Post #402,973
6/27/15 4:57:10 PM
|
Richard Posner's take
Slate: It was no surprise that the Supreme Court held Friday that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. It is very difficult to distinguish the case from Loving v. Virginia, which in 1967 invalidated state laws forbidding miscegenation. There was, as an economist would say, a “demand” (though rather limited) for biracial marriage, and it was difficult, to say the least, to comprehend why such marriages should be prohibited. In fact the only “ground” for the prohibition was bigotry. The same is true with respect to same-sex marriage. No more than biracial marriage does gay marriage harm people who don’t have or want to have such a marriage. The prohibition of same-sex marriage harms a nontrivial number of American citizens because other Americans disapprove of it though unaffected by it.
John Stuart Mill in On Liberty drew an important distinction between what he called “self-regarding acts” and “other-regarding acts.” The former involves doing things to yourself that don’t harm other people, though they may be self-destructive. The latter involves doing things that do harm other people. He thought that government had no business with the former (and hence—his example—the English had no business concerning themselves with polygamy in Utah, though they hated it). Unless it can be shown that same-sex marriage harms people who are not gay (or who are gay but don’t want to marry), there is no compelling reason for state intervention, and specifically for banning same-sex marriage. The dissenters in Obergefell missed this rather obvious point.
I go further than Mill. [...] A good read. Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #402,982
6/27/15 6:34:44 PM
|
You have to admit John Stuart Mill lays it out clearly.
Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
|
Post #402,989
6/27/15 8:32:58 PM
|
I don't have to admit ANYTHING! Oops, sorry.
|
Post #403,004
6/28/15 10:38:12 AM
|
Re: No more than biracial marriage does gay marriage harm people who don’t have or want to have such
Reinstate the marriage penalty in the tax code, and I'd agree.
My wife and I paid it for seven years and I always understood that the so-called penalty was just. I argued for continuing it with my married friends who (like everyone on this board apparently) could not understand the soundness of my position. Now more than ever it should be a part of the tax code.
|
Post #403,006
6/28/15 10:51:16 AM
|
You just don't get this, do you.
Or you're just clothing bigotry in sophistry.
"No more than."
If one group of people has it, every group should. That's the Fourteenth Amendment.
How does gay marriage harm people who don't have it or want it MORE THAN any other sort of marriage does? Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
|
Post #403,033
6/29/15 8:42:02 AM
|
You're right. I won't ever "get" this.
I won't ever get it because I'm not a six year old little girl dreaming of her prince who rides in on a white stallion, sweeps her off her feet, marries her and rides away to the palace with her in a gold carriage. To me, "marriage" has always been an entirely a State construct. The State license my wife and I got nearly 32 years ago has never said anything about how much love is present in our relationship nor how committed we are to one another. I've never cared what the State thought of my relationship with my wife. I do not grant the State the power to dictate what my relationship with my wife is nor what it means to either of us. Marriage was the legal relationship a couple entered into because they wished to have their children recognized as legitimate and not in any way castigated for the marital status of their biological parents at the time of their births. The State rightly believed that children who grow up in a household with their biological parents fair better, on average (which is what you write legislation for) than children who are not afforded that opportunity.
If marriage had nothing to do with procreation, how then did the State arrive at the classification of children born out of wedlock as illegitimate (or illegal)? And by what means were children born to a couple considered legal? By the issuance, prior to their births, of a marriage certificate to their biological parents, right?
I've already heard (even from an idiot Justice) that "we allow infertile couples to marry, so ..." So what? So, let's correct a mistake by compounding it? Although truth be told, there used to be some measure of correcting this particular error codified in the tax code. You want the benefits of laws pertaining to marriage (written to encourage biological parents to remain with their offspring) in the absence of a desire or ability to have children? The State said, "Fine. But it's going to cost you." Why? Because such marriages do not result in the benefit to the State of a new generation. That was true until, IIRC, around the year 2000. It should be corrected and I sincerely do not see how same-sex marriage advocates (or non child producing opposite-sex marriage advocates) could be opposed to a re-instatement of that tax. For doing so would indicate that their position is far from "wanting equal dignity" and is more a desire to get something for nothing.
|
Post #403,042
6/29/15 9:48:46 AM
|
Marriage is not. About. Children.
It's about:
1. Who gets my shit when I'm dead, and I couldn't be arsed to do the paperwork.
2. Who gets to say "turn the fucker off" to the doctor.
Serious, important stuff.
Honestly, the whole "kids" thing is a massive red herring.
And don't bring up history. Sure, blah blah blah was different in the 15th century.
People in the 15th century didn't go to the hospital where their husband is, to find a doctor going "I can keep this wanker alive for as long as you want. Or I can switch his face right the fuck off. What do?"
|
Post #403,047
6/29/15 11:58:37 AM
|
Re: Marriage is not. About. Children.
So, it's about ...
1) Greed that survives sloth.
2) Inability to plan properly.
Thanks for that.
|
Post #403,068
6/29/15 2:22:04 PM
|
Not even wrong.
|
Post #403,043
6/29/15 9:58:07 AM
|
Red herring.
Answer the question as posed. i didn't ask about children or love or any of the other things.
Nor do I see any same sex marriage proponents railing against reinstating the marriage tax.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
|
Post #403,038
6/29/15 9:05:19 AM
|
Any tax benefit anyone else gets harms him financially.
Remember, he feels (in the depths of his nonexistent Communist soul) that he IS the state. So, once he has it set in his mind that some benefit will chip away at his totallity, he will fight it. Even if it costs him just a 1/10 of a cent, he hates it.
Happy MM? You are no longer a homophobic bigot!
|
Post #403,039
6/29/15 9:13:48 AM
|
s/him/State
|
Post #403,041
6/29/15 9:48:37 AM
6/29/15 9:50:58 AM
|
Which makes no difference in the meaning of the post
Since it states they are the same thing to you. Which you didn't argue against.
Did I summarize your view correctly, or did I miss anything? After all, you have argued a bunch of side points, but it all boils down to this, or so it seems.
You feel pain when the state feels pain. Of course, since the state doesn't actually feel anything, it is up to you to determine it.
Edited by crazy
June 29, 2015, 09:50:58 AM EDT
|
Post #403,044
6/29/15 10:01:47 AM
|
No, he still could be.
Because whether or not there is a tax benefit, it should be equally applied to everyone/no one. And since marriage isn't going to be abolished, his wishful thinking (?) aside, the 14th Amendment applies.
It's really starting to smell like a pseudo-rational cover for bigotry. Paraphrased: "I don't like the institution of marriage, therefore I'm going to fight against allowing this last little bit of society to have it."
Seems like quite a stretch to me. Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
|
Post #403,048
6/29/15 12:04:45 PM
|
Of course the tax should apply equally. It did.
I think you're asking me "In what way has altering the definition of marriage injured the marriages entered into before the definition changed?" Is that it? If so, (and again, I'm speaking here of the perspective of the State) I'd say that the definition has been so altered as to make the definition ambiguous and without purpose. I don't know that I'd say that really injures pre-existing marriages, but I would say that it makes them at best undefined, at worst irrelevant.
|
Post #403,049
6/29/15 12:10:01 PM
|
Nope
Inheritance is not undefined.
Medical decision-making authority is not irrelevant.
Neither of those things changed. This decision didn't make my marriage one iota different from what it was before.
|
Post #403,050
6/29/15 12:12:46 PM
|
But you got that because of an expectation that you'd reproduce.
|
Post #403,051
6/29/15 12:16:06 PM
|
An expectation by whom? Legal cites, please.
|
Post #403,052
6/29/15 12:36:36 PM
|
You didn't make a claim about retroactive meaning
You said, "that it makes them at best undefined, at worst irrelevant."
That's "makes", present tense. That this decision changes something in the present meaning of my marriage.
It doesn't.
|
Post #403,062
6/29/15 1:29:24 PM
|
I was trying to answer a question posed to me.
Although I admittedly don't yet completely understand the question's full implications.
Our everyday language is (or was at least at one point) full of expressing the idea that marriage results in children. Surely you've heard at some point in your life, "Get married and start a family." Does that not imply the expectation that children will result from marriage? I think it indisputable that most opposite-sex marriages do, in fact, result in the births of children. I recall the scuttlebutt about the hospital where my wife and I worked being that we "would never have children" because my wife wasn't pregnant in the first two years after we got married - like everyone else who was our age who'd gotten married.
I'm finished with this topic here because everyone apparently rejects my premise that State issued marriage licenses only make sense in the context of an expectation of a new generation arising from those relationships and that expectation is the basis for all codified preferential treatment under law those relationships receive. I think rejecting that premise is being dishonest of (at least) the history of marriage in the United States. But, if you can't agree on the premises, you can never agree on the arguments. And that's where we are. And I'm weary. ;0)
|
Post #403,054
6/29/15 1:00:40 PM
|
Re: Of course the tax should apply equally. It did.
In responding to "No more than biracial marriage does gay marriage harm people who don’t have or want to have such" you said, Reinstate the marriage penalty in the tax code, and I'd agree. Here's the question I asked again, for reference: How does gay marriage harm people who don't have it or want it MORE THAN any other sort of marriage does? Because the decision last week was about the 14th Amendment, from the viewpoint of the State. Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
|
