I think we spent too much time demanding those opposed to gay marriage to come up with a good reason for their opposition. It’s hard to find a very good reason to legalize it. “It’s only fair” and “love is love”, which most of the arguments for gay marriage boil down to, aren’t up to snuff.

jas88 on March 2, 2013 at 11:25 AM

+1. Even if you absolutely plant your head in the sand regarding the health risks, societal-breakdown dangers, and blatantly obvious loss of religious freedom as reasons AGAINST…the reasons FOR are painfully inadequate.

When you are debating changing an institution that has been a recognized pillar of civilized society since Tubal-Cain was figuring out bronze tools, for the benefit of a sliver of your current society (which is an eyeblink compared to history), rehashed liberal “fairness” arguments do not cut the mustard.

Anything else you’d like cleared up?

righty45 on March 1, 2013 at 10:33 PM

Nope.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair on March 1, 2013 at 11:39 PM

Great. Please remember this exchange in the future before you hastily write lengthy, strident posts criticizing others for their stupidity.

Wait a minute Mr President. Our country is imploding. World Muslim fascism is exploding, and you’re distracted about the happiness of less than 2% of our population which gets less than 50% support & the outcome of the SCOTUS decision? How are you going to spin this so Bush get the hit?

RdLake on March 2, 2013 at 1:30 AM

The US Titanic is heading towards a deadly fiscal iceberg and Obama wants to paint the deck chairs pink.

A primary goal of the Left has always been to replace the family with the state, because, as Mark Levin wrote in Ameritopia, the individual’s “first duty must be to the state—not family, community, and faith, all of which challenge the authority of the state.”

INC on March 2, 2013 at 3:11 AM

Oh, but various psychologists have pointed out that having gay parents of the same sex is the same (if not better) than traditional family make ups. C’mon, get with the times. /s

As always, the Left largely through Hollywood has emoted sympathy for the gay cause. Just look at the success of films like Philadelphia and TV shows like Will and Grace.

The constant bombardment of propaganda really does work. Madison Avenue figured that out decades ago.

Abortion, progressive schooling, and the redefining of marriage are tools of the Left that destroy these “little platoons” to which we each belong, and in which we each first find our identity.

Some of those platoons are pretty bad and have done some of us harm, but that should motivate us to improve them, not destroy the model.

I wondered what Bawney Fwank meant when he was all for back taxes?

Now I know. Yeeeech….

viking01 on March 1, 2013 at 7:46 PM

I think that he meant going into arrears for taxes… I know, not quite right if you want to get all anal about it…

And when it changes, Barack’s ‘core beliefs’ change with it.

A windsock with no spine, just a stack of hard-packed lies in its notochordal place.

It’s the Fascist Way

I had hoped that legal protections of secular civil unions would end this divisive issue.

Unfortunately it did not.

There is no tolerance for reasonable compromise in Fascism…

The data of European countries that redefined marriage and legislated same sex marriage reveals instability due to the rapid decline of the culture of marriage.

Homosexuals are not a distinct class with immutable characteristics that meet the requirements for civil protections as a “suspect Class” as racial groups do.

Religions are protected under the US Constitution from coercion by the State to alter doctrine and the Free Speech of Pastors are protected at the Pulpit.

1) Yes, same sex couples deserve heightened judicial scrutiny, i.e. laws discriminating against them should be subject to strict scrutiny rather than the default rational basis review. The way Obama phrased it is perfectly fine.

So, you’ve already determined that the laws are “discriminating” against them (even though marriage has always been a man and woman or a man and many women – and never anything else … EVER) and then you are going to impartially decide if this “discrimination” (of which Nature is responsible) is allowed for your pet “class”? Okey doke.

Laws concerning the definition of marriage are not discriminating against homosexuals. Marriage is an institution that has never applied to homosexual couples any more than it’s applied to four friends who decide they want to live together and be considered a “family unit” by the government, including immigration rights and the rest.

2) Homosexuals, of which same sex coupled are a subset, can certainly be considered a “class” for purposes of equal protection analysis.

So, you say here that homosexuals are a class, not that “same sex couples” are a class. And why do you think that “same sex couples” have to be homosexual? Why aren’t any two people who decide they want whatever benefits or certification the various governments bestow on “couples” (right to adopt, immigration rights, social security – old people might want to become a “couple” with some young people to pass on their social security after they die) also considered in this “same sex couple” class?

I can see that you really haven’t thought this through much.

3) Heightened scrutiny (like strict scrutiny) is a term of art in constitutional law and Obama used it correctly.

No, he didn’t.

Anything else you’d like cleared up?

righty45 on March 1, 2013 at 10:33 PM

Nope. You answered pretty much as I figured you would. Now, get back to licking Barky.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair on March 1, 2013 at 7:57 PM

To answer your questions:

1) Yes, same sex couples deserve heightened judicial scrutiny, i.e. laws discriminating against them should be subject to strict scrutiny rather than the default rational basis review. The way Obama phrased it is perfectly fine.

2) Homosexuals, of which same sex coupled are a subset, can certainly be considered a “class” for purposes of equal protection analysis.

3) Heightened scrutiny (like strict scrutiny) is a term of art in constitutional law and Obama used it correctly.

Anything else you’d like cleared up?

righty45 on March 1, 2013 at 10:33 PM

Nope.

In order to become a suspect class, however, homosexuals have to make the case that there is a history of discrimination against them, that they are politically powerless to fight back, and that theirs is a “discrete group” with “immutable characteristics.” This is not easy.

Bradley and McHugh make the case abundantly and perhaps surprisingly that the plaintiffs fail on the questions of both discreteness and immutability.

The definition of a suspect class requires the group be “discrete” or distinct and definable. Race is an accepted category, for instance, but the Court has rejected age and poverty as suspect classes. Bradley and McHugh assert that sexual orientation fails, too, because it “may characterize points along a continuum of sexual attraction, sexual behavior, and sexual identity where individual categories are anything but distinct. They cite the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, “There is currently no scientific or popular consensus…that definitely ‘qualify’ an individual as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.” The authors cite more than a dozen such quotations from equally authoritative sources.

In fact, the authors go on for 28 pages showing there is no agreed upon definition of sexual orientation, that sexual orientation—at least among those who claim some sort of same sex attraction—far from being immutable is in fact plastic. Citing a plethora of social science research, they show that degrees of homosexuality change consistently through the life of most who claim same-sex attraction, particularly among women.

The authors also demonstrate that there is not a single repeated scientific study showing that homosexuality is genetic.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/on-two-compelling-legal-briefs-that-challenge-same-sex-marriage?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

How can we account for the fact that a stable and prosperous Western European country like The Netherlands is experiencing marital decline at a rate matched only by countries which have suffered severe social, political, and economic dislocation? Why would a country with a notably traditional attitude toward marriage and parenthood all of a sudden experience such a remarkable and long-lasting spike in its out-of-wedlock birthrate? The answer is that, once marriage stops being about binding mothers and fathers together for the sake of their children, the need to get married gradually disappears. That’s why I’ve argued that the soaring Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrate has everything to do with gay marriage…”

http://old.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200602230800.asp

Furthermore, the barbaric cruelties of the past that SoCons implicitly endorse are so disgusting that your own conscience should bother you in endorsing their arguments. “Why do you persecute me?”

thuja on March 1, 2013 at 10:56 PM

Oh, that’s a good one.

In fact, I know exactly where I’ve seen it before: dripping from the mouth of your Obama and his Congressional Racist Caucus as they scream that criticizing a black person and not giving them exactly what they want means you implicitly endorse slavery and persecute African-Americans.

So you can go do anatomically-impossible things to yourself, you stinking leftist bigot.

You don’t give a damn about gay people. All we are to you is excuses for your own filthy hatemongering and bigotry. You’re a disgusting homophobe of the worst kind, just another Obama racist wannabe.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair on March 1, 2013 at 7:57 PM

To answer your questions:

1) Yes, same sex couples deserve heightened judicial scrutiny, i.e. laws discriminating against them should be subject to strict scrutiny rather than the default rational basis review. The way Obama phrased it is perfectly fine.

2) Homosexuals, of which same sex coupled are a subset, can certainly be considered a “class” for purposes of equal protection analysis.

3) Heightened scrutiny (like strict scrutiny) is a term of art in constitutional law and Obama used it correctly.

Anything else you’d like cleared up?

righty45 on March 1, 2013 at 10:33 PM

The second very interesting brief was submitted by Professor Gerard Bradley of Notre Dame Law School on behalf of Dr. Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. McHugh is a remarkable man. For 26 years he headed the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science. You may recall that this department was the place in America that initiated sex change operations under the notorious and now discredited Dr. John Money. One of McHugh’s first acts was to close down Money’s sex change unit.

Their brief is also about definitions, in this case the definition of homosexuality and sexual orientation.

Bradley and McHugh want to convince the court that homosexuals do not rise to the level of a “suspect class” deserving of “heighted scrutiny” protection. Those in support of traditional marriage believe the people of California in the Proposition 8 case and that Congress in the Defense of Marriage Act all had “rational” reasons for their claims. It is a lower and much easier claim to defend. Prop 8 and DOMA plaintiffs want to claim “suspect class” which would force the defendants to make the much harder case that the state has a “compelling interest” in maintaining man-woman marriage.

In order to become a suspect class, however, homosexuals have to make the case that there is a history of discrimination against them, that they are politically powerless to fight back, and that theirs is a “discrete group” with “immutable characteristics.” This is not easy.

Bradley and McHugh make the case abundantly and perhaps surprisingly that the plaintiffs fail on the questions of both discreteness and immutability.

The definition of a suspect class requires the group be “discrete” or distinct and definable. Race is an accepted category, for instance, but the Court has rejected age and poverty as suspect classes. Bradley and McHugh assert that sexual orientation fails, too, because it “may characterize points along a continuum of sexual attraction, sexual behavior, and sexual identity where individual categories are anything but distinct.

They cite the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, “There is currently no scientific or popular consensus…that definitely ‘qualify’ an individual as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.”

The authors cite more than a dozen such quotations from equally authoritative sources.

In fact, the authors go on for 28 pages showing there is no agreed upon definition of sexual orientation, that sexual orientation—at least among those who claim some sort of same sex attraction—far from being immutable is in fact plastic. Citing a plethora of social science research, they show that degrees of homosexuality change consistently through the life of most who claim same-sex attraction, particularly among women.

The authors also demonstrate that there is not a single repeated scientific study showing that homosexuality is genetic.

The First Brief:
Professor Robert George of Princeton and his talented young collaborators Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation and Sherif Girgis who is toiling on a law degree at Yale and a Ph.D in Philosophy at Princeton.

In a Harvard Law Review article, a book and now this brief, George, Ryan, and Girgis answer the question “what is marriage?” They describe two competing views; one they call “conjugal”, and the other “revisionist.” Allowing for the revisionist view “can cause corresponding social harms.

It weakens the rational foundation (and hence social practice) of stabilizing marital norms on which social order depends: norms such as permanence, exclusivity, monogamy.”

George and his colleagues argue that marriage can only be “conjugal”, that is, a “comprehensive union joining spouses in body as well as in mind, it is begun by commitment and sealed by sexual intercourse. So completed in the acts by which new life is made, it is especially apt for and deepened by procreation and calls for that broad sharing uniquely fit for family life.” Such a comprehensive view of marriage is still available to sterile couples but not for homosexuals.

The authors explain that what they call the “revisionist” understanding of marriage “is essentially an emotional union, accompanied by any consensual activity. Such romantic unions are seen as valuable while the emotion lasts.” Men and women can have such “unions” just as same-sex couples can, “both involve intense emotional bonding, so both can (on this view) make a marriage. But comprehensive union is something only a man and woman can form.”

George says, “enacting same-sex marriage would not expand the institution of marriage” as proponents claim, but would redefine it. Such a redefinition would permanently harm the notion of marriage and sully the goods that come from marriage properly understood.

As the George brief makes clear, this would signal the end of any kind of marriage culture in the United States.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/on-two-compelling-legal-briefs-that-challenge-same-sex-marriage?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Since Same Sex Marriage was enacted in European countries the data corresponds to rapid decline of the marriage culture in those European Countries.

Studies in the Netherlands where gay marriage was first legalized, show a subsequent decline in the number of traditional heterosexual marriages. This has also occurred in other Scandinavian countries where same-sex unions have been legalized (see “Dutch Debate Despite a challenge, the evidence stands: Marriage is in decline in the Netherlands“ by Stanley Kurtz;

Kurtz:
Why would a country with a notably traditional attitude toward marriage and parenthood all of a sudden experience such a remarkable and long-lasting spike in its out-of-wedlock birthrate? The answer is that, once marriage stops being about binding mothers and fathers together for the sake of their children, the need to get married gradually disappears. That’s why I’ve argued that the soaring Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrate has everything to do with gay marriage.

http://old.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200602230800.asp

and see also Joop Garssen, Dutch demographer in http://www.demographic-research.org/Volumes/Vol7/12/7-12.pdf)

If polygamy becomes legal in one jurisdiction, it can predictably occur elsewhere as has been the case with gay marriage. As this occurs among heterosexual groups of one man having multiple wives, the precedent will be established to include the legal recognition of group marriage among homosexuals.

As marriage is legally defined, the secular society will no longer have a unique definition of marriage, and the traditional institution and definition of marriage will pass into extinction as has been the case increasingly in countries that recognize gay marriage.

What will happen to society as traditional marriage is diluted and fades from the culture? The breakdown of the traditional family has historically resulted in mental illness, unemployment, homelessness, and poverty. It is our view that the deconstruction of traditional marriage will predictably further accelerate the decline of Western society.

http://www.prlog.org/11560977-mental-health-news-social-impact-of-gay-marriage-equality.html

Anyway, let’s remember why normalization of gays is winning. It’s because it is just and kind. The best excuse not to have gay marriage is someway somehow heterosexuals won’t understand marriage as something special, and won’t get married. If you think you can state their argument better than this, I am all ears. I am trying to be fair in stating their argument, but their argument just doesn’t seem persuasive to me.

Well, of course not, because your thinking on this isn’t rational; you just loathe social conservatives and use gay people as a socially-acceptable excuse to act out your hate and bigotry toward them.

The argument is very straightforward. Marriage exists to provide a legal structure and protection for the children that are the inevitable result of opposite-sex coupling and to provide benefits to parents to offset the costs and restrictions of raising the children they produce.

Gay-sex couplings produce no children and therefore need none of these. Gays and lesbians are adults and presumably can pay for and take care of themselves, so society need not waste resources that would and should be better spent on the children that need them.

The pro-gay case is that you a need a good reason to condemn people, and sexual desire for members of the same sex simply isn’t a good reason.

The lack of marriage does not in any way represent or equal “condemnation”. Once again, you attempt to use other peoples’ sexual orientation to carry out your irrational hatred of and bigotry toward social conservatives, which makes you an exploiter and a homophobe.

Furthermore, the barbaric cruelties of the past that SoCons implicitly endorse are so disgusting that your own conscience should bother you in endorsing their arguments. “Why do you persecute me?”

Opposition to gay marriage is not “cruelty”. Once again, you attempt to use other peoples’ sexual orientation to carry out your irrational hatred of and bigotry toward social conservatives, which makes you an exploiter and a homophobe.

It’s tough for me to argue here, because I somewhat enjoy being obnoxious, but the actual argument requires I be open and friendly. I will try.

thuja on March 1, 2013 at 10:56 PM

Don’t waste your effort. You already insult and act obnoxious towards gay people like myself by your condescension and your attempting to speak on our behalf to push your petty and irrational bigotry.

You’re a teapartier like Mitt Romney is a conservative. You used left-wing propaganda in the next sentence after your laughably lame claim.

MelonCollie on March 1, 2013 at 10:58 PM

F*** trying to be nice and reasonable with the likes of you. You’re just an idiot.

Leftard, moi? Be real dude. That I’m not a socon doesn’t make me any less Tea Party, and I think you know it.

Anyway, let’s remember why normalization of gays is winning. It’s because it is just and kind.

thuja on March 1, 2013 at 10:56 PM

You’re a teapartier like Mitt Romney is a conservative. You used left-wing propaganda in the next sentence after your laughably lame claim.

Leftards like thuja are rubbing their hands in wicked glee because they know time is on their side.

MelonCollie on March 1, 2013 at 10:31 PM

Leftard, moi? Be real dude. That I’m not a socon doesn’t make me any less Tea Party, and I think you know it.

Anyway, let’s remember why normalization of gays is winning. It’s because it is just and kind. The best excuse not to have gay marriage is someway somehow heterosexuals won’t understand marriage as something special, and won’t get married. If you think you can state their argument better than this, I am all ears. I am trying to be fair in stating their argument, but their argument just doesn’t seem persuasive to me.

The pro-gay case is that you a need a good reason to condemn people, and sexual desire for members of the same sex simply isn’t a good reason. Furthermore, the barbaric cruelties of the past that SoCons implicitly endorse are so disgusting that your own conscience should bother you in endorsing their arguments. “Why do you persecute me?”

It’s tough for me to argue here, because I somewhat enjoy being obnoxious, but the actual argument requires I be open and friendly. I will try.

Plus, why all the tap-dancing? You know exactly why this has occurred; you also know the reasons why it is pushed by certain persons and associations. Are you trying to not “lead the witness” via questioning? I wish you would create an article for public introspection, just so I, and others, may see how you get to your belief. I do this with myself in order to understand the consequences of my ideals. It is the easiest way to defeat left-wing thought; make them expound on reasoning.

Irregardless, this should begin with “what is marriage” and “what role for government”. If government was not involved, there would be less marriages, more successful ones, personal responsibility, and less overlording by courts/tax code.