Is gay marriage unconstitutional?

You clinging to an old testament prohibition or did you have some other reason to justify such discrimination.

 

I said it was the only type of marriage that existed.

 

I made no assertion as to its validity or not. You would need to ask the gays who use it to describe monogamy in a committed gay relationship if it is valid. And Im pretty sure they are using a different word specifically because it is not monogamy.

Monogamy is important for heterosexuals in that it helps establish paternity and helps preserve the husbands resources to be devoted to the children of one woman as opposed to many.

And yeah, that's why men who have sex with men have a higher incidence of a long list of STDs

 

Because there is no such basis. Here would have been a good place for you to state what you thought was the rational basis.

Nope. There WAS a rational basis until by judicial dictate the courts declared procreation to be irrelevant to marriage.

Perfectly rational basis to exclude same sex couples from marriage that is intended to improve the well being of children that only heterosexual couples produce. No basis whatsoever for this new marriage intended to improve the well being of those who have sex with each other.

 

This is kinda besides the point, but I think you severely underestimate the difficulty in interpreting even these leading parts of the constitution. The constitution, for example, references the "chief justice" of the supreme court, but never mentions how that office is created or distinguished from the remaining justices. The constitution uses the term "natural-born citizen", but does not clerify if that includes people born of foreign parents on US land, people born of American parents on foreign lands, or whether 1 or both parents being natural born is sufficient. "Citizen" itself is not defined in the original constitution, although it is pretty well understood that it didn't include black people at the time it was written. The original constitution gives the power to make "recess appointments" to the presidency when the senate is out of session, but never defines what constitutes a "recess"... presumably this means it is whatever the senate says it is, but if the senate decided to say that they are never in "recess", even if they are not there, does that nullify this power that the constitution gave to the president? Is that allowed?

In the Bill of Rights, the first amendment protects the "freedom of speech", but what is "speech"? Does "speech" include yelling "fire" in a crowded room when there is no fire? Is a teacher in a classroom violating a child's freedom of speech when she tells them to be quiet while giving her lecture? Is a man with a megaphone outside my house at 2am in the morning entitled to his right to keep me up all night, "speaking" into the megaphone? Can the government require warning labels and stickers to be put on musical albums, cigarette advertisements, and alcoholic beverages, or does that restrict the freedom of speech of those who own those commodities? What balances and limits are appropriate? Answers to these questions can be very difficult if you don't try to ask the purpose and principal behind the protection of this freedom, and act accordingly to respect that purpose, allow people to freely express their ideas, but not give up my ability to get some godamn sleep at 2am in the morning.

And that's just one part of the first amendment, don't get me started on the remaining of the original 10

Well, strictly speaking, the 14th amendment isn't about "equal treatment", it's about "equal protection by the STATE".

"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

So with regard to your example, the 14th amendment simply doesn't apply unless, under some hypothetical scenario, you are supposing that it actually is state law that is requiring one person to be paid a million dollars and another 50k.

If that's the scenario you're supposing, well, then it requires digging in further to understand what is meant by "equal protection of the laws". Equal protection doesn't necessarily mean equal treatment... somewhat more specifically, it has been taken to mean "equal treatment of similarly situated parties". The state must have a legitimate reason for the disparity, something that establishes why the two situations are not similarly situated. If I'm being paid to dig a ditch, while you're being paid to build and maintain the nuclear arsenal of the united states, our situations are arguably not similarly situated. We both still have "equal protection"... but equal protection doesn't mean equal treatment when the situations are justifiably different.

What it means to be "justifiably different" can be difficult to nail down. If a law is challenged in court for violating equal protection, it is generally evaluated using one of three tests. I'll give a link below that goes into more detail, but the short of it is just asking if there is a legitimate reason for the difference in treatment, or if it is arbitrary. This is an oversimplification, but if it serves a legitimate state interest, then it doesn't violate equal protection. If it does not serve a legitimate state interest, or if the state plainly does an exceptionally poor job tailoring the law to serve the claimed interest, while unnecessarily limiting the rights and equal treatment of similarly situated parties, then it may be held in violation of equal protection. Exactly how easy or hard it is to win an equal protection case depends on which of the three tests are applied.

http://academic.regis.edu/jriley/401three_tier_test.htm

If you accept that those tests represent a reasonable application of the principal behind "equal protection of the state", then the question is which test applies in the case of same sex marriage, and under that test, which side wins?

 

you are trying to make a distinction where none exists.

 

Pretty good arguments.

I really did not wish to debate the constitution, but show that the main gist of the bifurcated constitution that goes to running government is well laid out. Even the 14th is not one of the bill of rights.

And at the time of it's creation, it had nothing to do with marriage nor homosexuals.

 

?????? No, you as always, you are trying to avoid the topic of discussion. What laws were in place is irrelevant to my claim that opposite sex marriages were the only marriages in existence. And that the statement referred to opposite sex marriages only.

 

The topic of discussion is the constitutionality of gay marriage.

.
they directly refute your claim.

no such distinction is made in that ruling.

 

You are hopelessly confused as usual. The discussion is whether the statement is exclusively referring to heterosexual marriage or not. The fact that opposite sex marriages were the only marriages in existence at the time, demonstrates that fact.

They don't even contradict it, but you aren't even aware of what my claim is.

 

Granted, at the time it had nothing to do with marriage nor homosexuals.

But by this, are you saying that it can't? The principal it established doesn't seem to be that explicit to exclude cases of marriage or homosexuals explicitly. It's just a very general principal that requires equal protection of the law by the states.

If you agree that "equal treatment of similarly situated parties" is a fair representation of what this protection means, then it's pretty easy to understand why the 14th amendment didn't apply at the time when it was written, and could only be taken to apply more than a century later. At the time when it was written, it would have been virtually impossible to argue that homosexuals were "similarly situated". For most of this country's history, homosexuality has been understood as a crime against humanity, a crime against god/nature, and a mental disorder. While I do not believe those understandings were correct, that was the best people knew at the time... Given that understanding, it wasn't just easy... it was the right thing to do to treat homosexuals different even under the 14th amendment.

It has taken many decades for the understanding of liberty to expand and protect individuals from the state enforcing their morality on people without just cause, and many decades of increased understanding of homosexuality for us to get to this point where homosexuals can no longer be treated as that dis-similar to everyone else that they can be targets for ostracism. I argue that the principal of the 14th amendment is the same, but it is acting on a new set of facts and understandings that were not known at the time when the amendment was written.

 

It's actually right at the top of the page.

yes, that is the discussion you want to have because you constantly intentionally derail threads.

nope, as has been repeatedly pointed out.

actually they directly refute it.

 

When I argue that the decision that forced the nation to license homosexual marriages, also includes the rest of the banned marriages (due to age, due to being closely related, due to number in the marriage, etc and etc), I am told it is super restrictive to just homosexuals.

I reject that the homosexual argument is based on principle, but that it is very selfish in scope.

A common theme to the argument against my "principle" is to fight in court for rights for the rest of people who also want to marry. This should never be the outcome in the Supreme Court to force others to fight the same argument.

Let's get a good look at the 14th.

https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/14thamendment.html


I would think this is why Justice Roberts and Scalia scoffed that marriage is the purpose of the 14th amendment.

 

That's the topic of the thread. I was responding to the content of the post I quoted

My claim didn't make any assertions regarding the law. Im sure it refutes the strawman you've assigned to me.

Actually, use of the word "marriage" makes that distinction.

 

right, which is a result of your deliberate thread derailment.

your claim was directly refuted.

nope

 

Nonsense Robert! I and others have explained how things work many times before and still there are those like you who don't get it , or are just trying to derail and obfuscate the issue.

It is really a very simple matter to destroy your "argument":

1. The case for marriage equality was based on the equal treatment of same sex couples to the treatment of opposite sex couples. There was NO QUESTION before the court regarding any other bans other that the ban on same sex marriage. The court could not have issued a ruling effecting anything else, even if they were so inclines.

2. Whatever other bans that you are talking about is not the same fight. There are different legal and societal issues associated with others variations on marriage. THINK ABOUT IT! Removing age restriction? Someone would have to convince the court that minors can consent or that they can be forced to marry. Plural marriages? All of the statutes pertaining to marriage are centered around two people. Think about the chaos. Just one of many possible examples: Spouses can make medical decisions for each other, but what if one is in a coma and the other two disagree on pulling the plug? You have not thought this through at all my friend.

A court would have to weight all of these implications and impacts on the legal system and society and rule based on the merits of each.

 

Pearls before swine, my friend.

 

Look, you were very close to losing the case.

But for Stevens vote, your side was losing.

My questions do go to the use of the 14th amendment.

Wail, fall on the floor and wail some more. But you came very close to losing.

 

Yes it will be lost on him. The next step will be that I will be accused of being a hypocrite for opposing plural marriage, despite the fact that I did not say that I was opposed to it. Waite, you'll see. It always happens.

 

Close only count in horse-shoes and hand-granades. Nearly every court on the way to the Supreme Court decision had decided against anti-same sex marriage proponents.
It wasn't really that close. Too many states and public opinion we're against the anti-gay legislation.

 

Marriage limited to men and women has nothing to do with morality and is instead based upon biology.

 

What are you talking about? What case ? Stevens ?? Is he back on the court?

 

Every court before the 21st century decided the other way.

 

And how many times was THAT argument used by racists to promote miscegenation laws? Sorry, our culture has grown beyond that cave-man mentality.

 

Your baseless claims, without a shred of evidence or even a few words strung together to make a relevant argument, refutes nothing.