’t much of an institution.
Ernst: not much, but give it 10,000 years and church and state protection….we’ll see. Now that they don’t purge gays outright…
No stomach for Natural law huh?
Had and still do.
Given that the advancement of knowledge is predicated on Christian philosophy, however much the anti-Christians wish it weren’t so, and irrespective of there success in persuading people that it is not in fact so, I really doubt that’s the case.
Avoid what? participating in unnatural acts? participating in natural acts? I don’t follow where you’re going here. Do you mean to say that heterosexuals are obliged to exercise their free will to direct and control their natural genetic/instictual imperatives, lest they be ruled by those imperatives? Also, that argument from Free Will (so to speak) which you’ve summarized is only part of the argument: We’re also obliged to conform our will according to the designs of Nature’s Creator –which leads us to Aquinas.
Aquinas [as quoted by you]:
Your comment:
My reply:
This is very easily read as against homosexuality, but….
Sure, it can be read that way, but you yourself seem to acknowledge, however diffidently, it shouldn’t be read that way (“the bold section could easily be read in the context that no other species murders one another, or goes to war with itself / Nature is more complex, not the least of which many primates will go to war and kill members of their own.”) So instead going to the Confessions or the Book of Genesis, I’ll just acknowledge that you’ve conceded the point.
I did hear, back in the day, a long talk on[c]e exactly what was Sodom’s [sin] and it wasn’t homosexuality.
Yeah, I read that book. Still have it around here somewhere. It isn’t persuasive.
the point I wanted to make was that Nature was at best minimally understood both in the Early Church and Aquinas’ time.
So you’re telling me because our understanding of nature is less imperfect than back in his day, Aquinas’ point that acts contrary to the natural order pollute nature, also injuring the Author of nature in the process, is somehow invalid? What exactly is it that we’ve learned since the thirteenth century that overturns Aquinas? Your say so? Based on what?
We’re getting into that problem of experts prefering their own, limited, expertise over the widely diffused general knowledge of society in aggregate that Sowell, and before him, Hayek, talked about.
Although, personally I prefer the German concept of besserwissen the logical fallacy that, because we know something those who came before us didn’t know, or something they knew was wrong, nothing that they knew holds any validity.
Forty-two years ago, you’d have said “i’m worried about all this abortion[.]”
“RI Red: Yes. Though a child (even of adult age) can be under undo influence of a parent, making contractual ability suspect.”
So you do actually concede the supreme court has so changed the meaning of marriage it has become practically meaningless, legally speaking. Huh. I always kinda thought that was what you were arguing against here, and that marriage would be strengthened by garriage.
Oops.
Big Box Stores are retailers They buy all sorts of stuff in order to sell it to all sorts of people. The really interesting question is whether the Mennonite weaver has to sell a hand made comforter or the Amish furniture maker a hand crafted bedroom set.
Made to order of course. Because how are those hatey christers even going to know unless the gays in question are on the lookout for victimizers.
“ut the bold section could easily be read in the context that no other species murders one another, or goes to war with itself.”
Not much of a nature buff, are you?
Lost track of your question , Tracy. Too busy watching you convince yourself that your navel orange is the same as a Granny Smith apple.
Who are you to deny navel oranges can freely will their way past the limits of nature? Love cannot be denied if all fruits are to have the dignity that equality among fruit demands!
And you still haven’t answered the question!
(that’s an old joke around here, btw, in case anyone didn’t already know that)
can Bed Bath and Beyond refuse to sell gays bed linens? Can Ashley Furniture refuse to sell bedroom furniture to gays? <
would you sell to the demonrat/kkk ? how about cair, westboro baptist church, ms 14/16 ? please elaborate. you seem stupid on principle.
Clearly this Brave New World needs new definitions:
Marriage – one human male, one human female, age of consent, non-consanguinity. Thousands of years of tradition and experience.
Garriage – two humans, same sex. 2015 enlightenment.
Polygarriage – more than two, any sex. Three’s company! In case you wake up in the middle of the night and one has gone to the bathroom and can’t answer you.
Chromogarriage – consanguinity not an issue. I know, icky, but we ain’t having kids.
Animarriage – human plus non-human. Damn, that dolphin looks good.
Did I miss anything?
>Did I miss anything?<
fundamental stupidfication
transformation> Can Ashley Furniture refuse to sell bedroom furniture to gays? <
can the gay baker refuse to bake an "gays are evil" cake for a muslim?
do gays like muslims tossing gays from the 4th story?
is it “gay” to crucify gays?
why do “gays” attack the language and not the islam?
Damn, that dolphin looks good.
Animarriage probably won’t happen since the animal rights crowd is likely to prevail in our consent based politico-legal framework.
On the other hand, if that dolphin takes a shine to you and you don’t reciprocate, well then, you’re probably a speciesist and a Christian to boot!
Robomarriage – hey, you know Ai is coming (pun not intended)….
I knew I missed one, Lee. Good catch.
>The movement for gay rights that began after World War II was waged from society’s margins; its most outspoken proponents sought to overturn social convention, not join it. It was not at all inevitable that the movement would one day coalesce around marriage.
In 1953, the first year of its publication, the national gay magazine ONE dismissed the idea that gays might one day be allowed to marry. “Rebels such as we, demand freedom!” one article declared.The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.<
eric hoffer
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/17715-the-true-believer-thoughts-on-the-nature-of-mass-movements
nyt
>The movement for gay rights that began after World War II was waged from society’s margins; its most outspoken proponents sought to overturn social convention, not join it. It was not at all inevitable that the movement would one day coalesce around marriage.
In 1953, the first year of its publication, the national gay magazine ONE dismissed the idea that gays might one day be allowed to marry. “Rebels such as we, demand freedom!” one article declared.The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”
? Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements <
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/17715-the-true-believer-thoughts-on-the-nature-of-mass-movements
the submission device doesn’t like
The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”
? Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
It may be too early yet, but;
Vegimarriage? – ‘cuz of I got a ficus here what died when I stopped loving it and it felt all lonely and shit. Withered up, lost its leaves, and freaken’ DIED!
I shoulda married that magnificent plant when it was in its bloom.
And don’t you dare judge me!!
Aw damn, that should probably be Floramarriage.
Vegimarriage is raciss…
LBascom: you are the one with a minimal definition of marriage that ignores it’s breadth and depth. That gays are part of that now is the minimal change. Adding gays hasn’t affected my definition of marriage at all. Of course you will say that a definition that includes everything means nothing – but the what hasn’t changed, only those participating. So, adding Red’s scenario does exactly the same thing, adds two more people to the list of those participating in the same unchanged institution. From my point of view.
Gee LBascom, thanks for clarifying exactly my point. Aquinas is told by his God that a certain truth exists, Aquinas sees multiple examples in nature and is therefore validated in his belief as to the omniscience of his God. However, we now see and know that many of the beliefs about nature were less informed. Animals war against their own species; animals act in sexual ways with members of their own sex. So, in the natural world we find ‘unnatural’ acts. That is the root of my point to Ernst, it is not that we know everything, it’s that we know lots more now that might have changed the point of view of people like Aquinas.
Ernst: I don’t have a problem with Aquinas. His works are great. I’m not appealing to an authority, but to a well established viewpoint. We have a foundation of knowledge that was accumulated in the past. It wasn’t perfect, complete, or at times rational. But in the process we gained knowledge – some we have had to discard along the way as more became known. Pork, two fabrics, 7 days unclean vs 14 days unclean – though to be honest that probably had nothing to do with hygiene. I had a seizure disorder. In the past, people with seizures were thought to be possessed, then mentally deranged. Now we know it to be functional damage, genetic malformation or allergic reaction. But taking an awareness of nature and applying a belief system to it doesn’t make the belief system any less a belief system. Man and woman make babies, male and female animals make baby animals. Acts that don’t produce offspring are unnatural. Except not every natural act produces offspring – as LBascom would say, its the potential… Saying that acts that don’t, can’t produce offspring is sin changes it from science to belief. I won’t dismiss the science – gay sex doesn’t produce offspring, can’t. So. Not every straight sexual act (intercourse) produces offspring, sometimes CAN’T – infertility – doesn’t make it unnatural or sinful. Aquinas spends lots more time talking about lusts and straight sex that is sinful. Homosexuality is a sin against God and Nature…moving on….incest, adultery…etc…..
RI Red, sorry you are so easily distracted….
That’s what you were doing?
Shorter you: since “sin” can’t be measured in a laboratory test, you choose not to believe in it. Is that about right? If so, try not to throw the rest of the morality baby away with that dirty
bathsinwater there.Or maybe that’s not what you meant, since you seem to have lost your train of thought at the end there, what with the way your comment peters out
Not every natural act produces offspring, but many natural acts have the potential to do so, even allowing for the examples of instances whee they don’t or can’t; whereas, no unnatural act will produce offspring, ever. From which follows: it’s still science that undergirds the belief system, even if you reject the conclusions (beliefs) drawn from the premises (science).
As for what you’ve repeatedly tried to argue, that any sex act of any kind is okay, since not all sexual intercourse ends in pregnancy, and thus pregnancy can’t be the end to which intercourse is directed and therefore homosexual acts don’t burden sexual morality, I find that such weak sauce that I haven’t bothered to remark on it before now. To my mind, it’s more than a bit like pointing to a couple or even several early childhood illnesses with a high rate of mortality among infants and then using that to justify abortion under any and all circumstances. Or special pleading.
Since that was addressed to Lee, I wasn’t going to comment at first, but there’s so much that’s faulty in it I’m inclined to address it after all:
Aquinas is told by his God that a certain truth exists,
Aquinas wrote from reason, not revelation, although Revelation guides his reasoning.
Aquinas sees multiple examples in nature and is therefore validated in his belief as to the omniscience of his God.
What Aquinas concluded from nature was that nature was the Creation of his God, and that it was ordered towards certain ends. He also believed in God’s omniscience, but that’s a rabbit hole as far as this debate/discussion/argument is concerned.
However, we now see and know that many of the beliefs about nature were less informed. Animals war against their own species; animals act in sexual ways with members of their own sex. So, in the natural world we find ‘unnatural’ acts.
Unless I’m very much mistaken you’re argument that Aquinas was mistaken about nature is you attributing your interpretation of Aquinas to Aquinas (“This is very easily read as against homosexuality, but the bold section could easily be read in the context that no other species murders one another, or goes to war with itself”), and thus you’re arguing with your strawman self.
And if I am mistaken about the context you’re reading from, then we have to address both the capability of animals to murder and wage war their culpability for doing so. (Also the quote you’re pulling from would be helpful.)
Put another way, human nature is not merely or simply animal nature.
[I]n the natural world we find ‘unnatural’ acts. That is the root of my point to Ernst, it is not that we know everything, it’s that we know lots more now that might have changed the point of view of people like Aquinas.
That’s arguing that the exception to the rule invalidates the rule rather than proves it. What’s more likely is that people like Aquinas would argue that we’ve forgotten more of what we used to know than we’ve learned.
Case in point being: the general incomprehensibility (both genuine and pretended) of the idea that the end of marriage is children, rather than love or companionship or social recognition or government bennies; all of which are secondary to the primary end of raising up the next generation.
All for me for tonight.
Ernst: Aquinas was appealing to an authority. I get people love to use ‘fallacy’ assertions. No. I wasn’t. You wanted to have a discussion on natural law, I have at least had some effort in that area – and just because I reference someone as holding a point of view, of which I tend to disagree with, how can I appeal to his authority. I am pointing out my awareness of some of the differing viewpoints – not just offering my own.
Sin is a belief. It is not subject to measurement. You believe in sin (I’m assuming), I don’t. Are you suggesting there is an empirical test for sin?
There is right and wrong. I have a foundation for that. It differs from yours.
Yea, I re-read that and decided it was poorly crafted but it was something you could pick on and I could clear up later. The last two sentences are short-hand for Aquinas pointing out homosexuality was a sin against God and Nature and not much else could be said so lets move on to the heterosexuals vast repertoire of sexual vice… without quoting two pages of Aquinas working on ‘lust’.
Ernst: “, no unnatural act will produce offspring, ever” Yea, I noted that with a reference to LBascom’s potentiality point. And? I’ve already made the argument that marriage is more than reproduction. LBascom, and I guess you, argue that is the point of marriage. So, the lack of reproduction isn’t the issue – people that can’t have children are allowed to marry. Apparently they don’t have a real marriage as there are no children… for some people all natural acts will never produce offspring….doesn’t stop them from getting married.
Ernst pulls a Tracy?! “nd thus pregnancy can’t be the end to which intercourse is directed ” Pregnancy is often the end to which intercourse is directed. Except when people use contraception to prevent it…but it is clear that it is often enough a consequence that people seek to prevent it. And?
Wow…how did I miss this the first time I read it…
Ernst: “no unnatural act will produce offspring, ever…..From which follows: it’s still science that undergirds the belief system, even if you reject the conclusions (beliefs) drawn from the premises (science). ”
Tracy: “saying that acts that don’t, can’t produce offspring is sin changes it from science to belief.”
Science says that unnatural acts can’t produce offspring. Belief says that makes unnatural acts sin. That isn’t a foundation, it is justification. Aquinas (and the Catholic Church if I recall) basically say anything sexual that is not done with the goal (and possibility) of offspring is a sin. Which is what I left unsaid of Aquinas but assumed would be understood…. I reject the belief. It has no bearing on the science. Rejecting the belief does not reject the science.
Ernst: “As for what you’ve repeatedly tried to argue, that any sex act of any kind is okay, since not all sexual intercourse ends in pregnancy, and thus pregnancy can’t be the end to which intercourse is directed and therefore homosexual acts don’t burden sexual morality, ”
I never said ‘any sex act of any kind is okay’. Rape is a sex act – people call it a power trip, but it can be a ‘natural act’ in that often is intercourse that leads to pregnancy. I don’t think it is remotely ok. Sex without procreation is fine. Aquinas calls it sin. I don’t. Marriage is not about sex – er, reproduction. I dealt with the middle ‘thus’ which isn’t. So, absent the premise, your final assertion that you think I make ‘homosexual acts don’t burden sexual morality’ is….correct. As long as it is between consensual adults. If you accept Aquinas’ formulation of sin with regard to sex, okay. Doesn’t have anything to do with science or the Natural Law. But…I’m getting off track..or you were…
Ernst: “I find that such weak sauce that I haven’t bothered to remark on it before now. ” Not sure what you think is weak…that I don’t think non-procreative sex is sin, or that I don’t accept sin, or that neither have anything to do with Natural Law. Aquinas thinks the Natural World as he understood it gave physical evidence of God’s word. Much like you seem to think that [calling unnatural acts] sin is justified by lack of procreation.
I don’t see the similarity to abortion at all. The absence of a consequence is not the same as the presence of a consequence.
I have been accused of being the product of my faith upbringing. So too Aquinas. Yes, he uses reason. If you are suggesting that from original thought he reasoned that unnatural acts were sin, then my point stands even without reference to Scripture. By original thought, without reliance on any aspect of prior knowledge. He looked at the Natural world and saw that the lack of procreation was morally wrong. Are these statements what you are suggesting? In the Natural World, in Nature, the lack of procreation or the expectation of procreation was never an issue….except to humans.
Ernst: “Aquinas wrote from reason, not revelation, although Revelation guides his reasoning.” My statement stands, if it guided him, it informed his inquiry. The two are intertwined. If God says this is bad and Aquinas then using reason establishes the philosophical basis to support that statement, he has validated the Truth via reason.
No, I am suggesting that I am aware of alternative interpretations, though I didn’t agree with them. The more direct interpretation seems correct. Aquinas sees unnatural acts as a sin – a violation of nature and God. If God has set a purpose and that purpose is frustrated or denied it is a sin. Aquinas sees species procreating. Their purpose, for they have no reasoning, is to do what they were designed to do. It would seem that if I hunted and killed an animal before it could procreate, that would be frustrating God’s purpose for the animal. Or, better, if I killed a man or woman before they could procreate, it would be a sin. Ok. He calls it a sin.
My argument with regard to Aquinas is that his reasoning is based a limited view of the Natural World. I don’t know what his reason might have yielded had he seen animals engaging in ‘unnatural acts’ as if there could be a thing. They would be engaging in natural acts as they have no reasoning to do otherwise. That those acts would not result in procreation would not be sin. I AM assuming he would not reach the same conclusions….
Summa Theologica Question 154.
I agree that human nature is not merely nor simply animal nature. We are more than the purpose for which we were created/designed. Reliance upon the Natural World, Nature, to establish laws – while a nice place to start – is not the end. Exceptions to the rule prove the rule is not absolute. Nothing more. Rules, as established by experience and knowledge, are not to be taken lightly. Gee, isn’t that your point? But because they are not absolute, neither should their application be.
given the stupidity of “Where does hamburger come from?” The store! Aquinas would get no argument with regard to individuals from me.
I accept that we need to have the next generation, but we are long past the point where that is in doubt. We’re popping them out like Pez. Whole different world than 800 years ago. Goes to my point: Nature doesn’t need that each member of a species procreate. Species want every member to procreate. We don’t need rules or institutions to have procreation. We need them to raise the next generation.
Gay marriage is the exception that proves the rule. That marriage is important even when procreation is not possible or planned.
Forgive me for quoting myself:
And speaking of incomprehensibility:
You know, it’s getting increasingly difficult to take you seriously.
How much alcohol can I concentrate in my ‘shine before it’s poison?
80 proof, 86 proof, 90 proof, 100 proof, 120 proof, 150 proof, 200 proof? I’m just adding to the percentage of alcohol by volume. It’s still the same white lightnin’ corn likker. From my point of view.
Hardly unchanged though, however “minimal” the change happened to be when it went from not being poison to being poison.
That’s the kind of minimal change (pardon my botched blockquoting) we’re talking about here. Marriage has been changed –one minimal increment at a time…
…and after 50, 60 plus years of doing shots, the Supreme Court just set up our national bachelor party’s beer bong. Hope we survive the alcohol poisoning long enough to experience the hangover.
Furthermore, you never quite managed to address Lee’s point, about the meaning of marriage having become, thanks the Supreme Court, practically meaningless now, did you? Your definition hasn’t changed, so why should anyone anywhere think otherwise than you do?
Well your definition was your definition before the Court changed it for the rest of society, and whether the Court’s action affects you personally or not, it will have an effect on society, the long term consequences of which are unknowable, but likely to be negative on the whole, given that if it was a good idea, some society somewhere in the world would have tried it sometime in the last 10,000 years. So either it’s been tried and ended very badly for those concerned, or we’re the first society in history to be so stupid as to congratulate ourselves on how much smarter and better we are than any who ever came before us.
But hey, thanks for sharing your narcissism and solipsistic worldview with the rest of us.
Aquinas was appealing to an authority.
This is also known as supporting an argument.
[H]ow can I appeal to his authority[?] I am pointing out my awareness of some of the differing viewpoints – not just offering my own.
Then why’d you write “I’m not appealing to an authority, but [“appealing” understood] to a well established viewpoint?
Sin is a belief. It is not subject to measurement. You believe in sin (I’m assuming), I don’t. Are you suggesting there is an empirical test for sin?
I’m glad I understood that you were saying you don’t believe in something that can’t be empirically verified.
There is right and wrong. I have a foundation for that. It differs from yours.
Not as much as you might pretend, since I would bet your selectively drawing from the same Judeo-Christain foundation we all share. So, like I said ” try not to throw the rest of the morality baby away with that dirty
bathsinwater there.Science says that unnatural acts can’t produce offspring. Belief says that makes unnatural acts sin. That isn’t a foundation, it is justification. Aquinas (and the Catholic Church if I recall) basically say anything sexual that is not done with the goal (and possibility) of offspring is a sin. Which is what I left unsaid of Aquinas but assumed would be understood…. I reject the belief. It has no bearing on the science. Rejecting the belief does not reject the science.
Half a point to you, I guess. But your pretty much doing the same thing (what I said was “arguing that the exception to the rule invalidates the rule rather than proves it”), so only half a point.
The rest of no unnatural act will produce offspring, ever” Yea, I noted that …. Pregnancy is often the end to which intercourse is directed. Except when people use contraception to prevent it…but it is clear that it is often enough a consequence that people seek to prevent it. And? Is the same old special pleading, so we’re off to:
Not sure what you think is weak…
All that special pleading. All that contraception, periodic infertility, sterility, sex other than intercourse traditionally understood [I suppose I should just go ahead and say penis in the vagina, if only to keep you from evading the point by referring to some other type of sexual activity as “intercourse”] means that conception can’t possibly be the philosophical end of sex, therefore it must be something else. That’s what’s weak.
No, I am suggesting that I am aware of alternative interpretations, though I didn’t agree with them. The more direct interpretation [of Summa 154] seems correct.
Thank you for the reference. Having acknowledged that, I’m done with you. I’ve wasted at least a half hour in this comment alone trying to figureout where “animals don’t murder or war with their own species” comes from, and I finally find out it comes from “alternative intrepretations” of which you are aware. If you don’t agree with them, why even bother to bring them up? To confuse the issue? We’re not debating whether or not Aquinas’s understanding of nature has any bearing on the question of gay marriage, though that ostensibly i’s what the subject under debate these past several comment exchanges is, or at least ought to be understood to be. No, what we’re debating is what somebody (for all I know, the voices in your head) is pretending (aka “misinterpreting) Aquinas’s understanding of nature –and that for the sole purpose of dismissing Aquinas.
Aquinas is wrong because Aquinas believes animals don’t murder or wage war, and we can point to these examples on animals killing each other and call them murder or war, ergo, Aquinas distinction between natural and unnatural sex acts doesn’t have jack shit to say to us, because other unnatural acts. Well, Aquinas never said anything about animals in Summa 154, did he?
I’m done wasting my time because everything with you is squirrel nests inside rabbit warrens ending in, “well, I don’t agree, so everybody else must be wrong.”
Ernst: It is not necessary that EVERY marriage be about procreation and raising children. the combustion engine was for a train, then a car, then a boat, then a plane, then a rocket. It’s fundamental purpose might be for transportation, but it also can provide heat, and electricity and with extra tools air conditioning. The fundamental purpose IS ([conceded for the purpose of this discussion] to have and raise children. But that is not it’s only purpose, or usefulness. It can be used for other purposes also and yet retain it’s fundamental one. Some percentage of the 98% of heterosexual marriage will still be potentially for procreation and raising children. But a whole lot of procreation and raising children will be done outside of marriage. I’m assuming you’d like more of it done within. ME TOO!
Now, I will read the rest of your responses….
damn…2 hours gone in the flash of a click.
Ernst: “How much alcohol can I concentrate in my ‘shine before it’s poison? ”
Well, if you want to compare marriage to alcohol, then I guess adding gay marriage takes it up to 200 proof (pure) marriage. I of course think that the last 50-60 years was more of a dilution to marriage….like offering wine spritzers.
Ernst: “Furthermore, you never quite managed to address Lee’s point, about the meaning of marriage having become, thanks the Supreme Court, practically meaningless now, did you?”
I did, and you quoted me, to recall…:” LBascom: you are the one with a minimal definition of marriage that ignores it’s breadth and depth. That gays are part of that now is the minimal change. Adding gays hasn’t affected my definition of marriage at all. ”
My definition of marriage encompasses much more than Lee’s. Mine is the loving, the caring, sharing, securing, trusting, devoted definition that includes infertile couples, fertile couples, senior couples, couples that want children but have gotten any yet, couples that don’t want children, gay couples. My definition is not just about the procreation. So, the SCOTUS didn’t do anything to change my definition, it was a radical change to Lee’s limited “marriage is the procreation and raising of children” however.
Ernst: “given that if it was a good idea, some society somewhere in the world would have tried it sometime in the last 10,000 years”
During the time when gays were killed, homosexuality was a crime and slavery was legal period? Yea, if that was the thought processes for 9,950 years, then maybe these current generations that got rid of Jim Crow, discrimination against women, computers, walking on the moon, might be a little better than those… After all, if God wanted man to fly, He’d have given him wings.
Ernst:
“Aquinas was appealing to an authority.
This is also known as supporting an argument.”
Or a justification. Because if the authority doesn’t really exist… It’s like using Forrest Gump as an example of actual history. Aquinas sees the world and reasons that how he sees it is rational and it is how God said it was, therefore, his reasoning is sound. Except, if his view of the world is actually limited, then his conclusions might not be correct. But, hey, you got my conclusion right despite errors and assumptions, so who is to say – WHICH was my point in referencing him. He has a world view, a reasoned conclusion. It can be interpreted as he offered it, or there are other interpretations if other information is made available. His view, like Hobbes and Locke constitute a significant foundation for people in a Natural Law debate. I acknowledge them – offer them as a starting point. Then make my position.
You offered nothing. No starting point, no suggestion as to your position on Natural Law. Don’t know that you even have one. You worry about me throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I don’t know that you even have a baby to start with.
Ernst: “Then why’d you write “I’m not appealing to an authority ”
I’m not. I offered a viewpoint. Aquinas does not support my position. Doesn’t really hurt it either – but we haven’t gone there yet. You are still parsing every sentence…
Ernst: “I’m glad I understood that you were saying you don’t believe in something that can’t be empirically verified. ”
You understood wrong. I didn’t say that at all. I said I don’t believe in sin. I believe in a significant number of things that can’t be, or haven’t yet been, empirically verified. Again, because I make a statement does not mean it is exhaustive or exclusive, it means what it says. I asked you if sin could be empirically tested – you ignored the question.
Me, then you:
There is right and wrong. I have a foundation for that. It differs from yours.
Not as much as you might pretend, since I would bet your selectively drawing from the same Judeo-Christain foundation we all share. So, like I said ” try not to throw the rest of the morality baby away with that dirty bathsinwater there.”
I was raised Roman Catholic, I was a Born-Again Christian, I live in a country that is predominantly Judeo-Christian, founded by people that were Judeo-Christian. More than likely not I am going to be drawing from that. But you don’t know my foundation, I don’t know yours? What is your moral foundation? And since I don’t pretend my foundation is anything more than it is – MY foundation, based on reasoning.
And my rejection of the belief of sin is not a rejection of YOUR belief of sin. If you have such a belief. I don’t reject Aquinas belief, I question that his reasoning would have reached the same conclusion if he had greater knowledge…but I DO think he was starting with the faith and then using reasoning to support it. He didn’t reach the conclusion and then find it was consistent with God’s Word. His reasoning and philosophy are great – it is why I included him, it is why I quote him in MY writings. But I don’t appeal to his conclusions as authoritative. Just like I think your faith and belief are important, vital, necessary and worthy of respect and honor, but I don’t share them. And they are not science.
Ernst:
Conception can be the philosophical end of sex. Can be. I think sex is the philosophical end of sex. There are consequences, and the majority of adults understand that. That is why they go to lengths to mitigate or avoid those consequences. Some of those lengths include NOT having intercourse, no penis in the vagina. Aquinas (and I believe the Catholic Church…did I say this before..?) think that all those lengths constitute sin. Of which gay sex is just one variation on sin. One that he spends only a little time on. He thinks the most egregious of those sins is adultery.
If your philosophy is that the only philosophical end to sex is conception, the only valid one, then ok. I disagree. I am not saying you are wrong, only that I don’t agree with it. I think there are reasons for that. Aquinas touches on it….
Ernst: I’ve wasted at least a half hour in this comment alone trying to figureout where “animals don’t murder or war with their own species” comes from.
Actually, there is no reference to ‘that’. I was referencing Aquinas point of view of the natural world is limited. His quote that I offered and suggested there was an alternative interpretation, suggests a blind spot that his view of the natural world seems to share. That is that the sin of Sodom – sorry, we have to go there despite you being aware because it is causing confusion – is one of abuse of men, not homosexuality per se. But, in the context, he was probably addressing homosexuality. That potential blind spot – that the sin is men abusing men, men at war with one another – is something that lots of people used to talk about with regard to humans. Both Hobbes and Locke touch lightly on it, ‘the nature of men is that they are always at war with one another’. If in nature, animals of the same species war with each other, then it IS natural, it is not unnatural. If animals exhibit homosexual behavior then it IS natural, not unnatural. It might be rare, it might be 1% or less of a population, but if it happens then it has nothing to do with reason or free will, it is a natural, though rare, event. Calling it unnatural would be incorrect. Now, calling it a sin can still be certainly done. Nothing I just said suggests that calling homosexuality a sin is wrong. It just doesn’t have a foundation in the Natural Law.
and therefore:
Ernst: “We’re not debating whether or not Aquinas’s understanding of nature has any bearing on the question of gay marriage, though that ostensibly i’s what the subject under debate these past several comment exchanges is, or at least ought to be understood to be. ”
His understanding of Nature does have bearing on the question of whether homosexuality violates Natural Law. I say his understanding is suspect therefore his conclusion is to. But his goal was different. He used reason to establish that God’s Word and Nature’s Law were the same. I think he started with the conclusion they were and reasoned to that. He did not independently reason out Nature’s Law and then find out it was consistent with something he didn’t know before hand. Kinda like your assumption that I would be culling from Judeo-Christian foundations. The same people that wrote God’s Law down were observers of the natural world too. Albeit limited also.
Ernst: “Well, Aquinas never said anything about animals in Summa 154, did he? ”
Proof that 1) you didn’t read it, 2) that jab and duck is all that you will offer.
Question 154, Article 2:
Question 154, Article 9
So. What to make of that.
Ernst: “I’m done wasting my time because everything with you is squirrel nests inside rabbit warrens ending in, “well, I don’t agree, so everybody else must be wrong.””
I don’t agree. I have a different opinion. I’m respectful of those that I disagree with.
Ernst: “But hey, thanks for sharing your narcissism and solipsistic worldview with the rest of us.”
I don’t think the dictionary has the same definition of the word narcissism that you do. Maybe you read it like Question 154. And as to solipsistic, obviously I am aware of others, have considered their views, words, efforts and discussed them at length and acknowledge the importance and value, so, I don’t think that works either. But, it is a nice punch line.
Too bad your invitation wasn’t to a debate, just a dart game. Makes me wonder where the hours go…
Tracy, the total breadth of marriage is the Union of make and female. That’s it. It can be all those things you describe, too, indeed that is the popular ideal, but it can also be between two of the opposite sex that choose to live on opposite coasts and see each other biannually. In fact, married people don’t even have to love each other to be married. It doesn’t matter, all that matters is they have to be concenting adults of the opposite sex that aren’t related. That is what marriage IS! I never said procreation was a requirement, I said procreation is a first principle. It’s the reason there is such a thing as marriage in the first place. This is why the very basic requirements of marriage are what they are, else why not marry your first cousin? It is why it’s always until now been opposite sexes.
Your view on the other hand all boiled down to “I don’t see it that way, I think marriage is a [above mentioned ideal] loving relationship. Period. That is a weak, narcissistic, solipsistic position (to coin a phrase) lowering the important commitment of marriage to a feeling any high school girl can relate to.
Thing is, we live in a narcissistic, solipsistic culture, so your view has been imposed on us (by the way, just the way it was done should disturb you as an American). Now we start anew with your reordering of humankind, we will see if our warnings were warranted or not. I think if you’re honest, you will already see our warning about the definition of marriage continuing to expand now that the original has been breached is coming true. Also the warning about religious persecution. The big one of course is marriage was for the safeguarding of children, now it’s about the happiness of adults. We’ll see about our warnings of kids losing out. That’s a harder one to judge, as these days kids are under assault everywhere, if they’re even lucky enough to make it out of the womb.
We no longer have a reason to defend traditional marriage, it’s gone forever. Now You have to defend your position when the consequences start adding up.
Good luck.
damn…2 hours gone in the flash of a click.
Been there, done that, and the return on the investment is telling me that is past time to cut my losses.
I was referencing Aquinas point of view of the natural world is limited.
You were implying that Aquinas argued “no other species murders one another, or goes to war with itself” (Full Quote: “the bold section [i.e. Aquinas’s
] This is also known as Making Shit Up, which is why I’m done with you.
Damn let me try that again:
I was referencing Aquinas point of view of the natural world is limited.
You were implying that Aquinas argued “no other species murders one another, or goes to war with itself” (Full Quote: “the bold section [i.e. Aquinas’s
]
could easily be read in the context that no other species murders one another, or goes to war with itself.”)
This is also known as Making Shit Up, which is why I’m done with you.
having read, and then reread, and having earlier gone over to newadvent.com, and upon careful perusal of the quote you offer, I still don’t see a context for “no other species murders one another, or goes to war with itself.”
Therefore: Fuck. You.
Tracy thinks people back then didn’t understand nature like modern Americans. That right there is funny shit.
Americans don’t even know that if dropped alone in nature, nature will kill your ass in any of a thousand different ways. That used tone common knowledge way back before MTV. Now they think “stay on trail” signs grow naturally, and nature closes at sunset.
Tracy is to be toyed with, not taken seriously. Kind of a Happyfeet with good grammer.
Lee, she’s right to this extent: I was so focused on murder and war that I skipped over the other references to animals, so I’m in the same position that Congress rightly ought to be in vis-a-vis ACA i.e. you fucked up; now fix it. So egg on my face for not completing the thought. But the rest of it, as far as I’m concerned is a bag full of cats inside her head. And I’m allergic to cats.
Ernst, I wouldn’t worry, her other references to animals was as ridiculous as what you were focused on. By her reasoning, Siamese Twins are natural because they happen. Sorry honey, that’s an aberration of nature, not natural. As any ancient rancher that bought a homosexual bull (as if) will tell you.
I once witnessed a steer mount another steer.
Naturally…eunuchsrriage, two Y chromosomes, no balls
Lee, I’m not worried. I fucked up. Honesty demands I acknowledge that. I’m just pissed off that that I’ve been trying to suss out a “context” that’s entirely made up by someone who’s not Aquinas.
Thanks guys,
Hey, at least you knew who Aquinas was before this thread. Me? I’m still just assuming he was some contemporary of Plato or sumthin…
He pretty much had the right of it about Sodam from what I gather though.
And thus it begins…
http://news.yahoo.com/polygamous-montana-trio-applies-wedding-license-193205283.html
Nope, no slippery slope here…
There’s no dignity in being a third wheel!
Take that polygamists! THUS DO I REFUTE THEE!
Maybe all the theorists and philosophers here can offer an argument against polygamy. Rather than complain others are arguing for it…’just like they’d been telling us for years this was coming’ so there has been ample opportunity to come up with something other than opposition to gay marriage as a buffer/barrier/excuse.
The only kind of argument you’d finally accept, so why bother?
It’s true there is a better argument against garriage than against polygamy.
Having said that, the argument ishainst polygamy is it has a destabilizing effect on society, whereas marriage has a stabilizing effect.
ishainst? WTF? Against is what I was shooting for…
>gay marriage<
is anti darwin special "science" snow/white privilege flake
Ernst: have got a clue what the hell Saudi Airlines has to do with anything. Flying? Middle East? Islam? what?
I’d accept any kind of argument. When you going to make one? LBascom thinks he as made one against polygamy. He hasn’t. Polygamy has been around for thousands of years, society has seemed to continue to function. Marriage has been declining for 60 years – gays had nothing to do with that. Is marriage declining because society is destabilizing or the other way? You suggest that marriage, which has existed throughout history, has stabilized society – what characteristics of society are you willing to use now, to determine the effects of gay marriage upon it? And how will you distinguish cause and effect?
There was a specific set of reasons to outlaw polygamy. Aquinas touched on them in Question 154 – don’t need to venture deeper into his work. He was pretty emphatic about it. They would still generally apply today. It is one of the reasons I have shifted away from accepting polygamy. I’m not 100% of the way there, but I am well over 50% of the way.
?
Ernst: “The only kind of argument you’d finally accept, so why bother?”
So that I don’t have to sit and watch you whine about it for the next 5 years while you sit on your hands and do nothing about it…?
Actually have a defense for something you claim to want to defend. I don’t have to accept it. I’m never going to marry again, anyone of either sex so I don’t have a horse in the race at all. (The debate is useful to me for ‘strength training’)
>He hasn’t. Polygamy has been around for thousands of years, society has seemed to continue to function. <
like africa idiot? you are a stupid white privilege clown. that is all loser
tracycoyle one stupid motherfucker(trans lgbtqrxt dim bulb)
>Actually have a defense for something you claim to want to defend.<
white asshole lawyers from yale and harvard won't tell me what to do white snow FLAKE
There was a specific set of reasons to outlaw polygamy. –
But Kennedy’s “reasoning” in Obergefell obliterate them.
Marriage is now a”right” that exists in “love” with the Government obligated to provide “dignity”
It is whatever consenting adults define it to be. To even start to say polygamy is not wise “social policy” is to deny the dignity of the polyamorous and their families.
That the the world we now live in.
no i do not want to “engage” “the other side” anymore. obliterate and salt gaia.
Polygamy has NOT been around western society for thousands of years. You know, during the time the west came to dominate the globe. And the moon.
What happened 60 years ago? Oh yeah, school children were forbidden to pray.
Now we are a nation that no longer relies on objective truth to guide us, but feelings. And we are sliding into polygamy.
There’s some clues there you may want to think on.
Of course you won’t, you’ll just keep asserting your boilerplate horseshit that gays are the only innocents on the planet it’s conservatives fault for failing to conserve.
Ernst said he’s done with your disingenuous ass (paraphrasing), and now I am too. Good luck with your brave new world.
Darleen: I will have to go back and re-read Kennedy’s opinion with the arguments against polygamy in mind, but I don’t think he said anything that negates them, maybe he even strengthens them….I’ll have to see.
LBascom: Loving v VA, civil rights, vietnam war, birth control, anti-war protests, no fault divorce, war on poverty, then Roe v Wade probably had nothing to do with society…..prayer in school was of course THE seminal act keeping our nation on the steady course and losing it just tore us apart….until 2004 when it all just….tore apart, again til June 26, 2015? All that other stuff was just minor culture stuff of no great import or impact….
Soon as we lost God, we were lost as a nation. Got that. Reagan said that.
The Left thinks they have considered everything and that they are smart so anyone that doesn’t agree with them is either stupid or evil.
You think because I don’t agree with you I must have either ignored everything or that I am stupid, or just evil.
No one is innocent. Original sin.
How’s that go Now is the time when we juxtapose?
Yeah, I think that’s it.
Tracy earlier today:
“No one is innocent. Original sin.”
Tracy the day before yesterday:
“Sin is a belief. It is not subject to measurement. You believe in sin (I’m assuming), I don’t.” [emph. add.]
That would be why I’m done.
And I use Scripture too….as an agnostic. How DARE I… That I might use Aquinas, AQUINAS….
Sorry if my mocking doesn’t rise to the level of LBascoms.
Is ascribing a characteristic calling someone a name?
Tracy doesn’t believe in sin so she doesn’t get to use it as an argument. Same goes for scripture. At best, that’s special pleading. At worst, it’s Alinskyite abuse meant to freeze others out and preempt debate.
What seem’s more likely though, is that it’s merely contrariness for the sake of being contrary. And that’s really all we’re left with, contrariness; since every argument offered up to her ends with, at the risk of overgeneralization, “well, I don’t believe that, so for me that doesn’t count as an argument.”
Finally, she wasn’t using Aquinas, she was using a strawman characterization of Aquinas in order to dismiss Aquinas without ever having to really engage with Aquinas himself.
Offered up in the at best unlikely possiblity that anyone else is still paying attention to this nearly dead thread.
“You think because I don’t agree with you I must have either ignored everything or that I am stupid, or just evil”
No, I think you allow yourself to be guided by your heart, not your brain.
“Is ascribing a characteristic calling someone a name?”
I say you are foolish, so you tell me, did I just call you a name?
Ok, everyone gone? Good….ah
Ernst suggested I would not be up for a discussion on Natural Law. I welcome it. I opened with some stuff often brought up in a discussion that I thought to get out of the way right away. Hobbes, Locke and Aquinas. Each has their points to be made and I respect each. I don’t agree and it is the nature of my disagreement that I wanted to bring to the Natural Law discussion.
Ernst’s response was “Good. Let me know what Hobbes, Locke and Aquinas have to say about marriage.”
He offered no discourse on Natural Law, didn’t dispute or agree, though I don’t know what the ‘Good.’ was for. Marriage however is a human construct – it is not in nature. Families and raising children are in nature. But animals don’t require an institution, an definition, to DO what is in their nature to do. So rather than a discussion on natural law, Ernst wants to discuss marriage. And unnatural acts.
Which brings up what appears to have been a catastrophic mistake on my part. Define unnatural. Aquinas calls unnatural acts a sin against God and Nature. but what acts are they, these unnatural acts? Why they are acts that can not accomplish procreation yet are in the sphere of human physical contact with each other.
I tried to point out that animals engage in ‘unnatural acts’, and that as such, they are not necessarily ‘unnatural’. That Aquinas and LBascom and apparently Ernst (because he has still not stated his position on any of this), all consider the act of procreation to be the only ‘natural’ act. Everything else is unnatural. Acts for the purpose of procreation that have a different character are brought up by Aquinas in the Question 154 that I was referencing. Acts such as incest (mandatory for early humanity) and rape.
So, I compounded my mistake, assuming that Ernst was being forthright, in getting further afield. My point, lost in the diversion
In all of the discussions, what each of the writer’s note is that we are part of nature but with the ability to reason and that sets us apart from the animals. I don’t disagree, but if reason sets us apart, it does not remove us from a state of nature.
It appears that the complete thesis of Ernst with regard to Natural Law is that unnatural acts are those that fail to procreate. Which fits with LBascom’s the purpose of marriage is to procreate (and then raise the progeny).
Natural Law is a discussion of morality. Something Ernst (and peripherally LBascom) seem disinterested in discussing. Ernst stayed with unnatural acts and I kept missing that all he was focused on was ‘no procreation = unnatural acts = sin. I addressed each separately but not as a cohesive set and probably not all that well given the responses.
We touched on actual morality. I don’t know the source or character of Ernst’s morality. I assume it has something to do with God’s Law. But even that seems less framed and asserted. He did not inquire as to mine except to suggest it was certainly lacking.
So, as to Ernst, natural law is procreation in the context of marriage, which isn’t a marriage until there are offspring. Don’t know why he even brought it up.
As to using arguments. I can use whatever is relevant. Aquinas calls unnatural acts sin. Fine, in the real world those acts are made by animals – without reason and therefore without sin. So, the acts are not in and of themselves ‘sin’ by the definition he uses.
If we both see a red rose and you think it smells bad (a sin) and I don’t think it smells bad (not a sin), it doesn’t mean that I don’t realize that it COULD smell bad to YOU. Doesn’t mean that it is a Truth (smells bad).
finally, as to my last comment that got Ernst all in a lather. LBascom suggested I thought all gays were innocent – there is no way that conclusion has any substance or validity. I responded with an equally useless and invalid statement.
LBascom, I don’t know. Did you?
Hopefully no one comes back to read this and I get the last word:
I don’t believe in sin. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that you do. Which is more consideration than I got.
What Tracy says Ernst said:
What Ernst actually said:
Inability to accurately restate arguments would be another reason why I’m done.
I’ve been trying to decide if I should offer my own list. But in the end, I think I will just use Ernst’s own words….
I’m glad I understood that you were saying you don’t believe in something that can’t be empirically verified. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57131#comment-1252860
Shorter you: since “sin” can’t be measured in a laboratory test, you choose not to believe in it. Is that about right?
As for what you’ve repeatedly tried to argue, that any sex act of any kind is okay, since not all sexual intercourse ends in pregnancy, and thus pregnancy can’t be the end to which intercourse is directed and therefore homosexual acts don’t burden sexual morality, – See more at https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57131#comment-1252739
Assuming that’s what was meant, I think we have a winner for the oxymoron of the day award. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57131#comment-1252062
Not as much as you might pretend, since I would bet your selectively drawing from the same Judeo-Christain foundation we all share. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57131#comment-1252860
“I’m done wasting my time because everything with you is squirrel nests inside rabbit warrens ending in, “well, I don’t agree, so everybody else must be wrong.” – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57131#comment-1252860
having read, and then reread, and having earlier gone over to newadvent.com, and upon careful perusal of the quote you offer, I still don’t see a context for “no other species murders one another, or goes to war with itself.”
Therefore: Fuck. You.
– See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57131#comment-1253045
But hey, thanks for sharing your narcissism and solipsistic worldview with the rest of us. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57131#comment-1252841