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LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
The 14th amendment grants equal protection to all citizens under the law. So let’s look and see if that equality exists. As for marriage, the law allows any citizen (of age) to marry anyone of the opposite sex (with a few exceptions due to close relatives). That right is extended to everyone equally - straight or gay. Just because gays don’t want to marry someone of the opposite sex, that does not mean they don’t have that right. To prove that gays are being denied the same rights as straight people you would have to show that the right to marry someone of the same sex is actually the same right as the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. It clearly is something different. It is as if I wanted to marry an avocado and I complained that I was not being given the same rights as those who want to marry people. Sure, there are lots of similarities between straight marriage and gay “marriage”. But legally it only takes one clear difference to establish that it is a different right. Therefore the 14th amendment does not protect gay “marriage”. If anyone wants to promote same-sex marriage and grant it the full force of law, they will have to do so on the merits of the thing itself - not by a mindless application of the 14th amendment, saying that it is essentially the same thing as straight marriage. And if I want to establish legal protection for human-avocado marriages, then I would have to put forth a convincing argument that it is in the interests of society that such marriages be legally recognized. I could not appeal to the 14th amendment as a shortcut.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Leaf
**If anyone wants to promote same-sex marriage and grant it the full force of law, they will have to do so on the merits of the thing itself - not by a mindless application of the 14th amendment, saying that it is essentially the same thing as straight marriage. **
Good point. The 14th Amendment does not accord prisoners the right to vote, nor to move about society freely, precisely because they have not satisfied the conditions that merit such rights. They exist in a disordered mental state for which they have been denied equal rights. How can married gay men satisfy the conditions that matrimony was instituted for … to procreate the next generation with a member of the opposite sex? And haven’t they also exhibited a disordered mental state that disqualifies them for 14th Amendment equal rights protection?
**If anyone wants to promote same-sex marriage and grant it the full force of law, they will have to do so on the merits of the thing itself - not by a mindless application of the 14th amendment, saying that it is essentially the same thing as straight marriage. **
Good point. The 14th Amendment does not accord prisoners the right to vote, nor to move about society freely, precisely because they have not satisfied the conditions that merit such rights. They exist in a disordered mental state for which they have been denied equal rights. How can married gay men satisfy the conditions that matrimony was instituted for … to procreate the next generation with a member of the opposite sex? And haven’t they also exhibited a disordered mental state that disqualifies them for 14th Amendment equal rights protection?
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buffalo
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Taoist
Guest
Thank you for directly addressing the 14th Amendment question.
This is irrelevant, since the obvious topic is same sex marriage.
Irrelevant again. An avocado is not a person who is a US citizen. This analogy fails miserably.
This almost sounds good, but the ambiguity of it raises too many questions. Specifically, explain what the similarities are and “one clear difference” is, and why that one difference does not protect gay marriage. Also, the subtle but not unnoticed insult of putting ‘marriage’ in double quotation marks shows unnecessary conceit on your part.
The burden of proof to deny gay marriage is upon those who wish to deny it and you are not providing it here, which is the reason gay marriage supporters have won so many court cases. What I am trying to do here is help you strengthen your argument, because the ones presented here are failing in court. The best and most expensive trial lawyers arguing to ban gay marriage are failing with these arguments, so you need to come up with better ones to convince judges gay marriage is detrimental to society, and why equal protection and application of the law should be denied regarding sexual orientation. So please, for the sake of the truthfulness and righteousness of your religion come up with something new.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
it is not irrelevant because those who support same sex marriage on the grounds of the 14th amendment are doing so by claiming that it is similar enough to opposite sex marriage that it should be granted the same legal status as opposite sex marriage. So looking at what the law does say about opposite sex marriage is entirely relevant.
And I could say that a same sex potential partner is not an opposite sex potential partner. So the analogy to opposite sex marriage fails - maybe not as miserably as with the avocado, but fails nonetheless.
I’ll leave explaining the similarities to you because you probably have a long list. As for the one obvious difference, it is that the requested partner is not of the opposite sex, and the law only provides for opposite sex marriage. The 14th amendment says that the law, whatever it is, will be applied equally to everyone.
Nothing I said implies that I wish to deny gay marriage. All I am saying is that the 14th amendment doesn’t do it for you. Would you also say that the burden of proof to deny me the right to marry an avocado is on those that want to deny it? Or is it rather on me to prove why my marriage to an avocado is something worthwhile?
No, I am not claiming that gay marriage is detrimental to society. Others have done that job better than I could. And I repeat that there is no legal discrimination due to sexual orientation. That is, a gay person is permitted to do exactly what a straight person is permitted to do. It is just that they don’t want to do it. They want to do something similar but not exactly the same.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Taoist
The burden of proof to deny gay marriage is upon those who wish to deny it and you are not providing it here, which is the reason gay marriage supporters have won so many court cases.
You have got it backward! Never in the history of the world have homosexuals ever demanded the right to be married … until now. There has never been such a right. Clearly gays want to invent a right that never before existed or was even claimed to exist. Just as clearly, the burden of changing the law is on those who want to change it.
The burden of proof to deny gay marriage is upon those who wish to deny it and you are not providing it here, which is the reason gay marriage supporters have won so many court cases.
You have got it backward! Never in the history of the world have homosexuals ever demanded the right to be married … until now. There has never been such a right. Clearly gays want to invent a right that never before existed or was even claimed to exist. Just as clearly, the burden of changing the law is on those who want to change it.
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Taoist
Guest
You’re way off. Laws defining marriage as only between opposite sex couples are being challenged as unconstitutional and are being overturned, which is why gay marriage is legal in those states which do not have a constitutional amendment defining gay marriage. Laws can be made all day long, but if they are ruled unconstitutional then the law is overturned. That’s how the US system works. So far the only way to successfully ban gay marriage is to make an amendment to a state constitution. However, those amendments, specificaly Prop. 8 in California, are being challenged, and so far are winning.
Once again, the avocado analogy fails because an avocado is not a person and marriage is a contract between persons only. I thought you understood that.
This is correct, but the glaring point you are missing is that the law providing only for opposite sex marriage is being challenged as unconstitutional. It is being ruled unconstitutional because:
. . . and the law is not being applied equally because gays are specifically being prevented from entering into marriage based solely on the type of sex in which they engage. The legal basis to ban sodomy between gays was ruled unconstitutional; see below.
This is false. Your entire argument here is meant to deny gay marriage. Also, gay marriage is legal in certain states specifically because the 14th Amendment makes it so. How the 14th Amendment is being applied is that the state must allow marriage for everyone, and defining the kind of sex acts to be conducted within that marriage is found to be irrelevant to the marriage contract, but this is exactly where you have a hang-up. Defining a marriage as a sexual contract valid only between opposite sex couples is failing in the courts.
Please. Enough with the avocado, and stay on topic.
These statements contradict each other and make you appear deceptive because you are leaving something out, namely your tacit agreement with those who think gay marriage is detrimental to society.
This is profoundly ignorant of what it means to be gay. Homosexuality is not a choice, one is born that way. Homosexuals detest and have the same revulsion to straight sex as much as you detest gay sex.
Moving on. One of the reasons gay marriage is an issue is due to the Supreme Court overturning sodomy laws in the case, Lawrence v. Texas.
Suddenly the state is prohibited from making laws against sex acts done privately between consenting adults. Rehashing arguments that don’t work in court is not working. Please come up with new, convincing arguments, and stop throwing up whatever comes to your mind and hoping it sticks. I’m straight, gay sex do not turn me on, but that is not the issue for me. The issue is denying people equal protection of the law based on the kind of sex they engage in within the confines of the marriage contract.
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Taoist
Guest
The same thing was said about women voting and slavery. Tradition does not absolve injustice done in its name, nor is tradition immutable. Gays aren’t inventing a new right, they only want to be included in an existing one.Taoist
The burden of proof to deny gay marriage is upon those who wish to deny it and you are not providing it here, which is the reason gay marriage supporters have won so many court cases.
You have got it backward! Never in the history of the world have homosexuals ever demanded the right to be married … until now. There has never been such a right. Clearly gays want to invent a right that never before existed or was even claimed to exist. Just as clearly, the burden of changing the law is on those who want to change it.
I’m really tired of responding to you because your posts are regurgitations of bumper stickers and show no independent or critical thinking. The gay marriage issue is a new one, true, but that does not mean it is without merit considering the changes US society has made over the last 50 years. I won’t stop you from your opinions, but they aren’t made with much consideration of people, events, and law.
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Elizabeth502
Guest
But gender, lacking surgery and other treatments, is immutable.
And marriage is defined objectively as the union of an actual man (not a pretend man) with an actual woman (not a pretend woman). When those two ingredients are absent, the conditions for the right are absent.
Rights are based on objective standards, not subjective feelings, wishes, longings, or private definitions.
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Taoist
Guest
Marriage was only recently, 1996, specifically defined as between opposite sex partners in response to pressure to include homosexual unions. There was no reason to define marriage as strictly an opposite sex union because because homosexuality was, until recently, a crime accompanied by social acceptance of rejecting homosexuality. Since the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional any law declaring homosexuality a crime then there is no reason to accept your definition of marriage, as the courts are doing, and the only leg you have to stand on the lagging and waning social reason.But gender, lacking surgery and other treatments, is immutable.
And marriage is defined objectively as the union of an actual man (not a pretend man) with an actual woman (not a pretend woman). When those two ingredients are absent, the conditions for the right are absent.
The anti-gay marriage supporters are going about this the wrong way, but President Bush clearly signaled how to stop gay marriage and that is to add an amendment to the US Constitution defining marriage as strictly between opposite sex partners. Until then, your side will continue to lose court cases and have anti-gay marriage laws thrown 14th Amendment grounds.
This is incredibly off base. Rights are not objective in any way, they are agreed upon and supported by the people who live under them. There is no objective standard for free speech, gun ownership, or any other right provided by the US Constitution. There is no free speech in dictatorships, no right to gun ownership in the vast majority of countries, and no freedom of religion in Muslim states. Closer to home, even the Bible forbids freedom of religion with the first of the ten commandments.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Taoist
The same thing was said about women voting and slavery. Tradition does not absolve injustice done in its name, nor is tradition immutable. Gays aren’t inventing a new right, they only want to be included in an existing one.
It’s really insulting to compare homosexual marriage with slavery and suffrage.
In both of those cases there was a subjugation of natural rights by those in power (usually men, but sometimes women also owned slaves). Women are naturally free beings, and slaves are naturally free beings. There is nothing natural in the right to own slaves or to deny women the right to vote. But since men have often exercised unlawful power over other men and women, their natural rights were denied them.
It is simply absurd to argue that sodomy is natural in the same way that it is natural that all men should be free and all women should be able to vote. Sodomy, like incest, is an inherently unnatural relationship, and therefore sodomites have no natural or legal rights relating to sodomy.
Whew! :banghead:
The same thing was said about women voting and slavery. Tradition does not absolve injustice done in its name, nor is tradition immutable. Gays aren’t inventing a new right, they only want to be included in an existing one.
It’s really insulting to compare homosexual marriage with slavery and suffrage.
In both of those cases there was a subjugation of natural rights by those in power (usually men, but sometimes women also owned slaves). Women are naturally free beings, and slaves are naturally free beings. There is nothing natural in the right to own slaves or to deny women the right to vote. But since men have often exercised unlawful power over other men and women, their natural rights were denied them.
It is simply absurd to argue that sodomy is natural in the same way that it is natural that all men should be free and all women should be able to vote. Sodomy, like incest, is an inherently unnatural relationship, and therefore sodomites have no natural or legal rights relating to sodomy.
Whew! :banghead:
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Elizabeth502
Guest
They most certainly are objective in that there is a standard. That standard is a reference point. (Hence, objective as a category.) At contrast with that is the standard that seeks subjective definitions of social institutions, pursuant to individual wishes, dreams, fantasies, lexicons, reversals of order for entire societies.
Marriage as a social institution has nothing to do with degree of romantic attraction, which is a subjective, not objective factor. Thus, passionate attraction is not a qualifer, per se, for genuine marriage. Rather, the qualifier is two differentiated genders who are of adult age, with no conflicting encumbrances such as close blood relationship or existing undissolved marriage, and free by any other administrative criteria, to marry.
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Taoist
Guest
Hold it. For the last time, sodomy is practiced by straight and gay people, therefore it is unfair and inaccurate to use it to describe homosexuals. If you wish to continue to equivocate the term in a deliberately derogatory way towards homosexuals then you will open the door to using personal insults and cause the discussion to stray off topic. If you refuse to use the proper terms your arguments, no matter how well constructed, will be ignored. This is your final warning.
Now, your argument relies only upon denying “natural rights” to people (which is undefined nor mentioned in the US Constitution) based on a sex act of which you disapprove. As I noted above, the US Supreme Court nullified all laws relating to sex between to consenting adults in privacy, therefore what you consider unnatural is irrelevant to the discussion. It is also why anti-gay marriage cases lose when this argument is used in court. Give it up. The law doesn’t care about your opinion on this particular sex act.
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Taoist
Guest
Stating something doesn’t make it true, nor am I required to accept your statement without you making an argument. What you have written makes no sense without an explanation, and please do this in relation to the topic of gay marriage so we don’t stray too far off.
Oh, for crying out loud. You don’t really believe this do you? That romance has nothing to do with marriage and is entirely objective? Do your really believe I’d be so gullible to accept this?
This “qualifier” you mention is unqualified, meaning you made no argument why the sexes must be opposite. Again, stating something doesn’t make it true, you need to explain it in relation to the topic of gay marriage.
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Taoist
Guest
Not at all, since it took two constitutional amendments to make it so. The 13th Amendment came at the price of a civil war with the following statement made at his Conerstone Speech to kick it off:
And the 19th Amendment passed 70 years after Seneca Falls, opposed in the following fashion:
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John21652
Guest
After reading through this thread I can now see why so many countries do not allow same sex “marriages”. What a shambles! Oh, don’t worry, the gay lobby brigade has been hard at work pushing its agenda for , ahem, equality, but there has been a backlash and recently our Prime Minister came out and publicly stated thet the government views marriage as being between a man and a woman.The responses from the political left were pretty predictable. “P.M. supports Biblical Marriage Discrimination” screamed the gays. Of course the mainstream media, in its wisdom, ran with those headlines. They just love loud minority groups. Sells papers, you see. What the silly nongs didn’t get was that behind the scenes the majority of people are sick and tired of the gay brigade trying to ram their own desires down the throats of everyone else.
Which is what seems to be happening in the United States and which has already happened in the United Kingdom and which has made Australians very apprehensive of going down that path. There are backlashes appearing in some of the countries which have liberalised their laws too, so I wouldn’t get too carried away with quoting the number of foreign nations that currently allowed same sex “marriage”.
You are aguing a very, very narrow case in favour of same sex marriage. I’d hate to become before you if you were a Supreme Court Judge! I’d have to lych you. Courts at that level consider a whole lot more than the narrowness of the argument you are trying to channel people down on this thread. Suffice to say, the gay brigade do indeed have to prove a whole lot more ‘sameness’ than they have so far.
Besides, you are jumping the gun on this getting before the Supreme Court. Obama’s decision not to support the Defence of Marriage Act is a gutless one, despite the advice he received from his lackeys. The President is duty bound to support it, or is supposed to be anyway. I note that the House of Reps. head honcho says the House will defend it. Man, that’s going to put a cat amongst the pidgeons because the Court will be forced to take notice of the will of the House, aka, the people. The arguments put forward will carry a lot more weight thab those put forward by some highly paid lackey of the gay brigade.
LeafByNiggle put up a very good argument why the concept of gay marriage is rather a silly notion anyway. You were rather dismissive of it, but in the process you trashed one of the arguments you have been putting forward all through this thread. That is, your Amendment No. 14 protects individual rights. Anyway, just to avoid any misunderstanding, I might bring my dog over, acquire citizenship and he and I can get married. It’ll be my right, you see! There, I’m outed. My dog is a boy dog. You see, LeafByNiggle is right, the gay brigade are after something substantively different. Not to mention something substantially different!!
As for the same sex regulations in some of your states, they are there by default, because your Supreme Court overturned that Texas Case about the boys fornicating in an apartment, Lawrence v Texas. I note that the Court didn’t dispute that the sex act was unnatural. I also note the dissenting opinions of the judges in that case. The majority ruling substantially moved the role of the law in a direction that it has never taken before and that just might cause a backlash next time the Court sits on such a matter.
More to the point though, you seem to be very dismissive of moral arguments posited here. Why is that? The law and morality parted company in Lawrence v Texas and that has shredded much of the United States good standing as a morally decent civilization. Of course that’s an outsiders opinion, so take it as you will. It also puts the law into the dangerous realm of moral relativism. Even you, a well educated Taoist should be worried by that. And don’t give me that **** about there being no objective standards either. Even your Supreme Courts has tests for defining Objective standards. Naughty you for saying otherwise. If those are trashed then I expect someone to ride a horse into the Senate before too long. Right after I marry my dog.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Taoist
**The law doesn’t care about your opinion on this particular sex act. **
I see. I suppose it also doesn’t care about polygamy and incest?
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This is incredibly off base. Rights are not objective in any way, they are agreed upon and supported by the people who live under them. **
Not according to Jefferson.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson July 4, 1776
Doesn’t self-evident mean the same as objective? Doesn’t all men mean a universal objective right? And doesn’t endowed by their Creator signify a higher objective source of those rights?
Jefferson likewise instituted a Virginia law against sodomy with severe punishment (castration for men). So he certainly didn’t see the law as being required to dignify sodomites with a marriage certificate for their “loving” ways.
**The law doesn’t care about your opinion on this particular sex act. **
I see. I suppose it also doesn’t care about polygamy and incest?
**
This is incredibly off base. Rights are not objective in any way, they are agreed upon and supported by the people who live under them. **
Not according to Jefferson.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson July 4, 1776
Doesn’t self-evident mean the same as objective? Doesn’t all men mean a universal objective right? And doesn’t endowed by their Creator signify a higher objective source of those rights?
Jefferson likewise instituted a Virginia law against sodomy with severe punishment (castration for men). So he certainly didn’t see the law as being required to dignify sodomites with a marriage certificate for their “loving” ways.
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Taoist
Guest
If you want to marry your dog then bring the case to court. Good luck with that as I’m sure even Australian law doesn’t recognize marriage outside our species.
The rest of your screed amounts to “I hate gays,” which isn’t much of a legal argument. You’ll have to do better than that if you wish to be taken seriously.
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Taoist
Guest
Charlemagne II, it’s clear you’re just trolling. You’ve not made one legitimate legal argument (the Declaration of Independence is not part of the US Constitution), repeatedly try to take the discussion off topic (incest and polygamy are not being discussed here), and insist on resorting to derogatory expressions in a juvenile attempt to de-humanize people you just don’t like. Give my regards to oblivion.
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