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 :).
Quite right. They differ in that they omit the mumbo-jumbo.
Gregory, you’re clueless.
You might prefer to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak …
Happy to help you out anytime you need it. 🙂
Social security is a system of retirement benefits available to US wage-earners, and their surviving spouses, directly affected by the SCOTUS decision that is the subject of the OP. You really need to get out more.
Fascinating. I’m still not an American, however. 🙂
No, my understanding of the relationship between marriage equality and the Enlightenment has very little to do with the idea of “progress” (in large part because I’m deeply suspicious of the very idea of progress; see Adorno’s short essay, “Progress“).
Rather, the connection hinges on the de-institutionalization of unjustified privilege: differences in access to basic social goods which are not rationally justifiable should not be entrenched in social and political institutions. We see this idea at work in the Enlightenment critique of clericalism and feudalism — in Spinoza, Voltaire, d’Alembert, Paine, and Diderot (“man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrail of the last priest”) — and in the tradition of radical Enlightenment that continues through the 19th and 20th centuries in socialism, feminism, anti-racism, environmentalism, anti-imperalism, anti-militarism, and so forth.
As for “marriage equality”: I’ve asserted many times here that what is really crucial is the de-institutionalization of heterosexual privilege. Same-sex marriage is one way to achieve this. There are alternatives. One alternative would have been to get the state entirely out of the marriage game, so that no federal benefits attach to marriage. This would in effect level the playing field between married and single people. (Universal single-payer health-care would have been a major step in this direction.)
It’s an interesting question why the LGBT rights movement chose to go with same-sex marriage as a route to de-institutionalizing heterosexual privilege. I would conjecture that there was debate about this within the LGBT rights movement, but I have no idea what the history is or why the fight took on the shape that it did.
That it would never occur to you is the problem right there. Both are legal documents provided by a government agency.
Likewise, there are common law marriages which omit the marriage license.
You have that backwards. If the churches didn’t want to recognize the government involvement in marriage, they should have refused to honor marriage licenses, and those married in church should have refused to file joint tax returns.
And if the “folks on your side of the divide” had amended every single law and every single regulation (e.g. hospital visitation policies) in every single institution to include civil unions, then and only then you might have a point.
I blame Henry VIII…
There’s a rich vein of humor on that very subject.
The fact of the matter is that “marriage” is a secular institution, and has been for a very long time. Your particular church is welcome to do whatever you want with your particular version of “matrimony”.
We agree that they are two different things.You are making my point for me.
Yep, and as we all keep saying, they’re free to keep their mumbo-jumbo “holy matrimony” for themselves, for whomever meets their holy status rules.
There’s no threat here. No one wants to interfere with their mumbo-jumbo. No one wants to take it away from them.
Recognizing both straight-marriage and gay-marriage as legally equal is no threat to “holy matrimony”.
I can’t believe these people are such scaredy-cats, terrified that the big bad secular mob is coming for them with pitchforks if they so much as dare to utter their vows in a church. Poor timid little churchmice.
Do we have a sad-face emoji? 🙁
That’s me, being sad for all the poor little bible-bangers who are so threatened by people who love and wish to recognize legal equality.
Heh. I was going to make a similar comment, at some point earlier in this discussion.
What’s that they say? “Great minds think alike … and small minds rarely differ”.
No further comment, yer honor. 🙂
Neil Rickert says,
Not in my country. Here we are supposed to have a separation between church and state. The government should not care if I’m baptized or not in fact it is prohibited from even asking me such a question.
This is already happening with Churches requiring pre marriage counseling and the rise “covenant marriage” as a reaction to the government institution of no fault divorce. The Church is simply being forced once again to adapt to the ever changing fickleness of the state. It’s always been that way
Expect more of it in response to this latest legal fad.
There should not be any benefit in filing joint tax returns It’s not fair to those who choose to live alone.
or I should be able to file a joint tax return one with anyone I chose my sister or two people or whoever . It’s none of the governments business who I choose to form a union with.
If we are so fragile and insecure as to rely on the government to pick our winners for us there will always be losers. It’s how governments operates.
If we want equality lets have real equality not beg the government to pick another winner. Just because this one happens to be cool this week.
peace
DNA Jock.
The folks on my side have never had the power to amend and single law anywhere.
We are a little flock living in hostile territory trying to act as salt and light to those on your side.
Folks on your side are the ones who set up the marriage regulations back last week when homosexuality was unpopular and child-rearing was all the rage. This week you change your mind I’m sure you will again in a week or so. You are fickle that way
All folks on my side can do is what we have always done.
Speak the unchanging truth till we are prohibited from doing so and hope folks on your side will eventually get the message.
Peace
You’re not USAian? If you were, then you would know that joint-tax returns carry a financial penalty for married couples compared to unmarried “head-of-household” (with child or other dependents) status. Maybe it’s unfair, but whaddya gonna do — it off topic for this thread, anyways.
Neil’s point isn’t about which direction the financial bonus flows. Neil’s point (and Petrushka’s earlier, I think) is that the church was all too wiling to entangle itself in government recognition of marriage when the church thought that was to their advantage, and all too willing to cooperate with the governments’ demand that the church officiant sign off on the government marriage license at the end of the “holy” ceremony. But if the church wanted to keep some special status for “holy matrimony” it should have refused to do the government job, should have required all of its members who wanted a legal marriage as well as a spiritual one to go to the separate civil office to get one. (That is actually the procedure in some nations, but has never been true in the US.)
And the church members who united in “holy matrimony” should as a matter of principle refuse to claim they were “married” on various government documents (such as tax forms) unless they indeed have the separate, government, formality of civil marriage in addition to their church ceremony. But no, they were happy to combine both worlds, spiritual comfort that they were united in the eyes of god, plus whatever advantages accrue to being recognized as civilly married, all in one convenient stop.
That is, they were happy until they decided that same-sex marriage being recognized suddenly devalued their own marriages. No longer being so special makes them cry. Too bad, so sad. That’s what they get for being unethical selfish religionists.
So nice to know one is always right.
Anyhow. I’d like you to take your salt and choke on it. (You’re already blind, so there’s not much advice I can give you for what you can do with your light.) Choking and being blind can’t be too awful a fate for someone who knows every important Truth about the universe, so your whining about what everyone has done and is doing to you is very unbecoming. Much better to have everlasting life (or 42 virgins or whatever you’re sure you’re getting) than to be treated gently by Caesar, no?
Firstly, as has been pointed out, yes, legal recognition was withheld, and the alternative would have been much more extensive and therefore expensive rewriting of the “civil union” laws.
Secondly, as has also been pointed out. as the difference between these two approaches hinges solely on the word used, namely marriage, it is a distinction without a difference, and the reservation of the word for straight marriage is discriminatory.
Thirdly, as has been said before the existing definition of marriage does not include the requirement that the couples be mutually fertile. So all arguments that marriage must involve children is based on post hoccery.
Lastly, the definitions of words reflect usage, not the other way round. You are entitled to your view that gay couples are not *really* married by your own definition. But your idiolect is compulsory for everyone, and is also not the law.
Perhaps miscommunication. My “both” referred to the birth certificate and the marriage license. I was not commenting on baptismal records.
You possibly inadvertently put your finger on the issue here, Gregory. The answer is a simple no.
Just as nobody is making it illegal (as far as I know) for any church to refuse to marry a gay couple. In fact, in the UK, it would require an Act of Parliament to allow the Church of England to do so.
Time to put another anti-Catholic myth to rest:
Whether it belongs to the human law to repress all vices?
Oh, bless your little heart.
You do know that the majority of faithful christians are in favor of marriage equality, don’t you?
“Our side” includes all the decent and loving theists as well as atheists, all those not too afraid to expand love and equality to every human in spite of historic indoctrination of hate.
Good luck with your “salt” 🙂
#LoveWins
Is there even one single important Truth that you know, waldo? Even one?
Perhaps it’s time for Hobbes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/
Post hoccery! What a great phrase. I love it. 🙂
I think that’s better …
mung, I know whatever propositions I believe and have warrant for that are also true. Some things I think I know, I likely don’t; others I may know without realizing.
As to importance, I leave that kind of categorization to y’all. It’s more your thing to have opinions on that sort of stuff.
Hey hotshoe.
You do know that the Church on earth is not represented by any single organization but instead is individual believers each dealing with the effects of remaining sin on us.
We will always fall short and individually we often act as if we are still part of the world.
When you talk as if the Church did this or that in the past what you should say is that sinful people who claimed to be part of the Church acted in a certain way.
The fact is the Church has always been in the tiny minority and it has always been folks on your side who pull the strings of government. That much never changes all that changes is what you find to be popular at any given moment. Today it’s LGBT tomorrow it will be something else.
You can’t blame the Church for excluding people from secular marriage we don’t have any authority over that realm. That determination was made by folks from your side last week when homosexuals weren’t cool.
peace
As you are coy about what you mean by “the Church,” it’s hard to be sure, but on most ordinary interpretations of that term, what I’ve excerpted from your post above is a lot of bullshit.
I would appreciate if you’d spell out your point, Mung.
Humor me and explain why it’s “time for Hobbes”.
Whatever, dude. Or dudette as the case might be.
You could not possibly pay me enough to care about your opinion on who are genuinely part of your church or not.
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who claims to be a christian is one. I assume they’re being honest and I figure they’re the ones who would know. Who am I to judge who’s a true christian?
You don’t like it, go argue with THEM not with ME. If you think THEY are fucking up your church, take it up with THEM. If you think the majority of faithful christians are wrong to accept same-sex marriage, go rant on some christian forum, not here.
One thing you are right about: the side of the H8ers is tiny, and getting tinier every day. Thank god!
P.S. Just a little hint for your future happiness: there is no such thing as heaven or hell and you are not going to be judged by god for eternity based on your “sins” here on Earth. Whew, that’s a relief, isn’t it!!
Of course the majority favor it it’s popular is it not.
If folks are for what is popular they are on your side by definition. But I’m not sure how you can call yourself a faithful christian and disregard what Jesus’ chosen apostles say about the issue.
peace
Again, this is just false. I understand it may make you feel good to keep posting it, but it is simply not true. I’m hoping it will be one day, however.
ETA: Well, not “by definition”–but sure, I’d love to have more people on my side.
So here I was, hoping for an appropriate “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoon. But all you gave us was an old dead philosopher.
Heh. If we define “people who are on our side” as whoever goes for whatever is popular then (by definition!! Oh lord, I can hardly stand the irony) I’m hardly ever on “our side”.
Last month was the first time in ages that I turned out to be on the “popular” side of a major issue in the US. Because to be honest, in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, neither equality nor justice have been very popular concepts in my lifetime.
As KN said above, it’s a radical part of the Enlightenment which works on “socialism, feminism, anti-racism, environmentalism, anti-imperalism, anti-militarism, and so forth.” It’s radical, not mainstream, not popular. At least not yet, although we can hope that it will be one day. 🙂
.
This may be relevant:
Jesus and Mo
Warning: Not safe for work if you work with humor-impaired religionists.
me before
If folks are for what is popular they are on your side by definition.
walto
Me
Lets go to the definitive definition of the two sides shall we.
quote:
They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
(1Jn 4:5-6)
and
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
(Joh 15:19-20)
end quote:
In my worldview the truth of a proposition refers to it’s correspondence to the Truth. And the Truth says popularity is a big part of what defines your side.
That settles it for me. I know that you will disagree but your opinion is just not as important to me as his.
peace
PS
Our mutually exclusive worldviews are immaterial except when we talk about things like morality. That is why I mostly avoid these discussions. But I had a minute to kill
If you really believed that, then you would not be upset about the same sex marriage issue.
Your worldview is consistent with Truth being false–that is, not corresponding with actual facts. If that’s ok with you, fine, but you should know that while what you say may be True (as you use the word), it may be patently false as everybody else means it. I.e., not in accord with actuality, fantasyland, inapposite, inapplicable, etc., etc. Thus, when I say that what you have asserted here is wrong, or false, I certainly don’t mean “not comporting with this or that Gospel”–I mean not comporting with the facts of the world. And much of what you’ve written simply does not so accord with the facts. Many of your statements are what pretty much everybody in the world understands by FALSE.
Hobbes rejected natural law and offered an alternative.
Rejection of the natural law seems to be a common thread here so I wonder if people are doing so because they are Hobbesian or if they have some other alternative.
Who knows, maybe some folks here have never even heard of Hobbes and will be motivated to find out more.
On a more general note, ideas are often [always?] tied to philosophies and people are often unaware of the history of those ideas. I think it’s important to understand the history of an idea because that gives it context that might be otherwise lacking and lead to a better understanding of why (or why not) to accept an idea.
Many philosophers are not so much arguing for a particular idea but rather arguing against (rejecting) that which came before.
Neil Rickert
I’m not upset.
I had a minute to kill and offered a libertarian solution that should be acceptable to both sides. Your side immediately rejected demonstrating one again that equality was not what this was about instead it was always about silencing those who refuse to celebrate a particular sexual choice.
mission accomplished
peace
lol at that cartoon. Christians. The New Gays.
Actually though, Christians were persecuted [and still are]. Perhaps some have forgotten the past and should be reminded.
p.s. on Hobbes.
http://theenlightenmentthinkers.weebly.com/thomas-hobbes.html
For all you fans of the Enlightenment. (Another reason Hobbes seems relevant given the current trend in the discussion.)
I’m kind of Hobbesian in taking a satisfaction-of-desire theory of wellbeing. But he was much more religious than I am. More than you too, probably.
Mung,
Arguably, Hobbes’s innovation was less that he rejected natural law per se and more that he rejected political theology: the idea that legitimate political sovereignty was grounded in theological metaphysics. (The so-called “divine right of kings” would be an example of political theology. So too is something like “Manifest Destiny”.)
Though I’m not a social contract theorist myself, I share Hobbes’s rejection of political theology. I’m certainly a democrat insofar as I think legitimate sovereignty derives from “the consent of the governed”.
That said, it is a huge problem for democratic political theory that consent can be so easily manufactured and manipulated through advertisement and propaganda. Very few political theorists have taken this problem seriously; one of the exceptions is Jason Stanley in his new How Propaganda Works.
This settles the matter neatly.
So far so good.
What is heterosexual privilege and in what way is it unjust?
It is okay by me, too, to make marriage something unlegislated, but to a very different effect. Instead of “de-institutionalization of heterosexual privilege” I think it’s not good to keep up an institution that is unpopular, even though it should be respected. It should be respected, because it sanctifies the nucleus or cornerstone of society, namely family, but since marriage is almost universally mocked, broken with impunity, and the concept has disintegrated so that people refuse to understand its purpose or, as in case of the supreme court, fail to understand it even when they are expected to be eminently qualified to understand it, we should look for alternative ways to uphold family.
Here’s some Hobbes:
The office of the sovereign, be it a monarch or an assembly, consisteth in the end for which he was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety of the people, to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an account thereof to God, the Author of that law, and to none but Him.
Heterosexual privilege is when a difference in sexual orientation affects one’s access to basic social goods and resources. When a man is not permitted to visit his dying gay lover in a hospital, because the law does not confer on them the same rights that a heterosexual couple has, that’s heterosexual privilege.
If you ask me — though I know you didn’t — the problem with the deterioration of marriage are at least as economic as they are cultural.
More like, rejection of the twisted christian misuse of some concept of “natural law” as a club with which to beat anyone who doesn’t conform to their ingrained prejudices.
Funny how whenever god speaks to a man in his prayers, god always happens to say whatever that man wanted to hear to begin with.
If their side — whose narrow bigoted views we reject — actually respected “natural law” they would be completely in favor of natural human rights (ie equal rights) in accordance with such freedom-founding documents as the US constitution.
The Catholic church is ridiculously backwards, imposing an antique philosophy on its followers, but surprise! 2 of the Catholic justices were able to see their way clear to embrace the inherent dignity of all persons regardless of genitals matching in marriage. Yes, surprise, that’s a “natural law” view: that the true meaning of the content of a law (does the wording of the 14th Amendment apply to gay marriage) can only be determined by reference to moral principles (may we morally discriminate against a same-sex couple – and their children – with no larger principle than “it’s been that way for a long time”). Well done, Justices!
“Natural law’ is fine as long as it isn’t a dead stick.
Kantian Naturalist
Yes it must be economics. That is the ticket.
It could not possibly be the enthronement of human selfishness or treating the sexual desires of the individual as if they were the ultimate in life.
If we just had more money things would be better. The richer a society gets the better marriage shape must be in.
The answer must be to keep expanding the franchise to other sexual partnerships.
The additional cash they bring to the table surely will stem the tide and right the ship.
peace
Yes, I’ve seen the claim that something was withheld, but nothing of substance. Only the word was withheld. And, as I have pointed out, there are good reasons why the word was withheld. Namely, it has a meaning that is inappropriate for same-sex couples.
Good to see that we agree that it’s just about the word. To withhold the word “marriage” from same-sex couples is discrimination only if there’s some substance to it that was unobtainable to same-sex couples otherwise. You have only named some “benefits” that same-sex couples supposedly didn’t have, but as soon as we get into specifics (inheritance, recognition, “love”, etc.) we invariably see that they actually had it all. So there was no discrimination and gays have been making noise for no reason.
It’s the other way around. Infertility is typically found out when people get married. When infertility is found out, it counts as a defect in marriage, because marriage cannot fulfil its function.
Things can be broken, you know. A three-legged dog is not in complete health. According to you of course three-legged dogs have all the rights of four-legged dogs, including the rights that they cannot have in principle due to the missing leg.
The law is a funny thing. I think reminding you of the constitutional amendments XVIII and XXI is enough to give you an idea.
There have been broadly two ways to implement gay laws in the world. One is, as in United States and Canada, to short-circuit the concept of marriage. This may seem a harmless idea, because evidently nobody has a clue of the purpose and meaning of marriage anyway – the evidence is on plain display in the supreme court’s decision and in this thread.
The other way is taking another concept, such as “civil union”, for gays to “enjoy the benefits” of marriage, but without the word marriage. There are perfectly sound reasons why the second approach exists. For example, the word “marriage” may quite legitimately be reserved for religious purposes and the word “civil union” is a legally separate concept for state-sanctioned registration. The reasons of the state to register couples somewhat differ from the reasons of the church, so the different concepts are justified. Note that in Catholic countries generally the churchly and stately ceremonies were already kept strictly separate – if you want to get married, you must do the stately ceremony, and if you want a churchly marriage, you are free to do the church ceremony after that (even the Prince of Monaco had to do it this way, two ceremonies). They already had a legal concept, such as “civil union”, to denote the stately thing, so they are not even creating a new concept, they are just modifying the concept they already had.
Another reason to do it the “civil union” way can be, for example, that the concept of marriage is defined, in a civil law country (basically all continental Europe contrasted from Anglo-Americans), in the law called “Family Law”. In such a case, it is procedurally impossible and conceptually nonsensical to redefine “marriage” there – it would inevitably affect the legal framework concerning families. So, instead they create a new law, called “Civil Union Law” or “Cohabitation Law” or similar, which establishes the concept of “civil union” or “cohabitation” and tries to not affect the legal structure concerning families. An example of this solution is Germany.
You, of course, never saw any of this happening. You thought redefining a word in laws is a piece of cake and has no consequences. Oh, (wo)man, if we all were as incompetent and sloppy in our jobs as the United States Supreme Court is permitted to be…
Gregory,
Why all the scare quotes?
You and Erik, for two here, are unwilling to allow homosexual couples to use the word “marriage” to refer to their legal status. That view is equivalent to claiming that homosexuals are not deserving of the same civil rights as heterosexuals.
Five is a big ask, given the general nonsensical silliness people believe in the name of religion.
There are five not bad rules from the ten commandments:
– Thou shalt not kill
– Thou shalt not commit adultery
– Thou shalt not steal
– Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour
– Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ass
Now, those aren’t specifically religious beliefs, just reasonable guidelines for any group of sentient social apes. At least the priest caste was sharp enough to codify them. Too bad they didn’t say anything about slavery and rape.
Erik,
Do a widower and his children not constitute an ErikFamily(tm) then?
fifthmonarchyman,
Getting the government out of the marriage business altogether would be my preference as well.
So long as the government is involved, do you agree that the legal benefits of marriage should not be denied to homosexual couples?
If I were to determine what conceptual background you have (as I must, in order to figure out what you are after here), I would say none. To correct my impression, please provide your conceptual background.
As for mine, look up the words “essential” and “accidental”. Or “primary” and “secondary”. Or “complete” and “incomplete”. Or “relevant” and “irrelevant”.
But why should we agree that’s “legitimate”? It’s completely illegitimate for the religious assholes to try to hijack the secular, legal, term. which has been used by western governments for a millennia to reference the secular legal rights and responsibilities of couples.
If the religious assholes want a term “reserved for religious purposes” then let them make up their own term, not steal ours; let them use “holy matrimony” which is already exclusively theirs.
Only if “civil union” were exactly the same for all straights and all gays (which never was the case in the US) and only if every one of the tens of thousands of statutes which currently pertain to “marriage” were re-written to refer to “civil union” instead.
But again, why? Why should the religious assholes be allowed to steal the word marriage, which never belonged to them ever, and require everyone in the whole nation to change our ways, our words, and our laws just to satisfy their narrow little minds?
Except they call the “stately thing” MARRIAGE NOT “CIVIL UNION”. As they should. And as we should, also.
Your ideas stink to high heaven.