onegoodmove

How monumental can this victory be since it will be turned BACK by the right-wing idiots on the Supreme Court when they appeal?

The fact that we are writing gay marriage bans into state constitutions is incredibly disgusting. That sort of thing has no place in a constitution.

This just always seemed so simple to me. If the government wants to be in the marriage business and the government can not discriminate, then no same-sex marriage ban.

I've been protesting opposite-sex marriage to show solidarity with our gay brothers and sisters. Damn. Now what's my excuse?

Yeah. It sucks that the current federal law that discriminates against same sex couples was signed by Bill Clinton. See:

wikipedia on same sex marriage

You can see the current candidate's positions on gay marriage here:

http://pewforum.org/religion08/compare.php?Issue=Gay_Marriage

Good. Nice to see that we're not sliding back into a theocratic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-intellectual shit-pool in every single aspect of our society, I guess.

What I find delightfully ironic is that at least to some extent, the gay marriage issue was brought to a front because of homophobes refusing to extend the same rights to civil unions, as that of marriage. Nice backfire.

I've been protesting opposite-sex marriage to show solidarity with our gay brothers and sisters. Damn. Now what's my excuse?blockquote>

The cost of beer? Yeah, that's it!

I'm interested in the comment about Bill Clinton which makes it sound like this was a law he put on the books (or, are all laws that Congress passes and a President doesn't veto considered theirs? I don't really know - the comment seemed pretty pointed about Bill's involvement)....I don't remember enough about what was going on then to get it and Wikipedia really didn't say anything.

yes, it is heterosexual marriage that should be banned. save them the trouble of divorce, cheating, lying, and screwing up their kids with all that drama. they're a threat to the family! we need a constitutional amendment to declare them immoral.

May this court decision serve as a symbolic cock that has penetrated all the calligraphs of America. Pwned bitches!

Bill Clinton's own words

As a gay man who hopes to one day marry:

Jesus Christ, can we please stop doing this exclusively during election years?

Also, is it too much to ask to have at least one state legalize it through their state legislature so that Neocons will stop bitching about "liberal activist judges?"

If only Schwarzenegger weren't Governor or Joseph Bruno weren't NY State Senate Majority Leader...

and?

Jill asked, I answered.

This just always seemed so simple to me. If the government wants to be in the marriage business and the government can not discriminate, then no same-sex marriage ban.

Pitifully, it is exactly that simply. But like many other easy issues--is evolution the best scientific account of biological diversity and human origins? Does global warming exist? Does the market magically correct itself, such that selfishness and rapacity result in a boon of moral rewards and human flourishing, and all government regulation in a horrible 'evil'? Were there WMD in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion? Which branch of government has the authority to declare war? Do electronic voting machines work? Does your cell phone company have the legal right to let the government monitor your conversations? Would a single embryos be saved if we halted all stem-cell research immediately? Doesn't the fact that the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits government sponsorship of any religion mean that the U.S. is a Christian nation? Isn't it true that corporate lobbying and indirect bribes have no influence legislation and policy?--it is quite hard for even a question to be raised.

Welcome to the U.S. Land of the free, home of the brave.

I just think it's hilarious that everyone pretends to be for democracy right until they can't get a privilege they want. Then it's by any means necessary, right?

In a democracy if you want to change an established social institution it should be done through the will of the people. This should be put to a vote. The reason supporters of gay marriage don't want it to go to a vote is they know it will lose.

And for your information, the government is in the marriage business - the fact that you don't realize that shows how poorly you've analyzed your position. Try to marry an animal or have more than one spouse or marry someone under the age of consent (which varies state-to-state, by the way). Social rules reflect the morals and beliefs of the society they regulate.

Hey, some evangelical Christians are happy- for once we actually agree. (Though I can't say I share the view that more women than men obtaining advanced degrees is "a sign of the end days.")

In a democracy if you want to change an established social institution it should be done through the will of the people. This should be put to a vote.

Leaving aside the fact that the appointments of the judges were themselves democratically confirmed by the voters, that the court's decision has passed in the state legislature twice, and that an amendment to the state constitution would override the decision, it is not an issue democracy but of principle. Equal protection under the law means it is not up to the tyranny of a democratic majority to decide whom to exclude from basic legal protections, whether the potentially excluded group is women, ethnic minorities, or homosexuals. That is at the core of landmark civil decisions like Brown vs. the Board of Education and many others.

More philosophically, there is a notorious tension between the principles of democracy (popular sovereignty) and liberalism (basic rights and liberties, equal protection under the law, balance of powers) because the former can potentially undermine the latter if and when majoritarian outcomes conflict with basic liberal principles. Although we tend to take their compatibility for granted in most cases, there is no obvious conceptual reason why they should always coincide.

On your animals point, non-human animals do not, in the United States, have basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, are not afforded equal protection under the law, and cannot be expected to make decisions about whom to marry. (Can you imagine a horse trying to get married? It would always refuse! --'Do you, Black Beauty, take this man to be your husband, to have and to hold, 'til death do you part?' --'Neigh! Neigh!'

A better case is miscengenation or, of course, polygamy.

So by that logic the day after slavery was outlawed, we shoulda had a vote on it and if pro slavery won, all the brothers and sisters go back to being slaves too right? That is the difference between a democracy and a republic, is that the majority doesnt always rule, because the majority could be idiotic evangelicals. The only way equality will happen in this country for gays and minorities and poor of all colors is if the good guys stand up to the greedy and brainwashed masses, and we better be ready for a fight.

This decision won't be "appealed" anywhere-- it was about interpreting CA's Constitution, not the US Constitution. The best description of what happened here is Glenn Greenwald's Salon column.

In Spain (as in most European countries) homosexuals have the same rights in marriage as heterosexuals and guess what? The fabric of society is not ripping apart at the seams. In fact, from what I have seen Spain is much more “family oriented” than America. Most people here seemed to have accepted this basic right for homosexuals and have gone on about their own lives. Once in a while you hear some mealy-mouth protest from the Catholic Church but that is about it. The majority of the folks are a lot more concerned about real issues.

P.S. Ever notice how hicks always shoe-horn bestiality into this issue? That would never occur to me but it seems like that is the first thing to pop into their heads.

I especially like Allison's thoughtful response pointing out the difficulties that arise when one claims that there should be simple majority rule in this country.

I've never had anyone on the other side of this issue--I don't really know any of them, as bigotry and hatred are qualities that I don't prefer to live around--explain to me what harm will be engendered when two men or two women get to live in the same house together. Oh, they can do that now, can't they? The difference is there will now be a little piece of paper that sits in a drawer somewhere that you'll never even see. Nothing that you will even see will change. Gays live together, dine together, hold hands and more together now, as it is. As far as economic rights/insurance rights of spouses, the markets are handling this one quite well, actually.

Maybe it will offend God, for Christ's sake. But don't you believe (I am thankfully not speaking here to the loyal 1GM audience) that each person has a right to offend God or not in the way he or she believes is best? You certainly do have that right--shouldn't others?
This whole Christian thing about God destroying villages and towns (New Orleans, Sodom and Gomorrah) because of the sins of individuals is one of the nastier parts of an already pretty spiteful world view.

Anyone out there who can suggest how this is going to harm anyone or anything? I assure you, you'll never even know, as I presume no gay person will care to invite you to the ceremony! Ok, there will be pictures of two men or two women in wedding notices. I know that could be devastating!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the problem is:

A. There are people who believe that sexual orientation is a choice.

B. There are people that know it's not a choice, but think it's a defect.

C. There has not been a national figure that has effectively challenged the thinking of both A and B.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the problem is: A. There are people who believe that sexual orientation is a choice.

B. There are people that know it's not a choice, but think it's a defect.

C. There has not been a national figure that has effectively challenged the thinking of both A and B.

No, the problem is that national figures don't challenge the relevance of A or B.

In a free society we are free to be the way that we are and the way we chose to be. Your points are only to relevant to a religious discussion as to whether it is a sin, which is a discussion the theologians should have outside our political system.

This is a good victory.

calligraph: I just think it's hilarious that everyone pretends to be for democracy right until they can't get a privilege they want. Then it's by any means necessary, right?

Someone already answered you regarding this.

Richard D. Morey: You've missed the point, I think. Marriage, in and of itself, is not the right being sought. It is equal treatment under the law. Let me set up another scenario for you, to illustrate the point. Suppose the government set up a privilege that only some people could take advantage of, if they met the requirements. Let's say that the privilege is getting a PhD, and the requirement is that you are white. PhDs certainly aren't a right, so why should anyone complain about this state of affairs? The obvious answer is that it is unequal treatment under the law, which IS a right; at least, it is one our society grants.

This is entirely true. In fact this is what happened in Lawrence v. Texas when they tried to construct the Issue for the case. The issue certainly wasn't whether you have a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy. That was a redhering to circumvent the actual issue. It was a fundamental rights case not necessarily whether you have a fundamental right to sodomy. The real issue is therefore whether the statute violates constitutional protections of due process and equal protections clause of the 14th amendment.

calligraph:In a democracy if you want to change an established social institution it should be done through the will of the people. This should be put to a vote. The reason supporters of gay marriage don't want it to go to a vote is they know it will lose.

Sure in a pure democracy. But under a constitutional democracy such tyranny of the majority is halted.

Thanks for playing though.

Leaving aside the fact that the appointments of the judges were themselves democratically confirmed by the voters

Please. Do you contend that this is sufficient democratic representation for such a key issue? I guarantee if it had gone the other way (no pun intended) you wouldn't be so complacent. Suppose Schwarzenegger pushed through a ban? Would you contentedly claim 'the system works' and have nothing to say about the issue?

it is not an issue democracy but of principle.

There's ancient wisdom that states that whenever someone says "It's not X, it's the principle!" you can be assured it's really about X.

It is not about 'equal protection'. If that were your worry, you'd be petitioning to remove the key special considerations from marriage entirely and grant them to independent citizens. The laundry list of issues that people bring up in this matter are all things that you could just as correctly claim should be granted to your best friend, your two-month girlfriend, and so on.

Furthermore, the special interest groups who keep pretending this is a 'rights' issue have repeatedly rejected compromises that would grant them these privileges, because they see anything less than marriage as an insult. So it is clearly about what it's about: getting society to accept your deviant union.

So by that logic the day after slavery was outlawed, we shoulda had a vote on it and if pro slavery won, all the brothers and sisters go back to being slaves too right?

Ah, reducto ad slavery. It's difficult to determine who should feel more insulted by such a tired, childish 'argument': me or the generations of black people to whom you liken your desire for a reach-around. I'm actually surprised you didn't just come right out (again, no pun intended) and call me a Nazi.

I've never had anyone on the other side of this issue--I don't really know any of them, as bigotry and hatred are qualities that I don't prefer to live around

WIth such an accepting attitude, that doesn't surprise me. It amazes me that people who claim to support 'tolerance' (which is really just a blanket term for trying to force everyone to accept your quirks and behaviors) are the least tolerant.

There is no hatred or bigotry in you not getting something you want. The only reason you want to frame it as such is because you cannot win a logical argument, so you take the oldest and most base route possible: you jump to the emotional and try to bribe or browbeat people to accept your opinion on the issue.

The fact is that the vast majority of states do not allow this travesty, because the vast majority of Americans do not want it. When the vast majority of the people in a democratic society do not want something, the laws of democracy mean that thing will not happen. That is not tyranny. That is democracy.

You can keep trying to usurp and avoid the system all you want, but rest assured that those on the other side of the issue will do the same.

This just in:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24671020/

Apparently there will be a vote. Which is how it should be. If my side loses that's just how the cookie crumbles. But at least this way everyone gets a voice in how they want the state to define marriage.

I have been married and I don't understand why anyone would want to do that. In the 19th century, feminist Victoria Woodhull described it very well.

"Victoria Woodhull's great virtue and her great failing were one and the same -- her refusal to remain silent about the sexual empowerment of women and about the sexual hypocrisy she saw all around her among important political figures of her day, both within and outside the suffrage movement. Frequently overtaken by the "spirits" from whom she drew her inspiration, she insisted on speaking uncompromisingly about what she believed and, when hypocritically attacked for her sexual views, about the dalliances of the people around her.

With regard to women's sexual appetites, she was both indignant and uncompromising: "Some women seem to glory over the fact that they never had any sexual desire and to think that desire is vulgar. What! Vulgar!... Vulgar rather must be the mind that can conceive such blasphemy. No sexual passion, say you. Say, rather, a sexual idiot, and confess your life is a failure... It is not the possession of strong sexual powers that is to be deprecated. They are a necessary part of human character... they are the foundation upon which civilization rests."

With regard to marriage, Woodhull was equally outspoken: "Why do I war upon marriage.... because it is, I verily believe, the most terrible curse from which humanity now suffers, entailing more misery, sickness, and premature death than all other causes combined.... Sanctioned and defended by marriage, night after night there are thousands of rapes committed.... There was never a servitude in the world like this one of marriage.""

http://www.sexuality.org/authors/steinberg/cn70.html

"For Woodhull, women's right to "love whom I may, to love for as long or as short a period as I can, to change that love every day if I please" included women's right to exchange sex for money, if they so chose. "If our sisters who inhabit Greene Street [New York's most notorious brothel district]... choose to remain in debauch," she declared, "and if our brothers choose to visit them there, they are only exercising the same right that we exercise in remaining away.... I can see no moral difference between a woman who marries and lives with a man because he can provide for her wants and the woman who is not married but who is provided for at the same price.""

Today's feminists are far behind.

calligraph:

You have made clear that you do not accept that arguments about gay marriage are about 'equal protection'. Do you also believe that if the majority of Americans were to return to the view that interracial marriage is 'deviant' and a 'travesty', that members of different racial groups could then be properly excluded from the "special considerations of marriage"? If so, is it your view that the prohibition of such interracial marriages in the past, when the majority of American favored such prohibition, were therefore acceptable and not a basic violation of people's rights?

I ask this not to elicit some sarcastic response, but to boil the debate down to its essential characteristics - I mean if that's the way you think our government and society should function, there is really nothing to debate with most of the people here, is there? We're irreconcilable and spewing bile by either side is a waste of time and effort.

But Tim, you're forgetting than any analogy to African-Americans is a reductio ad slavery according to callgirl. Though I wonder if he's noticed his reductio ad beastiality.

I guarantee if it had gone the other way (no pun intended) you wouldn't be so complacent.

There's ancient wisdom that states that whenever someone says "It's not X, it's the principle!" you can be assured it's really about X.

OK. Read this part very slowly. You seem to keep insisting that the decision was not democratic. In response I pointed out (1.) the U.S. is not a direct democracy; (2.) the decision had already gained support from representative institutions such as the legislature; (3.) principles of democracy (popular sovereignty) and principles of liberalism (equal protection under the law, balance of powers, basic rights) can--but need not be--in tension because the outcomes of the former can potentially undermine that latter. (4.) There are democratic mechanisms for overturning the courts decision through an amendment to the state constitution.

So it is not an issue between one principle and something else but two principles, the claim that majoritarian outcomes are authoritative in a democracy and the claim that all citizens are guaranteed equal protection under the law. My claim is that where the principle of popular sovereignty conflicts with the principle of equal protection under the law, the latter is authoritative because the notion of democratic citizen is, in general, unintelligible in its modern form without it.

Rather than dealing with any of these arguments, you say, "oh no no, democracy?" I'm sorry, but if that's your idea of democracy, you missed out on the Greek polis by about 2,500 years, where--speaking of "ancient wisdom"--you also could have been waited upon by slaves, indulged freely in pederasty, and treated woman as not much more than reproductive machines. But you're right: the judicial authority to interpret the basic principles of law and guarentee basic protections under it is plainly an undemocratic and tyrannical institution.

Your comparison with bestiality is both absurd and offensive. It is absurd because the institution of marriage in its contemporary form presupposes the notion of consent--note: in its contemporary form--and animals cannot consent to a life-long commitment because, so far as any one knows, they don't know what commitments like that are, and they don't know what 'until death do you part' means either. It is offensive because it implies that homosexual sex is somehow 'unnatural' or perverse, when in fact it is highly common not only in the human but in many other species.

'. Do you also believe that if the majority of Americans were to return to the view that interracial marriage is 'deviant' and a 'travesty', that members of different racial groups could then be properly excluded from the "special considerations of marriage"?

We should ask the converse question as well. Given that you think homosexual marriage is a 'travesty', 'deviant', and comparable to bestiality, would still be 'deviant' and abnormal in your view if a democratic society were overwhelmingly in favor of it? Or more directly: how far does the moral authority of democratic decision extend? Can anything in principle be up for grabs, so long as the majority thinks its OK?

So it is clearly about what it's about: getting society to accept your deviant union.

Some people feel that a union between a "white" person and a "black" person is "deviant".

So if the majority feel that a particular union is deviant, they can outlaw that union?

WIth such an accepting attitude, that doesn't surprise me. It amazes me that people who claim to support 'tolerance' (which is really just a blanket term for trying to force everyone to accept your quirks and behaviors) are the least tolerant.

So in Calligraph world, being tolerant is cleverly twisted into being intolerant. Amazing the way that homophobes justify their prejudice.

There is no hatred or bigotry in you not getting something you want

There was no hatred in women and Blacks not "getting something that they wanted", such as the right to vote?

you jump to the emotional and try to bribe or browbeat people to accept your opinion on the issue.

Hell, yeah. People get emotional about having equal rights.

The fact is that the vast majority of states do not allow this travesty, because the vast majority of Americans do not want it.

In the history of U.S., the vast majority of Americans considered it a travesty that women or Blacks should have the right to vote.

You can keep trying to usurp and avoid the system all you want, but rest assured that those on the other side of the issue will do the same.

Yep, at one time, those on the "other side" didn't want women or Blacks to have the right to vote.

Also, in the history of the U.S., the vast majority of people considered a "travesty" and "deviant" that someone with "white" skin should marry someone with "black" skin.

So fucking what? So the majority of people are racist homophobes and this is an excuse to continue to have a racist, homophobe society?

The homophobic, racist, Christian fundamentalists have taken over American society. So sad! :(

It's difficult to determine who should feel more insulted by such a tired, childish 'argument': me or the generations of black people to whom you liken your desire for a reach-around.

A reference to bestiality and then you show your that you are fluent in homosexual lingo. I'm no psychologist but I'd say you have some issues that need some sorting out—something I have encountered in many folks who feel somehow threatened by gays.

Just like global warming deniers, Iraq War supporters, and those still standing guard at the private health care Alamo, folks who oppose gay marriage are just plain wrong and will soon see the error in their position. Gay marriage is going to be law in America sooner or later. Do opponents of gay marriage think this is just going to go away because they find it offensive or immoral? The sooner we put this non-issue behind us the sooner we can start dealing with some real problems.