Same sex marriage is a constitutional right for all USAians, regardless of the homophobic, religiously-motivated bigotry in 14 state legislatures.
Chief Justice Kennedy writing the 5-4 decision:
“The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of a person,
… under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, couples of the same sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty.
.. The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry,
… [They] ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. </blockquote>
And Antonin Scalia displays his usual regressive Catholic assholishness: <blockquote>The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic,
Suck it, Popey-boy.
HT: Chris Clarke, image, and Ophelia Benson
Edit: Should have been Justice Kennedy, not Chief justice Kennedy. Thanks for the reminder, Kantian Naturalist :).
As far as I know, I have made one single point in the same tone all the time. You, on the other hand, have become worse than you were.
I am giving you an opportunity to quote me on where I denied any legal commitment to same-sex couples. Until then, you are a hateful bigot and hypocrite, deliberately misreading what’s plainly written.
I have never said that gays should not have it. If they so badly want it, let them have it. It’s just that I personally, for the reasons given, will never call it marriage. It does not have the necessary characteristics of marriage and therefore it isn’t.
It’s best for everybody when this redefined concept has a very short life span and will be replaced with something more sensible soon. Such as “civil union” or “cohabitation” or “household”. And this applies to heteros as well as gays. I have been quite clear on this.
Yes, the exact same revoltingly bigoted unloving and inhumane point over and over again. And you genuinely think anyone, anywhere on the planet, has anything to learn from your truly revolting example?
In case this goes unnoticed, I am pointing out where our dear Erik has now made explicitly clear that he is one of the cuckoos — like the county clerks in Alabama — who meanly choose to deny marriage to heterosexuals rather than be forced to share the institution with the “defectives”.
First there were the defective heterosexuals who defiled the precious purity of marriage with their childlessness and step-parenting and serial monogamy (no different than living in sin!!) and contraception and artificial insemination … and whatever else Erik personally thinks flies in the face of “natural philosophy”. Dunno if Erik ever took it upon himself to rant in Irish newspapers about ruining marriage when the Irish squirmed out from under the thumb of the Catholic oppression and legalized divorce. But then came the final straw: legal standing for gay marriage in one of the largest most important nations of the world, setting a shining example of freedom and equality for everyone.
And suddenly, Erik can’t stand it a moment longer. This is the battle he’s suddenly prepared to fight: no more marriage for anyone, no matter who, no matter for what reasons they wish to marry. Simply because all you filthy, lazy, wrongly-motivated degenerates have failed to obey Erik’s specific definition of marriage! So, to hell with you, all of you, no matter what all of human history says about the real flexibility of cultural definitions of marriage and family, if you’re going to be warm-hearted and fuzzy enough to expand the definition to openly-gay couples, then you cannot have any marriage at all. It is so ordered. By Erik.
This is instructive; this is the natural course of bigotry. When it can’t win, bigotry sometimes merely seeps away slowly. But all too often it intensifies — as Erik and the Alabamans are demonstrating (and as Dylann Roof demonstrated in a different context last month) — and becomes more actively hateful and even more destructive to our collective aim of tolerance and freedom.
Then so much the worse for “natural philosophy,” and good riddance!
“You shall not commit adultery.”
How do these priests get away with this? What business do they have in my bedroom? And the sheeple. They thought this was a good idea or just went along with it taking it on faith because it came from a priest? Lord help us.
Oh, I wouldn’t cede that term to erik to use for his bigotry, KN. He can have ‘natural bile’ or ‘homophobia’ or ‘natural toxicity’ or ‘unnatural dickishness,’ or we can stick with good old fashioned ‘bigotry.’
‘Natural philosophy’ already has a perfectly good meaning, and it has nothing to do with the religious anti-gay venom that erik is spewing.
Mung, do you have a point you wish to make?
I assume this is some cryptic response to petrushka’s comments about the fallout for religious authorities when secular power — which they once co-opted to enforce sectarian doctrine — begins to desert them, leaving them worse off than if they had remained separate all along.
You’ve made basically the same comment several times, and it’s not any more clear after your repetition. Do you mean anything here?
Erik,
For someone who wants words to have specific meanings, you’re pretty sloppy yourself.
You want to deny same sex couples the right to marry, the right to call their lifelong, loving commitment marriage, and you want to do this solely because of the gender of who they love. That is hateful and it is bigotry.
Please do explain why the gay couple and their children are not a family and how those two men are not married.
This thread is a keeper. It’s a beautiful illustration of bigotry seeking to rationalize itself.
I’m not so sure I agree there. Erik’s refusal to acknowledge the conceptual possibility of same-sex marriage is firmly grounded in his Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophical anthropology (or so he wants us to believe).
I, for one, am in no position to challenge his assertion that it is grounded in that philosophical anthropology. The Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition is not one of my vocabularies. That said, I suspect it would be pretty easy to find someone who defends marriage equality on Aristotelian/Thomistic grounds — no philosophical tradition is ever homogenous on any interesting, controversial issue.
Hence, if the Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophical anthropology entails that same-sex marriages are conceptually incoherent, then so much the worse for that philosophical anthropology.
Absolutely. One last shot then:
“You shall not murder.”
I just can’t wait until we’re completely rid of all these horrendous religious laws, and the priests that make them and then get the state to enforce them. Right?
Or we could get rid of the state and let the priests then try to enforce their laws. I sort of like that one.
Oh, Mung, that’s so dumb. Priests didn’t make the law against murder; it arose long before we humans had stratified culture into the kind of society which could support the dead weight of priests. Aversion to murder is a natural result of the empathetic brains which allow us to (mostly) get along with each other in groups, and could possibly date back far into our social primate ancestry. (Although they wouldn’t have language to call it murder, primate groups have the ability to ostracize and drive out a member who behaves abnormally.)
And the same applies to the rest of your “priest-law” examples: all of them originate in human pre-history, were codified before we invented priests, and are accepted by theists and non-theists alike because they have nothing to do with “god’s law” or priestly desires.
No, the priests don’t get to take credit for inventing basic ethical rules. No, where they get into trouble, as petrushka said, is when they got into bed with the state to have state legal power enforce the arbitrary priestly rules such as “No using contraception. God doesn’t like it when women deprive the church of more kids to indoctrinate. No prescribing, providing, or selling contraception of any kind.”
Such as “You must keep the sabbath holy. No selling or buying alcohol or even fizzy soda water on Sunday.
(Maybe you’re too young to remember Blue Laws which required closures and restrictions on Sunday for items which were legal any other day, but I haven’t forgotten them.)
Such as “No sex unless you’re married. Oh, and you can only be married if you’re a male-female couple. And only if neither of you have ever been married before (or if the previous spouse has died).”
That’s what petrushka meant.
Dunno how you missed the point.
I was working in New Jersey in the early to mid 1990’s and they still had them then. For all I know they still do.
You’ll end up appealing to natural law [if you aren’t already] if you’re not careful.
Not parsimonious to appeal to some unspecified “natural law”. No need to invent or invest in such an idea.
We know that humans are social animals. Social mammals have social behavior. It is what it is because it works well enough for evolution to maintain empathetic traits, not eliminate them.
What’s more interesting to me are the idiosyncrasies which bubble up all around the world. How can one culture impose a religious taboo against dogs while another one respects them to the point of sainthood? How can one cult religiously ban alcohol while another states that peyote is a sacrement?
How can any priest or pastor or imam be confident that they have happened to hit upon the correct group of idiosyncratic but “god-approved” rules and taboos? When god tells them they’re right, how come the rest of us rational folks can’t listen in and hear the same?
Why, in the most-religious first world nation, is the approval of gay marriage skyrocketing? Why are the christians who believe gay marriage is against god’s will losing out to the christians who believe gay marriage is just fine in the eyes of a loving god?
Every single sentence in this paragraph is demonstrably wrong.
You didn’t read at all further? You really think it’s good when a legal term ceases to make sense so that you (you personally) are deluded about what it has become? (And you are deluded also about how much A-T I am. Namely none. Prior to finding Feser’s blog about two years ago I was closest to Neoplatonism, and Feser’s take on various points only made me firmer in this. Natural philosophy doesn’t equal A-T. Natural philosophy is the common perspective of everyone who happens to feel more at home in the pre-Enlightenment philosophical paradigm.)
You think it’s monogamous but it isn’t. When it’s nothing but a “commitment between two people”, then it’s like friendship on FB – I can have a thousand of those and each and every one of them is “commitment between two people”.
Here’s someone pointing out the difference between American and Canadian definitions of marriage http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/07/happy-canada-day
“In Canada, if on this day you’ll permit me a bit of bragging, we know how to do this: Marriage used to be “the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.” It is now “the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others.” How difficult is that?”
Notice “to the exclusion of all others”. (The problem that remains is why it should be “to the exclusion of all others”, but at least this makes it monogamous by legal stipulation, even though not by any intrinsic characteristic.) The American definition diluted into non-existence in the topical judicial decision and lacks this.
Another important point from the article, “Both the majority and the minority kept slipping back and forth, quite unconsciously, between “the right to marry” construed as an individual autonomy right and “the right to marry” construed as the right of a couple. Did this not warrant even a moment’s thought? By long-standing international precedent, the right to marry is the right of an individual, not of a couple.”
This is what conceptual confusion does.
Then you can certainly demonstrate it too. Until then, your words don’t merit even the response you got for now.
hotshoe_,
Sorry, but … just no. We complain bitterly, and rightly, at the ‘unreasonable extension’ tactic practiced over at UD whenever a mass killer emerges from his basement. This seems too close to the same thing to me.
Erik,
Continuing to repeat nonsense doesn’t make it any less nonsense.
The only difference between now and before the ruling is that same sex couples now have access to exactly the same legal protections as heterosexual couples. The legal definition of marriage has been expanded to stop state discrimination against homosexuals. That’s it.
Are you suggesting that homosexuals are less capable of monogamy than heterosexuals?
Do you think marriage between heterosexuals is equivalent to a Facebook friendship? There is no difference between the commitment of a homosexual couple that chooses to marry and the commitment of a heterosexual couple that chooses to marry.
Your bigotry is making you unreasonable.
It’s simple to demonstrate. Just replace “gay” with “infertile”.
‘Evolving’ bigotry?
(insert image from media library?)
Can be and often is, when they hop into and out of marriages every other year. It’s closer to proper marriage when they beget children and raise them to adulthood too.
You see, my point is that the legal definition should reflect what marriage really is. The law is not the end-all by itself. The law is relevant inasmuch as it regulates that which really exists.
Thus far I have only seen y’all deny that marriage really is anything, except a word we use on certain social occasions. But if it’s just a word, then why this debate and accusations of bigotry? When I use a word in its correct meaning and you deliberately refuse the correct meaning, then how is it bigotry on my part? Is bigotry about semantics these days, and not about behaviour? If so, then isn’t “bigotry” also just a word that I can redefine to mean whatever I want?
If “marriage” is a word associated with evil male dominance (as it is for Elizabeth) why not do away with it like with slavery? We didn’t redefine slavery to make it something better, more “inclusive” or more “equal”. We got rid of it when it became undesirable.
Homosexual couples don’t (and cannot) make a husband and wife, a mother and father. This is the difference.
Okay, let’s replace. “Different from what you say, under
gayinfertile laws marriage is not monogamous. It has been reduced to commitment between two people. It’s like a contractual bilateral partnership – and just that. There’s no inherent need for children recognised any more – logically so, becausegaysinfertiles cannot breed. Therefore parental considerations are null henceforth. Under these terms, marriage is just a partnership, like business partnership.”So, is this quite the same thing? Are there infertile people demanding “equal rights”? Okay, let’s say there are. What are their rights about? Do they demand the right to live together and let their partner inherit their stuff when they die (which everybody already had, including gays) or the right to beget children (which they cannot have by definition)?
Go on, make your point. You could become the first one able to define marriage so that gays are applicable and FB friends are not. Which of course cannot be done, but as you can see, this is not an obstacle to anybody else.
Elizabeth,
Thanks Lizzie. Perhaps you’ll find that in my non-blog voice we have more things to agree on after all. At least you can see that I’m just as anti-IDism are you are! 😉
Erik must be living in an alternate universe, because that is very different from what I have been seeing.
I explained this in some detail, Gregory (and even suggested that you to “PAY ATTENTION” as I did so). But it’s now clear that you need to go back and read my post on the reason for moving from the granting of civil unions to the granting of marriages again.
I don’t know either whether a case can be made that only hetero marriages are legit that relies only on premises found in Aristotle and/or Thomism, but I haven’t seen any such argument made here. On the other hand, I don’t find anything about that subject in Galileo, and his work is generally taken to be the paradigm example of natural philosophy: that sort of thing was considered both philosophy AND the study of nature until those fields were granted their (among some, still contentious) divorce. So until erik meets this burden, I’ll continue to call him a “natural bigot” rather than a “natural philosopher” if you don’t mind.
walto,
The point is that the cartoonist included ‘evolving’ as the caption. Is walto a ‘social evolutionist’ too?
Following my first comment, has anyone here acknowledged the biological nature of family? Nope. Nobody has recognised that marriage is irreducibly about forming a family. Elizabeth said marriage is about males’ possession of hapless women. Hotshoe said he can redefine marriage to mean anything.
Nobody is even pretending to be descriptive according to the nature of things. Everybody is crying out for the right to define and redefine marriage as they please. But when so, then why not extend it further, why not include even more stuff to equalise the rights?
Alternate universe indeed.
Gregory,
I got “the joke,” Gregory. (I couldn’t breathe, I laughed so hard!!) What I’m waiting for is some sense that you’ve understood why people “evolved” from the civil union stance that you take (and that both Obama and I once took) to the “marriage” position. Of that, I’ve not received even the smallest glimmer from you yet.
Erik,
The legal definition reflects the legal benefits that accrue to legal marriage. The Supreme Court recognized that, under the 14th Amendment, those benefits must also accrue to same sex couples.
I haven’t seen anyone say that. What I am saying is that there is no difference between the love and commitment of a married same sex couple and a married heterosexual couple. I’ve also been saying that there is no justification other than mean-spiritedness and bigotry to deny the word “marriage” to same sex couples. You have yet to come up with a counterexample.
You are not using the correct meaning. You are attempting to distinguish between equally loving and committed couples solely due to their sexual orientation. There is no rational justification for considering these couples unequal. The only reasons you’ve presented boil down to bigotry on your part.
They can make loving parents to children in a family, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out (and as you’ve repeatedly ignored).
Erik,
Do you consider an infertile heterosexual couple with adopted children to be a family?
I’m sure that’s exactly what Erik is suggesting. I’m sure it logically follows from something Erik’s written, I just can’t quite figure out what. Not that it really matters.
At least your reasons are rational, though too often coupled with irrational editorializing.
Which doesn’t define marriage. Is marriage about benefits? Then marriage equals social welfare. Everybody, including gays, already had this. So the ruling changed nothing on this point.
Is marriage about love and commitment? Then how is it different from sex partners who are going steady? Everybody, including gays, already had this. So the ruling changed nothing on this point.
So, it’s about people’s right to the word, not its meaning? And how do you justify the application of the word, of any word, when you at the same time disregard its meaning? This is the only effect that the ruling seems to have.
And there is no difference between different sexual orientations? Like, it doesn’t matter if the poles of the magnet are of the opposite or of the same sign, nobody should attempt to distinguish here. They are both equally magnets and working just fine either way, right?
I am yet to see a rational justification of the claim that gays were somehow unequal. Marriage was defined as being between a man and woman for rational and objective reasons – that’s how procreation works in nature. It’s irrational blindness to objective facts to ignore this.
Are infertile couples excluded from procreation due to bigotry? No, they are excluded by definition.
And nevermind what perception of family the child gets this way? It used to be common sense that when a family misses a mother or a father, then something’s really missing and the child needs extra care to avoid the possible psychological damage due to the loss. The loss used to be considered real. But now we have evidently evolved and it’s bigotry to say that it’s natural for the child to have both mother and father.
Believe it or not, Mung, precisely the same psychological problems can arise for kids who lose adoptive parents or adoptive sibs.
Hmmmm, how can that happen on your view, I wonder.
Edit: FWIW, I spent five recent years as a volunteer at a place called ‘The Childrens Room” which was set up for kids who have lost a parent or sibling. So I don’t have to join you in basing my views on this matter on blind prejudice and/or antiquated religious foolishness.
Would’ve helped to put wink quotes around ‘evolved,’ Erik. 😉 The ideology of the ‘progressive’ social evolutionist is rather ‘unscientific’ and mainly based on a worldview and philosophy that they usually find very difficult to define. So, in keeping with the language level here at TSZ, should they be called ‘loose sluts’ or ‘loose gigolos’ for evolutionism?
Not merely ‘constantly changing’, mind you, but rather specifically ‘constantly evolving’. 😉 What might be the difference? A sense of personal or societal ‘improvement’? Every day Barack Obama’s thoughts about ‘marriage’ improve because, well, that’s just the way he was made?!
Here’s a response to the so-called ‘evolution of marriage’ by a social scientist internationally renowned on the topic of ‘marriage’ (e.g. World Congress of Families): http://profam.org/docs/acc/thc_acc_frc_oneflesh_040310.htm
Erik,
That is the legal definition of marriage. If you want a separate definition for whatever your church supports, that’s fine. Just don’t expect the legal system to use your sectarian one.
And yes, from a legal perspective marriage is about a wide variety of benefits already described in this thread.
Marriage is a very strong, legally and socially recognized commitment. There is no rational reason to deny it to same sex couples.
It’s about the right of same sex couples to use the same word for the same relationship. If you didn’t recognize the importance of a marriage relationship you wouldn’t be so insistent about denying it to those you are bigoted against.
The meaning of the word “marriage” does not exclude same sex couples. Only you and mean-spirited bigots like you want to do that.
Same sex couples were unequal in many states before this decision because they were not allowed the legal benefits of marriage.
Marriage is simply not defined in the way you keep insisting. The fact that infertile couples can marry, by your limited standards, so long as they are not a same sex couple, demonstrates that conclusively.
They are not excluded from marriage. That shows that your preferred definition is not correct.
You mean the perception that the adults who care for him or her love each other? The horror.
Same sex parents do not negatively affect children:
If you’re worried about children being raised by same sex parents, the best thing you can do for them is to stop being a bigot.
Actually, it’s not a joke at all. There are people who actually think this way!
In fact, I’d guess about 80+% of people who post on this site are ideological ‘social evolutionists’ (even if they’ve never read a single thing about it!!). For them, SSM is simply an example of ‘social evolution’; can’t go back, one-way change, inevitable ‘progress’. I.e. just like it was for Canadian PM J. Chretien, as I quoted on the first page of this thread when Canada ‘evolved’ SSM 10 yrs earlier than USA, proving again that it is a more ‘advanced’ country.
I don’t think they have. They only argue: “it’s too complex & would (have) cost too much. Let’s take the ‘easier’ route, morals & values be damned! We’re a ‘secular’ country, after all ;)”
That’s a major difference between our positions. For you, it is inevitable (which somehow sounds very un-American, though maybe USA has ‘evolved’ into a 15% population of negative determinists). But as for me, I still believe in free will and choice. We can choose a different pathway. Maybe this is because I’m not an atheist or nihilist (and certainly not a secular USAmerican analytic philosopher – uggh!!), after all.
Or maybe it is because the waltos of the world have strangled society with philosophistry parading as knowledge, disguised as wisdom and they let him teach it occasionally in classrooms and to children out of ‘pragmatic’ desperation?
Firstly, I apologize for having misunderstood your basic position. In my limited defense, however, the only people I hear talking about “natural philosophy” these days are conservative Aristotelian-Thomists, such as the natural law people.
Secondly, we have at last identified the very heart of our disagreement — and it turns out to have nothing to do with theism/atheism or science/religion.
It is simply that you are more comfortable in a pre-Enlightenment paradigm. I, on the other hand, have one foot firmly planted in the Enlightenment (Spinoza, Hume, and to some extent Kant) and another foot firmly planted in criticisms of the Enlightenment (Nietzsche, Marx, the Frankfurt School, critical social epistemology).
What is stake here is the Enlightenment itself. Insofar as the SCOTUS decision was a decisive step forward in what Habermas calls “the unfinished project of modernity” — though I am less than enthused about the libertarian arguments that Justice Kennedy gave — I now see more clearly why you are opposed to it.
What’s your take on the Islamic State? They also feel much more at home in a pre-Enlightenment philosophical paradigm, after all! Or — let me guess — they have the objectively wrong pre-Enlightenment philosophical paradigm?
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment
Mung,
Yep, Cassirer is fantastic — though I also recommend Peter Gay’s history of the Enlightenment. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Jonathan Israel’s massive three-volume history of the Enlightenment, but I can’t commit that much reading time to something that huge. I did read his little A Revolution of the Mind and thought it was superb.
Mung,
Not a bad choice, for a corrupted, deluded, usually hopeless IDist. 😉
My ‘editorialising’, Mung, can take down your ‘precious’ (Gollum) Discovery Institute’s CSC ship by exposing the double-talk and lack of respect to theists who reject IDism. That you are silent about it is simply a symbol of ideological vulnerability.
Gregory, this is just an assortment of irrelevant insults. I’d like you to respond to the arguments I (as well as the U.S. Supreme Court) gave against the “separate but equal” approach. If you can’t, just say so–these ugly outbursts of yours are kind of ridiculous.
Gregory, I respect theists who reject IDism and I show this by trying to understand their reasons for doing so. So if you choose to lump me in with the disrepectful DI it earns a big so what. You must be talking about some other ‘Mung’ is the way I read most of your jibes aimed my way. 🙂
Well, what have you understood so far about those reasons? You seem to have accepted none of those reasons or at least not yet acknowledged them (stcordova is much more reflexive and honest about his doubts than you are here). Feser might have helped change your position.
This is for another thread. But ok, then, let’s actually hear what makes the DI ‘disrespectful’ in your opinion. This is the first time you’ve expressed such a thing. You normally just avoid and distract rather than face up.
My ‘jibes’ are aimed at a ‘Mung’ who posts like an ‘insider’ on ‘Uncommon Descent’ and who has not distinguished clearly his/her own views of IDism from those of the DI. Is that not you? Either way, Mung, you’re still in deep shit if you want to face the challenge because of what the DI and IDists have fatuously claimed about ID. And the DI still ‘owns’ IDism, despite what any of the little independent ‘revolutionaries’ themselves might want to say otherwise.
I came to the father through the son.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Cassirer
God’s New Covenant: A New Testament Translation
My favorite New Testament translation.
Why do you suppose there has been no Islamist Enlightenment? [Is that an oxymoron?]
Sorry walto, your bluff & bluster doesn’t move me. Go have fun tiddling with someone else on this day. You are obviously trying to make ‘equal’ what is not ‘equal’. The analytic philosophistic atheism you display comes across as both desperate and disgusting.
More pointless insults from Gregory. But, as I’ve said before, I suppose you have to play with cards you’re dealt. If all you’ve got is bile….
I certainly don’t think it is an oxymoron, but I don’t really know.
I am struggling to draw lines with regard to the rules in this thread. It is a topic in which attacks on an argument are often attacks on people personally
Can I ask everyone to please take a step back and a deep breath. You may find the views expressed by other “bigoted” and “disgusting”.
But please try to critique the views themselves, not to the holders of them, hard though it is.
From this post on, I am going to be a bit more ruthless about moving posts that stray over my fuzzy line to guano.