My last post got wrong quotations so I’m repeating it here:
No, and to call one’s point difficult to understand is quite different from calling another stupid or unable to read English. ANd you know this.
I apologise if my expressions were ill received. I did not mean to hurt or cause pain, only to ask for you to pay more attention.
The court ruling discusses all of the prior cases that recognize marriage as an inherent right. Read the ruling! Start on page 110.
I understand how case law works in the United States… I don’t necessarily agree how it works, but then again, I’m not an United States citizen.
If those rulings are to be read literally then the State could not prohibit incestuous marriage, for example, which I don’t see being defended by homosexuals anywhere on earth.
Secondly, Prop 8 was challenged on the grounds of the 14th Amendment. So there is no need for you to ask where in the constitution people are looking for defense of gay marriage. You know the answer, and it is in this thread title: The 14th Amendment.
I don’t think the 14th amendment can be used against proposition 8 because the 14th amendment doesn’t mention that marriage is a right or that marriage is simply a contract between two people, it just states that people should be given the same rights. I’d understand it better if you argued for article 1 section 7 from the california constitution which states:
“A citizen or class of citizens may not be granted privileges
or immunities not granted on the same terms to all citizens.
Privileges or immunities granted by the Legislature may be altered or
revoked.”
The problem is that according to this law literal interpretation any kind of privilege can argued for, a position in office, same kind of taxes, etc…
How can richer people pay more taxes than poorer people using this law?
That is a statement of dogma, not law. US law has a long history of “marriage law,” and none of it assumes that “marriage” is something that they do not define and regulate. “marriage” also existed before the time of the Bible, and existed in places around the world that never heard of the Judeo God and outwardly reject that God now that they do know of it.
US law has a long history of marriage law, but not the creation of marriage. It is a statement of fact. The US constitution and the Bill of rights were written after marriage was already practiced in the country, heck, they were even written after “life” was practiced in the country, but they felt the need to write the “right” to life, but not the “right” to marriage. And from every ammendment I’ve read in the US all definitions of marriage include a man and a woman… so you could argue that any case law where this is denied makes that case law unconstitutional.
That’s nonsense. Society recognizes many many “religious institutions.” I have no idea how you actually mean this claim.
Re-read what I wrote… If society recognizes religious institutes and religious people how is it not imposing the acceptance for such unions (gay marriage) to everyone (including religious institutions)?
Do you really mean this nonsense? Are you really saying that if I individually choose a blonde to marry that I am discriminating against the class of brunettes? I am assuming that this is merely insincere talk from you.
It was an argument for discrimination, just like you stated that gays don’t have the “right” to marry, they do have the “right”, just not each other… We are debating the definition of marriage, not the granting of rights.

But we are DEBATING the classification of gays as
legally “unsuitable.” In law, this rejection by gender or sexual orientation from a legal status considered by most to be a fundamental right of humanity, then you had better have a valid reason for doing so other than “my God says so.” So, pardon me if I do not merely accept your rejection of gays on definition, since that is the CRUX of the entire debate. This thread is about the legal case, where the very
basis for this rejection of an entire class of consenting adult was brought into question.
Actually we are debating the definition of marriage. If marriage is a special kind of contract, like we have talked about, we need to define it explicitely. It isn’t a matter of rights, since a contract isn’t a right, and even the privileges the state gives to such contracts are not rights. Is Marriage a contract that states: “I will only have sex with person (or group X if you count group marriages) for the rest of this contract”? If it were, why would the state grant any privileges to it? Heck, that kind of contract doesn’t even need that both parties have sex, only that they do not have sex with another person.
It doesn’t even have automatic exclusion clauses. Only if any of the people involved ask for a divorce, and even then they have to have “good reasons” to do it (altough people can argue just emotional anguish for anything). How does this kind of contract have any meaning or significance for the state or society?
What makes a married couple under this definition more stable or better than two people who live in the same roof and respect each other and have sex and have children but aren’t married?