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 :).
You appear to be flailing, phoodoo.
Alan Fox,
It is not a different topic to discuss why some activities people find offensive are illegal, yet some activities others find offensive (like having to watch gay couples) people here are proclaiming deserve special protection.
Which activities deserve special protection and which don’t from a materialist perspective? Petrushka would like to masturbate in public. Should he be allowed?
As I understood it, the recent ruling allowed gay people to marry. It didn’t allow people to have (or bar them from having) sex in public.
What on earth is your point?
I am adamantly against prohibition in all things. People drink in public. I see no reason to make other less harmful drugs felonious. More non-drinkers die as a result of drunkenness than as a result of all other kinds of misbehavior combined. Yet we allow alcohol.
Effed up priorities.
I’m not impressed by the suffering you feel as a result of telling other people how to have sex.
Phoodoo, Eric: have you ever masturbated?
Elizabeth,
How thick are you?
WHY can’t people have sex in public if they want to? Because it may offend someone else? The entire point is that what one person finds acceptable another finds offensive. You can’t get that?
And you say I am flailing?
From a materialistic perspective, you have no moral ground to deem one form of personal expression acceptable, and another not.
You seem to be a little off your game today. Have you been smoking crack in Trafalgar?
I’d say this completely misses the point. The OP is a celebration of equality that ordinary people across the world (Well done, Ireland) see no reason to withhold. Your attempts at distraction fail and flail.
I have a long list of acivities that are illegal in many environments and shouldn’t be. I hava a list of activities that should be illegal and aren’t. It’s probably not so long. Do you want to compare lists? Can you suggest a thread topic?
Not sure whether you are correct. Not sure what the legal position is in France; the UK or the US. I did read one sad report of a down-and-out being arrested and dragged off to police custody after being caught masturbating while watching a porn video on his portable player. He was in a public place though cocooned in a sleeping bag. I felt sorry for the guy, though I did wonder how he could afford the video, the player and the sleeping bag. In my day, it was newspapers to read, to keep warm and to wipe up with.
As opposed to smart? The subject of whether “intelligence” has any useful or quantifiable meaning is a question I’d like to see IDists address one day.
Phoodoo is posting statements that are demonstrably untrue. I will refrain from making obvious inferences about his character.
Phoodoo, Eric: have you ever masturbated?
You are aware that even in private it has been a major sin and in some places a felony. In fact, God killed Onan for using birth control. That has been for thousands of years the gold standard for sexual morality. If it isn’t for procreation, it’s a mortal sin. Sometimes the mortality is imposed immediately.
So Phoodoo, have you ever committed Onan’s sin? Have you ever ejaculated under circumstances that precluded procreation?
A yes or no will suffice.
Hitchens
How thick do you have to be not to distinguish public from private?
How thick do you have to be to author a post about a paper you’ve not read?
More precisely still, the court ruled 5-4 that no state had the right to prevent same-sex couples from being married. Put otherwise, it ruled that state-level bans on same-sex marriage were in violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
What’s at stake here has nothing to do with what anyone finds “offensive”, discomforting, disgusting, immoral, against nature, or whatever. It is entirely about whether or not same-sex couples enjoy the sorts of intrinsic goods of committed relationships such that they deserve the same degree and kind of legal recognition as heterosexual couples. That’s it. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about anything beyond that.
I suspect it will have ramifications beyond that. I suspect the tax exempt status of churches will be challenged if they refuse to perform same sex marriages.
This is why I say they are hoist on their own petard. There could have been a separation of church and state. Churches need not have entangled their sacraments with secular contract and tax law, but they chose the path of power, and now they are discovering the consequences.
Small personal example of the entanglement. I was married in a church. Prior to the ceremony, the pastor required us to have a marriage licence. I don’t think there is anything in the Book of Common Prayer about licenses.
The marriage license is not official until a ceremony is performed. Civil ceremonies are allowed, but until recently, the ceremony required either a religious official or a judge or other qualified official. The requirement for a ceremony has always been quasi-religious, even when secular. I don’t know of any other contract that requires anything beyond a witnessed signing.
They should be removed anyway. They provide no benefit to me and I pay for services they use but don’t pay for, so I subsidize them. This is legally and morally wrong.
Tax exemptions are the really big entanglement.
That may date me.
I’d be astonished if that were to happen. It is true that businesses have been sued for refusing to render services to LBGT people, but that a church or synagogue would have its tax-exempt status challenged for refusing to perform a same-sex marriage? A rabbi can refuse to marry a couple if one of them isn’t Jewish; a priest can refuse to marry a couple if one of them isn’t Catholic. Religious leaders draw these distinctions all the time — they appeal to the doctrines and practices of their faiths to justify which marriages they are wiling to perform and which one’s they aren’t. I don’t see any infringement on religious liberty at stake here.
You seem to be a little of topic, phoodoo. Try another thread?
I don’t think people should be free to smoke crack, period. I do think people should be free to smoke pot freely in Trafalgar Square, or drink alcohol, so long as they don’t become intoxicated.
Drunk driving is a public safety issue; urinating on the gates of Buck House is too, although for a more subtle reason: the health and safety of the police officers who would be duty-bound to rescue you from the crowd of suddenly violent monarchists. (ggg)
I notice that you backed away from the obvious public safety issues, and have retreated to the ‘sex in public’ issue. Other posters have tried to gently point out to you your failure to distinguish public from private behavior, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you are trying to argue for your right to enact legislation against things that you find icky. And somehow you find the idea of gay marriage (as opposed to gay PDAs) icky.
Sorry to break it to you, but you have no such right. Laws against public sex provide protection against being exposed to behaviors that rational people may find threatening (exhibitionism/masturbation) or inappropriately educational (intromission in the presence of minors). There should always be a rationale (or at least a rationalization…) for the prohibition.
“It makes me uncomfortable.” is inadequate.
There is no drug that causes more trouble and deaths than alcohol. Even in neighborhoods where illegal drug use is common. The discrimination is irrational and counterproductive. Particularly locking people up and destroying their lives for drug use, irrespective of whether other laws have been broken.
I think that includes just about all laws dealing with public displays of nudity or sex.
It would make me uncomfortable also, but I have to ask, what is the objective and culturally neutral objection to sex and nudity?
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Silly priests. What were they thinking, trying to pass a law against covetousness.
Hoist on their own petard they are. Serves them right.
I agree. I’m not up to date on the latest data, and I may be suffering from having lived in the USA for too long, but my prejudice is that a lot of the harm caused by alcohol is related to unreasonable attachment to cars and guns…
However, I reckon that the trade-off between personal liberty and public good is better served by allowing (or not enforcing laws against) public drinking. Intoxication is a different matter.
There is a subtle argument against public drug use that I would find harder to refute, but I want to see if phoodoo is smart enough to come up with it on his own.
Not holding my breath.
DNA_Jock, in your view, how does one calculate a “trade-off between personal liberty and public good”? Thanks.
Exactly. Thanks for repeating this point — we can but hope it will sink in for some other folks.
GUANO, phoodoo, GUANO.
Makes me uncomfortable too, on occasion. But I do not believe that is (or should be) an adequate reason, in and of itself. Do we make public nose-picking and zit-popping illegal?
Aye, there’s the rub. I don’t think that there is one. In my experience, even in closely related cultures, attitudes towards sex, nudity, violence, and violence against women vary. Likewise, cultural perception of naked breasts, and of public urination, varies widely. So I don’t think there is an objective, culturally neutral standard, but I don’t think that that absence precludes rational, culturally appropriate restrictions on public displays.
Hence my point as that, given a specific cultural context, then public sex may be threatening (some exhibitionists are predators, some like a little non-consensual frottage), or inappropriately educational (“Mummy, what are those two people doing?”; “I’ll tell you when we get home, Virginia”)
“It makes me uncomfortable” just doesn’t cut it, IMHO.
Awesome question. With great difficulty…
Short answer = I am a fan of Rawls.
Unfortunately, I have to run now.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
Stupid priests and their stupid laws. They’ll get their cumuppance!
This looks as close as we can get to a common approach – a purely technical view of the matter. Your view concerns primarily legal technicalities. My view is also technical, in the field of natural philosophy.
So, let’s take the formulation, “It is entirely about whether or not same-sex couples enjoy the sorts of intrinsic goods of committed relationships such that they deserve the same degree and kind of legal recognition as heterosexual couples. That’s it.”
Now, what are “intrinsic goods of committed relationships”? This is where your formulation goes beyond legal technicalities. “Intrinsic goods of committed relationships” (more properly, intrinsic goods of *marriage*, because we are not talking about, say, committed penpals or devoted employees here), given that marriage is about family, absolutely cannot exclude anything that is an irreducible part of family. It’s not a purely legal matter what is a family. It is intrinsically a biological matter.
The supreme court could in its omnibenevolence rule that “intrinsic goods” of pregnancy belong to men as well as to women , with reference to the Fourteenth Amendment. I think in pure legal terms there’s nothing to be said against this. If rights are to be equally applied to all, then indeed it seems that men have been unjustly deprived of the joys of pregnancy. If men raise their voice and demand it, they should have it. All good legally. Except that does this make any sense in terms of *how nature works*?
In my view, the ruling does violence to nature, but you outargued me. Lawmakers always get the upper hand over any other argument. Just one more question: Do you think this is how it should be?
Speaking for myself (although you asked KN): yes. I think that marriage, whether contracted with the aim of raising childen or not (and may gay couples marry with th intention of raising children) can be a hugely good thing. I have never regretted marrying, despite the first 20 years being childless, and, as we thought then, likely to remain so. The value of our vows to each other has been immense, and simply knowing that we are each committed, by vow, to “love and to cherish” each other, no matter what life throws at is, “till death us do part” is an enormous comfort. To know that we each have a partner of our choice, legally our closest relative, whom we can rely on to “be there for us” “In sickness and in health” to the end of our days, is a huge blessing, and its reinforcement in law (via tax laws, inheritance laws, and even the laws that make it legally momentous to part, and protect us if we do) all contribute to the benefits of the married state.
And I see no reason whatsover for withholding those benefits from those whose chosen life partner happens to be a member of the same gender. So the legal reasons for allowing it are, in my view, identical to the moral reasons: it is a benefit that, if withheld from people on the grounds of their sexual orientation, would be to deny them a beneficial state that is available to the rest of us.
Then, on top of that, is the question of children. Children do benefit from family stability, in the main, and so if a couple is bringing up children, there are probably benefits in that couple being legally bound to each other, not least so that if they part, there is a framework for child-support and custody. And as gay people often have children, indeed often enter a lifelong partnership in order to raise children together, then having that partnership recognised in law has exactly the same benefits as it has for any partnership in which the partners are raising children.
Biology has little to do with any of this, other than the mechanics of producing the zygote. A shared sexual act is not required. Adopted children, step children, children brought up by siblings or grandparents, or half-grandparents, DI children, IVF children, children born via surrogacy, – what appears to matter with regard to the wellbeing of the child is not the genetic relationship to those in loco parentis, but the quality of the love and care the child receives.
Just curious, Lizzie, were you married in a church? If so, in which denomination? If not, was it a ‘notary public’ (or some other gov’t sponsored figure)? (I don’t know how this works in the UK.)
I ask because this ‘wedding’ obviously took place before your adult de-conversion to atheism and criticism of religion in your 50s, i.e. in your apostasy.
Yes, and that would be the same if it were a ‘civil union’ rather than a ‘marriage’. That’s the case if by ‘legally’ means ‘the law of the land’ and not the ‘law of God’. (That is, if national citizenship is the main or only thing that counts for a person by the signifier ‘legally’.)
If anyone is interested, I got married in a church, though I have disbelieved in God since age 11. And it was my decision.
Yes, it was a catholic wedding, Gregory. I joined the catholic church a year later. We both stand by the vows we made that day.
And yes, a civil partnership would be another way of achieving the same thing – but both legally more complex, and for no point, as the legal machinery already exists for marriage.
Not only that, but there’s no good reason, as I’ve said, not to call a civil partnership a marriage, if the vows are the same. The only reason is a poor one – to deny people the right to use a specific word to describe their partnership for no other reason than the congruency of the gender of their partner of choice.
BTW, I’m not sure why you are so critical of my own, in particular “apostasy” as you call it. I am certainly not the only person in this group to have changed my beliefs from theism to something more atheistic during my lifetime. So why single me out for opprobrium?
I might do a post about my particular journey, one day. But I do not see that mine calls for any greater use of pejoratives (or any, for that matter) than anyone else’s. The short answer is that I came to believe, on the one hand, that religions tended to do more harm than good (homophobia being one of many ills that they often foster) and on the other, and this was the clincher, that the arguments against libertarian free will made no sense, while arguments for a systems-level model of moral responsibility do.
Calling that realisation “apostasy” is both to misrepresent it and to trivialise it.
BTW, Gregory, I bought your book!
It’s on my kindle. I’ve read about three chapters so far.
Be curious to hear more if/when you get more time. I know it’s a thorny question. Been working on a paper that gets into it. I think petrushka may have missed my question about how he reconciles his utilitarianism with concerns about “tyranny of the majority”–I’d still like to hear from him (or anyone) about that too.
FWIW, I find Rawls a little off-putting. Obviously really smart, though.
Eric, I suspect there are no unsurmountable barriers to men becoming pregnant. I think it’s in the works.
Or possibly zygotes from two male parents – as long as you picked at least one gamete with an X chromosome, the result should be viable.
Yes, there was even a movie about it. This only confirms the point that I count against you: You think that whatever people want, they should get it.
This is a can of worms that you cannot close.
erik, your original reason for claiming this stuff was wrong, was that it was unintelligible. It wasn’t a moral claim, you insisted, but a lexicographic one. But now you’ve moved from “it’s unintelligible because contrary to my understanding of what these terms mean” to “Sure, I get it (it’s even in the movies!) but it’s wrong” (i.e., even if people want this, they shouldn’t get it.).
You really need to figure out what it is you want to be the basis for your pretense that this isn’t just a religious view, and stick with it.
walto, I’m reminded of your unanswered question to Erik a couple days ago, when you pointed out that by his same lexicographic objections, no gay person ever actually has “sex” with another gay person. Because obviously, when “marriage” is defined (by Erik) as consisting strictly of the combination one man, one woman, plus at least potential mutual-fertility, then it follows that “sex” must also be defined (by Erik) as consisting strictly of the combination of one man, one woman, penis in vagina (else how are they going to get any results from that potential fertility!! ). It’s traditional, doncha know, and biological, and scientific! Okay, a gay man can have PiV sex with a gay woman, but I’ll bet you anything that Erik will think of a silly objection as to why that doesn’t count, rather than having to admit that a gay couple could procreate and thereby fit into Erik’s own definition of “marriage”. (Icky!!)
He could just grow a spine and state outright that his objection to gay marriage is based on religious teachings, some religiously-inculcated sense of moral indignation about gay wrongness rather than a purely disinterested view of lexicography. That is, it’s his childhood/current religious “indoctrination” (or is “indoctrination” another word I can only use if I “redefine” it to include religious propaganda rather than just government education? Ha. Ha.)
No one will blame him for having been vulnerable to being indoctrinated — we are all human and we are all susceptible sometimes. But what’s important is to recognize it for what it is, once it’s clearly pointed out to oneself, as we have clearly pointed out to Erik.
And he’s correct to be worried that he will continue to be mocked if/when he does reveal his religious-homophobic motives. Of course, he’s totally free to have them and to use his Freeze Peaches to defend them. But that’s exactly what he needs to grow a spine for: to have the courage of his convictions even in the face of a little mockery. Being mocked or scolded is a totally fair price for him to pay for using his Freeze Peaches to harm other people. It’s not as if we’re going to evict him from his housing or fire him from a job, which is what his kind of bigotry results in, every day, for non-heterosexuals. When he wants to tell people to their faces that they’re “defective” but he doesn’t even want to admit why he thinks that, he should thank god he gets away with only a little bit of mocking.
I will note that I was right days ago (contra Mung) that Erik’s choice of wording revealed his inherent bigotry. If it weren’t clear to everyone else before, Erik’s response to the concept of male pregnancy makes it abundantly clear now. Clear enough for any unbiased witness. It would be good for Erik’s own moral development, though, if he would just stand up and say it proudly himself. (But not proudly like Gay Pride, that’s just icky! )
Don’t be scared, Erik. I do bite, but I can’t actually bite you through a computer screen. You’re safe. Be proud to stand up for close-mindedness. Be proud to be among the H8ers.
The difference between our conceptual universes (so to speak) lies in where we want to draw the line between biology and culture. As I see it, marriage is a political (also economic and social) recognition of a kind of monogamous pair-bonding distinctive of advanced hominids. (Though it is a fascinating and all-important fact about human beings that we evolved culture, language, and ritual at all.) The variation in marriage customs across the full range of human cultures (varying by both geography and by history) strongly suggests that how pair-bonds are recognized depends on politics, economics, religion, etc.
As a consequence, however, we cannot say that marriage is “natural”, except in the innocuous sense that everything that human beings do is part of human nature. And if we were to endorse that claim, but then say that everything natural is thereby fixed and unalterable, then it would follow that no human institution or practice should ever be changed. And that’s clearly absurd.
Some institutions and practices are good for us, and others not. We’ve been having a lively debate about which is which for millennia, and that’s not going to change any time soon. The question here is whether a prohibition on same-sex marriage is good for us. I am saying it isn’t, because marriage is a political and social recognition of monogamous commitment, and because there is no reason to believe that same-sex couples do not find in monogamous commitment the very same intrinsic goods that heterosexual couples do.
To deny this is to basically say that the facts of human biological reproduction make for a difference in moral and legal status. No argument has been forthcoming for that claim apart from vague gesturing at “tradition”. I would also like to stress that, apart from appealing to “tradition” or “majority opinion,” neither the defendants in Obergefell vs. Hodges nor the dissenting Justices made any such arguments. If there are any such arguments, therefore, they were not made in this case.
I see no reason why not as long as it does no harm. And in this case, it doesn’t.
Have at it. The full two minutes of hate.
I tried to post something about the tyranny of the majority from my phone, but lost it.
I think tyranny of the majority is a problem for democracy in the same way that the tragedy of the commons is a problem for capitalism. I have nothing to add to the voluminous discussion of these problems.
I will only say that I am “philosophical” in the psychological sense of the word. Somewhere between resigned and optimistic. Looking at societies in hundred year chunks, I cannot help but think that life gets easier and safer over time.
Some things — especially the personal freedom I enjoyed as a child — have all but vanished. I was a free range child in a rural agrarian environment. My play area covered half a square mile. Of woods and pasture. I have no recollection of being supervised from age three on. And yes, we had guns that were not locked up. I think I was the ripe age of twelve when I was allowed outside unsupervised. I don’t know of anyone in my vicinity who was harmed by a gun.
But lots of things have improved. My parents went blind from cataracts. I see better now than at any time in my life. Everything about medicine and dentistry has improved.
If you add up all the people in the world who have died in wars and insurrections in my lifetime, they are a fraction of those killed in the first half of the twentieth century.
I could go on, but in general, I approve of cultural evolution.
I’d go further than that. In some cases a little harm is inevitable in the production of a lot of good. Pareto-optimality is a very high bar.
“You shall not steal.”
We needed priests to tell us that? Seriously? Next thing you know they will be telling us what we can and cannot eat and make that the law of the land. Oh, wait. That’s not the priests. What was I thinking?
I have been pressing the point where “same-sex marriage” most obviously is bad – it doesn’t make conceptual sense in terms of natural philosophy. And things that don’t make conceptual sense invariably have fatal legal consequences, because laws depend on their conceptual structure for their stability. If the conceptual structure is out of order, the law is bound to be challenged rather sooner than later and change further. I have foreseen the demise of marriage decades ago due to sheer statistical reasons. Gay laws add legal conceptual reasons to the abolishment of marriage.
Different from what you say, under gay 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, because gays cannot breed. Therefore parental considerations are null henceforth. Under these terms, marriage is just a partnership, like business partnership.
A business contract is most ordinarily between two parties, but note that any single entreprise can have multiple such contracts. Apple’s partnership with Google doesn’t prevent Google’s partnership with Microsoft at the same time. They are all distinct partnerships, even though simultaneous and involving the same agents.
The new concept of marriage is like that, a network of ostensibly monogamous partnerships that forms an effectively polyamorous cartel. In fact, due to ease of divorce, modern marriage has been, as a series of monogamies, a very close approximation of de facto polygamy. The only thing that prevented it from becoming formally explicitly polygamous was considerations of parenthood (biological parenthood or, close to that, bisexual stepparents – a child was supposed to have a single mother and a single father at any one time). Now with same-sex adoption rights, these considerations are gone.
If there’s “no good reason” why a child should not have two fathers at the same time, then there’s also no good reason why not three or more. And, as said, the child’s perspective has been now made inessential to the legal concept of marriage anyway, so it has no obstacle to take the form of multiple simultaneous bilateral “partnerships” or “contracts”. Which is known as polygamy or polyamory.
Call this good if you want to.
Erik,
It’s just as monogamous as heterosexual marriage. Where infidelity is grounds for divorce in a heterosexual union, the same is now the case for same-sex unions.
That’s what it is for heterosexual couples, too. You have yet to present any rational reason why that legal commitment should be denied to same-sex couples.
I have mentioned the married gay couple of my acquaintance who are raising two children born of a surrogate a couple of times already. Both these men have bred, to use your delightful terminology. You have yet to articulate why they and their children should not be considered a family.
You seem to have had time for a few deep breaths and to control your tone more. That doesn’t change the fact that what you are writing is hateful bigotry. Is that really what you learned from Jesus?
Nothing more to be said:
the ever-accurate, ever relevant: Digital Cuttlefish