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 :).
Neil Rickert says,
Some of us would like to go forward to principles expressed way back in the first century but never actually tried.
We will keep pointing these timeless principles out until society gets the hint and finally grows tried of ever changing but never quite satisfying counterfeits.
peace
Oh, you gotta love this part:
That is, if you could ever figure out what on Earth he means by all that.
Cracks me up, he does!
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I hope I’m not causing another “guano” problem by re-posting that part, as I don’t see anything pointedly guano-worthy in those scattershot insults aimed at the side of the barn, not at any target.
Why don’t you try listing some of those specific principles?
And we’ll see how they fit into a world where all god’s children are created equal.
To recap:
(1) in a just society, all persons have equal access to natural and social primary goods (a Rawlsian premise that I neglected to make explicit but which I thought was obvious from what I was saying);
(2) privilege [def] = a person is privileged if she or he belongs to a social group that enjoys different degrees of access, or ease of access, to natural and social primary goods due to the structure of basic institutions;
(3) hence, privilege is unjust;
(4) heterosexual privilege [def] = a person is privileged if his or her sexual preference for opposite-gendered person allows him or her to enjoy different degrees of access, or ease of access, to natural and social primary goods due to the structure of basic institutions;
(5) but, since heterosexual privilege is a kind of privilege, and privilege is unjust, then;
(6) heterosexual privilege is unjust.
This leaves open as to how heterosexual privilege should be mitigated, curtailed, overcome, etc. The decision by SCOTUS to strike down state-level bans on same-sex marriage does, by these lights, curtail heterosexual privilege with regard to the basic institution of marriage. No doubt there were other routes to that goal, but for a variety of contingent reasons, that’s the one that was actualized. And there are much broader and interesting cultural shifts that paved the way for this decision, as we’ve all noted above.
Some much more generic reflections on the vast difference between my conceptual framework and Erik’s . . . .
I’m deeply suspicious of the very distinction between “essential properties” and “accidental properties”. (I am actually pretty suspicious of the very concept of “properties”, since I think that ontologically, there are neither properties nor objects but only processes. That’s why I’m so easy-going — us Heracliteans just go with the flow.)
As a result of this suspicion, definitions of terms do not specify essential properties. Instead definitions are partial, context-dependent specifications of rules of use. And the rules of use are implicit in the communicative practices of a discursive community. This is why meanings can shift over time — because there is nothing over and above the linguistic norms at a particular stage in the history of a discursive community to tie them to anything. All any definition can do is give a partial specification of the rules of use at a given point; the function of a definition is to indicate to a speaker whether or not he or she is conforming to the communal norms, which is of interest to him or her if he or she wishes to be understood.
This is why Nietzsche was correct to say that “only that which has no history can be defined” — if by “define” one means “specify the natural and sufficient conditions for” or “specify the essential properties of”, then anything that is part of the world of life, nature, history, and most generally, ‘becoming’ cannot be defined.
To the extent that we distinguish between essential and accidental properties, it’s a context-dependent, goal-oriented distinction between the aspects of a system that we do not perceive to be manipulable (“essential properties”) and the aspects of a system that we take to be open to manipulation (“accidental properties”). And what we are able to perceive as manipulable itself is contingent on our level of technology as well as general creativity and inventiveness.
(In philosophical terms, I’m suspicious that there are natural kinds specifiable independent of any inquiry.)
When it comes to social conventions and institutions, I don’t see how there could be any essential properties in a metaphysically interesting sense — even if I’m wrong about essential properties for non-human reality. Even if nature has joints at which to be carved (and I’m not entirely sure that it does, hence my vacillation about scientific realism), social institutions do not; that’s just part of the distinction between what is natural and what is societal.
KN, can I ask where your empathy was for the parents? Their son was dying. Maybe an only son, perhaps an only child. I admit I don’t know. Do you think they loved their son and kept his friend/lover away to spite their son?
Or do you think they were perhaps blaming this other party? What was known or thought about aids and how it was contracted at that particular time?
And the hospital? Really? So you want to argue that the bakery should have had the power to over-rule the Kleins? How does that work?
fifthmonarchyman,
You mean that “love thy neighbor as thyself” principle? I for one would be delighted to see the fundamentalists in the US practice that one more.
Elizabeth, given what has gone on in this thread your actions now appear completely arbitrary. I would say keep your admins and replace your moderators. They obviously take their cue from you, in spite of what you may think to the contrary.
You did nothing and they followed suit. Brave boys those.
But I will congratulate you on supporting them when they do, and supporting them when they don’t. At least you are consistent in that! Perhaps you should follow their lead. 😉
I thought the post by VJT was pretty mild. I side with Eric [and others] in scratching my head at monogamy as the essence of marriage. But it was pretty much all I could do to not post a link to this thread as Exhibit A for the overall case he was making.
Where is the reasoned discussion that you hope for? Even the philosophers here are getting all emotional. Makes me want to cry, it does.
But then, when people start out with the stance that there can be no reasonable opposition to their own view, I suppose this is precisely what is to be expected, and oh yeah, it’s probably against those fuzzy site rules too.
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
Mung,
I’ll admit, my empathy for the parents was pretty much mitigated by their failure to acknowledge their son in his full and complete being. Being gay is part of who he was, and their refusal to acknowledge that is, in my books, a moral failing on their part. Be that as it may — they don’t need my forgiveness.
As for the whole bakery thing in Oregon, that actually strikes me as much ado over not very much. Justice would not have been denied if the state had dismissed the complaint as frivolous under the statute. I admit, I haven’t been following the whole story; it didn’t seem as if it was worth my attention, and perhaps I’d have a different opinion if I were better informed.
The right to power of attorney for one’s life-partner strikes me as a reasonable candidate for being a primary social good, but a right to a wedding cake is not.
I always knew I was married to my job!
Mung,
I’m dialing back on my participation in this thread because I don’t see any hope of progress. I’m curious, though — do you see any reasonable argument in favor of denying equal protection under the law to same sex couples who wish to marry? Please note that I’m asking only about the legal definition of marriage and the legal benefits pertaining to that legal relationship.
I think Erik would agree with you.
I’d like to know who the inured party was in this case the patient or his partner?
It seems to me that if the patient was conscious he could invite his partner in and if he was unconscious it really did not matter who was allowed to visit.
Even if he was unconscious at the time of the visit I would expect that an adult son could have expressed his wishes to the hospital staff while he was still lucid. This would be true of anyone a lover or even a friend that his parents did not approve of.
I can’t see a hospital denying a sick persons expressed wishes when it comes to visitors.
This story seems a bit odd to me. If we were talking about a sudden accident I guess it’s possible that parents might be given deference until the patient could communicate his wishes but that might be the case even with a heterosexual spouse. Emergency rooms can be chaotic.
I just don’t see anyone being denied access if the patient made it clear that he was welcome.
peace
We’ve already established that equality is not the goal for your side. If it was you would be campaigning for removing any special privileges that married couples have instead of extending those privileges to a single particular sexual arrangement that is popular this week.
Patrick says,
Now there is something we can agree on. The world would definitely be a better place if we all had a little more love for our fellow man.
Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for you neighbor is to tell him he is headed in the wrong direction.
Peace
I just don’t freaking care all that much. This country (USA) has gone so far from it’s founders that it would not be recognizable to them. Do I think people should have equal protection under the law? Absolutely.
Is that actually what happened in this case? I admittedly don’t know, which is why I’ve pretty much kept my mouth shut in that regard. I honestly can’t even tell you what rights were denied this couple. I don’t know the basis of their lawsuit. I haven’t read the decision. I haven’t read the dissent.
There were four justices who disagreed with the majority opinion in the case, but I don’t see anybody even beginning to care about their reasons for doing so. Why not?
This is a cheerleading thread. To be honest I was actually somewhat disappointed in how it turned from an expression of joy (which is how I chose to read the OP in spite of some of it’s snarkier bits) into what it’s become.
Celebrate the decision. Don’t be a poor winner. 🙂
It’s not very charitable, Mung, to act as if KN used “hospital” as an inanimate object when KN clearly meant “hospital” as in, the hospital personified in its administrators and staff.
Hospital personnel would most certainly have the authority – and the duty – to override the obstruction by parents when the legal spouse wants to visit. And in many cases in the US in recent decades (not just in KN’s particular story) the hospital personnel have found some way to allow both the anti-gay family members and the grieving life-partner (even if not legally married, in a state which didn’t gay marriage) to reach some kind of mutual accommodation. Hooray. In many other cases, the hospital administration itself was part of the problem and all too eager to take the side of the anti-gay family to the exclusion of the partner.
This is the problem which is solved by marriage equality: the physical exclusion of a gay life-partner from their partner’s bedside, which is clearly unjust because it no hospital administrator would dream of excluding a straight partner merely because someone in the family objected. Justice requires that straight partners and gay partners are treated the same when it comes to hospital visits.
Of course it doesn’t solve the problem of the spouse and the rest of the family not getting along. That’s a whole ‘nuther problem..
P.S. Same problem with your funny objection to the “bakery” problem. Of course the “bakery” should have over-ruled the Kleins’ asshole behavior — but that’s only possible when you realize that “bakery” is shorthand for “the people who own, manage, and are employed in the bakery. (And sadly, in that particular case, would have been possible if Aaron Klein was an employee whose manager could have knocked some customer-service manners into him, but alas, that wasn’t how it really happened.)
C’mon, you’re not that stuck in kindergarten-literal language usage.
P.P.S.
Why is anyone, Mung, Erik, or anyone else, focusing on the specific details KN relates, when the problem of hospital exclusion by hysterical bigots has been a recurrent problem in the US? KN’s account is valuable in that it proves it happened in the lifetime of someone (KN) you’re personally acquainted with (for an internet value of “acquainted”, at any rate). IF it happened at least once in the witness of someone you know, how rare do you think it must be? Rare enough that if you pick a hole in KN’s specific account, you can demonstrate that it’s not really a problem with systematic inequality? Really? Focus on the general principle!
fifthmonarchyman,
And deny him civil rights to emphasize your opprobrium?
If you want to show love, respect love between consenting adults.
Mung,
Okay, that’s two issues I agree strongly with you on in a single comment. You’re freaking me out. What have you done with the old Mung?
You and me both!
Evidence please. quantifiable data would be nice.
I’d like to see data comparing homosexual partners verses heterosexual spouses that the rest of the family does not like.
peace
Probably because we’re talking politics and not religion or Intelligent Design. 🙂
Did you vote for Reagan? (Or were you too young to vote back then, lol?)
I’d love to see you explore this with Erik. I’ll leave it at that for now. If Erik doesn’t take it up perhaps I’ll come back to it. Seems contrary to your anti-essentialism though.
p.s. How is it that you were not likewise failing to acknowledge his parents in their full and complete being? It’s your view that they were defective?
What you “can see” or what you “can’t see” is totally worthless.
What really has happened is that anti-gay families and anti-gay policies in hospitals have really blocked visits by gay partners, against the expressed verbal or written wishes of the sick person — who is too sick to fight them physically while still in hospital — and that hospital personnel have sided with the anti-gay family factions for some reason or another.
But we know that where gay marriage is legal, hospitals don’t deny visits by spouses (whether straight or gay) regardless of the other family rejection or acceptance, because spousal visitation rights are automatic (next of kin).
And contrary to your example, it was even more critical in emergency situations that the hospital workers accept a gay spouse as the legitimate next of kin — instead of deferring to a hateful parent — because that’s when medical decisions need to be made most urgently and by the person who knows the patient best, their partner. But wherever gay marriage is illegal, hospital workers have been quite predisposed to believe that the same-sex partner is not in fact the legal next of kin, a mistake they absolutely never would make with a heterosexual partner who enters the ER saying “I’m his wife.” Now, hospital workers have no excuse for not accepting the partner who says “I’m her wife”.
Whether you “see” it, or not …
I think you and I are the only ones in this discussion who want equality for all when it comes to civil rights.
If I had the choice I would not have the government picking winners and losers period, It’s above their pay grade.
This decision is not about civil rights if it was SCOTUS would not have stopped with homosexual couples.
Does that respect go for insestual partners and polygamous groups as well ?
The love that losses out most in the current climate is deep platonic love among same sex friends. It’s seems that all our preoccupation with equating sex with love has made this kind of relationship obsolete in today’s America.
That is the unreported tragedy of it all. No one even stops to morn what we have lost.
Peace
🙁 Stop {blub blub} I’m begging you! 🙁
How can anybody just be friends now what with gay marriages being allowed! {WAH!}
🙁 🙁
hotshoe_,
Nicely said.
Bwahahaha! No need for a research project there since “Spouse” trumps everybody else as legal “next-of-kin”. The rest of the family will have to make nice with the spouse in order to visit. Hopefully, he/she is the forgiving type.
I don’t see why; now they can get married (if they are both single). They could even raise children together. How awesome is that?
But c’mon. How can anybody just be friends now?
In case anybody’s counting, that’s wackadoodle “argument” number 63.
I was just thinking. Can you now lend somebody your bathing suit without being required to marry them?
Shit. What have we done? 🙁
“Just friends” ……. You have made my point for me.
“Just friends” is not at all what I’m describing
You don’t even have a category to express the platonic love that previous generations routinely experienced and you don’t even realize it .
It’s either “just friends” or it’s sex partners in today’s America.
What a pity
peace
You’re right. I put “just” before “friends.” 🙁 It’s like having your all your children and your parents die the same day. Of something awful. Maybe in a fire, or by sitting for too long on radiators!
🙁 And, of course, without their bathing suits which they don’t even WANT back now. 🙁 And they were almost new. 🙁
And I BEGGED YOU. Talk about gratuitous cruelty. {WAH!!!}
fifthmonarchyman:
Do you feel pressured to have sex with your same-sex friends now that gay marriage is widely accepted? I certainly don’t.
People who want platonic friendships can still have them. People who want more can have that, too, if they find a willing partner. What’s not to like?
No better answer than the Digital Cuttlefish I’ve posted before:
Torley’s post was entirely about the crocodile tears of people who are afraid they can no longer publicly exhibit their bigotry without *gasp* being called bigots.
Yep, this thread is a great exhibit of what teary-eyed Torley is trying to make a “case” for: the “right” of irrational discriminators (christian, or not) to use their free speech rights to advocate for continuing discrimination WITHOUT having to bear any consequences whatsoever, not even the tiny “consequence” of someone like me using my own free speech rights to publicly refute them and mock them in return. Hey, look, Torley, this thread is just full of examples of your regressive side behaving like whiney babies who can’t take what they dish out. Bet you’re proud now!
Guess what, this is how public speech works (and it still works like this in countries which don’t have a specified Constitutional right to Free Speech, so Erik or Gregory not being USAian doesn’t exempt them, either.) Sure, Erik or whomever can say whatever bigoted things they want. And people who care about truth may choose to set them to rights. Mung, the fact that it makes you “want to cry” is hysterical.
Oh, keiths, you’re obviously not getting the sad part. It’s like Christmas with mud instead of snow, and all you get are ugly ties, and you know that that’s all you’ll ever get again. And Rudolph has a cold and can’t come. 🙁
I’m counting. The number of instances where anyone here has addressed the arguments of the four dissenting justices == 0.
Celebrating is ok. Gloating? Not so much.
How about “Boston Marriage”?
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I’ll get me coat.
I would, mung, but I’m too sad right now. 🙁
BTW, I HAVE a category:
The love that DARES to say its name.
I can’t explain it, but you’ve suddenly become more attractive. Perhaps we can consummate in your soon to be published OP on Moderation.
Bullshit.
My side’s exact goal is equality, and one strategy for achieving that is to extend the “special privileges’ already granted for opposite-sex couples to all married couples simply by acknowledging that straight and gay marriages are equal in the eyes of the law. It’s not the strategy I might have chosen if I were king — but I’m not — and it did turn out to be the simplest strategy to achieve.
All god’s children are created equal. I notice you have nothing to say about what that implies for god’s approval of your personal decision to deny equality.
I’d be terribly worried if I were you. You’re definitely on the wrong track.
The chief justice’s dissent is heartless (Posner).
Mung,
Sorry, the attraction isn’t mutual.
Perhaps Rich would be willing.
fifthmonarchyman,
I haven’t done the necessary research to understand if adult incestuous relationships meet the criteria of being consensual, so I can’t opine on that.
I see no reason why polygamous groups composed of mutually consenting adults should not have some means of legally defining their rights and responsibilities with respect to one another and any children that may be raised in that structure.
You’ve never heard of bromance? All the cool kids are doing it.
That’s the legal standard Neil? Exactly how “heartmore” was the majority opinion?
Like I said. Emotion.
You mean instead of all the solid serious arguments we’ve seen here about three legged defectives and how “marriage” is a natural kind term, and how sad we should all be that nobody can be {just} 🙁 friends anymore.
Listen, I took the time to present a relatively lengthy argument as to why “separate but equal” was an inappropriate response. All I got back was insults.
Well, in fact, spouse being next of kin is federal law. That hasn’t changed. The only thing which has changed is that the angry in-laws can no longer claim superior rights on the grounds that he/she isn’t “really the spouse”, as they did when same-sex marriage was illegal. Used to be, no matter how committed the partners were to each other, no matter what other paperwork they had filed (power of Attorney, etc), no matter whether they had a “civil union” or not, the mere fact that they couldn’t legally marry meant they weren’t “real spouses” and the family could trample on their relationship.
Stings to be on the side that has to “make nice” to visit now, doesn’t it. Well, that was the situation every gay couple used to be in, a few weeks ago, and because of the inherent inequality of reserving marriage for only straight couples, that was a situation NO straight couple ever had to face. Oh yeah, heterosexual spouses did (and still do) have to face conflicts with disagreeable inlaws, but they never had to “make nice” to be guaranteed hospital visitation rights, because those were federally guaranteed all along.
Why do you guys keep thinking, because some folks now have the same rights and privileges you’ve had all along, that means you’ve lost something ??
I mean, unless you were — or are planning to be — the asshole inlaw — you haven’t lost anything whatsoever. Meanwhile someone else, gay men and women, have gained something that costs you nothing: the right to visit their now-legal spouses in hospital. All gain, no pain. Why is this even a question!
You should be cheering. Not for yourself personally (if you’re not gay) but for your gay family member or co-worker or friends, or just humanity in general, who no longer have to worry about this particularly sad injustice.
True, gay people in America have a million other problems besides marriage equality (and probably marriage wasn’t the most serious problem, just the easiest one to solve) such as housing discrimination and lack of employment protection. But that ‘s a subject for another thread. Can’t go there now.
Hey Patrick,
I had asked above about your two friends each with a child and what demands each child had upon the non-biological parent (if any). Do the two children have equal rights with respect to each parent and does each parent have equal rights with respect to each child? Didn’t see an answer.
I’m not a lawyer. But Posner is a highly respected judge and is familiar with the issues.
Funny that what looks like “gloating” is a perfectly justifiable reaction against mean-spirited assholes such as those who are still trying to paint gays as “defective” and “ungodly”, instead of themselves joining the world-wide celebration so we could all be sweetness and light together. Hell, they don’t even have to join the celebration, they could have just shut up if they didn’t want to precipitate a sarcastic reaction. If they behaved like their decent christian brethren even to the small extent of saying something like “well, it’s not my personal preference, but the majority of people of faith accept it, a majority of the (religious, including Catholic!!) Supreme Court find it guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment … I guess I better keep my sour thoughts to myself and hope for the best, god willing”? Yeah, if they behaved like that, you’d see nothing but a cheerful response, not “gloating”.
Just like I respond to you, Mung: act positive or at least neutral and you get nothing but cheerful positivity from me in return; act like an idiot and you get snark in return.
Edit: fixed some verb tenses.
“Boston Marriage”, “bromance” “new found attraction”
Even your attempts at humor prove my point.
It’s friends or “sort of like sex partners” in your worldview.
You can’t even fathom love unless it is associated with sex in some way.
It’s was not always like this
quote:
As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
(1Sa 18:1)
end quote:
That sort of love has been lost in the modern world. No one even seems to care.
Oh well at least we can celebrate yet another sexual arrangement.
peace
This does not follow from your premises and from that point on you’re just begging the question.
The most you can say here is that the society is not a just society. But to argue that the society is unjust because privilege is unjust is circular, and question begging.
Your definition of privilege does not establish that privilege is unjust. This leaves it up to your first premise to establish that privilege is unjust. But it does no such thing.
Furthermore, everyone has different degrees of access. Blind people do not have the same degree of access to books as sighted people. In a just society should we outlaw books or blindness?