US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1633

On February 10 2015 12:29 IgnE wrote:
Non Judeo-Christian cultures are also pretty big on marriage.

On February 10 2015 10:04 Yoav wrote:

Don't have my pocket constitution on me, but I'm calling bullshit on this. I'm fairly certain marriage is unmentioned in the constitution.



See, I get that there's a good case for Roe v Wade being a "mistake" from the pro-choice POV (was on the road to gradual universal legalization, but the sudden snap galvanized opposition and got them incredibly well organized and powerful to fight back). But this fight seems a lot closer to the Civil RIghts fights (not taking a position on whether this is a Civil Rights issue) like integrated schoolrooms, misegenation, and the like. The opposition was already organized and powerful, but at peak power was never really expanding territory, only trying to stall for time. And in this issue the anti-marriage lobby seems to have really faded in power. Major mainstream churches are pro-gay. The majority of the population is pro gay marriage. If there were a mandatory-vote up/down referendum tomorrow, marriage would win. Half our anti-marriage legislators are thoroughly uninterested in the issue, or in some cases actually disingenuous about their position (see how Chris Christie shepherded gay marriage into NJ while allowing himself to veto it once to keep his cred).

The courts are supposed to address issues where one side has no good logical arguments and smack them down. The advantage of the unelected courts is that, by and large, they actually do work logically within each of their own ideological frameworks. So sure, they shouldn't legislate complicated things like tax law or foreign policy. But religious liberty, marriage, civil rights? That's well within their purview.

I don't really get why marriage is even a governmental issue at all. The state has no interest in marriage, gay or straight. What does the state get out of people living together?

Now, I know what you're going to say. "But Millitron, the state has an interest because marriages provide families for children, and the state has an interest in seeing children raised in a healthy environment." To which I'd reply marriage has nothing to do with children. Single parents are a thing and are capable of providing a healthy environment for a child. Further, not even all heterosexual marriages result in children. Marriage is wholly unrelated to children.

Forget regulating homosexual or heterosexual marriage, the state shouldn't regulate marriage period.

On February 10 2015 14:08 oneofthem wrote:
you have made the simple assertion that the court is making shit up, do better

On February 10 2015 14:37 zlefin wrote:
That a right isn't spelled out in the constitution does not mean that it isn't a right.

On February 10 2015 14:34 xDaunt wrote:

Go look at abortion jurisprudence and then come back and tell me that the Court wasn't making shit up. Start before Roe where the Court starts discovering rights in the "penumbras of the Constitution" and work your way forward to all of the cases where the Supreme Court basically legislates when abortions are legal and when they are not.

On February 10 2015 14:46 oneofthem wrote:

the court simply recognized a substantive area of rights and rights at the federal or whatever 'above the states' level has to be grounded in a number of potential legal basis. they picked some result and then found the legal reasoning to make it work, which is perfectly fine. this does not mean this process of rights creation is groundless. we could get into the history of rights construction but that doesnt really matter. fact of the matter is the court makes its own justification. this process is a feature of all social construction of rights, even the constitution itself. instead of "we haz rights because scotus said so" it is "we haz rights because constitution said so". you will never escape from having to recognize some sort of rights dubbing ceremony event at some point, and this argument of arbitrariness can apply to all such incidents.

there is no privilege to the particular moral sentiments prevailing at the time of the constitution and the function of the document is clearly to provide citizenry with some set of rights, and the open ended formulation of certain amendments support this function. the court is acting within its powers to spell out these rights.

On February 10 2015 14:59 xDaunt wrote:

I encourage you to go read about "substantive due process" and why it is generally shat upon by pretty much everyone. If we as a society want to create additional rights at the federal level, there is a mechanism for doing so: it is called amending the Constitution. Beyond that, states and localities are free to do basically whatever they want within the confines of federal law. I'd much prefer democratic processes work things out as opposed to letting 5-9 judges make such determinations by fiat.

On February 10 2015 14:46 oneofthem wrote:

the court simply recognized a substantive area of rights and rights at the federal or whatever 'above the states' level has to be grounded in a number of potential legal basis. they picked some result and then found the legal reasoning to make it work, which is perfectly fine. this does not mean this process of rights creation is groundless. we could get into the history of rights construction but that doesnt really matter. fact of the matter is the court makes its own justification. this process is a feature of all social construction of rights, even the constitution itself. instead of "we haz rights because scotus said so" it is "we haz rights because constitution said so". you will never escape from having to recognize some sort of rights dubbing ceremony event at some point, and this argument of arbitrariness can apply to all such incidents.

there is no privilege to the particular moral sentiments prevailing at the time of the constitution and the function of the document is clearly to provide citizenry with some set of rights, and the open ended formulation of certain amendments support this function. the court is acting within its powers to spell out these rights.