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 :).
Elizabeth,
Right. In fsct, 60% of Republicans under 30 support same-sex marriage.
Yeah, thanks, I’ve been meaning to get back and edit that but I’ve been too lazy … I’ll go ahead and fix it now.
Really?! Wow, I’d better tell some friends their ‘Aunt Lizzie’ is now claiming to be authoritative about it.
Then you’re simply blind, Lizzie. Even the ‘polygamy’ that you are now defending as scriptural, is between a ‘man and a woman’, not between two (or more) women or between two (or more) men. But yet again, selective reading means you’ve made an argument against a ghost.
You conveniently collapse ‘man’ and ‘woman’ into ‘person.’ That’s fine for gender neutral languages. But it isn’t for English. Woman does not = man; man does not = woman … and most men and women, boys and girls are quite ok with that … given it is ‘natural’ (i.e. based on biology men and women are not ‘equal’).
And guess what, Miss Lizzie, you failed to answer the ‘sacred’ part. Surprise? Is that perhaps because NOTHING is sacred in your nihilistic adult atheist waffling wonderland?
Are you actually going to argue that marriage is NOT sacred in the Abrahamic faiths? https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/06/after-obergefell-a-first-things-symposium
If it was just about ‘rights’, then calling it a ‘civil union’ would suffice. The Canadian Conservatives proposed exactly this before the whipped vote in the HoC. The case in front of scotus could have been easily resolved if that were the only issue. Clearly activism for more than mere ‘legal rights’ was involved.
If gay people asked for the ‘right’ to bear children without a seed and egg, would you simply wish to ‘grant’ it to them against natural powers with a wave of your magic wand, Lizzie?
I can’t find a link to the whole decision, although I know it’s already been published somewhere, but I think your concern was addressed in the majority opinion. For example:
— quoted from the NYTimes.
… And there’s this, quoted from The Atlantic:
There are already folks working on what this decision means for state laws pertaining to adoption by same-sex couples, surrogate parenting, etc. I read this in the LA Times:
fight for gay families is next
Of course, the regressives — like the lying Institute for American Values (is there any organization with “American” of “Family” “Values” in its name which is NOT actually against the founding values of liberty, happiness, and justice for all??) — are trying to making a stand against legal adoption of children by gay parents, but eventually they’re going to fail at that as they failed to hold on to their special exception for heterosexual marriage.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/14
What an idiotic thing to say.
This is wrong on so many levels that it would take a lifetime to address it, as it has surely taken a lifetime for it to infect Gregory’s worldview.
Gregory, you do know that you will never be forced to marry a man, don’t you? Breathe, relax, you’re going to be fine; no one is going to hurt you.
What on god’s green earth is your stake in this fight for legal equality? Why do you want to be on the side of the evangelical bigots and the regressive Abrahamists and the phobic chavs?
To be honest, Gregory seems to favor civil unions.
Yes, I’m aware of that and breathing easy about it.
One could easily turn around and accuse you of anger against religion, based on numerous posts here at TSZ. But what would be the point in naming the obvious at TSZ?
Gregory, your claim that what the gay and lesbian population wanted were rights that could have been provided by a civil union law is false. They actually did not want a ‘separate but equal’ situation that seems to you would have been fine for them. They wanted to be able to get MARRIED. You or I may personally think that’s silly or pointless, but…too bad for us.
Thanks, Mung. Your page links to the published opinion, pdf
It’s a “slip” opinion — a term I had not seen before — that is, the version released to the printers which might contain corrections from the bench opinion.
walto,
A ‘marriage’ in which a ‘couple’ physiologically CANNOT bear children is by definition not ‘equal’ to a ‘marriage’ in which a ‘couple’ physiologically CAN (most often) bear children. Do you really disagree?
Calling same-sex official partnerships ‘civil unions’ gives those men or women ‘equal rights’ by law with ‘married’ couples, but not ‘equality’ by higher counts where it is not valid.
‘The land of the free and the home of the brave’ seems to have a serious difficulty with ‘equal’ and ‘unequal’ these days. Not a surprise, following the ‘99% vs. 1%’ claims of recent years. Congratulations, what an ‘equal’ country you are, USA!!
The real problem for the conservative position is that it requires denying a key principle of the Enlightenment: that what is regarded as sacred (good, natural, right) by one community cannot be held as morally authoritative for all communities.
One of the best ideas to come out of the Enlightenment is what Rawls and Habermas call “the priority of the Right over the Good”. While it is certainly true that different communities promote various goods as important for human flourishing, and also true that individuals often (though not always) realize their conception of the Good in communities, the state must be neutral with regard to different conceptions of the Good. Laws and policies are just to the extent that they enable individuals and communities to develop their own conception of the Good while at the same time preventing any individuals or communities from imposing their own conception of the Good on other individuals or communities.
From this perspective, the fact (if it is a fact) that most Abrahamic believers hold that the sanctity of marriage is limited to (at least) one man and (at least) one woman is simply irrelevant to whether the legal benefits of marriage should be withheld to same-sex couples. Whether or not any religious organization chooses to sanctify a same-sex marriage — and while many don’t, some do! — has no bearing on the question of marriage as a political and legal status.
While one could, it is true, adopt “civil unions” for same-sex couples and “marriage” for opposite-sex couples, this would amount to nothing more than a vast duplication of federal laws involved. There are over 1000 federal laws, restrictions, and benefits that are attached to the status of “married”; all of these would have to be duplicated, with “marriage” replaced by “civil union” in all of them. The substance of the laws would be identical. But it would quite expensive it would be (to the American taxpayer!) to duplicate all of these statutes and policies.
The expedient, and also morally just, decision is the one that SCOTUS arrived at: there are no non-religious grounds for denying that same-sex couples who want to enjoy the goods of marriage are entitled to the legal protection thereof, and any religious grounds for denying this have no place in a pluralistic society.
Separate “but equal” has never worked. Gregory doesn’t need to be from the USA to be aware of the horrible injustices inflicted on black American schoolchildren in the name of separate “but equal”. Gregory doesn’t need to be from the USA to remember the innocent people murdered by the bigots in the fight for civil rights. The fight for gay marriage is just another facet of our long-running fight for equal rights, but in this term it’s about sex identity rather than color of skin.
There is absolutely no reason why intelligent adults would be willing to settle for separate “but equal” when it comes to their 14th Amendment constitutional right to equal protection.
For everyone, not just our lad Gregory, here’s the lynchpin of this particular case:
emphasis mine
And as already noted by Neil Rickert, “civil union” would never incorporate the literally thousands of other laws which refer to “marriage”. To grant true legal equality, we could change literally thousands of statutes at every level of government plus hundreds of thousands of forms – from library card applications and hospital admittance paperwork to IRS volumes — or we could change one thing: make same-sex marriage legally equal to heterosexual marriage in all 50 states.
Presto! Problem solved, nobody hurt, everybody wins.
Huh, whatever.
I notice you don’t want to answer my questions:
What on god’s green earth is your stake in this fight for legal equality? Why do you want to be on the side of the evangelical bigots and the regressive Abrahamists and the phobic chavs?
Gregory, why did you choose to avoid those questions?
You do know what it makes you look like, don’t you?
ad hominem plus more ad hominem is still ad hominem
Gregory,
Depending on what you mean by “sacred”, it may be. However, not all denominations are bigoted against non-heterosexuals. Much as I hate to quote Wikipedia, they have a list.
Yeah, yeah, Mung. Be sure not to specify what you actually mean. Wouldn’t do to make clear what you really meant to say, because then someone might be able to muster a cogent response to it. Better to leave it like Jello. No one can fight with Jello, can they.
P.S.
Since I’m smarter than your Jello tactic, and I do know you were attempting to slam me without being specific, I will note that you either
a) don’t understand what “ad hominem” means
or
b) can’t read for comprehension
or
c) chose not to read for comprehension.
I didn’t say people shouldn’t listen to Gregory because he’s an idiot.
I said Gregory looks like an idiot because of what he says.
The first would have been an ad hom.
The second is just an observation. Rude maybe, but still not ad hom.
You’re smart enough to know the difference, and if you didn’t know it already, you can learn something now.
Gregory,
I’ve had a vasectomy*. Should my marriage be annulled?
* I then ended up walking around Geneva, up and down hills, all the next day. Want to hear the rest of the story?
Kantian Naturalist,
Again, stop and think clearly. This is not about children (minors) or relatives (being forced or ‘withheld’) in sexual relations. If the ‘legal benefits’ of a ‘civil union’ are the same as a ‘marriage’, then what’s the problem, even if only theoretical of calling an official same-sex ‘partnership’ a ‘civil union’?
As for the concern of a “vast duplication of federal laws”, we live in the electronic-information era. Button pushing goes a long way. It’s actually not that difficult! (do you think it would cost < 5 billion USD?) And, get this, KN, if it serves to protect both a physiological and a moral truth, at the same time that it potentially relaxes social tensions (which are obviously going to be heightened because of this radical departure in USA legalism), why not risk the attempt first?
Your gov’t, after all, spent 5 billion USD trying to woo Ukraine away (along the way encouraging/overseeing a coup and domino effect that is endangering the entire world with nuclear war!) from its Slavic roots. Yet at the same time you have the gall to imagine it would be ‘quite expensive’ (boo hoo!) to try to find a middle ground on this very sensitive and socially disruptive topic? Those are some seriously (and imo dangerously) confused priorities!
Are you really excluding core national morality simply based on a pluralist populace? I’d have thought monogamy and same-sex marriage would be amongst the most central and easiest to defend (even after ‘Sex in the City’). Are you referring especially to alienated & secular Jews, like yourself KN, as were those who voted against traditional marriage in scotus?
It’s not really about the ‘conservative position’. What is at stake is trying to make equal what is not equal, while at the same time facing amongst the grossest of inequalities in the world (Brazil being pretty much the worst) on an economic scale. The alternative is to face ‘equality’ in a religious sense (whether in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha’i, Buddhism, etc.), which almost nobody here at TSZ, including KN, wants to do with any depth of exploration.
Yes there are, but you seem completely unaware of them, even as a secular/atheist Jewish practising ‘philosophist’. It is likely because you have chosen atheism for yourself that you don’t see those grounds. Wrt ‘marriage’ vs. ‘unions’ they are based on physiological, social, psychological, economic, anthropological and cultural grounds, among others. But that is different than arguing for the ‘dignity’ of persons, which of course I too advocate wrt homosexuals.
Speaking merely ‘pragmatically,’ the SSM-USA case wins, of course (how to out-weigh Hollowood?). But when speaking ethically, morally, culturally or sociologically the conversation is much more challenging, and once it brings in religion, respectfully, the future is less clear than this ‘court case’ suggests. But people will party for now as if ‘(erotic) love wins’ (and hate loses) until the next hurdle.
Then again, USA has been backing losers by espionage and force (submit to our superiority or we’ll bomb you!) for decades now and most of the world knows and (more or less) sees that clearly. Talk about the moral low ground, this is it.
p.s. regarding ‘how people look’, ‘hotshoe’. Muslims are more trusted in the USA than atheists like you. That alone has to tell you how you look, as angrily anti-religious and empty-hearted as you have shown yourself to be here. I’ve met decent atheists who show respect and fair language; you, sadly have shown nothing like that.
Gregory,
Why are you so hung up on denying the word “marriage” to same sex couples? Do you think they love each other less than a man and a woman? Do you think their commitment to each other is less? Or do you just think they are less?
Agreed. You do live, don’t you, in the religiously f*&#ed up ‘denominationalist’ & fragmented (yet sociologically surprisingly homogeneous) USA?
I’m not suggesting atheists’ ‘rights’ be taken away from them. On the contrary. I’m just saying I think atheism is a shallow, unwise and hopeless worldview/ideology.
Do you think infertile hetero couples should be denied the right to marry then? Or will you be your usual hypocritical self?
Did you not see the (most often) part?
Has anybody else noticed how physiology, biology, physics, and other sciences matter when they make a(n apparent) point against religion, but when the point against religion can only be achieved by dissing the sciences, then sciences suddenly don’t matter? All that matters is the point against religion, or against traditions, or against moral realism in general.
The case is really simple: Marriage has a specific definition. Marriage never was a right, and there’s no logical way to construe marriage so that it could become a general right.
Marriage is a sort of privilege, even though very common, like driving a car. Anyone who *can* is free to do so, but not everybody can, for specific reasons – and never will. Why is this so hard to accept? Why twist logic, language, and traditions to try to make it appear different? Why remove common sense from laws?
You have little basis to judge such value on this question without religion. ‘Less/more’ according to what standard/Standard? I am certainly not ‘against’ most LGBT people, just as I am not against most heterosexual people.
The case for ‘civil unions’ is quite strong & sociologically convincing. This is not in any way bigoted or biased against homosexuals. But I’m under no illusion that the majority of USAmericans don’t recognise the subtleties of distinguishing ‘marriage’ from ‘civil union’. You’re not exactly an intellectual or clever people in the USA, taken on the whole, let’s at least be honest about that (the YECism/IDism ideologies just touch the surface of the problem).
Except that the legal benefits of marriage and civil union are not the same.
To repeat: marriage is a federally protected status. Civil union is not. The federal government does not have “civil union” as a protected status in any of its laws. There are some individual states which have civil unions, civil unions do not confer the same benefits as marriage in the states that have them, and no state is obliged to recognize a civil union conferred in another state.
So the first premise of the argument is mistaken.
That said, I do quite agree with you about income inequality in the United States (I’m on the Occupy Wall Street side of things), and our foreign policy has been one imperialistic disaster after another, beginning at least with the Monroe Doctrine (if not before). We can certainly talk about those issues, and I’m hopeful we’d find more agreement on those issues than on marriage equality. But they do seem like a change in topic nevertheless.
Gregory,
Yes. And?
You know not all homosexuals are atheists, right?
I’m an atheist because I’ve never been presented with any evidence for anything that might reasonably be called a “god” and because there is plenty of evidence that humans make shit up.
Erik,
Legally, marriage is a state sponsored construct with significant benefits pertaining thereto. The 14th Amendment makes it clear that no state may deny any person equal protection under such laws.
If your church wishes to restrict the definition of marriage within its members, that is not a legal issue. It is, however, a different concept than the one on which the Supreme Court ruled.
Gregory,
Then why is it so important to you that their relationships not be called “marriage”? Does it harm you in some way? If two people want to enter into a legal and emotional commitment, on what basis other than bigotry and mean-spiritedness would you deny them that option?
Pretty much admitting that what follows is going to be ad hominem.
Followed by more ad hominem:
You’ve yet to address his actual argument, but don’t let that stop you.
Instead attack Gregory as a person. Question his motives and integrity. Smear him by association. Don’t want to call it ad hominem? What do you call it?
Kantian Naturalist,
If the US gov’t can’t (or won’t even try to?) federalise ‘civil unions’ into law, that’s of course a problem. Is your gov’t really that chronically WEAK as to be incapable (oh, goodness, don’t Snowden me on that)? Likewise, if your silly national policies [or ‘pragmatic’ convictions] can’t enable more than 2 political parties to form a functioning gov’t, that’s a problem. But the ‘evolutionary’ logic of many USAmericans is simply to believe the ‘nation’ is (inevitably, just like the prices of housing in USA *always* supposedly grow 😉 ) getting ‘better, stronger, faster, bigger, power,’ etc. You have lost track of what distinguishes fantasy from reality, with your Hollowood dreams of ‘more.’
China holds so much of your post-colonial debt, cracked ‘skeptic’ USAmericans (sorry to the few non-skeptic USAmericans reading this). This is a simple empirical reality that shows your atheist ‘faith’ in (national) progress is too thin to cherish.
Yes, your country’s “one imperialistic disaster after another” is a big problem. I definitely agree with that, KN. But similar fielded claims like “we simply can’t withdraw military bases from other countries” (i.e. disextensification) don’t make up for the simple lack of respect for moral and religious traditions that this 5-4 ruling shows.
The 3 secular Jews on scrotum shouldn’t even be called ‘Jews’ anymore; they are atheists, not religiously faithful. Real Jews should disown them. They gave up their ‘normative’ moral stance quite obviously (e.g. Ginsburg) for populism.
p.s. “You know not all homosexuals are atheists, right?” Duh.
Patrick,
Civil union. Not ‘equal’. Obvious. Simple. (But perhaps too complex for USA.)
And are the benefits just so for everyone? Or is there a specific purpose for the benefits? And, is it so that the benefits *should* be for everyone? On what grounds?
Of course not. There are specific kind of people who can marry, e.g. kids are not allowed. Also, there is a specific purpose to marriage, but yeah, pro-LGBT side never acknowledges basic logic and rationality on this point.
There’s such a thing as First Amendment. Does freedom of speech grant freedom to everyone to say anything they please without impunity? Did it ever mean that? *Should* it mean that?
And the vote was tight, so the matter is not a simple one. I am yet to see one rational (evidence-based or scientific) argument for the re-definition of marriage. From the moral point of view there obviously is no justification, but you may try a moral argument too, if you like.
Gregory,
Please answer my question: Why is it so important to you that their relationships not be called “marriage”? Does it harm you in some way? If two people want to enter into a legal and emotional commitment, on what basis other than bigotry and mean-spiritedness would you deny them that option?
Erik,
Well said. However, ‘The Skeptical Zone’ is predominantly ‘skeptical’ of *all* moral arguments. Why? This is because of ‘the leader’ Lizzie’s (quasi-Buddhist) cognitive (not just cultural) relativism.
Lizzie’s chronic anti-theism (with a soft spot underneath) seems to be seeking some kind of ground to ‘stand’ on, but can’t find it. Maybe a new, new, new 60s+ conversion is in her future. But this would have to go beyond just waving rainbow flags & claiming pseudo-holism amongst largely ‘analytic’ atheist English cognitive ‘scientists’ & fellow ‘new atheists’.
Patrick,
I have answered your ‘question’ the way I wanted to answer it. You, sir, seem to be simply shallow (and definitely boring!). Try a little verticality, maybe? 🙂
Erik,
According to the 14th Amendment, the legal benefits are for everyone.
And the purpose in your view is . . . ?
Does it include sharing a life together and caring for each other? Does the legal purpose include being able to be together in the hospital when one of you is ill and not losing your shared assets when one of you dies?
I’ll ask you the same thing I’ve asked Gregory: Why is it so important to you that their relationships not be called “marriage”? Does it harm you in some way? If two people want to enter into a legal and emotional commitment, on what basis other than bigotry and mean-spiritedness would you deny them that option?
Gregory,
That would be not at all, then.
Patrick,
Apparently nothing for a nihilist. So stop then.
Gregory,
I’m interested in hearing you answer Patrick’s questions:
I could only hobble for a couple of days after mine. I really don’t know why Gregory is so spittling hostile about this, other than his obvious dislike and contempt for the people he can’t stop posting to.
Already answered, see “legal and emotional commitment”
Yet you loudly object when people answer your questions they way they want.
Gregory, you seem to contribute very little here apart from snide insinuations about other people’s beliefs (mine especially). Would you please consider actually engaging with the arguments?
People online will always answer the way they want (especially under pseudonyms). That’s a social reality. Blaming me for this is trite.
Is Elizabeth Liddle objecting to the fact that people can and do take a stand against her often specious arguments? (She sounds not like a teacher at TSZ, but more like an atheist preacher.)
My ‘contribution,’ on the ‘scales’ of Lizzie’s atheist ‘skepticism’ can’t possibly be seen as very much. How could an atheist credit someone who is trained in the field and sees through her obviously flimsy and incredibly thin philosophy of science? Add to that, I’ve shown her to be a liar – and she still won’t even publically acknowledge that George Fox capitalised the divine Name – is enough. NO WILLINGNESS TO ADMIT ERROR.
I’ve engaged already with too many ‘arguments’ at TSZ. Your little anti-ID ‘blog,’ Lizzie, in which atheist die-hards often won’t face my legitimate questions, is largely a waste of time. And your waffling is a disgrace to clarity and scholarship.
The ‘pause’ I suspect is a conspiracy to gather her atheist TSZ ‘council’ and to wage communicative war against dissenters. Lizzie was banned from UD, as was I, but for very different reasons. Her banning is why this ‘blog’ was founded. Now, TSZ is an atheist funnel that bans ‘dangerous’ anti-atheist and post-atheist logic.
Except that any appeal to “physiological, social, psychological, economic, anthropological and cultural grounds” as premises in a moral argument would amount to a version of the genetic fallacy. You can’t get from an “is” to an “ought” without some other premises that will license the inference.
I don’t know where this idea comes from that liberals and/or atheists (not co-extensive!) can’t adopt moral realism. I’m a moral realist; I just think that the reality of moral facts is best explained by claims about what promotes and hinders human flourishing.* Heck, my neo-Aristotelian moral realism is why I support marriage equality!
* analogously, the reality of colors is best explained by claims about the complex interactions between the frequency of photons, reflectance properties of surfaces, the composition of the primate retina, the visual processing system, and the whole host of sensorimotor abilities in which the visual processing system is situated. It’s just a confusion between phenomenological description and scientific explanation to say that the our scientific explanation of color perception entails that colors aren’t real. Likewise, a scientific explanation of our awareness of moral reality, if there were a fully adequate explanation (and there isn’t), wouldn’t entail that moral properties aren’t real or that there are no moral facts.
LOL.
The only discussion there at present is about making sure users with author privileges (should be most participants here) have the abilities that they should.
Gregory, this comment definitely oversteps the rules of this blog. I won’t move it myself as it is directed personally at me, but I’m getting pretty fed up of these non-stop attacks on my integrity. They are groundless.
Specifically: I have never either claimed that George Fox did not capitalise the name of God, nor have I denied that he did. I am pretty sure he did. I can’t remember whether he capitalised the pronoun or not, but no matter – there is a strong Quaker tradition, in the UK at least, of not doing so, and it was not done at my Quaker school. So you will retract your accusation that I am a liar, please.
Moreover, I did not start this blog because I was banned from UD. Quite the reverse – at the time I started it I was an active member of UD and indeed it was originally started with the blessing of the UD team, as things scrolled so fast at UD, that I suggested it might be helpful to have a “slower-paced” venue for more extended conversations (a conversation with Upright Biped was extended over many many UD threads).
In addition, this is not an “anti-ID blog”. If it were, I wouldn’t open up the OP slot to ID proponents. I myself am not even particulary against the idea of a divine Designer – I just think the arguments-from -biology are universally terrible.
As for your views on my scholarship, you are entitled to your opinion. But your opinion is worthless without actually engaging with my arguments. Please desist from attacks on my person.
As for this:
I have no idea what you are talking about. Are you drunk?
Colors are real, it’s just a matter of mystery where they really exist.
Presumably the physical particles in our physical brains are no different in composition from the physical particles outside our brains.
Of course I disagree. I think the suggestion that people past childbearing or who are sterile should not be allowed to get married is an obviously reprehensible position. I can’t believe you’re seriously advocating for that though. My sense is that you’re just casting around for something to base this discrimination on.
First, you claimed that what potential couples want is no more than civil unions. But that is patently false–all you have to do is ask people to see that. So next you try, “Well, marriages are only for people who can have kids, right?” But that’s ridiculous too.
Better try something else. Maybe something involving random capitalization or something.