DOMA Ruled Unconstitutional
Carol J. Williams writes for the LA Times about the terrific news that a judge on Wednesday declared the disgusting 1996 Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, ordering the federal government to ignore it and provide health benefits to the wife of a lesbian federal court employee:
White ordered the federal Office of Personnel Management to enroll the wife of Karen Golinski, an attorney for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in the health benefits program available to other employees of the federal judiciary. The Defense of Marriage Act prohibits the extension of federal benefits to same-sex spouses, and Golinski's wife, Amy Cunninghis, had been repeatedly denied coverage since the couple married in 2008."The court finds that DOMA, as applied to Ms. Golinski, violates her right to equal protection of the law ... without substantial justification or rational basis," wrote White, who was named to the federal bench a decade ago by President George W. Bush.
Absolutely. We have no constitutional basis (or humane reason) to deny gays and lesbians the right to marry the consenting adult that they love -- or to get the benefits that arise out of this that straight couples are allowed. This is as wrong as denying people of different races the right to marry.
Religion and racism should not be the basis of policy in this country. They have been for far too long and enough is enough is enough. Or as commenter "TruthShines" put it on the LAT site:
The gender of marriage applicants is the most irrelevant characteristic of the couple, in the same way that race is the least important trait of a person.
As I've written before, I'm against marriage as a basis for benefits, but if we give benefits to the straights, the gays should get 'em, too.
(Waiting to happen.)
Y'know, gays have always had the same rights straights had.
This is what you get for trying to do important stuff through the courts: Nearly forty motherfucking years later, idiot woman are still afraid of Santorum. Many of them damn well deserve to be.
Have I mentioned that your thinking about this is medieval? Self-aggrandizing? Shallow? Fantasy-based?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 23, 2012 11:25 PM
Wow. Just wow:
Really?
What then are the relevant characteristics of a married couple?
Thanks, Lefties - for finally going so far off the deep end that your real motives can no longer be obscured by tut-tutting about "fairness"...
Ben David at February 24, 2012 2:46 AM
While I agree Gay Marriage should be legal, I don't think the Constitution has anything to say about it. I really don't think Gay Marriage crossed our founders' minds. It's not banned by the Constitution, nor is it protected by it.
Rather, the founders gave enough wiggle room to Congress to pass laws as they saw fit. Including making Gay Marriage legal if they wanted to.
NicoleK at February 24, 2012 4:06 AM
Marriage - Man and Woman
Garriage - Man and Man
Larriage - Woman and Woman
Each union includes all the same rights, benefits and obligations.
Problem solved!
Goo at February 24, 2012 5:33 AM
Y'know,(mixed race couples) have always had the same rights (nonmixed race couples) had.
---------------------------------------
Wow. Just wow:
The (skin color) of marriage applicants is the most irrelevant characteristic of the couple
Really?
What then are the relevant characteristics of a married couple?
Thanks, Lefties - for finally going so far off the deep end that your real motives can no longer be obscured by tut-tutting about "fairness"...
--------------------------------------------
While I agree(Miscegenation) should be legal, I don't think the Constitution has anything to say about it. I really don't think (Miscegenation) crossed our founders' minds. It's not banned by the Constitution, nor is it protected by it.
Rather, the founders gave enough wiggle room to Congress to pass laws as they saw fit. Including making (Miscegenation)legal if they wanted to.
-------------------------------------------
Marriage - Man and Woman of the same race
Jungle-arriage - Man and Woman who isnt white
Future Lynchees- Man who isnt white and Woman
Each union includes all the same rights, benefits and obligations.
Problem solved!
------------------------------------------
I cant help but wonder if we had had the internet back when people were fighting over mixed race marriges if this is what these arguments would have looked like
lujlp at February 24, 2012 7:40 AM
I'm pro-gay marriage, but to claim that the gender of marriage applicants is "the most irrelevant charactoristic" is exceptionally stupid.
I'm fully aware that many straight couples don't or can't produce children, but constitutional test for sex discrimination is "intermediate scrutiny", which is different from the "strict scrutiny" applied to racial discrimination. Which means that there has to be a good reason for the sex-based discrimination. The fact that most straight couples at least have the potential to produce children and pass on their property through a bloodline is a pretty darn good reason to adjust the benefits accordingly. It's fine that the law may be somewhat overly broad in that it doesn't specifically require that couples prove their fertility.
So, congratulations, TruthShine. Yesterday, I would have been on your side regarding the constitutionality of DOMA, but now, I'm not, based entirely on my consideration of your idiotic comment.
Lyssa at February 24, 2012 7:50 AM
"What then are the relevant characteristics of a married couple?"
A lifelong commitment asserted in front of a vested State official, who acts as the modern equivalent of the tribal council to determine the obligations that union has to the State and the State's duty to the union.
Got it?
The State does have a commanding interest in the relationships of its citizens. While you may be eager to point at someone and shout, "Denied!" to an American who doesn't toe your line, I suggest that you have other, bigger issues than whether someone promises to love, honor and obey someone you don't like.
I wonder if you realize that your position not only encourages promiscuity by officially discouraging faithfulness, it requires a TSA-style patdown to be enforced...
Meanwhile...
Radwaste at February 24, 2012 7:55 AM
Amy, there are certain cases where it does matter that the government recognizes a special relationship between two people. One such example is the spousal privilege in court, where you cannot be forced to testify against a spouse. Another is divorce proceedings which allow a couple to rectify issues of property and custody when they break up. Another is immigration, where a citizen of one country can bring in a foreign citizen as a spouse. These are laws that should be laws, and to banish marriage to the domain of wholly private relations would be to make bad law.
As a constitutional issue by the by, the judge was quite right to rule as he did. And for those not familiar with the US Constitution, the relevant clause is 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, which reads "No state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Peter H at February 24, 2012 8:46 AM
Why bother bringing the State into it - since the benefits and penalties it provides are relatively recent attachments to the concept and probably shouldn't exist anyway - except possibly as a provider of certain default arrangements for inheritance, legal proxy, shared property and dependents?
We could just go with "a non-commercial partnership agreement for the provision of certain services on the basis of mutual affection".
Relevant characteristics then being... the existence of said mutual affection between the participants, and nothing else. (Including, among that nothing, all of sex, sexuality, race, number, and anything else you care to imagine).
(Well, and their competence to contract, but I don't see children, animals, or inanimate objects complaining about being denied the right to marry any time soon.)
Alistair Young at February 24, 2012 9:11 AM
PeterH: As a constitutional issue by the by, the judge was quite right to rule as he did. And for those not familiar with the US Constitution, the relevant clause is 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, which reads "No state shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
But, you see, that is where this decision seems out of line with 14th Amendment jurisprudence.
Mixed race couples fought under the 14th Amendment saying there was no equal protection. A white man said that it was a violation of equal protection for him to be unable to marry a black woman when a black man could. It violated equal protection.
Here, there is no good analogy. Neither a straight man, nor a gay man can marry another man. So, the equal protection issue does not come up. And, the State does not require that a same-sex marriage be a gay marriage (i.e. a marriage between two homosexuals of the same sex).
I have not read this case, but miscegenation cases are poorly analogous to this issue on equal protection grounds.
-Jut
JutGory at February 24, 2012 9:18 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/02/24/doma_ruled_unco.html#comment-2998590">comment from JutGoryNeither a straight man, nor a gay man can marry another man. So, the equal protection issue does not come up.
This is the stupidest and most retreaded argument I see around here.
Adults are allowed to marry their love partner. The consenting adult with which they form a lasting love partnership and possibly have children. Many gays and lesbians are parents. They need the same protections straight parents do. Furthermore, if straight people can marry the person of their choice, gay people should be allowed to as well.
I'm sorry, those of you who keep trotting out this argument, that you don't have better arguments to support your Imaginary Friend-driven bigotry.
Amy Alkon at February 24, 2012 9:37 AM
I'm sorry, those of you, that you don't have better arguments to support your Imaginary Friend-driven bigotry.
Well, let's be fair to them. Sometimes it's not Imaginary Friend-driven. Sometimes it's just good old-fashioned "it's squicky to me, therefore it should be banned".
(Of course, that probably explains the former, too - just one step back along the chain.)
Alistair Young at February 24, 2012 9:41 AM
> when people were fighting over mixed
> race marriges
See? These people think they're Rosa Parks... Without the risks.
> on the basis of mutual affection".
Two hundreds years from now, when they look back at the fractured, misshapen families of our generations as we now look at slavery, they'll recognize the pornographic fascination of state power with "mutual affection" as a big part of the problem.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 9:52 AM
The fact that most straight couples at least have the potential to produce children and pass on their property through a bloodline is a pretty darn good reason to adjust the benefits accordingly.
Please explain then why those known to be barren and old enough to be past the age of birthing kids are allowed to be married, while at the same time gay couples with kids are not?
Also why does your argument invalidate the Equal Protection clause
lujlp at February 24, 2012 10:00 AM
> This is the stupidest and most retreaded
> argument I see around here.
No, it's PRECISELY on point. You're too eager to picture yourself as a civil rights heroine; but you're not even doing the logic. Schoolgirly daydreams about love are foremost in your concern, but the rest of us have to mop things up.
> Adults are allowed to marry their love partner.
No. Adults are allowed to marry an opposite-sex, unrelated, sane, age-appropriate, unimprisoned, consenting partner.
Amy, there's a reason you think this is all about feelings, even though the law is not concerned with interior lives. You've been raised to be a Disney/Mattel media consumer-bot whose best efforts (and wealth and loyalty) can be had for the cost of a trivial pander, a few Jennifer Anniston code words with a swelling string arrangement in the background. Hearing them, you charge into the howling afternoon thunderstorm, throw one arm towards your back and pull your other wrist to your forehead as you tilt to the uncaring heavens, and you cry out: 'But what could be more important than LOVE??!?'
(...By which you mean the impulses of selfish adults, through you dislike that that wording.)
Well, it turns, there are a few things, especially where children are involved.
But you can't hear that, because you're in fantasy mode, and you can't get out: Suddenly anyone who disagrees has an "imaginary friend", even though religion hasn't been mentioned. It's all a continuum for you. But as it happens, that gradient has only two data points; your belief in your own excellence, and everyone else who ever lived.
And there are GENERATIONS of women just like you. The world is not wholly improved by them. They persist in thinking of marriage as a cuddly-fun little packets of cuteness that society gives to some people. (Then why shouldn't the gays have it?) They're incapable of thinking of marriage as a bond between a couple and the larger community to get needs met.
(The pathetic part of this will be how many reading this will think of it in those terms for the first time. For them, heretofore, marriage has been about Modern Bride magazine and dancing to Elton John records at the reception.)
Pisses me off.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 10:17 AM
Crid,
Thanks. My sentiments exactly, except a little longer, and without a gratuitous spaghetti monster reference. For some reason, my response got lost in the Web.
I was making a LEGAL argument; Amy's argument was a MORAL/EMOTIONAL one.
-Jut
JutGory at February 24, 2012 10:27 AM
It has already been said, but the drooling idiocy of this quote justifies repeat slammage.
Mixed gender couples are the only kind that can produce children.
How someone can be alive and consider that distinction irrelevant completely gasts my flabber.
Which is a pretty ignorant thing to say.
Do yourself a favor and do some looking around at Volokhdotcom. (For those who have never been there, it is written by lawyers with pretty serious credentials. Many people who comment there are also lawyers. Which makes it a great place to see that many issues are a heck of a lot more complicated than knee jerk reaction would suggest. E.g., a thread on stolen valor of a couple days ago.)
If you take the time to do so (I think there is a post on this subject within the last month) you will find that invoking equal protection is not quite as straightforward as you assume; you may very well conclude it applies, but you probably won't think people are stupid for suggesting it doesn't.
Jeff Guinn at February 24, 2012 11:00 AM
"Why bother bringing the State into it - since the benefits and penalties it provides are relatively recent attachments to the concept and probably shouldn't exist anyway - except possibly as a provider of certain default arrangements for inheritance, legal proxy, shared property and dependents?"
Wow. You've never been to court. "Possibly?" No. In all cases, the State determines who inherits, where dependents end up, et al.
Even when provisions are made ahead of time, these things are arranged by law of the State in which one is resident. Every time.
And that's so that a family is not victimized by relatives and acquaintances acting in arbitrary fashion.
-----
"And there are GENERATIONS of women just like you. The world is not wholly improved by them. They persist in thinking of marriage as a cuddly-fun little packets of cuteness that society gives to some people."
Crid, you've been on here how long? Yet, you haven't read a damned thing Amy has said about marriage.
You should start.
-----
Those of you yelling on both sides should figure out the costs - the return on investment - for backing "gay marriage". For some of you, it clearly means "State endorsement of continuous sodomy" to the exclusion of anything else. I have to ask - is promiscuity the alternative you seek? How about inflicting pain on those people who are faithful, yet the law doesn't recognize them? Is that what you want?
Why?
Radwaste at February 24, 2012 11:00 AM
> Yet, you haven't read a damned thing
> Amy has said about marriage.
You bungled the comma.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 11:09 AM
@Radwaste:
'Wow. You've never been to court. "Possibly?" No. In all cases, the State determines who inherits, where dependents end up, et al.
Even when provisions are made ahead of time, these things are arranged by law of the State in which one is resident. Every time.'
Yes, I know. You're making descriptive statements. I'm making normative statements.
That it is the status quo is not an argument that it should be the status quo.
"And that's so that a family is not victimized by relatives and acquaintances acting in arbitrary fashion."
Or, depending on how you look at it, so that the desires of the individual people involved can be overridden by the State's view of what they ought to have done. I have a strong dispreference for social engineering, and while it'll probably always be necessary to have a default there in cases where people don't specify these arrangements themselves, I believe that the wishes of the individual where these matters are concerned should always be honored, if possible.
(Since, after all, it's their life, liberty and property, and not to be disposed of by State-favored relatives or the whim of the democratic mob.)
Alistair Young at February 24, 2012 11:18 AM
Laws are -- or should be -- designed to help organize the society in which they are created. We give hetero people the right to marry in part because it establishes rules for how their children are provided for, who gets their property and how they interact with the state. We can continue to deny them the right to marry, but to do so leaves a huge, gaping hole in our social structure. It leaves the children of these unions unprotected and creates situations in which courts have to decide on a case-by-case basis who inherits what, who gets to make legal decisions for whom, etc., when we already have a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with these situations.
And yes, gay couples can spend thousands of dollars in legal fees for the the maybe-sorta chance these contracts will be honored, but that's not good enough. It's not good enough that we leave these children unprotected because we want to send a message that their parents' choices aren't OK with us.
We're creating a social and legal clusterfuck for what reason, exactly? Because our feelings about the way families should work tell us to?
Every society is obligated to decide what makes up a family. Increasingly, ours is deciding that gay people and their kids make a family.
MonicaP at February 24, 2012 11:21 AM
@MonicaP
"Every society is obligated to decide what makes up a family."
Why?
Every society may be obligated to provide that someone ensure that minor children are cared for when their parents have failed to make arrangements for it to happen; every society may find it convenient to ensure that the property of the intestate deceased goes somewhere...
...but apart from these very specific cases, what business is it of society what arrangements people make for these and other matters between themselves?
Alistair Young at February 24, 2012 11:30 AM
When we decide what makes a family, we decide how that family is cared for, how it cares for itself, and how the state responds to that family. Before we can decide that, we have to decide what "family" means. We're free to abdicate that responsibility, but then we're not much of a society.
...but apart from these very specific cases, what business is it of society what arrangements people make for these and other matters between themselves?
Because people don't live in a vacuum. They have responsibilities to the world around them, and when their private arrangements fail or there are decision to be made (for example, who gets the house when one person dies), the state steps in and makes those decisions. We can pretend we're all rugged individualists in this regard, but it doesn't work out that way in real life.
MonicaP at February 24, 2012 11:45 AM
To add: If we really want to not have the state involved in matters of marriage and child-rearing and property, then we need to give up this whole agriculture thing and go back to the days when nobody owned personal property and the village raised the child no matter who fathered him.
MonicaP at February 24, 2012 11:48 AM
> the village raised the child no matter
> who fathered him.
Oh Good Lord.
Were you to see him with your own eyes, I'm certain you would not recognize a child in such a context as being "raised" at all.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 11:51 AM
MonicaP: "Before we can decide that, we have to decide what "family" means. We're free to abdicate that responsibility, but then we're not much of a society."
Some would say we have abdicated it.
One Mommy? Two Mommies? One Daddy? Two Daddies? Married? Not Married? Living Together? Living Apart?
Doesn't matter. They are all families.
And, if you say otherwise, you are a hateful bigot with an Imaginary Friend complex.
-Jut
JutGory at February 24, 2012 11:59 AM
Jut is responding to the modern feminine claim to papal infallibility in matters affection and reproduction. In vernacular-tudinal terms, he gits it.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 12:07 PM
@MonicaP:
"When we decide what makes a family, we decide how that family is cared for, how it cares for itself, and how the state responds to that family. Before we can decide that, we have to decide what "family" means. We're free to abdicate that responsibility, but then we're not much of a society."
On the contrary, in historical terms, we'd be a very advanced society, having moved even further away from the days in which the chiefs and the shamans, or the kings and the priests, etc., got to tell everyone how they had to live their lives, with brute force to back them up.
"They have responsibilities to the world around them, and when their private arrangements fail or there are decision to be made (for example, who gets the house when one person dies), the state steps in and makes those decisions."
I note, here, that you're using an example I already covered with regard to the State providing a default.
In this case, as with care of dependents - something which, I further note, has to work independently of any rules we have on marriage because not everyone will use your socially approved structure no matter how draconian you are about enforcing it - I admit the use of a state default.
What I am asking you to justify is twofold:
(a) Why is the state justified in stepping in where there are private arrangements for such things and overriding them? Or in forbidding certain people from making those private arrangements?
and
(b) Why is it necessary, when - as mentioned - the arrangements for care of dependents need to exist anyway, default inheritance laws can be provided to deal with co-owned property as a general case, etc., etc., for the State to attach all these things to a very specific structure which it then makes available only to very specific people? What is the valid justification for not solving these problems for the general case, and then letting anyone take advantage of them for their own family structure of choice?
To justify the current restrictionism, you need to be able to explain why it's so all-fired impossible to provide general solutions that can be applied in multiple ways in the same way that corporate or contract law works at its best, and I really don't think you can do that.
@Jut:
"One Mommy? Two Mommies? One Daddy? Two Daddies? Married? Not Married? Living Together? Living Apart?
Doesn't matter. They are all families.
And, if you say otherwise, you are a hateful bigot with an Imaginary Friend complex."
I would prefer the term "closet totalitarian", myself, if I was being particularly polite. People whose family arrangements don't match your preferred choice aren't picking your pocket or breaking your leg. They are not violating any legitimate rights which you have, and yet you're the one wanting them denied the ability to make certain legal arrangements, if not defined out of existence by force of law.
There's plenty of other terms for that, too, but none of them are exactly suitable for company.
Alistair Young at February 24, 2012 12:26 PM
Please explain then why those known to be barren and old enough to be past the age of birthing kids are allowed to be married, while at the same time gay couples with kids are not?
I already explained this; read the rest of my comment. All laws are overly broad in some way or another.
Also why does your argument invalidate the Equal Protection clause
I explained (not argued) how the Supreme Court has long interpreted the Equal Protection clause. No one's invalidating anything; they're simply acknowledging that sex and race are entirely different kinds of distinctions.
Lyssa at February 24, 2012 12:49 PM
> All laws are overly broad in some way or another.
Perhaps, but I don't see exclusion of gays from mutual marriage is an oversight. Straight love means things for society that gay love does not. It's nuhtin' personal.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 12:57 PM
As, not is... As an oversight. As Clinton used to say, in legal proceedings, it depends on what the definition of as is.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 12:58 PM
(a) Why is the state justified in stepping in where there are private arrangements for such things and overriding them? Or in forbidding certain people from making those private arrangements?
These private arrangements frequently don't exist, or they are subject to challenge, at which point the state has to determine what happens next. You can challenge anything in court, no matter what your piece of paper says.
Example: My parents had a will. It was a really simple will. Except that my parents (a man and a woman) had three kids, my mother two kids from a first marriage and my father no kids from his first marriage, but they adopted me together. All three of us were adopted from different biological families. My brother challenged the will in court. The court decided that my half-brother by adoption had no standing to challenge the will because my father did not adopt him.
The reason I am not going to spend the rest of my life in court fighting this is because the state has rules about how this shit is handled.
My parents HAD legal arrangements in place. Sometimes people are unhappy with those legal arrangements and challenge them, at which point the state has to either decide how this goes down or let these people kick each other until someone cries uncle.
Families are more complicated now. I don't care whether hetero unions produce healthier kids than homosexual unions. I think I know the answer, but I truly don't care. The fact remains that they ARE raising kids together, and we need a way to deal with it. Allowing gays to marry simplifies things tremendously. We don't need a separate set of rules for heterosexuals who marry and have kids together and a set of rules for gays who have kids together.
And, if you say otherwise, you are a hateful bigot with an Imaginary Friend complex.
I never mentioned God. You must be remembering another post.
We DO have a general solution: Two adults who tie their lives together legally should have the same rights -- and responsibilities -- no matter what gender.
MonicaP at February 24, 2012 2:23 PM
> Two adults who tie their lives together
Me and my little sister? She always dug me, and apparently society is required to provide bennies to ANY union, right?
Super.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 2:40 PM
You and your little sister already have legal rights related to each other. However, things change, and if at some point society decides that, for legal reasons, people need the right to marry their sisters, so be it.
MonicaP at February 24, 2012 2:48 PM
Alistair Young: "They are not violating any legitimate rights which you have, and yet you're the one wanting them denied the ability to make certain legal arrangements, if not defined out of existence by force of law."
Welcome to reality. Restrictions of polygamy, age, and familial relations (which Crid brought up) are all arbitrary restrictions on marriage which, at the risk of "re-treading" old arguments are all out there.
The difference, perhaps, between you and me, is that I will admit that these restrictions are arbitrary. You call them totalitarian but, like MonicaP, will try to justify your own biases. At least, I can admit that the laws can be arbitrary.
I mean, after all, does the government have any business with minimum wage laws, for instance? Why does the government want to impose itself in a legal arrangement where two parties are not violating legitimate rights between themselves?
This is nothing new here, people. Government is often arbitrary. That does not mean that people who are okay with that are bigots. But, if it does mean that, J'Accuse!
And, yes, MonicaP, I was throwing in a playful jab at Amy there. But, I agree with Crid, the legal relations between siblings cannot substitute for the profoundly sacred legal relationship we call marriage, and people who believe otherwise are bigots! (Again, tongue in cheek; I am sure you are a very nice person in real life.) :)
-Jut
JutGory at February 24, 2012 3:16 PM
"It's nuhtin' personal."
You bungled the spelling.
I don't care what gymnastics anyone here makes with respect to the State and marriage, because the State HAS a vested interest in what its people are doing.
Period.
Now go work out what you want to happen and why. It's been claimed that "it's nuhtin' personal", but clearly, it is to many.
"Me and my little sister..." - you left the "who tie their lives together" out to twist things to where you wanted. Go ahead, but note that it's obvious.
What do you want to happen? Why?
Abortion opponents get this BSOD stare when you ask them what jail term they want for a woman who gets an abortion - are you staring into the distance now, having been asked this?
Radwaste at February 24, 2012 3:18 PM
> You and your little sister already have
> legal rights related to each other.
You're begging the question. Gay couples already "have legal rights related to each other." Out topic today is what those legalities ought to be. Everyone has "legal rights related to each other." Our topic today is what those legalities ought to be.
> However, things change
No, actually they don't. Human nature is a constant, varying much less than any number of considerations elsewhere in the biome. Civilization is about refining our response to human nature, not about selecting chunks of it to disregard.
> so be it.
That's great! C'est la vie, y'know? Like, what-eVAR, dood! 'Kay Sarah!
Y'know what it reminds me of? Amy's fabulous "we"!
'Cause, y'know, in a truly righteous society, everything's up for grabs! "We" can do whatever we want!
(I continue to find amazement in the things people will say when they think they're being generous and tolerant.)
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 3:29 PM
Bad edit. I'm already feeling sick about it... Don't judge me!
Aw, what the Hell. Everything I say is worth reading twice anyway. Anyway.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 3:31 PM
Of course things change. Culture changes all the time, and we've always got one generation insisting that all these changes will lead to the end of us all. It has yet to happen. We're pretty much still OK.
The argument against gay marriage, when it isn't about religion, always seems to amount to, "But I have these feelings about the way human relationships should work." I don't see why that should be good enough. I don't see any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, why gay people can't establish solid relationships and raise healthy children. They are right now. We're just making it harder.
And of course we can do whatever we want. We're a democracy, at our best. We can decide what works for us given the environment we happen to be in. Human nature doesn't change, but the environment does.
Don't judge me!
Hell, Crid, if I didn't judge people, what would I do with myself?
MonicaP at February 24, 2012 4:03 PM
> I don't see any evidence, anecdotal or
> otherwise, why gay people can't establish
> solid relationships and raise healthy children.
Again, if you want to say that the masculinity of your father, and the femininity of your mother, and your own femininity to your children are empty quantities, I see no reason to dispute it.
But Hoppin' Jesus Fuck on a Stick, that would be pathetic.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 4:39 PM
> establish solid relationships and raise
> healthy children
Shitfuck. These are principles straight out of the coffeepot at a (bankrupt) P.R. firm.
Have you heard the one about "an authority figure recognized to be engaged in raising children"?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 4:42 PM
Again, if you want to say that the masculinity of your father, and the femininity of your mother, and your own femininity to your children are empty quantities, I see no reason to dispute it.
If I'd had two mothers instead of a mother and father, the femininity of both of them would have meant just as much.
Shitfuck. These are principles straight out of the coffeepot at a (bankrupt) P.R. firm.
Perhaps. It's still true. There's nothing suggesting kids of gay parents aren't just fine.
MonicaP at February 24, 2012 4:51 PM
> If I'd had two mothers instead of a mother
> and father, the femininity of both of them
> would have meant just as much.
This is LUNACY. It's INSANE. It's DUMB.
WHY, FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, ARE YOU ZOMBIES CONCERNED ABOUT SINGLE MOTHERHOOD? NO FAMILIES ARE MORE INTACT THAN THOSE OF FUCKBRAINED SINGLE MOTHERS...
It's pathetic. You're drunk on diet soda, and the processed sugar fueling your fantasies is morphing into policy. Pathos
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 24, 2012 4:56 PM
Be dramatic if it makes you feel better, but you still haven't presented anything to suggest that families made up of two parents of the same gender are any worse off than families made up of a man and a woman. Your feelings are strong, but they are not evidence of anything more than your special attachment to the idea that children need two genders in the home.
What makes families strong is having two parents, not making sure the scales even out on gender. Single motherhood has nothing to do with this.
Also, diet soda is gross. Coffee all the way.
MonicaP at February 24, 2012 5:02 PM
Add: I'm not sure what any of this has to do with gay marriage. Gays are already raising children together. It's not illegal for lesbians to get pregnant. We're just denying their children the social protections afforded to children of straight couples and making it easier, legally, for gay couples to dissolve their relationships. In the end, we're just making it illegal for a small group of kids to have married parents.
MonicaP at February 24, 2012 5:18 PM
Looks like Crid is being an asshat again.
Marriage as a contract with the state? Ok, I buy that, but what contract obligation can a heterosexual couple fill that a homosexual couple cannot? Both gay male and lesbian couples raise children these days, serve in the military and pay taxes. What more do you want?
While I agree that a child of any gender is better off with both a male and female parent figure, that is not the society in which we live, meaning that objecting and prohibiting gay marriage does not make anything better for any child and does not improve the situation of worse child rearing circumstance, such as those children raised by single mothers, the adversities of which are well documented.
As long as the state gives those who are married special treatment, it should allow any two people to marry. There is no logical argument against this, and Crid, you have given nothing that resembles a logical argument to support your position. I'll accept a certain amount of manipulation of the system, that's a given for any system.
Also gay marriage paves the way for gay divorce, and gender neutral policies for divorce, which has future benefits for many heterosexual couples.
Assholio at February 24, 2012 8:23 PM
Now that thousands of gay marriages have occurred in the states that allow them, can someone point out a single concrete quantifiable way that anyone has been negatively affected? (Aside from Jesus causing that hurricane to destroy New Orleans.)
clinky at February 24, 2012 8:29 PM
Childless, unmarried Crid, expert on marriage and the rearing of children, knows that denying gays marriage is the best way to prevent them from raising children. If gays are allowed to marry, then they will want to raise children in their legally sanctioned gay "families".
As it stands now, with gay marriage illegal, these things do not happen. Gays don't join together and raise children, and because this never happens, there's no concern that the lack of legal status for their relationships might cause harm to the children. Because if this were case, Crid might reconsider his anti-gay marriage litany. Crid cares about the children, you see.
Christopher at February 24, 2012 8:39 PM
Wasn't it on this blog that someone was mentioning the Canadian ban on polygamy and a court case, in which they brought up various ills that occur in societies that have polygamy?
I don't think there is a comparable list of societal ills caused by gay marriages. There haven't been enough societies that have had gay marriage to come up with such a list. So in that sense, what we're doing is a bit experimental.
However, based on the evidence available to us, I think gay marriage is good for our society.
NicoleK at February 25, 2012 4:15 AM
> you still haven't presented anything to
> suggest that families made up of two
> parents of the same gender are any
> worse off than families
You keep moving the goalposts... I say what's best for a child is a loving mother with a loving father, and you keep saying "Yes, but..." as if you meant it. But you don't.
The masculinity for you father meant nothing to you? TELL YOUR FATHER. Look him in the eye, and say it in as many words.
All this shit has the same tone of voice as slavery. It's exactly the monstrosity I remember from studying the shit as a child. 'Well of course the Negroes are happy to be whipped and starved and toiling for us... They're not actually *people*.'
Well, now civilization has found a new defenseless population to exploit for adult fulfillment. And idiot houswifes will slam down as much prozac as necessary to maintain flat affect and blasé tone as the rhetoric dribbles from the corner of your mouth: 'Gender doesn't matter.'
Or, more precisely, "There's nothing to suggest..."
As if having a loving man in your home didn't make you more comfortable with men as you were growing up.
Or maybe you didn't have a loving man in your home, in which case much could be explained here.
The burden of proof is all yours; As the petitioner for change, you must do better than "Why not"?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 25, 2012 9:18 AM
> However, things change
No, actually they don't. Human nature is a constant, varying much less than any number of considerations elsewhere in the biome. Civilization is about refining our response to human nature, not about selecting chunks of it to disregard.
lujlp at February 25, 2012 9:29 AM
> However, things change
No, actually they don't. Human nature is a constant, varying much less than any number of considerations elsewhere in the biome. Civilization is about refining our response to human nature, not about selecting chunks of it to disregard.
Thats funny, considering homosexuality has been observed in mammals, reptiles, birds, and documented in humans for more than 5,000yrs wouldnt refusing to allow gays marrige count as disregarding chunks of human nature?
Again, if you want to say that the masculinity of your father, and the femininity of your mother, and your own femininity to your children are empty quantities, I see no reason to dispute it.
If that were true you wouldnt raise this argument every time this topic comes up. Also given sex isnt binary what do you suppose to do with children of hetero parents when the father isnt masculine or the mother isnt feminine?
Also go fuck yourself
lujlp at February 25, 2012 9:31 AM
> I agree that a child of any gender is
> better off with both a male and female
> parent figure
Locutions like "parent figure" suggest that the speaker [A.] has never thought about the topic before and is (clumsily) attempting a pose of bogus professorial detachment and [B.] is a sniveling buffoon.
Cocksucking Christ on a Stick, boy: Do you have a mother, or do you have a "parent figure"?
As this broad insanity comes to a full boil, Hallmark will introduce a series of fey, "Parental Figure's Day" cards in which pastel cartoon ants offer lame rhymes.
Ah! I have it! New Rule: Children of zombies such as yourself should be PUNISHED for calling you Mother! You shall merely be Parent, evermore.
And if the school overhears your kid talking about "Mother" to some friend at the lockers before class, the kid will be disciplined or suspended!
I'm gonna propose this to the Obama administration, OK? Because I think it could make America a more compassionate, sustainable, Hope-y place to live.
You don't think they'll go for it? Consider how easy it is to get a kid in trouble for having an aspirin, or calling another kid a name, or playing doctor. I bet they go for it big time, especially if I can think up a some sort of "Homeland" angle.
You don't think it matter? OK, then I think we should FORBID it to matter.
> a logical argument to support your position.
It's difficult to accept tips on logic from someone who chooses to be known as "Assholio". Besides, I think Amy threw you off of here several months ago.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 25, 2012 9:36 AM
> I think gay marriage is good for our society.
What does "our society" get out of it?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 25, 2012 9:36 AM
Besides that smug, "Disney" feeling, I mean?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 25, 2012 9:37 AM
What Assholio said.
What do you want to happen, Crid, and why?
Radwaste at February 25, 2012 10:20 AM
Start here, and go forward. Don't skip anything. Take notes this time.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 25, 2012 10:31 AM
What do you want to happen, Crid, and why?
What Crid wants is clear: for gay couples to be denied marriage. What is unclear is how this relates to his concerns about children having a mother and a father. In the fantasy world in which Crid resides, somehow, gays being unable to marry means that they will do what he wants and also not raise children.
Christopher at February 25, 2012 11:55 AM
"What Crid wants is clear: for gay couples to be denied marriage."
No, I think what he is asking is "what is in it for me?"
How the hetros will benefit by allowing homos to marry?
Unless you can explain the benefits in U.S. dollar terms, we, the hetros, are not interested in changing the status quo.
Show me the money. Then, I will dodge the bullets with you, so homos can get married.
chang at February 25, 2012 4:52 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/02/24/doma_ruled_unco.html#comment-3002034">comment from changThat's not how we allocate rights in this country.
Amy Alkon at February 25, 2012 5:16 PM
Unless you can explain the benefits in U.S. dollar terms, we, the hetros, are not interested in changing the status quo.
People who are married are generally better off economically and are less likely to be on government assistance. Married people are also healthier, leading to lower medical costs. Done. Thanks.
Christopher at February 25, 2012 5:54 PM
> for gay couples to be denied marriage.
Nope, I want them to have the same rights to marriage as anyone else.
And whaddya know! They do.
The fantasies are all yours, composed (with Amy's) in the Disney/Mattel Consumer Fulfillment Matrix, or D/MCFM. A D/MCFM fantasy lasts thirty seconds, by happenstance as long as a TV commercial for a plastic toy, for a happy-princess cartoon movie, or for an amusement park ticket... Or maybe for the resolution of a sitcom. After thirty seconds of consideration, the fantasist considers the matter to be closed... And demands to be amused and, wherever possible, flattered. The rhythms of your thinking were pounded into this time signature years ago, and now the music starts in earnest.
You think marriage is just a quaint little kiss on the forehead that Mr. Government (Spencer Tracy or Morgan Freeman wearing a black robe) gives to all the broken teacups, adult though they may be, to reassure them that their feelings are important, too!
And when someone disagrees, you give yourself a second jolt of self-fulfillment, by imaging that you're just nicer than other people.
I don't think so. As mentioned above, this particular manifestation of the D/MCFM is more like slavery. As long as everyone agrees that the oppressed party isn't really human, everything goes great! No child is actually going to figure out that he's missing something precious by not having intimate love from a woman (or a man) in his development. Of those that do, a tiny percentage will have the natural skills of articulation to complain about it. And those few can be silenced as do the children of single mothers who ask where the fuck Daddy is while all this is going on... A little shouting, a couple hours of mind games, and the problem goes away…
(…For the "parent".)
Now, little Christopher, have you told YOUR mother that her femininity meant nothing essential to your development? Have you explained this to your Grandmother?
No?
Golly! I wonder why not.
Crid at February 25, 2012 7:15 PM
Shoulda been silenced as are, not silenced as do.
I feel bad. Listen, rhetorical syncopations happen sometimes.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 25, 2012 8:13 PM
Two hundreds years from now, when they look back at the fractured, misshapen families of our generations as we now look at slavery, they'll recognize the pornographic fascination of state power with "mutual affection" as a big part of the problem.
Indeed. A family is a social structure that enables enables society to consist of something greater than egocentric individuals.
What's "mutual affection" got to do with it?
Jet Tibet at February 26, 2012 4:22 AM
> What's "mutual affection" got to do with it?
If you're reaching for a mid-Reagan Tina lyric, this is a better one (if you can get past the video-game-thwoop of the synthesized snare drum, and you have have my sympathy and understanding if you cannot). Charming modulations in the verse; killer sweetness in chorus. Even the bridge is better than it sounds. The woman was nearly 50 when they shot that video... I wonder if she ever got old.
Otherwise, thank you very much for taking the point. Almost no one ever does around here.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 26, 2012 5:27 AM
(Later)
Come back here'n fight, ya little fuckers!
Grrrrr.
I will never understand how so many ostentatiously, theatrically 'loving' people come to presume that their parents (G/parents, G/G/p's, etc.) had nothing to do with it... As if all the warmth and insight and trust in the universe came into being as they themselves reached into their own underpants for that first time... An hour coinciding, by chilling happenstance, with the release of the first Britney Spears Greatest Hits collection.
Oops.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 26, 2012 6:26 PM
And by the way, because I never even bothered to read the blog post itself before deciding I wasn't going to watch the Oscars:
> This is as wrong as denying people of different
> races the right to marry.
Race has implications for character seen in no other human distinction, while race certainly does not, and you'd be a fool to deny it.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 26, 2012 6:49 PM
Fuggerz.
I mean it.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 27, 2012 6:35 PM
Whoops, that shoulda been "GENDER has implications for character..." etc.
Nobody spoke up. I think you guys have been beaten into submission. That happens sometimes.
Y'know,
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 28, 2012 1:55 PM
That was this guy
Crid [CridComment at gmail at February 28, 2012 2:25 PM
Leave a comment