Equal Dignity in the Eyes of the Law
From Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion
The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them.
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity. The petitioners in these cases seek to find that liberty by marrying someone of the same sex and having their marriages deemed lawful on the same terms and conditions as marriages between persons of the opposite sex.
Far from seeking to devalue marriage, the petitioners seek it for themselves because of their respect—and need—for its privileges and responsibilities. And their immutable nature dictates that same-sex marriage is their only real path to this profound commitment.
448 Comments:
"All You Need Is Love"
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
There's nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy
Nothing you can make that can't be made
No one you can save that can't be saved
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
Nothing you can know that isn't known
Nothing you can see that isn't shown
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be
It's easy
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
All you need is love (All together, now!)
All you need is love (Everybody!)
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Yee-hai! (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Yesterday (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Oh yeah! (Love is all you need)
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah (Love is all you need)
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah (Love is all you need)
NO MORE HATE, PLEASE AND THANK YOU
Congratulations to all my American friends on justice achieved!
And the good news just keeps piling up!
After leaving for personal reasons making many think his career was over Michael Sam has returned to Montreal!
Woohoo!
Clarence Thomas's demonstrated the twisted thinking of so many anti-gay conservatives. In his dissent he essentially said if gays aren't incarcerated or physically restrained they have nothing to complain about regardless of what other liberties they might be deprived of! Wow! Just Wow! What an incredibly harsh and selfish view of justice!
It shows you how depraved the minds are of anti-gay bigots. I'd like to hear what Thomas thinks of the idea that all Jim Crow laws were just and depriving blacks of the right to vote wasn't a problem because they weren't being incarcerated or physically restrained.
What an incredibly low bar many conservatives set for justice! These people are positively sick!
OBAMA: Our nation was founded on a bedrock principle that we are all created equal. The project of each generation is to bridge the meaning of those founding words with the realities of changing times — a never-ending quest to ensure those words ring true for every single American.
Progress on this journey often comes in small increments. Sometimes two steps forward, one step back, compelled by the persistent effort of dedicated citizens. And then sometimes there are days like this, when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.
This morning, the Supreme Court recognized that the Constitution guarantees marriage equality. In doing so, they have reaffirmed that all Americans are entitled to the equal protection of the law; that all people should be treated equally, regardless of who they are or who they love.
This decision will end the patchwork system we currently have. It will end the uncertainty hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples face from not knowing whether they’re marriage, legitimate in the eyes of one state, will remain if they decide to move or even visit another.
This ruling will strengthen all of our communities by offering to all loving same-sex couples the dignity of marriage across this great land.
In my second inaugural address, I said that if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. It is gratifying to see that principle enshrined into law by this decision.
This ruling is a victory for Jim Obergefell and the other plaintiffs in the case. It’s a victory for gay and lesbian couples who have so long for their basic civil rights. It’s a victory for their children, whose families will now be recognized as equal to any other. It’s a victory for the allies and friends and supporters who spent years, even decades working and praying for change to come.
And this ruling is a victory for America. This decision affirms what millions of Americans already believe in their hearts. When all Americans are treated as equal, we are all more free.
My administration has been guided by that idea. It’s why we stopped defending the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and why we were pleased when the court finally struck down the central provision of that discriminatory law. It’s why we ended, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”...
...From extending full marital benefits to federal employees and their spouses to expanding hospital visitation rights for LGBT patients and their loved ones, we’ve made real progress in advancing equality for LGBT Americans in ways that were unimaginable not too long ago.
I know a change for many of our LGBT brothers and sisters must have seemed so slow for so long. But compared to so many other issues, America’s shift has been so quick.
I know that Americans of good will continue to hold a wide range of views on this issue. Opposition, in some cases, has been based on sincere and deeply held beliefs. All of us who welcome today’s news should be mindful of that fact and recognize different viewpoints, revere our deep commitment to religious freedom.
But today should also give us hope that on the many issues with which we grapple, often painfully, real change is possible. Shift in hearts and minds is possible. And those who have come so far on their journey to equality have a responsibility to reach back and help others join them, because for all of our differences, we are one people, stronger together than we could ever be alone. That’s always been our story.
We are big and vast and diverse, a nation of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, different experiences and stories but bound by the shared ideal that no matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off or how and who you love, America is a place where you can write your own destiny.
We are people who believe every child is entitled to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is so much more work to be done to extend the full promise of America to every American. But today, we can say in no uncertain terms that we’ve made our union a little more perfect.
That’s the consequence of a decision from the Supreme Court, but more importantly, it is a consequence of the countless small acts of courage of millions of people across decades who stood up, who came out, talked to parents, parents who loved their children no matter what, folks who were willing to endure bullying and taunts, and stayed strong, and came to believe in themselves and who they were.
And slowly made an entire country realize that love is love.
What an extraordinary achievement, but what a vindication of the belief that ordinary people can do extraordinary things; what a reminder of what Bobby Kennedy once said about how small actions can be like pebbles being thrown into a still lake, and ripples of hope cascade outwards and change the world.
Those countless, often anonymous heroes, they deserve our thanks. They should be very proud. America should be very proud.
Thank you.
President Huckabee is absolutely losing his mind over the ruling for marriage equality!
He's gone so far as to make veiled calls for revolution, LOL!
His furious spittle flecked rants are absolutely delightful!
SCALIA: ASK A HIPPIE ABOUT MARRIAGE
HIPPIE: SCALIA'S A KNUCKLEHEAD
Before You
Baby, before you
Well, I was bad news
In lettin' me love you
I think I can get through
Oh, baby before you
Well, I was so scared
I was a train wreck waitin' to happen
On the way to nowhere
And now I think it's kinda funny that you say you love me
You tell me that I'm crazy then you smile
And now I think I'll get through the end of the world
And now I think I'll get through bein' a girl
Now I think I'll get through anything
And now I think I'll get through
Now honey around you
Well, I'm feelin' so good
'Cause you picked me up out of the rough
And you polished me up and made me brand new
And baby before you, ho ho
There was just a black hole
Yeah, I was beat down, blacked out
My darling you couldn't even know
But ever since I met you on a cloudy Monday
I can't believe how much I love the rain
And now I think I'll get through the end of the world
And now I think I'll get through life as a girl
Now I think I'll get through anything
Now I think I'll get through
Ever since I met you on a cloudy Monday
I can't believe how much I love the rain
And now I think I'll get through the end of the world
And now I think I'll get through life as a girl
Now I think I'll get through anything
Now I think I'll get through
Oh oh, now I think I'll get through
Oh, now I think I'll get through
Oh oh, and now I think I'll get through
And now I think I'll get through
Oh, and now I think I'll get through
Oh, and now I think I'll get through
Oh, and now I think I'll get through
Rob Tisinai suggested I've been ungracious in victory. This is not the time for schadenfreude. No, we should offer our opponents the same dignity and respect they’ve shown gay people for…for…for…oh, f*k it, hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
WASHINGTON -- Justice Antonin Scalia may have penned the most colorful dissent to Friday's landmark Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, but his colleague Clarence Thomas wrote the weirdest.
Thomas, alone among the four dissenting conservative justices, seemed to recognize that the legal reasoning he and his fellow dissenters were bringing to bear on same-sex marriage could also apply to interracial marriage. That's a problem for Thomas, because only bigots oppose interracial marriage, and he presumably didn't want his dissent to be seen as window-dressing for hatred. Thomas tried to get around this uncomfortable parallel by arguing that Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 decision that required every state to recognize interracial marriage, wasn't really about marriage after all. Here's what he wrote:
"Petitioners’ misconception of liberty carries over into their discussion of our precedents identifying a right to marry, not one of which has expanded the concept of “liberty” beyond the concept of negative liberty. Those precedents all involved absolute prohibitions on private actions associated with marriage. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967), for example, involved a couple who was criminally prosecuted for marrying in the District of Columbia and cohabiting in Virginia, id., at 2–3. They were each sentenced to a year of imprisonment, suspended for a term of 25 years on the condition that they not reenter the Commonwealth together during that time."
In other words, Thomas is saying, the Loving decision was actually about letting interracial couples live together without being arrested. And OK, yes, it's true that Richard and Mildred Loving were criminally prosecuted. But it's ridiculous to claim that the decision overturning their conviction simply decriminalized interracial cohabitation. Here's what then-Chief Justice Earl Warren actually wrote in that case:
"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause ... The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence... Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State."
If you're still not sure whether that decision was about marriage, then consider that it overturned interracial marriage bans in 16 states... kind of like how Friday's decision overturned same-sex marriage bans in 13 states. Thomas can say whatever he wants, but his reasoning here is hard to defend. (Incidentally, Thomas, who is black, is married to a white woman named Virginia, because you can't make this stuff up.)
But wait! The Thomas dissent actually gets weirder! The justice is apparently very upset about the majority of his colleagues writing so much about "dignity" for gay couples. Here's what he has to say about human dignity:
Human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.
Relax, same-sex couples! Your dignity hasn't been compromised by laws against gay marriage any more than slavery compromised the dignity of the Africans who were abducted, exploited, raped and murdered in its name.
Thomas said the purpose of government was to protect people's dignity, not grant it. Guess he couldn't get his bigoted mind around the fact that it is then the role of government to protect the dignity of gays and lesbians by overturning gay marriage bans.
Thomas also says lots of weird stuff about the Magna Carta and John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, neither of which is the United States Constitution.
The conservatives’ marriage equality dissents are petty, hypocritical, and embarrassing.
I’m glad to hear the scene on the court plaza following this morning’s announcement of the marriage equality decision was dignified. The gracious conduct of same-sex marriage supporters outside the courtroom throws into even starker relief the cold, petty, embarrassing dissents by each conservative justice.
Start with Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote such a marvelously measured and opaque dissent in United States v. Windsor. This time around, Roberts let his worst, most small-minded tendencies get the better of him. Roberts’ admonition to gay people and their allies—“[D]o not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”—is one of most spiteful lines he’s ever written. Roberts also likens the ruling to Lochner v. New York, arguing that the court has overstepped its constitutional bounds and acted as a “super-legislature.” But it’s hard to take these complaints seriously coming from the man who engineered Citizens United and helped to invent an individual right to own guns.
Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent is equally hypocritical, especially in light of his King v. Burwell dissent just yesterday. Scalia calls the decision a “judge-empowering” “Putsch” based on “hubris,” a “naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative power.” These complaints, arriving exactly one day after Scalia hoped to cripple a major act of Congress through a strained, implausible reading of one phrase in a sub-sub-subsection, rings quite hollow.
Thomas’ dissent is, in many ways, the fieriest of the bunch. To his mind, the “liberty” guaranteed by the Due Process Clause is not a liberty to receive something from the government (like marriage benefits) but rather to be free from government restraint. Thomas also disputes the notion that, by depriving gay couples of marriage rights, states can deprive them of “dignity.” “Human dignity,” Thomas writes, “cannot be taken away by the government”:
Thomas also accuses the majority of “demean[ing]” opponents of marriage equality—an astonishing charge, since Thomas refuses to believe that anti-gay laws demean gay people. His opinion all but declares that, personally and politically, he vehemently opposes same-sex marriage. He even trots out the right-wing talking point that the ruling “threatens the religious liberty our Nation has long sought to protect.” That undercurrent of animus makes the rest of his logic sound like so much pretext.
Oddly, Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent is the most measured and respectful. But it is also the goofiest. Alito comes close to saying that same-sex marriage isn’t true marriage, since, “[f]or millennia, marriage was inextricably linked to the one thing that only an opposite-sex couple can do: procreate.” Here, Alito buys into the coitus theory of marriage—the strange notion that a marriage is only valid if it involves heterosexual intercourse. Apparently Alito doesn’t buy the idea that marriages are about love and mutual support. Real marriages are about coitus, not commitment.
Alito also channels his inner right-wing ideologue when fretting about the vilification of gay marriage opponents. “I assume,” he writes, “that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.”
But Alito fails to explain why the court’s decision today will exacerbate the “risk” that gay marriage opponents will be “labeled as bigots.” Clearly, even before today’s decision, America was shifting rapidly toward tolerance. What Alito is really terrified of, I think, is the impending, inevitable widespread agreement that people who share his beliefs about marriage are bigoted. The court’s pro-gay ruling has little bearing on that eventuality, except perhaps to hasten it a tiny bit. Alito isn’t afraid of today’s decision. He’s afraid of the future.
giggle
Republicans Are Going to Leave the Country and Set Themselves on Fire Due to SCOTUS
Prior to the marriage equality decision Tom DeLay was stoking homophobic fears and warning of a massive revolt if the Supreme Court rules to strike down gay marriage bans. "If this Supreme Court rules against marriage, all hell is going to break loose," DeLay said.
And here's one that's going to be loads of fun, and one we can look forward to: Glenn Beck and religious-right activist Jim Garlow have 10,000 passionate pastors prepared to give up their lives if necessary in the fight against the coming persecution of Christians:
The number in the Black Robe Regiment is about 70,000 now. The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000. That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man.
DOES THIS DECISION MEAN CHURCHES MUST CONDUCT GAY MARRIAGES?
No. Religious organizations are exempt from this ruling. They can still make their own decisions about whether clergy will conduct gay marriages in their places of worship. Southern Baptists, Mormons and other conservative churches that believe God intended marriage to be a union only between a man and a woman said the ruling won't change their decisions not to allow same-sex marriages in their churches. Some religions already allow gay marriage, such as the United Church of Christ, and more could follow. Episcopalians are set to decide next week at an assembly in Salt Lake City whether to change church laws so religious weddings can be performed for same-sex couples.
Thank you, Jim.
"Blogger Priya Lynn said...
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
All you need is love (All together, now!)
All you need is love (Everybody!)
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Yee-hai! (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Yesterday (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Oh yeah! (Love is all you need)"
jeez, I left a reply to Jim's post and it's gone
it included a definition of "dignity"
which is something that people should aspire to and not something that is guaranteed by anything in the constitution
the constitution guarantees the liberty to pursue happiness
and it would certainly include the right of gays to advocate for changing the definition of marriage
the justices this week have turned the SCOTUS into a legislative body
Thomas wrote his finest dissent ever:
"the “liberty” guaranteed by the Due Process Clause is not a liberty to receive something from the government (like marriage benefits) but rather to be free from government restraint"
Clarence Thomas's demonstrated the twisted thinking of so many anti-gay conservatives. In his dissent he essentially said if gays aren't incarcerated or physically restrained they have nothing to complain about regardless of what other liberties they might be deprived of! Wow! Just Wow! What an incredibly harsh and selfish view of justice!
It shows you how depraved the minds are of anti-gay bigots. I'd like to hear what Thomas thinks of the idea that all Jim Crow laws were just and depriving blacks of the right to vote wasn't a problem because they weren't being incarcerated or physically restrained.
What an incredibly low bar many conservatives set for justice! These people are positively sick!
All the dissenting justices obviously think Loving vs Virgina was wrongly decided - interracial marriage should have been put up for a vote instead of being decided by 9 black robed tyrants. Of course unlike with marriage equality back then over 80% of the public opposed interracial marriage and the public support for it didn't get into majority territory until the 90's
But as Justice Thomas said:
Relax, same-sex couples! Your dignity hasn't been compromised by laws against gay marriage any more than slavery compromised the dignity of the Africans who were abducted, exploited, raped and murdered in its name.
Where was all this “five unelected judges” chatter when they handed down Citizens United?
Chief Justice John Roberts doesn’t want people to hate him, and he doesn’t want them to hate judges. Then there’s Justice Samuel Alito: He doesn’t want to be called a bigot, and he doesn’t want people with strong conscience objections to marriage equality to be called bigots, either. And Justice Clarence Thomas doesn’t want the government to be in the business of conferring and taking away his dignity, or the dignity of others. He also doesn’t want his religious liberty trammeled. So everyone writes about how this opinion will hurt them and people like them.
And Justice Antonin Scalia? Well, one friend of mine suggested that between “applesauce” and “fortune cookies,” he might just really need a nap and a snack.
Thomas also rails at the fact that a “bare majority of this court” is able to “grant this wish, wiping out with the stroke of a keyboard the results of the political process in over 30 states.” And all I could keep thinking was, “Where was all this five unelected judges chatter when you all handed down Citizens United? Or Shelby County? Why does this rhetoric about five elitist out-of-touch patrician fortune-cookie writers never stick when you’re in the five?”
Recall back at oral argument when Elena Kagan said, “We don’t live in a pure democracy, we live in a constitutional democracy.” Isn’t that the answer to the dissenters’ political process questions? Or is that only the answer on campaign finance reform?
The Supreme Court Has Just Destroyed Marriage
⦁ Today, June 26, 2015, a day that will live in infamy, the Supreme Court has just destroyed the great battleship of marriage. Sent a kamizake pilot right through its bridge. Blown it to smithereens.
A sacred institution that was founded by God Himself in the Garden of Eden and that has lasted for countless millennia, an institution that has persevered through fire and flood and earthquake and famine and tyranny and Nazism and Fascism and Communism and even terrorism, has just been wantonly wrecked. Like the ancient temples and icons of Syria and Iraq that have lately been smashed by the terrorists of ISIS, the institution of marriage now lies in ruins.
The Court has thus finished the wrecking job it began just over two years ago, when it recklessly overturned DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act. Until that happened, my wife and I (one woman and one man) had been planning to mark our Golden Anniversary with a blowout party for 600 of our closest friends plus our two children and their families from Brooklyn and LA. But the Court's decision killed our plans. How could we celebrate our Golden Anniversary when the Supreme Court of these United States had just made a mockery of marriage itself?
This sort of question never dented the brains of those who argued that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry throughout the land. Instead, these wingnuts claimed that legalizing same-sex marriage did no injury to heterosexual couples, that it didn't hurt us in any way. But they were and are dead wrong. Two years ago, when the Court overturned DOMA, my wife and I suffered pain. Deep pain. Heartbreak. Besides cancelling our Golden Anniversary party, we had to put all future anniversary celebrations on hold until the Court ruled, finally, on whether traditional marriage could survive in any state of this land. But today brought the final blow to our hopes. From here on, we must live apart and mark each anniversary only by separately mourning the death of marriage itself. Not just our marriage, but all marriages.
An I over-reacting here? Not a bit. Let me explain.
You may wonder how a decision to legalize same-sex marriage throughout the land could kill any institution that has somehow withstood a divorce rate of nearly 50 percent. Now it's true that Christ emphatically forbade divorce -- "What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder" (Mark 10:9) - and that divorce can be very damaging to children as well as to the men and women who go through it. But miraculously enough, divorce does no harm at all to the institution of marriage, which is why it has long been allowed by all Christian sects including the Catholic church. (The Catholic church nominally forbids divorce but routinely allows "annulments" -- even of marriages that have lasted many years and produced several children.) So while only about half of all married couples stay together for life, as marriage vows traditionally require, the breakup of their unions does no harm at all to the stability of marriage itself. It's strictly a matter of numbers. While a divorce rate of 50 percent leaves the institution perfectly intact, a gay marriage rate of as little as 5 percent can destroy it, and now will destroy it. That's how insidious gay marriage is.
Equally insidious is the argument that gays deserve equality. Two years ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy struck down DOMA because, he wrote, it denied "the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment." But gays are no more equal to straights than righteously homophobic conservatives are to leftist nuts. For that reason, gay "marriage" will never equal traditional marriage.
Today's decision puts us on a bullet train to chaos. The next thing you know, dogs will be legally allowed to marry cats, mice to marry rats, and -- worst of all -- Democrats to marry Republicans. (Any theologian worth her salt will tell you that the so-called "marriage" of James Carville and Mary Matalin violates natural law as well as the laws of God.)
And please don't ask me to cheer for Jim Obergefell, who brought this case to the Supreme Court because in Ohio, where same sex has been illegal up to now, he wanted to be named as the surviving spouse on the death certificate of his late husband, John Arthur. I don't cheer for Jim Obergefell any more than I cheered for Edith Windsor, who brought the case against DOMA because she would otherwise have had to pay $363,053 in estate taxes on what she inherited from her same-sex spouse. I don't cheer--and didn't cheer--for Windsor because that figure is far less than my wife and I will now have to pay to reconstruct our house.
Since our marriage--like all marriages-- has just been destroyed, we can no longer live together. But since neither of us can bear to leave the house that we have shared for the past forty years, we will have to build a brick wall right down the middle of it. Just to get permission for this arrangement in our neighborhood will cost us -- in legal fees -- at least fifty grand. Then the house itself must be reconfigured. On her side of the new wall, my wife will need a new Jacuzzi, a new kitchen, and a new living room; on my side I'll need a new exercise room, a new dining room, and a new stairway. Since no builder we know has ever done this kind of job before, we've so far had only ballpark estimates starting at 1.3 million.
And guess how far we'd get if we took our case to the Supreme Court.
American Muslims Supporting Gay Marriage Speak Up
Bristol Palin revealed in a blog post a couple of days ago that she’s pregnant with her second child, just weeks after calling off her wedding to Sgt. Dakota Meyer. She said this would be a “huge disappointment” to her family and asked for people to respect her family’s privacy.
But columnist Dan Savage couldn’t help but detect some hypocrisy in the air.
Savage wrote a blog post referring to the young Palin as “Bristol ‘Screw As I Say, Not As I Screw’ Palin.” He recommended birth control “for right after your next child is born into a fatherless home,” brought up the abstinence PSA she did a few years ago, and even quoted her own words about how “in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home” (an argument she used in taking on President Obama over gay marriage).
But the real kicker came at the top, when Savage said Fox News would have a much different reaction to Palin’s pregnancy if she was an Obama:
"If Bristol Palin’s last name was “Obama” the whole Hee Haw gang at Fox News would spend half of every day for the next nine months telling us that Bristol Obama has terrible parents—”Maybe Michelle should be less concerned with what your kids are eating and more concerned with what her kids are doing!”—and the half of the day pretending to fret over the terrible example that Bristol Obama was setting for other African American women and girls. But unplanned pregnancies and kids in fatherless homes and two different children by two different fathers? IOIYAR."
FYI, that acronym stands for “It’s Okay If You’re A Republican
SCOTUS Gay Marriage Ruling: These Conservative Meltdowns Are Better Than Netflix I'm moving to Canada
Pssst, Canada has had gay marriage for 10 years.
"Since our marriage--like all marriages-- has just been destroyed, we can no longer live together. But since neither of us can bear to leave the house that we have shared for the past forty years, we will have to build a brick wall right down the middle of it."
More selective cutting and pasting, Anon?
Here's the part you missed --
"If you hadn't guessed by now, this post is satire."
Nice try though, Anon.
"Where was all this “five unelected judges” chatter when they handed down Citizens United?"
Good point Priya Lynn.
I would add: Where was all this “five unelected judges” chatter when they handed down Bush v. Gore?
Ben & Jerry’s, a longstanding corporate champion of gay rights, is celebrating the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay marriage throughout the U.S. by renaming one of its ice cream flavors. During the summer the chain will rename its Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream to “I Dough, I Dough” at participating stores. Proceeds from the ice cream sales will go to the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBT rights.
Find participating stores in your area here. Scroll down past the video to Participating Locations, then type in your city and zip to find a participating store close to home.
"Thomas wrote his finest dissent ever:
"the “liberty” guaranteed by the Due Process Clause is not a liberty to receive something from the government (like marriage benefits) but rather to be free from government restraint""
So how does Thomas address all the heterosexual couples, like himself and his wife, who have been receiving marriage benefits while denying them to homosexual couples? What makes straight couples be entitled to such benefits but not gay couples? Did your Uncle Thomas address that?
Oh, no, he did not.
How convenient for him.
Did you miss the part where Thomas alleged "slaves did not lose their dignity?" How can he say that when we all know slave families were torn apart, wives from husband, children from parents?
Does your Uncle Thomas find nothing undignified about that?
Thomas and the other three SCOTUS dissenters are hysterical IMHO. Each wrote HIS own dissent, as if looking for a way, any way to keep gay Americans from sharing the very same marriage benefits and rights they have been enjoying themselves.
The financial services industry applauded the Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage nationwide on Friday.
Many of the biggest financial institutions in America praised the court's decision while activists acknowledged that the sector had led the way for the broader business community on the issue.
"We applaud today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, which will help families across the country, make it easier for businesses to hire and keep talented people, and promote both economic growth and individual freedom," Goldman Sachs said in a company statement.
Citigroup called the decision "an example of progress." Bank of America tweeted that it was "another step forward for human connections. Congratulations to all."
And Visa hailed the ruling by using a spin on its popular mantra "accepted everywhere." The company Tweeted: "Love. Accepted everywhere."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is the dominant business organization in Washington, did not release a statement, even though it has been a major force on other issues such immigration reform.
"The Chamber does not engage in social issues so we have not put anything out on this case," Chamber spokeswoman Blair Latoff Holmes said.
Experts note that the financial industry has for a long time recognized the spending power of gay and lesbian people. In fiscal year 2014 alone, the LGBT community had a spending power of $830 billion, said Joshua Charles, founder of Financial-360, LLC.
"The big players are genuinely interested in helping their clients, and this is a group for whom they can help create a financially secure future," said Charles.
Robert Shapiro, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, said that businesses recognized an untapped market before many politicians.
"In an economy defined by increasingly harsh global competition, no large business can write off 5 to 10 percent of potential employees," Shapiro said.
Shapiro said that "the potential cost among customers is considerably greater, since many millennials see gay rights and marriage equality as threshold issues — you have to agree before they’ll even consider you."
Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, director of social policy and politics at center-left think tank Third Way, said lawmakers across the country saw how influential the business community could be on the issue earlier this year in Indiana.
Businesses threatened to boycott and pull out of the state after lawmakers passed legislation that critics said would allow for companies to discriminate against gays. Amidst the political firestorm, Gov. Mike Pence (R) was forced to tweak the legislation to ease concerns.
"It wasn't just a few businesses -- it was big businesses," said Hatalsky, who is also president of Q Street, the professional association of LGBT lobbyists and public policy advocates. "Business was way out ahead of the country on this issue."
"Clarence Thomas's demonstrated the twisted thinking of so many anti-gay conservatives"
such as the writers of the Constitution
"In his dissent he essentially said if gays aren't incarcerated or physically restrained they have nothing to complain about regardless of what other liberties they might be deprived of"
Priya, the mindless one, must have read this tortured analogy somewhere on the interweb because Priya, the mindless one, keeps repeating it verbatim
what Thomas sagely pointed out is that "liberty" means freedom from restraint
Priya, the mindless one, thinks liberty means the government must provide the same benefits to everyone regardless of circumstance
apparently, Priya, the mindless one must now favor flat taxes because wealthy people's liberty is infringed when they pay more tax than couch potatoes like Priya, the mindless one
well, who's right?:
Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court justice, or Priya, the mindless one?
let's ask Mr Dictionary
Mr Dictionary, what does "liberty" mean?
"the state or condition of people who are able to act and speak freely"
oooo, sorry, Priya
looks like you lose
don't feel bad, it happened to your buddy, Karl Marx, too
better luck next time
maybe if sign up for an English class at the local community college
they have to let you in, even though you can't pass the minimum admission requirements
that's liberty!!
ha-ha-ha!
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "oooo, sorry, Priya looks like you lose".
LOL - marriage equality in all 50 states and Wyatt/bad anonymous thinks I've lost!
If that's what losing looks like I hope I lose every time hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
"The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tells ya!".
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
"LOL - marriage equality in all 50 states and Wyatt/bad anonymous thinks I've lost!
If that's what losing looks like I hope I lose every time"
well, the context of anon-emeritus' comment was that, in your disagreement with Clarence Thomas over the meaning of the word "liberty", he was right and you were wrong
making you the loser
and since you'd like to lose like that very time, rest assured
in any contest of spelling, grammar, or vocabulary, we are all confident you will, in fact, lose every time
you seem to think you've won some major victory because one guy on the Supreme Court decided he would rewrite the Constitution to require all states to redefine marriage
hard to see why since you claim to be in a woman in a relationship with a guy and you don't live in the United States
"So how does Thomas address all the heterosexual couples, like himself and his wife, who have been receiving marriage benefits while denying them to homosexual couples?"
well, states who defined marriage as inclusive of both genders felt society benefitted from strong marriages including both genders and so they conferred benefits on marriage
whether they were right or not, it was a matter to be settled by democratic processes
just like every other state requirement for marriage (age, relationship, dual as opposed to multi)
while the Constitution granted the right to advocate for any view, it did not define marriage
Thomas is right and no one has countered him
"What makes straight couples be entitled to such benefits but not gay couples?"
because the democratic process deemed it so, just like every other benefit conferred by the government
"Did your Uncle Thomas address that?"
a blatantly racist comment
"Did you miss the part where Thomas alleged "slaves did not lose their dignity?" How can he say that when we all know slave families were torn apart, wives from husband, children from parents?
Does your Uncle Thomas find nothing undignified about that?"
aside from repenting of your racist attitude, you might want to consider using a dictionary and looking up "dignity"
"Thomas and the other three SCOTUS dissenters are hysterical IMHO."
it's interesting how much vitriol is being directed at the four justices who voted to preserve the Constitution
I think we all know, as has been demonstrated clearly, that gays don't want the right to marry, they want government to force anyone who doesn't believe homosexuality is normal to be ostracized
that's why there is such focus on the dissenting opinions
like any totalitarian scheme, the homosexual agenda sees the removal of all independent thought as part of their mission
"Each wrote HIS own dissent, as if looking for a way, any way to keep gay Americans from sharing the very same marriage benefits and rights they have been enjoying themselves."
doesn't make any sense
the case was already decided
they were simply expressing why they thought the decision was wrong
theoretically, the decision could be overturned by a later court, especially considering how close it was and how little constitutional basis there was for the decision
it's happened before
but it's far-fetched to say their dissents were written anticipating that
For decades, a growing narrative from LGBT activists has convinced a great portion of the U.S. public that cultural peace would reign if social conservatives could just get with the times on marriage.
This narrative has recently gained new legs with rulings by federal judges that say marriage laws are based in animus against people with same-sex attractions. Likewise, states and localities regularly pass so-called “non-discrimination laws” that restrict freedom of speech, religion, property ownership, and more.
Despite yesterday’s ruling, however, social conservatives should reject this flawed thinking—not just because of their love for people with same-sex attractions, or because of the Supreme Court’s abuse of the U.S. Constitution, but to protect the American values of free speech and religious liberty.
Indeed, a simple look at the last 10 years of same-sex “marriage” laws in Canada and other nations shows that rather than bring a new utopia to America, changing the legal definition of marriage would lead to further restrictions of religious liberty, undermine parental rights, and lead to worse formative years for children.
In Canada, redefining marriage has led straight to the persecution of Christians. Just a decade ago, Canada made same-sex marriage legal, leading to fines for a Catholic-owned Knights of Columbus hall for refusing to host a homosexual wedding reception. Likewise, in 2005, Calgary Bishop Fred Henry was called before a Human Rights Tribunal for writing a public letter defending Catholic doctrine on marriage. The complaint was withdrawn, but the message was clear: Dissent is not tolerable under the new regime.
Quebec now requires an ethics and religious culture course including the ‘equality of all families’ to be taught in private schools, public schools, and home-schooled curricula.
In America, religious freedom includes religious expression, but not so in Canada, it appears. A Catholic church at which two cohabiting homosexual men were altar servers came to the attention of the local bishop due to a letter signed by 12 parishioners.
When Bishop Nicola de Angelis went to the priest, citing Catholic doctrine, one of the servers launched a human-rights case. The case sought $25,000 from the bishop and $20,000 from each of the 12 parishioners who signed the letter. It was also dropped, but not until the bishop, like Henry, had spent considerable money in his legal defense.
Canada was one of the first nations to legally redefine marriage, but other nations are seeing similar consequences of trying to undermine what God has created. Mayors in France have been told they could not refuse to preside over same-sex ceremonies and a British marriage registrar was denied freedom for her religious beliefs, though just months earlier a demoted government employee’s right to criticize marriage redefinition was protected by courts. Of course, the same thing has already been happening in North Carolina, where civil magistrates whose consciences prevent them from performing gay marriage ceremonies must quit their job or face fines.
One prominent way the state eliminates dissenting voices on marriage is to force the teaching of gender education and so-called “equality of all families.” In Canada, this was first done by not allowing parents to withdraw children from these kinds of classes. Such efforts have graduated to where the province of Quebec now requires an ethics and religious culture course including the “equality of all families” to be taught in private schools, public schools, and home-schooled curricula.
It took a court battle for parents and private schools to gain even a modicum of freedom. Withdrawal by parents was refused at the highest court, but a recent Supreme Court decision has since allowed a Catholic school to present its centuries-old teachings on the material. In Ontario, the government passed a law mandating all schools make room for gay-straight alliance clubs, even at private schools.
In Spain, the terms “mother” and “father” were removed from birth certificates in 2006—in order to not harm the feelings of several hundred same-sex couples getting “married” at that time—and in 2012 three different political parties targeted a bishop for alleged “homophobia” for discussing Catholic doctrine on same-sex relationships.
In America, freedom is considered sacrosanct. However, it is scary to see how similar some of this country’s laws to the ones described above. For example, religious liberty, freedom of speech, and property rights have been torched in New Mexico, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and elsewhere as “non-discrimination” laws provide state-sanctioned discrimination against supporters of real marriage.
In Washington DC, religiously affiliated education institutions are now forced to allow gay advocacy groups to use their facilities.
In 2012, New Jersey judge Solomon A. Metzger ruled against a Christian retreat house associated with the United Methodist Church that refused to allow a same-sex civil union ceremony on its premises. Just a few months ago, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed sacked fire chief Kelvin Cochran, an African-American Baptist church deacon, for expressing his personal religious beliefs on marriage in a Bible study publication.
In Washington DC, religiously affiliated education institutions are now forced to allow gay advocacy groups to use their facilities, and parents have been disallowed from helping their children who feel unwanted sexual attractions in California and New Jersey.
Even the federal government is not innocent of wrongdoing here. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told state attorneys general they can ignore state laws about marriage (in violation of their oaths of office), and President Obama has decided support for natural marriage is reason to discriminate against religious organizations when handing out federal grants. His administration is also attempting to punish a Navy chaplain for expressing his faith. With the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision today, one can only imagine what is coming next, although Canada, Britain, and elsewhere offer disturbing prospects.
The chief blame for this state of affairs falls not with unelected judges, the impressive public relations campaign of LGBT activists, or even politicians. It really boils down to the failure of our religious leaders to speak the beautiful Christian truth about love and sexuality. Christian pulpits have been silent on these matters for 50 years while the dogma of sexual liberation has been relentlessly preached from every screen, book, and newspaper.
The solution is to do what we should have done in the first place: Preach the truth with love and courage.
While that battle will be more difficult today—for example, my organization, LifeSiteNews, has been threatened with a lawsuit for using male pronouns when referring for a transgender male, and a lawsuit for accurately reporting what the LGBT ideology means for children in Canada—such is the mantle of responsibility we must face.
Many assume the marriage fight is lost in America and the Western world. That may be true. Regardless, however, that is another battle: Making sure the public, politicians, media, and LGBT activists understand that opposition to same-sex relationships is not akin to racism and other hate-based beliefs. In fact, because same-sex relationships hurt everyone involved, marriage supporters have a duty to oppose inverted relationships out of love and compassion.
Despite being perhaps 4 percent of the U.S. population, the LGBT community sees devastating levels of HIV/AIDS, depression, anal cancer, suicide, shorter lifespans, and other ailments. Again, it is up to Christians, and especially our pastors, to energize society with the beautiful love of our faith. We never should have given up talking about sex, and we must start doing so anew.
As former Canadian LGBT leader Gens Hellquist said in 2006, “I am tired of watching my community die” of diseases endemic to the LGBT community. A Catholic with a master’s degree in psychology who visited a ward for HIV/AIDS patients in India, he saw it was clear that only monogamous, marital relationships are healthy for human beings.
If we stand up for what is right, just, and good, even if our ideological opponents don’t agree with us, at least they will have to concede that we are coming at it from an altruistic perspective based in objective truth.
US same-sex marriage ruling likely to impact other countries positively
Does Legal Gay Marriage Doom Evangelical Christianity?
Hell hath no fury like the religious right scorned. The ink was yet wet on the Supreme Court's decision legalizing gay marriage when Southern Baptist minister and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called for an uprising.
"I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch," he roared. "We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat."
Weirdly, Chief Justice John Roberts denigrated his own institution. "Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law," he sneered in dissent. ["A]s a judge, I find the majority's position indefensible as a matter of constitutional law."
Roberts must have been snoozing in con law class. This is precisely what the Supreme Court is supposed to do: Prevent a tyranny of the majority. That is its essential function.
The Founders changed the world by crafting a separation of powers in our government. Any ambiguity about the Supreme Court's role was cleared up in 1803 when the Court issued its decision in Marbury v. Madison. In that towering decision, Chief Justice Marshall ruled that laws in conflict with the Constitution are no laws, and that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution says.
Roberts knows this, and Scalia, Huckabee and the whole howling pack of angry critics must know this, too. Why are they so furious about a decision that can have no direct effect on them? A court majority that blithely made "money talks" the law of the land in Citizens United really cannot complain about "judicial tyranny" when it finds itself in the minority.
Indeed, being in the minority, yet retaining fundamental rights, is exactly what this week's ruling is about. So what rights have gay marriage opponents lost? The answer, I think, is their future.
Opposition to gay marriage has only one refuge: Old Time Religion. To be sure, there are still plenty of people who take certain biblical passages to mean that homosexuality is wrong (conveniently overlooking other passages that say slavery is right). But their numbers are dwindling. American attitudes on gay marriage have swung about like the boom on a yacht caught in a gale of change.
What the religious right rightly fears is being blown away. They talk about the Roe v. Wade decision, but what haunts them is Loving v. Virginia. That 1967 Supreme Court ruling overturned laws banning interracial marriage. It came at a time when "We Shall Overcome," with its verse "black and white together," could be heard in the streets across the nation.
Today, racism persists, but only like a fatal disease awaiting eradication. It has lost all legitimacy. Even a billionaire NBA team owner can't get away with being a public racist.
Now, I am not making a content comparison of Old Time Religion with racism. I am saying that right-wing religion's exponents fear being stigmatized by this decision. Rick Scarborough of Vision America told NPR "What we have historically done is enforce moral standards," and after vowing to continue to discriminate in hiring regardless, he added wistfully, "Who wants to respond to a pollster and be called a bigot?"
Good question.
More than two-thirds of young Americans already accept gay marriage. As it proliferates, more will. To come out as anti-gay is already seriously not cool. Increasingly, in high schools and colleges, to be anti-gay will be like coming out as a Klansman.
Are young people going to want to join a church whose emblem is a huffing and puffing Mike Huckabee wielding the Bible to exclude millions from marriage? Not likely.
Love and the Politics of Stupidity
The Supreme Court has made marriage equality the law and the GOP is nuts to fight it.
It is a rare day indeed that I find myself agreeing with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, but I applaud this sentiment about the Supreme Court's affirming marriage equality this morning in Obergefell v. Hodges: "Now is the people's opportunity [to] respond because the future of the institution of marriage is too important to not have a public debate."
I agree. Bring it on. Love is love – and if the GOP wants to go to war over that, well that's just fine.
Of course Santorum isn't a lonely cultural revanchist. Most of his fellow 2016 aspirants have trashed the decision. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – a happy warrior before the changing national landscape highlighted his angry crusader side – railed against an "imperial court" and called for supporters to "resist and reject judicial tyranny." Former. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was more circumspect, saying he supports traditional marriage and that the court was wrong, but avoiding inflammatory rhetoric of resistance and rebellion. "In a country as diverse as ours, good people who have opposing views should be able to live side by side," Bush said in his statement.
The degree to which GOP presidential wannabe response to the decision is unhinged seems indirectly related to their standing in the polls – the closer they are to bottom, the more hysterical their histrionics. Which makes sense for two reasons: The Huckabees and Santorums of the field are desperately trying to make the top-10 cut for the first debate, on Fox in August. The easiest way to do that is to claim the mantle of most outraged culture warrior. On the other end of the spectrum, people like Bush who stand a chance of being the nominee don't want Obergefell to become their 2016 version of Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" – a debate moment that long outlives its utility and becomes an anchor in the general election.
The problem with Huckabee, Santorum and the other members of the righteous GOP who were so quick to issue statements of condemnation is that they are trying to refight the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s but seem incapable of grasping that the nation has changed.
President Barack Obama this morning aptly compared the decision to "justice" arriving "like a thunderbolt." The storm that produced that thunderbolt gathered with shocking speed. Who would have believed 11 years ago that the GOP's shameless 2004 campaign strategy – using anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives to rally its base – would prove to be a fleeting high water mark before the tide of public opinion and then, following it, the law ebbed out from under it?
When Gallup asked respondents in 2005 whether same-sex marriage should be legal, a mere 37 percent answered in the affirmative. As recently as 2010 the polling organization found that only 44 percent believed it should be legal. Last month that number had rocketed from minority to supermajority – by 60 percent to 37 percent Americans believe that marriage equality should be legal.
Now the Supreme Court has ruled – correctly – that the Constitution's equal protection clause does apply, well, equally – that law in this case happily conforms to the beliefs of the American people. If the leaders and would-be leaders of the Republican Party wish to spend the next year lecturing the public about why it's wrong, then by all means they should go right ahead.
The conservative columnist (and as a New York Daily News columnist, my corporate cousin) S.E. Cupp was visibly moved on CNN this morning discussing the ruling. She gave an eloquent warning to her party: This isn't a moment in history, she said, it's the future. She's right. The Pew Research Center has tracked the same evolution on the issue as Gallup and has broken it out by age group. They found that your likelihood of supporting marriage equality is directly related to your age. The younger you are, the more likely you are to support it – and support has been growing across all age groups. Here's the Pew chart:
As Cupp said, this isn't a data point, it's a trend. It's the future.
You can't fight the future, but the Republican Party is certainly welcome to try.
Wyatt/bad anonymous on the day of the Supreme Court striking down bans on gay marriage said it was "no big deal" that gays now have the right to marry.
Today he posts a long diatribe about how its a disaster that gays can marry. He did his best to pretend the decision didn't matter to him, but now he can't hold back how upset he is by it.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Good on you Wyatt!
"The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tells ya!".
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt
Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt
Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt
Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt
Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt
"on the day of the Supreme Court striking down bans on gay marriage said it was "no big deal" that gays now have the right to marry
Today he posts a long diatribe about how its a disaster that gays can marry. He did his best to pretend the decision didn't matter to him, but now he can't hold back how upset he is by it"
how terribly sad and lonely Priya must be
pathetic, really
I believe this person Priya is obsessed with said it was no big deal unless gays continue to pursue vendettas against those who disagree with them
the article pasted explains that, based on experience with gay agendists in other countries, it is unlikely that gay advocates will now rest in being able to get the state to marry them
that's because their goal wasn't to be married
it was to have the government enforce the view that they are normal
that's why now you read no stories about how great it will be to get married and tons of (1)personal attacks on the three judges that wrote dissenting opinions and (2)stories about how great it will be to feel "normal"
also, I think Priya has posted about 95% of the comments on this tread (and written about .5% of it) so I'm not sure but I think one of the pastes was a theory that this will devastate evangelical churches
such churches have always been counter-cultural and a recent poll showing a decrease in overall number of Christians also showed that evangelical churches were the only group with a positive replacement ratio
the so-called mainline churches, that try to adjust to the latest polls, have steadily declined for decades
indeed, driving around today, I've seen rainbow flags and balloons celebrating the Friday decision at many such churches
finally, one of mindless Priya's pastes from endless web searching said this:
"there are still plenty of people who take certain biblical passages to mean that homosexuality is wrong (conveniently overlooking other passages that say slavery is right)"
there are no Bible passages that say slavery is right and many that say homosexuality is wrong
"there are no Bible passages that say slavery is right "
You obviously have not read the Bible.
From the OT:
“Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem; and let Canaan be his slave. May God make space for Japheth, and let him live in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.” Genesis 9:24-27 NRSV
Patriarchs Abraham and Jacob both have sex with female slaves, and the unions are blessed with male offspring. Captives are counted among the booties of war, with explicit instructions given for purifying virgin war captives before “knowing them.” The wisest man of all time, Solomon, keeps hundreds of concubines, meaning sexual slaves, along with his many wives.
The books of the Law provide explicit rules for the treatment of Hebrew and non-Hebrew slaves.
"You may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way." (Leviticus 25:44-46)
When punishing slaves, owners are given latitude that falls just short of on-the-spot murder:
"When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property." (Exodus 21:20-21)
That said, the book of Deuteronomy explicitly forbids returning an escaped slave to his master, in a passage that was a favorite of abolitionists:
"Slaves who have escaped to you from their owners shall not be given back to them. They shall reside with you, in your midst, in any place they choose in any one of your towns, wherever they please; you shall not oppress them." (Deuteronomy 23:15-16)
From the NT:
Slaves are clearly property of the owners, as are their families. In one parable Jesus compares God to a king who has slaves. When one slave refuses to forgive the debt of a peer, the righteous king treats him in kind, “and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made” (Matthew 18:25).
While in prison, the Apostle Paul encounters an escaped slave, Onesimus, and sends a letter to his Christian owner, Philemon, tacitly endorsing Philemon’s authority in the matter. The messages are mixed. Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon “not as a slave but as a brother”—but he does send him back.
Several letters attributed to Paul express the sentiment that in Christ all people are one:
"For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:13)
"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)
Then again, he tells slaves to submit to their masters, even as he exhorts masters to treat slaves well.
"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free. And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality." (Ephesians 6:5-9)
"Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be blasphemed. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful to them on the ground that they are members of the church; rather they must serve them all the more, since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved." (1 Timothy 6:1-3)
"Thomas is right and no one has countered him"
On the contrary, Thomas was countered by the MAJORITY OF SCOTUS.
It sounds like you are attempting to erect a shrine to your beloved Uncle Thomas.
Worship him and his losing minority opinion all you'd like.
In America, you are free to worship whoever you choose
"You obviously have not read the Bible"
there's a word for what's obvious to a fool:
false
in fact, I'm quite acquainted with scripture
none of the passages you cite endorse slavery
it's just that the Bible isn't concerned with politics, it's a guide to spirituality that is relevant regardless of the political and economic system the reader finds them self in
it's why Priya, the mindless one, couldn't understand how someone could say the SCOTUS ruling is no big deal and then point out that it will lead to persecution and a breakdown in rights
to put it succinctly, Christians don't look to secular governments and economic systems to deliver them
if someone is a slave, it will hold how a slave can be a righteous person
it's not a guide on overthrowing secular systems
in the OT, you will remember, assuming you've read scripture, God didn't want Israel to have a king
but the people pleaded to have one so they could be like other nations
so God gave them Saul
the result was disaster
similarly, Jesus lived under an oppressive Roman regime
yet, he counseled his followers to render unto Caesar
not because he favored Roman rule
a couple of weeks ago, a group of African American Christian believers, who have studied the scriptures for decades were gunned down while doing so
do you think these people, who you must admit were more familiar with scripture than you, felt that scripture said slavery was right?
"On the contrary, Thomas was countered by the MAJORITY OF SCOTUS"
on the contrary, Kennedy's opinion which was endorsed by the four liberal judges, one of whom should have been recused because she has performed gay marriage ceremonies and was, thus, biased, never counters Thomas two points:
"liberty" means freedom from restraint not entitlement to benefits
"dignity", a phrase used in Kennedy's opinion, is not conveyed by the Constitution
let's face it, gays never wanted to be granted the right to force the government to marry them
they see it as a stepping stone to having the government force everyone to treat them with dignity, i.e. acquiesce in the normality of homosexuality
if saying someone is wrong about something is robbing them of their "dignity" and if that is unconstitutional, that effectively nullifies freedom of speech and religion and press
honestly, now that the initial giddiness has started to dissipate, some liberal thinkers are starting to concede how flimsy Kennedy's argument is
he might have had a better argument had he focused on equal protection under the law
I don't agree with that argument either but it is stronger than the one he made
instead, he simply focused on the effects of the ruling
but, in so doing, he has ruled what he thinks the Constitution should say rather than what it does say
that's not his job and we need to make sure people who think it is aren't on the SCOTUS
having a later court overrule a past SC decision is rare but it can happen and the flimsiness of Kennedy's argument coupled with the narrow margin make it a possibility
"It sounds like you are attempting to erect a shrine to your beloved Uncle Thomas"
the idea that all blacks must hold certain views or else they are "Uncle Toms" is racist
liberals have always become livid whenever a black person dares to disagree with the party line
Thomas has proved immune to this type of pressure
"Worship him and his losing minority opinion all you'd like"
thinking he wrote a good dissent is worship?
whadda ya know?
another English word corrupted to fit the gay agenda
"In America, you are free to worship whoever you choose"
how about a God who ordained the institution of marriage as a union of the genders?
the gay agenda has part of its mission the elimination of the freedom to worship God
For someone that stated the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans was "no big deal" Wyatt/bad anonymous sure is freaking out about it - one long diatribe after another trying to rewrite history.
There's something wrong with people who want to prevent people they don't know from entering a marriage that has no effect on them.
Overshadowed in the wave of several recent victories for pro-family liberals is the following good news:
A New Jersey court has ruled a so-called "ex-gay" group claiming to turn gay men straight committed consumer fraud
A New Jersey jury has found a non-profit group that provides gay-to-straight conversion therapy guilty of consumer fraud for promising clients they could overcome their sexual urges by undressing in front of other men, pummeling an effigy of their mothers, and re-enacting traumatic childhood experiences.
"The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tells ya!".
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Why Christians Aren't Being Oppressed By Gay Marriage
Mike Huckabee proclaimed that the United States is "moving toward criminalization of Christianity as a result of legalizing same-sex marriage." Some far right pundits are calling for a ban on rainbow flags with the insistence that they represent the intolerance of Christianity. Many fundamentalist evangelicals do not view the legalization of gay marriage as a win for freedom, rather an attack on their faith.
Fundamentalists are stating, quite clearly, that a tenant of their faith is to hinder gay rights. In fact, attempting to hinder their hinderance will be interpreted as persecution. They are telling the world in order for them to feel right, someone else needs to be wrong. They are following a Christ that commands them to put another man down, and to fight to protect the right to do so.
They need a wake up call. If there is a victim of your belief -- no matter how sincere and heartfelt -- you are not the oppressed. You are the oppressor.
Let me tell you what oppression is. Oppression is the years of mental abuse I endured at the hands of pastors attempting "pray away the gay" therapy. Oppression is the baseball bat that cracked the skull of my best friend in college as we left a gay bar one night. Oppression is when my friend Jesse lost almost everything when his partner of nearly 25 years died unexpectedly. They had no legal protection. To make it worse, his family wouldn't allow him in the hospital room.
Are Chrisitans feeling uncomfortable now that they are getting called out for their homophobic beliefs? Oh, that must be so hard.
Enough with the double-whammy intolerance game. Objecting to the intolerance of intolerance will not be tolerated. To say it a little easier, no one feels sorry for the bully.
Clarence Thomas's demonstrated the twisted thinking of so many anti-gay conservatives. In his dissent he essentially said if gays aren't incarcerated or physically restrained they have nothing to complain about regardless of what other liberties they might be deprived of! Wow! Just Wow! What an incredibly harsh and selfish view of justice!
It shows you how depraved the minds are of anti-gay bigots. I'd like to hear what Thomas thinks of the idea that all Jim Crow laws were just and depriving blacks of the right to vote wasn't a problem because they weren't being incarcerated or physically restrained.
What an incredibly low bar many conservatives set for justice! These people are positively sick!
All the dissenting justices obviously think Loving vs Virgina was wrongly decided - interracial marriage should have been put up for a vote instead of being decided by 9 black robed tyrants. Of course unlike with marriage equality back then over 80% of the public opposed interracial marriage and the public support for it didn't get into majority territory until the 90's
But as Justice Thomas said:
Relax, same-sex couples! Your dignity hasn't been compromised by laws against gay marriage any more than slavery compromised the dignity of the Africans who were abducted, exploited, raped and murdered in its name.
There's something wrong with people who want to prevent people they don't know from entering a marriage that has no effect on them.
"For someone that stated the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans was "no big deal" Wyatt/bad anonymous sure is freaking out about it - one long diatribe after another trying to rewrite history"
more adventures in language redefinition:
"freaking out" means responding to Priya, the mindless one's, comments in a succinct manner
of the 55 comments on this thread, I count 32 by Priya, the mindless one
possibly more, many are unidentified cut and pastes by those who share opinions with the mindless one
those who disagree with the mindless one: 6 posts
I guess "freaking out" now means brevity of expression
"There's something wrong with people who want to prevent people they don't know from entering a marriage that has no effect on them."
so, you're dropping your opposition to polygamy, marriage to minors, marriage to close relatives, and marriage to household pets?
how about people who want to change the Constitutions of countries they don't live in and, thus, has no effect on them?
is there something wrong with such people?
it seems mindless people embarrass themselves whenever they post comments
looks like while I was typing, Priya mindlessly cut and pasting some of Priya's mindless comments again, verbatim
yeah, Priya's not freaking out
"if saying someone is wrong about something is robbing them of their "dignity" and if that is unconstitutional, that effectively nullifies freedom of speech and religion and press"
Denying gays the right to wed is a lot more than merely "saying someone is wrong about something."
It denies every member of gay families their dignity.
"I'm quite acquainted with scripture
none of the passages you cite endorse slavery"
Well you seem to be quite ignorant about history because countless American religious leaders cited scripture in their defense of slavery in the United States at the time of the civil war and during the civil rights advances of the 1960 in attempts to prevent interracial marriage.
"Jesus lived under an oppressive Roman regime
yet, he counseled his followers to render unto Caesar"
Then I suggest your follow Christ's advice and render the equality of all men and their inalienable rights unto the USA as you keep your faith. In America, we have built a wall of separation between church and state so we are all free to worship as we choose, a wall you apparently want to tear down.
Romans 13:7
Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.
The Irony Of Clarence Thomas's Marriage Dissent
Today is a beautiful day.
It's a day of progress and celebration for those who have fought for and supported marriage equality in the United States. The Supreme Court ruling signifies a brief, shining moment of solidarity and joy. I don't want to ruin this moment. But we need to talk about Clarence Thomas.
More specifically, we need to talk about Clarence Thomas's dissent. It's unsurprising that the notoriously conservative Justice Thomas voted against marriage equality -- his track record when it comes to this issue has been consistently closed-minded. But the arguments made in his same-sex marriage dissent have reached new, terrifying heights of absurdity (and this is a man who once argued that the NBA is proof that racial imbalances aren't always a bad thing). That absurdity needs to be acknowledged.
In one horrifyingly obtuse paragraph, Justice Thomas demonstrates his simplistic concept of oppression. He writes:
"The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away."
Human dignity cannot be taken away by the government? Really? Slaves, who were lawfully stripped of their culture and religion, taught that they were inferior to whites and not even fully human, forced into lives of servitude, abuse, rape, mental and emotional anguish, were not robbed of their basic human dignity? Really?
Clarence Thomas is married to a white woman -- something that would have been illegal today if it weren't for the Supreme Court's historic Loving v. Virginia ruling which deemed discrimination against interracial marriage as unconstitutional. It's dangerous to equate too heavily the black civil rights struggles with those of the LGBT community, but the irony here is still profound. Does Thomas see his marriage as a mere government benefit? If the law of the land stated that he and his wife couldn't be married, simply because he is black, would his dignity truly remain intact? Would he have no sense of injustice?
At the end of the day, Thomas's dignity argument is wholly irrelevant. The dignity of slaves doesn't absolve the United States of its sins. The dignity of Japanese Americans held in internment camps didn't make the discrimination any less real. This idea that maintaining one's dignity makes oppression, marginalization, and the denial of basic human rights okay is beyond ridiculous.
If Clarence Thomas is against marriage equality, so be it: there's nothing he can do about it anyway. But the fact that a Supreme Court Justice could use this reasoning as justification for his decision? That's downright undignified.
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "how about people who want to change the Constitutions of countries they don't live in and, thus, has no effect on them? is there something wrong with such people?".
I'm not sure who you think you're adressing here but it couldn't be me as I've never suggested changing the constitution of the U.S. which thankfully requires gays to have the same right to marry that heterosexuals do.
Not only is there not something wrong with people who want to see other people treated fairly, there is something very, very right with them. What's wrong is wanting to harm innocent people, something at the heart of your dark, dark soul.
There's something wrong with people who want to prevent people they don't know from entering a marriage that has no effect on them.
For someone who said the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans is "no big deal" Wyatt/bad anonymous sure is bitter.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Wyatt said "yeah, Priya's not freaking out".
Of course I'm freaking out - there's been a string several awesome victories for liberals in the past week culminating with the most joyous striking down of gay marriage bans across the U.S.! I've been waiting 10 years for this, of course I'm freaking out! Freaking out with joy!
Unlike you who's freaking out with disapointment and bitterness - totally different kind of freaking out.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Wyatt is the epitome of denial. In his horror over what's happened he's telling himself that the people who won marriage equality in all 50 states are losers.
Oh, how that's gotta hurt!
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!
It's hard to believe that gay Americans achieved full constitutional personhood just five years after corporations did.
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
"Well you seem to be quite ignorant about history because countless American religious leaders cited scripture in their defense of slavery in the United States at the time of the civil war and during the civil rights advances of the 1960 in attempts to prevent interracial marriage"
abolitionists cited scripture as well, and so did MLK and the Bible studiers at Emanuel AME
at that time in America, no one took any position without trying to justify it with scripture
actually, that still happens
gay advocates have written long justifications about how scripture supports their view
and, yet, they know they are wrong
just like the slave owners who tried to twist scripture
as you claim to be acquainted with scripture, consider Matthew 4
here, the devil quotes scripture to tempt Jesus
the idea that any time someone tries to justify themselves using scripture, that means scriptures supports them is so ignorant, it's laughable
notable that slavery was first abolished in the Christian world
and it persist even today in non-Christian areas
btw, I'm not among those who favor an amendment to the Constitution to counter Kennedy's fallacious interpretation from Friday but once the precedence is applied to other cases and we get polygamy, incest, pedophilia and bestiality declared Constitutional rights and Christians fined, and jailed for refusing to participate in this new "right", don't be surprised if an amendment gets enacted pretty quickly
and it won't come from religious groups
when Barry o was elected President, our largest state voted to define marriage as bi-gendered
despite the supposed polls, few states ever voted for mono-gendered marriage
remember polls said gay "marriage" would be approved in California
when people who opposed gay "marriage" at some point see the deleterious effects, they won't hesitate to go back to their former views and for a Constitutional amendment
today, pictures of gay celebrations are flooding the internet with half-naked men and sadomosachistic paraphernalia common
people will only put up with so much
.
That was hilarious Wyatt! I love your desperate delusionality! Clearly the supreme court striking down marriage bans was "no big deal" to you.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
In the mid-4th century, Manichaean Christians, who were considered heretics by the Church of Rome, were encouraging slaves to take their freedom into their own hands. The Church convened the Council of Gangra, and issued a formal proclamation aligning with the Roman authorities against the Manichaean slave rebels. “If anyone, on the pretext of religion, teaches another man’s slave to despise his master and to withdraw from his service, and not serve his master with good will and all respect, let him be anathema.”
This became the official Church position for the next 1300 years. Although some writers, including Augustine, voiced opposition, the Vatican repeatedly endorsed slavery from the 5th through 17th centuries. To help enforce priestly celibacy, the 9th Council of Toledo even declared that all children of clergy would be slaves.
As the countries of Europe colonized the world during the 17th century, the moral authority of Bible and Church offered little protection for subject people in the Americas and Africa. The Dominican Fray Bartolome de las Casas, argued against enslavement of Native Americans, but was ignored. The Catholic Church required only that slaves be non-Christians and captured in a “just war.” Near the close of the 17th century, Catholic theologian Leander invoked both common sense and the Bible in support of Church doctrine:
“It is certainly a matter of faith that this sort of slavery in which a man serves his master as his slave, is altogether lawful. This is proved from Holy Scripture…It is also proved from reason for it is not unreasonable that just as things which are captured in a just war pass into the power and ownership of the victors, so persons captured in war pass into the ownership of the captors… All theologians are unanimous on this.”
Catholic defenders of slavery were not alone. In England, the Anglican Church spent half a century debating whether slaves should taught the core tenets of Christian belief. Opposition came from owners who feared that if slaves became Christians they might be entitled to liberty. In North America Protestants first passed laws requiring that slaves be sold with spouse and/or children to protect the family unit, and then decided that these laws infringed the rights of slaveholders. Many sincere Christians believed that primitive heathens were better off as slaves, which allowed them a chance to replace their demonic tribal lifestyle with civilization and possibly salvation.
But as the 17th century came to a close with broad Protestant and Catholic support for slavery, two minority sects, Mennonites and Quakers began formally converging around an anti-slavery stance. Their opposition to injustice, rooted in their own understanding of the Christian faith, would become the kernel of an abolitionist movement that ultimately leveraged the organizing power and moral authority of Christianity to help end both church and state sanction for human trafficking.
Prominent early Christian leaders turned to the Bible to defend the South’s way of life of enslaving fellow human beings:
-[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God…it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation…it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts. — Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.
-There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting slavery, but many regulating it. It is not then, we conclude, immoral. — Rev. Alexander Campbell
-The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.– Rev. Richard Furman, prominent Baptist and namesake of Furman University
-The doom of Ham has been branded on the form and features of his African descendants. The hand of fate has united his color and destiny. Man cannot separate what God hath joined.—U.S. Senator James Henry Hammond.
The doom of Ham. Whether Ham’s curse is “branded on the form and features of his African descendants,” as Hammond believed, the story of that curse has been branded on the form and features of Christian history, down to the present.
On Friday, Dec. 6, 2013, the LDS Mormon Church officially renounced the doctrine that brown skin is a punishment from God. The announcement acknowledged that racism was a part of LDS teaching for generations, as indeed it was, officially, until external pressures including the American civil rights movement and the desire to proselytize in Brazil made segregation impossible. LDS leaders have come a long ways from the thinking of Brigham Young, who wrote, “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 10).
“This will always be so,” said Young, but modern Mormons believe he was wrong. Similarly, most modern Protestants and Catholics believe their spiritual forefathers were wrong to endorse slavery — or practice it — or preach it from the pulpit. But thanks in part to words penciled by our Iron Age ancestors and decisions made by 4th-century councils, this moral clarity has been painfully difficult to achieve. How much sooner might Christians have come to this understanding if the Church had not treated those ancient words from Genesis and Leviticus and Ephesians as if they were God-breathed?
It is easy to look back on slavery from the vantage of our modern moral consensus—that treating people as property is wrong, regardless of what our ancestors believed. But the very same Bible that provided Furman and Jefferson Davis with a defense of slavery also teaches that nonbelievers are evildoers, women are for breeding, children need beating, and marriage can take almost any form but queer.
This month, aspiring presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was asked to comment on marriage equality and said, “This is not just a political issue. It is a biblical issue. And as a biblical issue, unless I get a new version of the scriptures, it’s really not my place to say, ‘Okay, I’m just going to evolve.’” I’m guessing that the generations of Christians who fought slavery, biblical texts and Church tradition notwithstanding, would beg to differ.
A week that lived up to America’s great declaration
Jerry AdlerJune 28, 2015
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
Let us pause now in our regular obeisance to the Constitution, whose veneration tends to peak in the months leading up to a presidential election, to note that the extraordinary events of the last week powerfully call to mind another foundational document in American history. That would be, of course, the Declaration of Independence, whose anniversary is almost upon us, without which there would have been no United States, or Constitution, at all.
All day Friday–as Americans assimilated the news that the rights to medical care and marriage had been made universal, as Confederate flags were lowered all over the South, as the president himself called the nation together in the sight of God to abjure hatred–they heard unspoken echoes of the Declaration’s ringing evocation of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This phrase, now stamped indelibly on the American soul, might have turned out quite differently. Historians debate how Thomas Jefferson arrived at it, but he surely had in mind the English philosopher John Locke, who wrote in 1690 that “no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.” In 1774, two years before the Congress met in Philadelphia, the now little-remembered Declaration of Colonial Rights paraphrased Locke in asserting a right to “life, liberty and property.” But Jefferson, with the backing of Benjamin Franklin, prevailed on the other drafters to substitute the phrase about happiness. Even down to the present, there are those, notably the libertarian followers of novelist Ayn Rand, who think Jefferson unfairly shortchanged “property.”
But there it is, in language as straightforward and as moving as political rhetoric ever gets, and we live in its light today. In 1776, the right to “life” presumably wasn’t meant to include medical care, because medicine didn’t, as a rule, cure anyone–but what else could it possibly mean today, when life or death may hinge on access to the right drug or surgery? And how better to honor “liberty” than to finally remove, from public buildings and grounds, the symbol of a power that oppressed and enslaved the ancestors of millions of Americans? And as for “the pursuit of happiness”–well, that speaks for itself. Justice Kennedy’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, striking down bans on same-sex marriage, didn’t directly reference the Declaration. (Justice Scalia’s dissent did, although to make the opposite point.) But Kennedy’s opinion did cite a ruling in a 1967 case –Loving v. Virginia, which struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriage–calling the right to wed “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” (Ironic now to reflect that as recently as that year such an opinion could be written without acknowledging in its language that women might also be pursuing happiness through marriage.)
And where do these rights come from? From the “Creator,” and we all know who that is, whatever Jefferson privately may have thought about organized religion. In a trend that has been building for some time, but gained new momentum just in the last two weeks, the Left has begun to reclaim some of the moral and spiritual energy of Christianity. Opponents of same-sex marriage must know they are fighting a rear-guard action; it is the Right that finds itself on the defensive about the new Pope’s statements on climate change and economic justice. Obama, for all his cool, cerebral approach to policy and politics, has always had a touch of the preacher in him, and his eulogy Friday for the murdered pastor Clementa Pinckney was as close to a sermon as any sitting president has come in many years. Even his enemies would have to admit that it takes courage to launch into “Amazing Grace” solo, a cappella, in front of an audience of thousands. His has been a consequential, and controversial, presidency. But as it approaches its final year, events have conspired to make him the man of the hour.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump didn't have much of an answer on Sunday when pressed about how he squares his own marriage history with his opposition to same-sex marriage.
‘LIBERAL SPRING’: JMart points to right’s ‘rout in the culture wars,’ starting with Bruce Jenner – Can GOP move beyond ‘losing battles and ... lost causes’?
US gay marriage ruling unleashes debate in Russia
How to Support Your Kid When He or She Comes Out of the Closet
When Going to the Store With Your 10-Year-Old Gay Son Is a Political Act
When you have a well-documented, young, gay son, you get a lot of questions. Everything from, "How does he know he's gay?" to "Are you sure he's gay?" to "No, really, HOW ARE YOU SURE?". And now that it's been almost four years since he "came out of the closet," (we need a new phrase for kids who announce their orientation when they've never been in a closet.
He was getting out of the shower one day when we realized we needed dog supplies and my wife, Amelia, threw him the top shirt off the pile of folded, clean laundry on the table in front of her. He pulled it on as we loaded the three boys into the Wagon Queen Family Truckster and headed out.
As I drove to the store, Amelia kept the kids busy talking about how we were not buying any hamsters, birds, fish, turtles or even feeder crickets as pets. Suddenly, she turned around and told me to look at his shirt. I moved the rearview mirror down and saw, on his white shirt, six-inch tall, black letters that said, "Likes Boys," just like one of his favorite Glee characters wore on the show. Uh-oh.
I've always called the pet store the poor man's zoo, and our kids love to watch all the little animals run in wheels, or swim or hang out on plastic tree limbs and crap everywhere, so we decided that I would take the kids to the animals and the wife would get what we had come for. And then, things did start to happen: smiles. People would look at his shirt as he looked at dog toys and they smiled. The fuzzy-headed lady with the tennis ball-sized dog, the couple loaded down with all the cat equipment you can legally buy at one time and the lady who checked us out all smiled at him. At us.
Maybe they smiled because he looks older and they can accept a 14-year-old gay boy more than a gay 10-year-old child. Maybe they smiled because attitudes are changing and our society is starting to accept that if people are born gay, there are gay babies and gay toddlers and gay little kids. Maybe they didn't even notice the shirt and they just smiled at my enthusiastic young son. As we make strides legally (thank you, Supreme Court!) and more people all over the country see LGBT people as just people -- people at home owner association meetings, taking up space on the bus, arguing with their partners in the store about what kind of jelly to buy -- hopefully, there will be more smiles for all the gay kids out there just wanting to live their lives, tell their parents their music sucks and that they just don't understand.
Perhaps things are getting better and we're just getting to the age where our gay boy is just another gay kid. It would be nice to think of him as just another kid, but maybe that's asking too much too soon. For now, I'll take the smiles.
Millions expected at Pride March following landmark gay rights ruling
The symbol of positive change in the U.S.
WASHINGTON —With its landmark decisions this week, the United States Supreme Court has sent the Republican Party scrambling to find entirely new bogus issues to pound away at during the 2016 campaign.
With gay marriage and Obamacare effectively taken off the table, the Republicans now find themselves without a signature phony issue to disingenuously flog for the next sixteen months.
But according to the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, the Party is already conducting an exhaustive search to find “fresh new spurious positions” to shamelessly distract voters during the upcoming campaign.
“Twenty-foot border fence, national voter I.D. cards, abolition of the I.R.S., mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds,” Priebus said. “Back at R.N.C. headquarters, we’ve got a wall of three-by-five cards filled with crap like that.”
Priebus acknowledged that the loss of Obamacare and gay marriage as issues had dealt a serious blow to the G.O.P.’s supply of meaningless talking points, but he claimed that the Party would come back with even more insincere rhetoric than before. “Anyone who thinks we’ve run out of b.s. is sorely mistaken,” he said.
So despite all the fiery rhetoric and bravado talking about revolution and conservatives being willing to die to oppose same sex marriage leading up to the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans the reaction from the bigots has been more of a whimper than an explosion.
Prior to the decision a lot of anti-gay conservatives tried to comfort themselves with the idea that a pro-marriage decision would be the modern Roe vs Wade and they'd fight reality to the end of time. But of course there's no way a large portion of the American population can get anywhere near as riled up about harmless gay marriages as it can about abortion.
The bigots are deflated and tired of fighting, its already apparent they're just giving up on their lost war on gays and lesbians.
to reap the last couple of weeks:
a nut case redneck shot nine African American Christian while they studied the Bible
while the liberals screamed for Federal laws and tried to incite the type of riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, the relatives of these believers lived out the gospel and forgave the killer in court and pleaded with him to give his life to Christ
these saints in this divine gesture did more to bring healing to the South than any squads of Federal marshals ever could
blacks and whites came together to honor the dead and support their church, governors across the South pledged to remove Confederate flags
the South was transformed by the gospel into a model for America
then, this week a law that unconstitutionally requires every person in America to but insurance to the specification of the Federal government was rewritten by fearful judges who were afraid to risk the disapproval of the liberal media
and one man on the Supreme Court lost his mind and decided that there is a heretofore unrecognized right to "dignity" in the Constitution, paving the way for the same rights to be bestowed on polygamists
and Americans watched in disgust as mostly naked men danced in the streets whipping and chaining each other in celebration of their new right to have the government call these relationships "marriage"
well, Obamacare remains as unpopular as the day Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid ignored the clear wishes of their constituents and pulled out every procedural trick in the book to pass it
and gay advocates are already well on their way to over-reaching, which the American people will eventually reject
think it can't happen?
it probably won't if gays behave in a civil manner
but how likely is that?
"So despite all the fiery rhetoric and bravado talking about revolution and conservatives being willing to die to oppose same sex marriage leading up to the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans the reaction from the bigots has been more of a whimper than an explosion"
unbelievable
there never was any such "fiery rhetoric and bravado talking about revolution"
what could come depends on how this plays out
if there are attacks on churches, religious organizations and ordinary citizens with convictions about traditional marriage, attempting to force participation in genderless "marriage", there will be civil disobedience
if you want to call that "revolution", go ahead
"With its landmark decisions this week, the United States Supreme Court has sent the Republican Party scrambling to find entirely new bogus issues to pound away at during the 2016 campaign"
is this statement simply bogus or does it represent profound ignorance?
both of these rulings vastly simplify a Republican victory in 2016
the American people detest Obamacare and by next year, the economics will be even worse than now
now that it's clear that Roberts will go any length to save Obamacare, it's clear it can only be stopped with a Republican in the White House
call it the Scott Brown effect
as for gay "marriage", it was never going to be an issue in 2016 but the court ruling makes sure of that
now that the court has ruled it a right, no one will vote against someone because they oppose gay marriage
it's irrelevant
those who oppose Friday's ruling, however, will appreciate those politicians who opposed it
and they'll want them there nominating the next SC justices
it's win-win with no downside
and, honestly, the behavior of gays is likely to eventually make Americans regret last Friday's decision
it's almost guaranteed
The Slaying of Charleston Leader Clementa Pinckney Hits Gay Rights Advocates Hard
They mourn the loss of an ally as the Supreme Court prepares to deliver a major ruling.
"As South Carolina gay rights advocate Jeff Ayres lobbied lawmakers earlier this year to stop a wave of anti-gay bills in the statehouse, he went to speak with state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, the charismatic legislator and church pastor slain alongside eight other congregants in last week's racially motivated mass shooting.
"He gave me his assurance then that he was on our side," says Ayres, the chairman of South Carolina Equality. The South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, of which Pinckney was a member, "always has our backs, and has always been there unconditionally to support the LGBT community," Ayres told me in an interview, echoing sentiments from other gay rights advocates and two lawmakers who worked with Pinckney.
Last week's massacre at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church has thrust South Carolina politics to the forefront amid a painful, contentious national debate about racism and the legacy of segregation. As President Obama prepares to commemorate the life of the Rev. Pinckney on Friday, another struggle for equality—the one for gay rights—will be close at hand, and in its own right marked by Pinckney's legacy as an influential civil rights leader. With a ruling imminent on gay marriage, the US Supreme Court could potentially clear the way for same-sex couples across the country to wed, just an hour before Obama is due to deliver a eulogy for Pinckney at his funeral, making for an extraordinary confluence of national narratives around civil rights.
(Update: On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage in the historic case of Obergefell v. Hodges, a decision which effectively invalidates bans on gay marriage. Read the opinion here.)
Obama will be eulogizing a man who, by all accounts, was a defender of all minorities in his community. "The Clementa Pinckney I knew was a man of faith who believed that all God's children were equal and loved," said Gilda Cobb-Hunter, an African American state representative and self-described "lone ranger" on gay rights issues in the statehouse. Cobb-Hunter stopped short of ascribing specific gay-rights attitudes to Pinckney—wary, she said, of reaction from certain quarters of the black religious community in South Carolina, which she described as persistently homophobic. But she described Pinckney as "a tolerant man," and said that the legislative black caucus "has traditionally been consistently supportive of LGBT issues."
Pinckney never uttered a discriminatory word, agreed state Sen. Brad Hutto, who has sponsored anti-discrimination bills in the statehouse. "That would not be his style."
Pinckney voted against a bill last year that sought to punish two of the state's largest public colleges for the introduction of books with so-called gay themes, including Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel, which was developed into the Tony Award-winning off-Broadway musical. Still, his record on the issue is far from perfect, especially going back a few years when progress on gay rights in America was much less further along. Along with all but one state senator, Pinckney voted to ratify the state's constitutional amendment in 2007 banning gay marriage. (In November last year, US District Court Judge Gergel ruled in favor of the freedom to marry in South Carolina, striking down that ban.)..."
"…But more recently he participated in the cause. "We'd be able to count on him when the chips are down," said Malissa Burnette, an attorney who is helping to fight the legal case at the center of the state's complex battle over same-sex marriage. "Sen. Pinckney would be among our troops," she told me by phone from Columbia, where on Wednesday Pinckney's open casket was placed on display at the statehouse with an official ceremony. Pinckney and the Black Caucus "had the same opponents in the legislature, and that made us form bonds."
A personal friend of Pinckney going back 20 years, Zeke Stokes remembers him as a man "who believed in social justice for all people." Stokes, a native of the state and now a vice president with GLAAD, added, "He said 'loving God is never separate from loving your brothers and sisters.' So he really did see community service and taking care of your neighbors and your community as the same thing—as inextricable—with your faith in God and religion."
It would not be surprising if on Friday Obama were to explicitly link gay rights and civil rights for the African American community, as he has done before. In his 2013 inaugural address, Obama said equality for all "is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall," referring to the early hours of Saturday, June 28, 1969, when patrons in a New York City bar decided to rebel en masse against a routine police raid to clear out homosexual "deviants."
South Carolina has seen some progress: Six anti-gay bills were introduced in the last legislative session, and all failed to get out of committee for a vote, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT rights group. That was a big deal, said Cobb-Hunter. "Trust me," she said, "when you live in a state as red as South Carolina, simply stopping bad legislation is a victory."
Should the Supreme Court indeed hand down its ruling on marriage equality this Friday, "it's gonna be a real emotional day," said Ayres, who plans to attend Pinckney's funeral. (The iconic Mother Emanuel, the church Pinckney led as pastor, is far too small for the throng of mourners expected; the funeral will be held at an arena at the College of Charleston.)
"I need to be at this funeral to show that we are in full support of ending social and racial injustice, and promoting equality across our state," Ayres said. "I need to let all of our allies know, and show the community and his family and all the South Carolina LGBT community standing strong with them."
But if the Supreme Court votes in favor of nationwide marriage equality, it won't mean the fight is over in South Carolina, said Cobb-Hunter, who is bracing for an election year in which "red meat is in short supply."
"This is South Carolina," she said. "I fully expect there will be efforts made to defy the court ruling. I hope I'm wrong. But I will not be surprised."?
above, a gay agenda propagandist tries to associate the gay agenda with the slain pastor of Emanuel AME in Charleston
the only evidence provided is that he voted against "anti-gay bills" in the last year
well, you have to see what those "anti-gay bills" are to evaluate this spurious association
the only specific is that he voted not to punish two public colleges because of "the introduction of books with so-called gay themes"
well, gee, I would have voted the same way and I'm not exactly a gay agenda enthusiast
indeed, colleges should be bastions of free speech were all views can be heard and sorted by students
indeed, liberals, including gay agendists are currently working hard to ban opposition from institutions of higher learning by labeling it "hate speech" and necessary of "trigger warnings"
there is currently a war on free speech at America's colleges and the gay agenda is a key antagonist
but back to Pinckney, he did vote to ban genderless "marriage" in South Carolina and so is, thus, on record as having opposed the ruling the slim majority of SC justices imposed on America Friday
I wonder if the gay agenda will seek to defame any other of the none martyrs in Charleston, or will it end here?
"Pinckney voted to ratify the state's constitutional amendment in 2007 banning gay marriage"
so when Brandon Eich was found to have contributed to a group opposed to gay "marriage" in this same year, gay agenda lunatics in the Bay area had him removed from his position in the Silicon Valley
and when Dan Cathy was found to have contributed to a group opposed to gay "marriage" in this same year, the gay agenda tried to put Chik-Fil-A out of business
and yet, they know claim Pinckney as an "ally"
shameless
Senator Pinckney, the pastor of the AME church where family members of the murder victims of a white, punk ass, rebel flag waving racist forgave him the day after his horrendous crime took their loved ones from them, evolved his view of gay rights over time.
"while the liberals screamed for Federal laws and tried to incite the type of riots in Ferguson and Baltimore"
It was the white racist rebel flag waving murderer who hoped to inspire a race war. Instead he inspired the greatest coming together of people we have seen in a long time Blacks and whites, liberals and conservatives, many from beyond the AME church congregation came together in the spirit of love and understanding to fight hate.
"mostly naked men danced in the streets whipping and chaining each other in celebration of their new right to have the government call these relationships "marriage""
It's interesting to learn what caught your eye in the PRIDE parades around the nation this weekend, Anon. I saw lots of rainbow flag waving happy families with overjoyed children because their long discriminated gay parents would finally be allowed to wed.
I'm hopeful you too, Anon, will evolve just like Senator Pinckney did.
when you have any evidence he changed any of his views, do let us know
he gay agenda often mistakes care for capitulation
they have now convinced themselves, for example, that the Pope is pro-gay because of a statement that he wouldn't "judge" them
gay marriage, like slavery once did, separates children from parents
that's because, lost in all the hoopla, is the FACT that every human being on Earth is the result of a heterosexual union
and in a gay "marriage", the children are separated from one of those parents
there are currently several lawsuits from adult children of such unions asking courts to ban same gender marriage because of the suffering it caused them
so, it's not out of the question that this issue comes back to the SCOTUS
the SCOTUS once ruled that segregation is fine
it later reversed itself and said "separate but equal can never be equal"
in the early 70s, the SCOTUS declared the death penalty unconstitutional;
a couple of years later, they reconsidered
so, a SCOTUS ruling is not always carved in stone
if gays continue to suppress religious rights, this could turn around
15 reasons "why marriage equality is neither":
http://thefederalist.com/2015/06/26/15-reasons-marriage-equality-is-about-neither-marriage-nor-equality/
"Senator Pinckney, the pastor of the AME church where family members of the murder victims of a white, punk ass, rebel flag waving racist forgave him the day after his horrendous crime took their loved ones from them, evolved his view of gay rights over time. It was the white racist rebel flag waving murderer who hoped to inspire a race war. Instead he inspired the greatest coming together of people we have seen in a long time Blacks and whites, liberals and conservatives, many from beyond the AME church congregation came together in the spirit of love and understanding to fight hate."
oh, I think it's clear that liberals think they benefit from the perpetuation of racial tension
giving credit where credit is due, it was the gospel that led to the remarkable transformation in the South these last 10 days
at a short court hearing more was accomplished than decades of court rulings and Federal marshals
"It's interesting to learn what caught your eye in the PRIDE parades around the nation this weekend, Anon. I saw lots of rainbow flag waving happy families with overjoyed children because their long discriminated gay parents would finally be allowed to wed."
those pictures were the featured ones on several general news websites
pictures don't lie
for what's it worth, I thought the White House with the rainbow colored lights on Friday night looked pretty cool
"happy families with overjoyed children because their long discriminated gay parents would finally be allowed to wed"
in families with gay "parents", at most one is the actual parent of the child
in those cases, the child has been artificially separated from one of their real parents
this injustice is done, much like in abortion, by making the life and happiness of children subordinate to the pleasure of adults
there are few of these children who don't wish their actual parents were together and that the present parent's sex toy would leave
I doubt many of these kids are overjoyed by this abuse
to the extent they are, they will grow up to resent it
state marriage will soon be eliminated in most states as a result of Friday's ruling and replaced by civil unions
marriage will be left to churches, free to set the appropriate definition of the institution
I think we can all agree that every child deserves the best opportunity we can give them to be raised by a married mom and dad. Friday's ruling puts the government’s stamp of approval on intentionally depriving kids of either a mom or a dad
So you speak to me of sadness and the coming of the winter,
The fear that is within you now that seems to never end,
and the dreams that have escaped you and the hope that you've forgotten,
and you tell me that you need me now and you want to be my friend,
and you wonder where we're going, where's the rhyme and where's the reason?
And it's you cannot accept: it is here we must begin to seek the wisdom of the children
and the graceful way of flowers in the wind.
For the children and the flowers are my sisters and my brothers,
their laughter and their loveliness would clear a cloudy day.
Like the music of the mountains and the colors of the rainbow,
they're a promise of the future and a blessing for today.
Though the cities start to crumble and the towers fall around us,
the sun is slowly fading and it's colder than the sea.
It is written: From the desert to the mountains they shall lead us,
by the hand and by the heart, they will comfort you and me.
In their innocence and trusting they will teach us to be free.
For the children and the flowers are my sisters and my brothers,
their laughter and their loveliness would clear a cloudy day.
And the song that I am singing is a prayer to non-believers,
come and stand beside us we can find a better way.
Anon, are you saying that divorce should be made illegal?
And what are your feelings about marriages between, say, a gay man and a straight woman?
A third basis for protecting the right to marry is that it safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education. . . .
Under the laws of the several States, some of marriage’s protections for children and families are material. But marriage also confers more profound benefits. By giving recognition and legal structure to their parents’ relationship, marriage allows children “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Windsor, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 23). Marriage also affords the permanency
and stability important to children’s best interests. See Brief for Scholars of the Constitutional Rights of Children
as Amici Curiae 22–27.
As all parties agree, many same-sex couples provide loving and nurturing homes to their children, whether biological or adopted. And hundreds of thousands of children are presently being raised by such couples.
Excluding same-sex couples from marriage thus conflicts with a central premise of the right to marry. Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser. They also suffer the significant material costs of being raised by unmarried parents, relegated through no fault of their own to a more difficult and uncertain family life. The marriage laws at issue here thus harm and humiliate the children of same-sex couples.
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "I think we can all agree that every child deserves the best opportunity we can give them to be raised by a married mom and dad. Friday's ruling puts the government’s stamp of approval on intentionally depriving kids of either a mom or a dad".
A pathetic and desperate lie. Gay couples were already raising children before the marriage equality decision. Allowing them to marry does not remove any child from a heterosexual marriage they would have otherwise been raised in.
We all agree that its good for children to be raised by married parents. If you're honestly concerned about children you have to want the children of gays and lesbians to have married parents. But of course you're not honestly concerned about children, you don't care if you hurt the children being raised by gay and lesbian parents as long as you can see your bigotry enshrined in law.
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "there never was any such "fiery rhetoric and bravado talking about revolution"
LOL, have you been living under a rock?!
The ink was yet wet on the Supreme Court's decision legalizing gay marriage when Southern Baptist minister and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called for an uprising.
"I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch," he roared. "We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat."
Glenn Beck and religious-right activist Jim Garlow have 10,000 passionate pastors prepared to give up their lives if necessary in the fight against the coming persecution of Christians:
The number in the Black Robe Regiment is about 70,000 now. The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000. That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man.
And they were far from the only ones talking about revolution and how "all hell is going to break loose" after the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans. But of course it was all pompous bluster, the reaction of anti-gay bigots has been more of a whimper than a revolution.
Oh-o, Wyatt/bad anonymous posted "to reap the last couple of weeks:". He mispelled a word, by his own repeated insistance that means he's stupid and he's lost all the arguments.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
Boy, for a guy that said the supreme court striking down the gay marriage bans was "no big deal" Wyatt/bad anonymous sure is wailing about it a lot. I think we better call a wahmbulance.
I still shake my head in wonder that the four Luddites on the supreme court still believe that human/civil rights should be put to a popular vote.
I don’t recall all of the details, but I remember hearing a few years back that in several states a majority were STILL against interracial marriage, decades after Loving. So that’s an awful idea.
The four dissenters on the supreme court ignored well settled jurisprudence and shirked their duty in order to vote their bigotry:
Gay marriage should have never been put up for a vote, the rights of minorities should never be put up for a vote and subjected to the tyrany of the majority. The Judicial branch was given equal authority, it is the job of the judicial branch to ensure laws passed by the legislative branch aren't unconstitutional. When they are the judicial branch is obligated to strike those laws down, thats the American system of government. If courts are limited to ensuring the laws passed by politicians or the people are enforced then there is no restraint on which laws may be passed. Laws are often passed that violate the ultimate law of the land, the constitution, and if there is no recourse in the courts then politicians are free to pass any law they like that ignores the individual rights guaranteed by the constitution and the constitution essentially becomes worthless. When people say they oppose judicial activism what they are really saying is they oppose judges striking down laws they agree with but they are perfectly fine with judges striking down laws they don't agree with.
All in all, stripping the right of the court to assure laws are subject to the constitution is going against what the founders of the U.S. intended. They knowingly and willingly gave the court the right to overturn laws that don't follow the constitution because to do otherwise would be to invite anarchy, dictatorship, and the tyranny of the majority. Of course no minorities rights should ever be voted on. In no democracy do people have a right to vote on every issue and politicians don't have a right to pass whatever law strikes their fancy. Those laws must fit in the guidelines of the constitution. The American democracy is now functioning in general exactly as it should and as the framers intended. They may not have envisioned gays marrying when the wrote the 14th amendment but they also didn't intend for the 14th amendment to allow interracial marriage when they created it and assured people it wouldn't at the time. But when you institute a broad overriding principle of equal protection under the law as the framers intended, it necessarily overrides desires to prevent interracial, or gay marriages as they are subject to the superior principle. The ninth amendment says the enumeration of rights in the constitution does not disparage unenumerated rights which the people still have. This means that although the constitution doesn't specifically say there is a right to interracial or gay marriage that right is in the constitution, that right is required by the constitution because the constitution includes the overriding principle of equal treatment under the law.
The disingenous cry that people are being deprived of their right to vote is a farce. Under the constitution there is no right to vote to decide others may not have the same rights you have. Depriving people of this so called right to vote on other's rights is trivial or insubstantial in that it does not deprive them of anything in reality. But having that right has caused great deprivation to the equal rights of minorities. The person who is deprived of the right to vote to deprive others of equal rights has not suffered any harm, his life is no different with that right than it is without it. The same cannot be said of gays having the same right to marry as heterosexuals. Now some make the unsustainable and irrational argument that gays have the same right to marry a person of the opposite sex as heterosexuals so there is no discrimination. Not true, that argument was rejected in Loving vs Virginia. The rights guaranteed under the constitution don't apply to groups, they apply to individuals. So it is not sufficient to say the law treats men and women equally, the law must treat individuals equally. This means that if Jane has the right to marry Tom then Fred must also have the right to marry Tom.
The Constitution that conservatives claim to adore so much, the one that establishes what is profoundly American was deliberately and explicitly designed to make sure that all laws do not, in fact, reflect the will of the majority. The entire point of the Bill of Rights was to make sure that no majority can violate the rights of the individual. That is what distinguishes the American Constitutional system of government from a pure, majoritarian democracy.
This is why judges were given lifetime appointments. The founding fathers spelled it out in great detail in the Federalist Papers. Lifetime appointments were given specifically to insulate them from the influence of the voters so they could pass judgment on the constitutionality of laws passed by majorities, whether directly by referendum or indirectly through elected legislatures, without caring whether their rulings were popular or not.
Wyatt/bad anonymous, how many years from now are you still going to be trying to re-litigate the past?
Even suggesting that prisoners, slaves, and internees didn’t lose their abstract “dignity” while being lashed, brutalized, raped, penned in the desert, and murdered is just deplorable and Thomas should resign in disgrace for even having penned those words. Really, this cannot be excused. This is a Supreme Court Justice writing those words.
Matt Walsh: Gay Marriage Still Doesn’t Exist
Of all the arguments used by the opponents of same-sex marriage, I think my favorite is the “God defined marriage, so there are no same-sex marriages no matter what the court says” argument. Matt Walsh makes that very argument at Glenn Beck’s site in the wake of Friday’s ruling.
“Gay Marriage Still Doesn’t Exist, No Matter What the Supreme Court Says,” the headline screams.
“But whatever the Supreme Court says, the Truth remains the same: There is no right to gay marriage. There is no gay marriage. It’s not real. It’s not possible.
It’s make-believe. It means nothing.
You might say it doesn’t matter now because the Supreme Beings have spoken, but I happen to think that Truth always matters. Despite what any judge says; despite the prevailing opinion; despite the surveys and polls and consensuses; the Truth still matters. If it doesn’t, then nothing matters and life is pointless. Your existence has no meaning if the Truth is irrelevant. There is no reason for you to be on this planet if there is no Truth worth fighting for.
And the Truth is that, due to the fundamental nature of human rights, marriage, and homosexuality, a union between two homosexuals is not, has never been, and will never be a legitimate marriage."
Then why are you still throwing a tantrum about it? If those marriages don’t actually exist, despite the signed marriage license and official legal status and all, you’re whining about absolutely nothing. You can continue on your merry way, pretending that they don’t exist. You can just put on your God-colored glasses and all those gay couples just magically disappear. I just wish I could pretend that bigots don’t exist.
Jindal: Let’s Just Shut Down the Judicial Branch
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal reacted to the Supreme Court making same-sex marriages legal nationwide by making one of the most asinine — and unconstitutional — proposals imaginable: I don’t like what the Supreme Court did, so let’s just get rid of it.
Louisiana Gov, Bobby Jindal (R) on Friday suggested doing away with the Supreme Court during a speech in Iowa that followed the court’s historic ruling on same-sex marriage.
“The Supreme Court is completely out of control, making laws on their own, and has become a public opinion poll instead of a judicial body,” he told the crowd, as quoted by The Advocate newspaper. “If we want to save some money lets just get rid of the court.”
Yeah, see, you actually can’t do that. It’s mandated in that pesky constitution you right wingers claim to love so much and know so little about. It’s one of the three branches of government. You know, separation of powers, checks and balances and all that. Maybe you were too busy doing exorcisms in college to pay attention during class.
“Yesterday, Justice Scalia noted that in the Obamacare ruling ‘words have no meaning,'” Jindal added, according to The Advocate. “Today, Chief Justice Roberts admitted that the gay marriage ruling had nothing to do with the Constitution. Marriage between a man and a woman was established by God, and no earthly court can alter that.”
Actually, an “earthly court” (as opposed to what, exactly?) just did. And you know what can’t actually do anything about that? You or your imaginary buddy.
Louis Gohmert Tears? Don’t Mind If I Do
The tour of right wing bigot freakouts continues with the single dumbest man in Congress, Rep. Louis Gohmert. Like his fellow theocrats, he thinks it’s somehow relevant that the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling contradicts what the Bible says. And of course, his big bad invisible buddy is totally going to beat us up now.
“Founders and leaders including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and most all of the Presidents have noted that it is God who has been the source of this nation’s unfathomable blessings,” Gohmert stated. “But if Moses, Jesus, and contributors to the Bible were correct, God’s hand of protection will be withdrawn as future actions from external and internal forces will soon make clear. I will do all I can to prevent such harm, but I am gravely fearful that the stage has now been set.”
Oh, you absolutely should do all that you can, Louis. You should turn yourself into an anti-gay superhero, with a cape and everything. Call yourself the Divine Avenger. Your superpower, naturally, would be shooting bullsh*t at people.
“It is a tragic and ominous day for the United States when a decision by five unelected justices of the U.S. Supreme Court blatantly violates the law in order to destroy the foundational building block for society provided by Nature and Nature’s God — that was stated as divine law by Moses and Jesus,” he said.
No, actually, it’s not a tragic day at all. It’s just another day that confirms that the U.S. is not a theocracy, no matter how badly you want it to be. God has no vote here, nor do Moses or Jesus. Unfortunately, you still do, along with millions of other people who think their religious beliefs give them the right to oppress others. But you’re losing. The days of your hegemony are coming to an end. So sad for you, really. Totally broken up about it.
"Anon, are you saying that divorce should be made illegal?"
I don't think I said that. While regrettable, the damage done when parents divorce is mitigated by the court supervision in the arrangements for children and their interests are considered. Not so, if gays get surrogates or go in vitro. They simply make an arbitrary choice to deny a child access to one of its parents in order to maintain an artificial fairy tale for a gay couple. Divorces don't result in kids not knowing who one of their parents are. Deviant gay relationships do. They're cruel.
Much like abortions are being limited by regulating various aspects, gay marriages will now be subject to certain requirements. First off, laws are being drafted to require that gays tell their kid who the other parent is. Secondly, these laws will require that the kid has the right to leave the gay parent and move in with their other parent at any time.
Polls show the public supports this.
"And what are your feelings about marriages between, say, a gay man and a straight woman?"
I don't have any strong feelings at all. But, obviously, if two opposite gender people want to unite and form a family, they can decide to do so and the children's rights are protected.
"Justice Kennedy said...
A third basis for protecting the right to marry is that it safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education. . . .
Under the laws of the several States, some of marriage’s protections for children and families are material. But marriage also confers more profound benefits. By giving recognition and legal structure to their parents’ relationship, marriage allows children “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Marriage also affords the permanency and stability important to children’s best interests. As all parties agree, many same-sex couples provide loving and nurturing homes to their children, whether biological or adopted. And hundreds of thousands of children are presently being raised by such couples."
Tell that to kids who aren't allowed to know who one of their parents is, Kennedy, you sleazeball!
Actually, you'll get a chance. Several such children, adults now, are suing for damages in accordance with the suffering they endured. Their cases should eventually get to the SCOTUS. By then, President Walker should have appointed some reasonable and decent judges.
"Gay couples were already raising children before the marriage equality decision. Allowing them to marry does not remove any child from a heterosexual marriage they would have otherwise been raised in."
Good point. Gays raising children when a biological parent is alive should be illegal. We'll add that to the bills.
"We all agree that its good for children to be raised by married parents."
You miss the point. It's not just good for kids to be raised by married parents but their OWN married parents. That never happens in a gay "marriage". Children should be banned from gay marriages. Childrens' lives matter.
"have you been living under a rock?!
The ink was yet wet on the Supreme Court's decision legalizing gay marriage when Southern Baptist minister and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called for an uprising.
"I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch," he roared. "We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat.""
He was talking about civil disobedience. He's a Christian Thoreau. btw, the use of "roared" is biased and inflammatory. He discredits whatever your source was and raises the question of whether the quote was out of context.
"Glenn Beck and religious-right activist Jim Garlow have 10,000 passionate pastors prepared to give up their lives if necessary in the fight against the coming persecution of Christians:
The number in the Black Robe Regiment is about 70,000 now. The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000. That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man."
Again, sounds like civil disobedience in the face of persecution. That's not an uprising.
"they were far from the only ones talking about revolution and how "all hell is going to break loose" after the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans. But of course it was all pompous bluster, the reaction of anti-gay bigots has been more of a whimper than a revolution."
I guess you were hoping someone would match your ranting but sounds like everyone stuck to their principles without over-reacting. Initiatives are ongoing on several fronts to nullify the gay marriage "right". Now, go sing a song, lazy Priya!
Why Substantive Due Process Matters
What is substantive due process? Glad you asked. Actually, I don’t care if you asked, I’m going to explain it anyway.
The phrase “due process of law” appears twice in the Constitution, in the 5th and 14th amendments. In the 5th amendment it says that “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The 14th amendment applies that to the states, saying, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
Substantive due process is among the most vilified ideas in American law. Sometimes it seems lawyers compete to find the cleverest way to ridicule it, as an “oxymoron,” a “contradiction in terms,” or a mere trick whereby judges substitute their personal political opinions for the law. Just weeks ago, Justice Clarence Thomas restated his longstanding rejection of substantive due process: “the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause is not a secret repository of substantive guarantees against ‘unfairness.’”
That’s wrong. As I have argued recently in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, substantive due process is as legitimate—indeed, as crucial—a part of our Constitution as the principle of, say, separation of powers. Note that the phrase “separation of powers” doesn’t appear in the Constitution; it’s an abstract principle one infers from the structure, ideas, and history of the document. The same is true of substantive due process.
Perhaps saddest of all, it often seems that the most vocal critics of substantive due process don’t even understand how the doctrine works in the first place. My point here is to explain briefly how the Constitution’s promise that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” means not only that government must take certain procedural steps (hearings, trials, and so forth) when it imposes a deprivation, but also that some acts are off limits for government, “regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them.”
If the due process clauses mean nothing more than “the government can deprive you of your rights as long as they follow the proper procedure to pass a law to do so,” then the very idea of individual rights is eliminated by majoritarian tyranny. This goes hand in hand with the concept of unenumerated rights and the proper interpretation of the 9th Amendment.
Prof. Bernstein, echoing many critiques of substantive due process, basically asks where judges are supposed to stop: would it be proper for a judge to say at any point “I think this law intrudes on unenumerated rights and, were I a legislator, I’d therefore oppose it, but as a judge I will defer to elected representatives”?
The answer to this is no. The point of our constitutional system is not to establish a democracy, but to limit it by imposing, among other things, the requirement that democracy act within the boundaries of law. But this is not merely a procedural requirement; to be entitled to the name “law,” a government act must comply with certain substantive values—it must be general, it must be fair, it must be public-oriented, and so forth. The Constitution deems any “democratic” action that exceeds these boundaries to be illegal, and a judge is bound to regard it as invalid. I see no basis for deference to a law that exceeds these boundaries and violates individual rights. There can be no legitimate action depriving people of rights—whether they be enumerated or not—and therefore it is proper for the court to invalidate such acts
A robust judiciary, more willing to engage the question of legislative authority and to defend individual rights, would be healthier for American democracy than the often overly deferential judiciary that we now have. Our system was meant to balance the judiciary against the legislature, and for good reason. We do harm to that system when our judges defer to the legislature to exceed its constitutional boundaries.
Conservative judges and legal scholars tend to write the 9th Amendment right out of the constitution. Robert Bork did this most famously when he referred to the 9th Amendment as an “ink blot” on the Constitution. Conservatives scream bloody murder whenever a judge “discovers” a right that isn’t explicitly stated in the Constitution — (well, sometimes; when they agree with that right, like the right to send one’s children to private schools, their opposition to unenumerated rights magically disappears) — and claim that if it isn’t explicitly listed as a right, it isn’t one. But that would render the 9th amendment meaningless. It would make unenumerated rights unenforceable and therefore make the 9th amendment mean that the people retain unenumerated rights but those rights can be abridged whenever the government chooses to do so.
So, it is not enough for the legislative branch to follow legal procedures in creating a law that deprives people of rights, it must have a valid reason for that deprivation.
And there is no reason to deprive gays and lesbians of the right to marry the partner of their choosing.
Cackling covens of gay agendists think they found the end of rainbow on Friday
while they dress in little green suits and dance around a pot of fool's gold, the world keeps spinning
first of all, the court said if the states perform marriages, they have to marry gays
but states could simply get put of the marriage business and leave it to religious bodies
and even if states continue to marry people, they can still impose restrictions
a key one involves the lives of children, namely that children have a right to know and have contact with both their biological parents
children should also have the right to leave gay parents for their biological parent, without exception
you can tell lazy Priya is getting flustering when three posts disappear in 15 minutes
that's not way to act, Priya
if you got the blues, sing about it
try that "All you need" song
hahahahahahaha!!!!
"And there is no reason to deprive gays and lesbians of the right to marry the partner of their choosing"
how about to protect the lives of children? their right to know their parents and be involved in their lives?
just like the abortion issue, consciences can be raised, and damage limited
I said "Gay couples were already raising children before the marriage equality decision. Allowing them to marry does not remove any child from a heterosexual marriage they would have otherwise been raised in."
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Good point. Gays raising children when a biological parent is alive should be illegal. We'll add that to the bills.".
So, you're going to take a child away from the parents he or she wants to be with and force a biological parent who doesn't want to raise or be involved with that child and force them to raiseit. And outlaw divorce so the child isn't "deprived of a biological father or mother". Yeah, no reason why that shouldn't work. Of course we'll have to outlaw adoption as well, wouldn't want a child to be taken from his or her biological parents.
I said ""We all agree that its good for children to be raised by married parents."
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "You miss the point. It's not just good for kids to be raised by married parents but their OWN married parents. That never happens in a gay "marriage". Children should be banned from gay marriages. Childrens' lives matter.".
The overwhelming social science research shows that the children of same sex parents do just as well, if not better than the children of opposite sex parents. Of course many times the biological parents may not be available to a child due to death or simply not wanting to raise the child, what your proposal would then require is taking away the children of gay parents and putting them up for adoption where odds are they'd be institutionalized until they age out of the system. Only the most heartless of people would think thats the preferred option. And once again, your proposal requires the banning of adoption and divorce becuase ". It's not just good for kids to be raised by married parents but their OWN married parents."
that's right~!!!
RAAAISED
We all know there's never going to be a law that takes children away from their same sex parents and forces biological parents who don't want to be together and don't want to raise that child to get or stay married and raise a gay couples child. What you're proposing at best could take a child being raised by gay parents and institutionalize him or her. If you thought chidren's lives matter you wouldn't want that, you'd want that child to be raised by two loving married parents who want him or her. Your goal is to hurt children being raised by same sex parents due to your animus towards them. Too shameful for words to describe.
"have you been living under a rock?!
I said "The ink was yet wet on the Supreme Court's decision legalizing gay marriage when Southern Baptist minister and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called for an uprising.
"I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch," he roared. "We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat.""
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "He was talking about civil disobedience".
Obviously not. He referred to the American revolutionary war, he was obviously making a veiled threat of revolution.
I said "Glenn Beck and religious-right activist Jim Garlow have 10,000 passionate pastors prepared to give up their lives if necessary in the fight against the coming persecution of Christians:
"The number in the Black Robe Regiment is about 70,000 now. The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000. That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man."".
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Again, sounds like civil disobedience in the face of persecution. That's not an uprising.".
Oh puuuuleeeeze. Thousands of people don't march to their deaths when being civily disobedient, they do that in a revolution. Only willful blindness would allow one to claim that wasn't a threat of revolution. And other anti-gay rightwingers have specifically said there'd be a revolution if the Supreme court struck down gay marriage bans. And the idea that being denied the right to persecute gays and lesbians is in itself persecution is absurd and an insult to the memory of all the gays and lesbians that have been imprisoned and executed as a result of religiously motivated hatred. You're disgusting.
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "Initiatives are ongoing on several fronts to nullify the gay marriage "right".".
LOL, yeah, good luck with that!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
For someone who said the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans was "no big deal" you sure are desperate to undo it!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
"The gay agenda is going down in flames! Flames I tells ya!"
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "you can tell lazy Priya is getting flustering when three posts disappear in 15 minutes".
Oh really Wyatt, how pathetic and desperate are you to try to cling to irrelevant details in the vain attempt to claim a "win"?
The three deleted posts are the exact same three posts I posted immediately afterwards. I deleted the first posting of those three because one of your posts was made in the middle of those three and I wanted each one of the three to follow one after the other for continuity.
Your ideas to try and undo history are becoming increasingly desperate, bitter, and unhinged. Tell us again how you think its "no big deal" that the supreme court struck down the gay marriage bans.
"The overwhelming social science research shows that the children of same sex parents do just as well, if not better than the children of opposite sex parents"
interview each of those researchers and you'll find they decided what the results would before beginning the study
and if the bias is not enough, anyone who finds anything to the contrary knows they'll be hounded and persecuted and attacked until they recant of the heresy
btw, research shows that most gay "marriages" are not monogamous
we just institutionalized a disease incubation complex
Wyatt posts all this desperate nonsense about taking away the children of gay couples while disingenously saying "Childrens' lives matter." but never considers that in almost certainly all cases the children of those gay parents want to be with them. What the children of gay parents want doesn't matter to Wyatt/bad anonymous because the truth is children don't matter to Wyatt/bad anonymous, he's blinded by animus and his desire to harm gay couples at all costs.
Anti-gay bigots like to disingenously say "Children have a right to a mother and father".
If you accept that then it necessarily follows that children also have a right to two mothers or two fathers. I would have happily traded my abusive opposite sex biological parents for two male or two female parents. Where was my right to the parents that would have been best for me? Or do chidlren's rights only matter when the outcome is anti-gay?
That was a rhetorical question Wyatt/bad anonymous, you don't need to try and come up with some absurd response.
"good luck with that!"
thanks, Priya
you're probably not as stupid as everyone seems to think
but then, who could be?
easy for you to be nonchalant
your family was a disaster so you hate everyone else's
truth is, all kids want to know who both their parents are
and gay marriage too often prevents that
society will find a way to protect these kids from deviants
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "btw, research shows that most gay "marriages" are not monogamous".
An outright lie. All the anti-gay articles making that claim focussed on "research" (such as questionaires from porno magazines) that was done prior to gays and lesbians having the right to marry, much of it from as far back as the 70's.
Research since gay couples have had access to civil unions or marriage has shown that gay promiscuity drops when gays have the right to legal recognition of their relationships.
Once again, like with children, anti-gay bigots like Wyatt pretend to be concerned about an issue but oppose the very measure (gay marriage) that would make things better.
funny how increasingly incoherent Priya is becoming
personally, I don't think living on the funny farm is good for any one!!
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "your family was a disaster so you hate everyone else's truth is, all kids want to know who both their parents are".
Nonsense on both counts. I don't hate everyone else's families, just the abusive ones and there are a lot of abusive heterosexually based families. Mine was far from an exception.
Second, while its true that some adopted children want to know who their biological parents are, many couldn't care less as they see their true parents as the people who loved and put the effort into raising them. They don't care about the biological parents that discarded them and hold them in contempt.
Once again you can't deny that at least some (I'm sure the vast majority) of the children of same sex parents want to be with those parents but you make no allowance for that despite your disingenous "children's lives matter" propaganda, you want to rip children from their parents and traumatize them for live. You don't care about children, you don't care how much you hurt them as long as it suits your goal of harming gay couples. You are motivated solely by animus, to gay couples and to your own same sex attractions. Now in particular you are all the more desperte for revenge on gays and lesbians because they've dared to take the same right heterosexuals have to marriage.
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "funny how increasingly incoherent Priya is becoming".
Yes, that's it, when you can't rebut the irrefutable arguments your opponent has made say nothing and declare victory.
That'll fool everyone into thinking you're right.
How pathetic!
Notice how Wyatt spends wastes so much more time here when he's at work than when he's off work?
Can you say Lazy?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Wyatt/bad anonymous is a classic example of a person going through the seven stages of grief
He's in stage one - shock and denial:
"The supreme court striking down gay marriage bans is no big deal".
"Initiatives are ongoing on several fronts to nullify the gay marriage "right".".
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
"some adopted children want to know who their biological parents are, many couldn't care less as they see their true parents as the people who loved and put the effort into raising them"
actually, I'm referring less to adoption than to when wicked gays pay a woman for eggs and then incubate the child is the womb of a paid surrogate
this is nothing less than human trafficking
it's pernicious and has a victim - the child who has been bought and sold, having its origins hidden so that they spend their life in doubt
all so a couple of deviants can pretend their sexual activities are normal
where are the studies on that?>!?!?!?!?
Give it up Wyatt you drama queen.
We WON!
Words alone cannot depict the significance this day holds. I - mother of three, married to the woman of my dreams - am living the life I always wanted, and yet not until now have I experienced true validation and… it’s everything. This is no mere vote; it’s not just a piece of paper. This is my country and its people assuring me and my family that we are no longer excluded.
I didn’t have this assurance fourteen years ago when my wife and I stood before friends and family and pledged our forever union. Even the word “wife” was not mine to use, as a colleague so emphatically informed me. Well, it’s mine now, and I feel such gratitude. Thank you to those who fought so hard for equality. Thank you to those not strong enough to keep it from me.
Leading up to this historical moment, I realize that there will come a day, maybe sooner than I think, when our kids’ kids will not even appreciate this fight. Marriage as equal opportunity for all will simply be a fact in their lives; they will not even have to consider the alternative. They may turn to this history as a template for ridding their world of whatever injustices plague it, but they won’t fully understand those who stood for a minority group simply because it was the right thing to do. They won’t know or even need to know, and I guess that’s a good thing. Homophobia and bigotry will have subsided in comparison. To forget is to be permitted to.
My daughter, with tears in her eyes, asked if there was a chance that the Supreme Court would make the wrong decision. I was proud to be able to tell her, “No, this is what our country does; we eventually get it right; history proves it.”
And so it has.
In celebration of the struggle and the victory, we offer a lighthearted look at the future Sallys and Harrys of the world. May the protection afforded them by the Supreme Court, and the millions of voices behind it, stand forever.
yeah, the government definitely needs to ban that crap
is gays want to have surgery to alter themselves and pretend they're girls, they can go ahead
when they start playing around with someone else's life, they have crossed a line !*!*!*!*!*!*!
"My daughter, with tears in her eyes, asked if there was a chance that the Supreme Court would make the wrong decision"
maybe she was crying because she doesn't know her father
if not, she will eventually
a lot of people don't know:
Priya once had super powers
but Priya's therapist took them away!$!$!$!$!!!!
ha HA ha !!!
that's funny!!!
you should a mark twain prize!!
btw, the SCOTUS ruled today that Obama can't use the EPA to crack down on imaginary global warmin'
"btw, the SCOTUS ruled today that Obama can't use the EPA to crack down on imaginary global warmin'"
No it didn't. SCOTUS ruled:
"In another 5-4 ruling with the court's conservatives in the majority, the justices found the Obama administration should have considered the cost of compliance when it decided to limit emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants mainly from coal-fired power plants. The ruling was a setback for the administration and left the legal status of the regulation in limbo.
The rule stays in effect for the time being, with the case returning to an appeals court, which will decide whether or not it should be thrown out.
The legal rationale adopted by the court is unlikely to have broader implications for other environmental regulations, including the administration's Clean Power Plan that would cut carbon emissions from existing power plants, according to lawyers following the case."
The AZ GOP took the hardest hit today on the gerrymandering case.
"In this 5-4 ruling, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the court's four liberals in backing an independent commission approved by the state's voters to draw the districts.
The court ruled that the ballot initiative did not violate the U.S. Constitution's requirement that state legislatures set congressional district boundaries. The ruling could pave the way for more states to adopt similar procedures. Six other states, including California, already have independent commissions.
Critics say partisan "gerrymandering" leads to House of Representatives districts being drawn in a way intended to give the party controlling the legislature the maximum number of seats possible while marginalizing voters favoring the other party."
I'm not surprised that Sen. David Vitter would have something to say about gay marriage becoming the law of the land. This is a guy who, after all, once called banning gay marriage the most important issue facing the nation once. And not even being outed as a massive, hooker loving, diaper-sporting hypocrite can stop him from voicing his disapproval to the sight of happy couples being joined together in wedded bliss. Or at least, using Twitter to be an asshole:
Twitter does not forget.
That’s what Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) learned the hard way when he lashed out at the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling Friday with this tweet:
Chick-fil-A kind of day
Complete with a big photo of him sitting in a car chowing down on Chick-fil-A. Ha ha, sure showed them gays what's what.
It didn't take long for Twitter to strike back, as evidenced by this tweetfrom journalist Sam Knight:
You always know exactly where to go when you want to uphold the sanctity of marriage, Senator
Complete with this headline and accompanying article:
New Orleans Madam Says Sen. David Vitter Used Her Brothel
Boom, baby. And he wasn't alone. Courtesy of Salon here's some of the other replys:
How do you pick between a "Chick-fil-A kind of day" and a "cheat-on-your-wife-with-prostitute" kind of day?
You get off on wearing adult diapers and being an adult baby. Who are you to judge my lifestyle and marriage?
@DavidVitter marriage is between a man, a woman and his prostitutes. Right Senator?
Is that where you meet your hookers? Like is "Chik-Fil-A" code for "hooker"?
While proponents of marriage equality celebrated love, Vitter ate a shitty chicken sandwich in his car. #Winning
And my favorite:
I thought you preferred Wendys.
12 Things Conservatives Have Predicted Would Happen Now That Marriage Equality Is Law
Anticipation of Friday’s Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling inspired conservatives to engage in a lot of defensive posturing. Some have called for “civil disobedience” and warned that nationwide marriage equality will have consequences for religious liberty. Focus on the Family’s political arm, CitizenLink, posted a video last week citing the “fallout” that will supposedly now follow the decision, which serves as a potential road map to the hot spots where opponents might still put up a fight.
What’s telling about this litany of concerns is that they all boil down to attempts to reject or ignore the legal validity of same-sex marriages or somehow discriminate against same-sex couples. Here’s a look at CitizenLink’s list of marriage equality fears and what they actually mean by them.
“The tax-exempt status of non-profit ministries and organizations will be under attack nationwide.”
This refers to a question Justice Samuel Alito asked during the oral arguments in April in the Obergefell v. Hodges case. Would a school that opposes same-sex marriage meet the same fate as Bob Jones University, which lost its tax-exempt status for opposing interracial marriage or dating? As ThinkProgress has previously explained, the comparison is not accurate, because the issue in the Bob Jones case was not the school’s position on interracial relations, but its actual discrimination against students who engaged in them. Moreover, even a school that does engage in the same kind of discrimination against students in same-sex relationships might not be at risk because of the incomplete patchwork of nondiscrimination laws protecting sexual orientation. Either way, the tax-exempt status would only be at risk if actual discrimination is playing out
“Parents will have no say in what their children are taught about relationships and marriage in public schools. No notice in advance. No chance to opt out.”
Conservatives regularly object to any content in schools that even acknowledges the existence of gay people, their relationships, or their families. They argue that homosexuality is all about sex and that parents should be able to teach their own kids what to believe about it — or simply protect them from hearing about it whatsoever. As the “princess” ad from the Prop 8 campaign in California demonstrated, this stems from the antiquated but not forgotten myth that children can somehow be recruited or persuaded to be gay simply by being exposed to information about gay people.
With marriage equality available nationwide, the number of same-sex families will surely increase. In turn, the likelihood of children having classmates with same-sex parents will also continue to climb. In many cases, schools won’t have to read a book like King & King for kids to learn about same-sex families, but they may still rely on such tools to help kids better understand the diversity of their classmates and combat bullying. If parents truly want to prevent their kids from learning about “relationships and marriage” in a same-sex-inclusive way, they may have to either opt their children out of school entirely or find a way to ostracize same-sex families from the school community.
“Teachers who express support for marriage may be fired.”
There has been no shortage of teachers who have been fired for being gay or for simply announcing intentions to marry their same-sex partner — mostly from Catholic schools. But CitizenLink is talking about teachers who get in trouble for opposing same-sex marriage. In a few cases, teachers have made remarks outside of the classroom that have caused their schools to be concerned about whether they are fit to work with students, but in most of those cases, the teachers have kept their jobs.
For example, in 2011, Florida high school teacher Jerry Buell posted on Facebook that he “almost threw up” watching a news story about same-sex marriage, urging, “Don’t insult a man and woman’s marriage by throwing it in the same cesspool as same-sex whatever!” He was suspended for three days while the school investigated, then reinstated.
In a more recent example, Patricia Jannuzzi, a teacher at a Catholic school in New Jersey, was suspended after she posted an anti-marriage equality position on Facebook back in April. She wrote that marriage equality proponents “want to reengineer western civ into a slow extinction,” describing homosexuality as something chosen not comparable to race or disability. Jannuzzi, like Buell, got to keep her job.
Teachers’ free speech outside the classroom is still guaranteed. The problem is the increasing awareness that disparaging people for their sexuality is just as detestable as making comments that are racist or sexist. If schools feel that teachers’ comments are offensive or reflect too poorly on the school — particularly when made quite publicly on social media — it is the school’s prerogative to ensure a safe learning environment for all students.
In the meantime, it remains true that only gay teachers and their supporters have actually lost their jobs over the issue of same-sex marriage.
Christian college accreditation will be attacked.”
So far, the only Christian university that has had its accreditation challenged was Gordon College in Massachusetts. Last year, after President Obama issued an executive order requiring all federal contractors not to discriminate against LGBT people, Gordon president D. Michael Lindsay joined other religious leaders in asking the White House for a religious exemption. The higher education commission of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) considered whether Gordon’s policy of forbidding “homosexual practice” ran afoul of its standards for accreditation.
This April, NEASC and Gordon issued a joint statement confirming that the college would retain its accreditation status, but Gordon did agree to some new initiatives to educate its communities about LGBT people. On its own website, Gordon College asserted, “Contrary to many media stories during the last few months, Gordon’s accreditation was not in jeopardy.”
If Gordon had actually lost its accreditation, it would only have been because of irreconcilable policies that discriminate against LGBT people, which was the commission’s primary concern.
“Government-backed student-loans at those colleges will go away.”
Student loans have never been threatened as such at any university, so this particular conservative fear is conjecture that builds upon the other fears. It seems likely that if the marriage equality decision would lead to a threat to educational funding, the IRS and state tax agencies would first have to make new policy decisions. That would be a long process and one that would likely allow for input from the potentially impacted schools.
Nevertheless, fear is a powerful force, and at least one school has already decided on its own to stop accepting federal aid. In April, Wyoming Catholic College announced it was joining a few other religious colleges in refusing to participate in federal student-aid programs. That means no federal loans, work-study money, or grants could be applied to students’ tuition costs. The young unaccredited school argues that the clean break is necessary to adhere to its religious values. Other schools that decline federal dollars include Christendom College in Virginia, Hillsdale College in Michiganm and New St. Andrews College in Idaho. In all cases, this was a choice made by the school, not one forced by the government.
“Faith-based adoption agencies will be forced out of business.”
There are a number of stories of faith-based adoption agencies — Catholic Charities in almost every case — shutting down after the arrival of marriage equality, but in none of those cases was an agency “forced out of business.”
In Massachusetts, Illinois, and D.C., Catholic Charities voluntarily shut down for political purposes. In no case did the law force them to shut down or force them to adopt to same-sex couples. What did happen is that the agency’s access to state funding was dependent upon not discriminating. They could have continued to operate in a discriminatory fashion without support from the taxpayers, or they could have stopped discriminating to continue functioning with the government subsidies. In all three cases, Catholic Charities just gave up on the charity of adoption entirely.
Catholic Charities’ political motives against the recognition of same-sex unions was most evident in Colorado. In 2012, Colorado lawmakers considered a civil unions bill that had broad exemptions for religious organization, including adoption agencies like Catholic Charities. Officials from the organization nevertheless testified that they would “discontinue our service in adoption and foster care” if the bill passed. There wasn’t even funding on the line — it would have been an act of pure protest. That legislation ultimately failed, and when a different civil unions bill passed a year later — over Catholic Charities’ same objections — it didn’t offer the same exemptions. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Colorado since October, and Catholic Charities is still functioning normally there.
If any adoption agency shuts down over marriage equality, it will be because the organization prioritizes discriminating against same-sex couples over finding families for children.
“Christian business owners, wedding photographers, cake bakers, florists, etc, will be sued for discrimination if they turn down business for a same-sex ceremony.”
It’s true that business owners have been sued for discrimination, and they have lost in every case. That’s because they violated states’ nondiscrimination ordinances. The New Mexico photographer, the Colorado baker, the Oregon bakers, the Washington florist, the Iowa art gallery, the Vermont inn, the New York farm, and the Hawaii bed and breakfast all refused to provide the same service to same-sex couples that they provide to different-sex couples, and they all did so in states that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Though these cases affected same-sex couples, it was not the legality of marriage equality that was responsible for them; it was laws guaranteeing equal access to goods and services.
“Churches [that] open up their buildings to outside groups will be sued if they turn down events such as a reception for a same-sex wedding.”
This concern is actually the same as the last. What matters is whether or not a church offers its property for use as a public accommodation. If a church wants to rent out its space for non-church functions, it may do so, but it cannot then pick and choose who it rents to based on religious reasons.
This fear reflects what played out with a beach-side pavilion owned by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a Methodist church organization in New Jersey. The property actually benefited from a Green Acres real-estate tax exemption, a state subsidy that supports conservation and recreation — not a religious tax exemption. When the Association refused to let a same-sex couple host a civil union ceremony there, it was found in violation of its agreement with the state to provide “equal access.” The Pavilion is now covered by a religious exemption and the Association no longer makes it available for public rental.
Churches would only face the treat of a lawsuit if they attempt to profit off of renting out their properties and then arbitrarily discriminate against same-sex couples.
“Faith-based charities and relief organizations that get money from the government will see those grants go away.”
There is no evidence that government funding of faith-based initiatives is in danger over the issue of same-sex marriage. As with adoption agencies, this would only become a concern if an organization accepted taxpayer money and then refused to serve all people equally.
“The freedom of Christian organizations to hire people who are in harmony with their beliefs will be attacked.”
This again reflects an intent to discriminate against people based on their sexuality. Conservative groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom have already outlined a strategy to pretend that all employees at a religious organization have a “ministerial” duty in hopes that will justify discriminatory hiring practices.
“Members of the military who disagree will be challenged.”
There have been a few incidents where members of the military claim they were punished because of their religious beliefs, but in the facts of their cases, it was their actions, not their beliefs, that caused them problems.
For example, Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Phillip Monk claimed that in 2013, he was relieved of duties because he refused to agree with a commanding officer on the issue of same-sex marriage. What actually happened is that she directed him to punish someone under his supervision who had inappropriately promoted his own anti-gay religious beliefs in a mandatory training. Monk refused to follow the order and was reassigned — to a new position commensurate with his rank and experience. He retired in 2014, receiving a prestigious award for his performance and conduct.
This past March, Lt. Cmdr. Wesley Modder was issued a “detachment for cause” letter because of the way he conducted himself as a Navy chaplain at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command. He shamed female students for premarial sex and out-of-wedlock pregnancy and told several students that homosexuality was wrong and that he could “save” gay people. This violated his responsibility to serve the needs of all service members, not force his religious beliefs upon them. Chaplains must be willing “to function in a pluralistic environment” and “to support directly and indirectly the free exercise of religion” of all individuals they might minister to. Modder did not.
“People who work for city and county governments who express support for marriage may lose their jobs.”
This is the issue that has come up most immediately since Friday’s ruling. In Texas, for example, Attorney General Ken Paxton is encouraging county clerks not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples if they believe doing so would violate their religious beliefs. As blogger Hemant Mehta frames it, “In short, if you have religious objections to doing the job you were hired to do, Paxton is letting you off the hook. If you get sued, well, they’ll do their best to protect you, but you’re on your own since you’ll probably lose.”
North Carolina lawmakers similarly passed a law this month guaranteeing that state magistrates do not have to issue marriage licenses, though it does not let them pick and choose which couples they’ll marry and which they won’t.
Perhaps more alarmingly, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) also said Friday that the state would not take action against any state officials who refuse to act because of their religious beliefs, including those responsible for granting benefits. Thus, a married same-sex couple could hypothetically be denied, or at least delayed, a benefit they are entitled to under law because of a single official’s religious beliefs.
The coming weeks will likely demonstrate to what extent government officials can refuse to recognize same-sex couples’ marriages in the course of their duties.
What’s evident from this long list of “religious liberty” fears is that conservatives are not actually afraid of same-sex marriage itself. After all, nobody is being forced to marry someone of the same sex, nor are any religious leaders being forced to officiate such marriages nor denominations being forced to welcome such marriages. It is fear of the inability to engage in anti-gay discrimination and disparagement that are at the root of conservatives’ fears.
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "a nut case redneck shot nine African American Christian while they studied the Bible".
He has repeatedly insisted on mentioning the religious activities these people were engaging in when they were shot because he desperately wants to pretend the shooting wasn't solely about racism. He pays lip service to acknowledging this is about racism but then says "OR the shooter used racism as an excuse for a desperate cry for help" and keeps trying to inject religion into it though religion had nothing to do with it.
The religious activities of these people when they were shot has no more relevance to the shooting than shopping would have had relevance to the shooting if the victims had been shopping when they were shot.
Attempting to deny or minimize the role of racism in this shooting is in itself racism
Denying that race is a serious problem in the U.S. is in itself racism.
And no, admitting that there is some racism in the U.S. while pretending its trivial or a rare isolated event doesn't absolve you of denying that racism is a serious problem - you're still a racist.
Wyatt said "you should a mark twain prize!!".
OH-O, by Wyatt/bad anonymous's own repeated insistance this typing error means he's stupid and all his arguments are wrong.
Justice Roberts cited the traditions of four cultures in his dissent on gay marriage. Here’s what he didn’t mention.
In his written dissent to the Supreme Court's decision to effectively legalize gay marriage in all 50 states in the United States, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made a conspicuous gesture to the rest of the world. He referred to the "social institution" that the majority of the court was "transforming," and anchored its legitimacy in the currents of history.
"...the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?"
It's not quite clear to WorldViews why Roberts decided to implicate these four particular cultures in his opposition to the legalizing of gay marriage. But we can suggest reasons why they are hardly exemplars of "traditional" unions between men and women.
The Kalahari Bushmen
These hunter-gatherers in sub-Saharan Africa have long been the world's stock image of "primitive man," and presumably that's why Roberts referenced them -- as the stereotype of an atavistic people, whether it's fair or not. (It's not, but let's move on.) The Kalahari Bushmen don't have very strong wedding practices, and don't pay much attention to ceremonies around mating.
Early European accounts of tribes and kingdoms encountered in southern Africa included details of warrior women styling themselves as kings (not "queens"), polygamous households where lesbianism was common, and even ancient Bushmen rock paintings depicting explicit homosexual sex.
Han Chinese
Again, it's unclear what exactly Roberts is invoking by mentioning the largest ethnic group in China. Gay marriage is not legal in China, but activists are working to change that. A whole set of other "traditional" wedding practices -- including the grisly custom of "corpse brides" -- are banned.
During the Han dynasty, the ancient lineage of kings that gives the Han their name, homosexuality was rife. Almost all the emperors -- you know, the lawgivers of the land -- of the Western Han dynasty apparently had same-sex lovers.
The Carthaginians
For centuries, the Carthaginians were Rome's greatest rival, and sparred for preeminence in the ancient Mediterranean. The great Hannibal, general of Carthage's legions, famously crossed the Alps with war elephants in 218 B.C. and almost snuffed out the world-conquering empire before it bloomed. Sadly for him, things went the other way.
Now, some right-wing Italian scholars of Roman history see in Carthage the seeds of Rome's eventual fall. Why? Well, according to Roberto De Mattei, formerly the deputy head of Italy's National Research Council, Carthage "was a paradise for homosexuals." After it was conquered by Rome, said De Mattei in 2011, "the abhorrent presence of a few [Carthaginian] gays infected a good part of the [Roman] people."
De Mattei's remarks led to a heated backlash, but one imagines Roberts was not that aware of the debate.
The Aztecs
Here's an excerpt from a discussion of Aztec customary law on the Web site of the University of Texas at Austin. It hardly presents a picture-perfect snapshot of conservative family values:
"Marriage was conditional in that the parties could decide to separate or stay together after they had their first son. Marriages could also be unconditional and last for an indefinite period of time. Polygamy and concubines were permitted, though this was more common in noble households and marriage rites were only observed with the first, or principal, wife. Aztec families could live in single family homes, though many opted to live in joint family households for economic reasons."
Then you have to factor in the whole human sacrifice thing.
Chief Justice Robert's dissent on striking down gay marriage bans is heartless
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. I say that gratuitous interference in other people’s lives is bigotry. The fact that it is often religiously motivated does not make it less so. The United States is not a theocracy, and religious disapproval of harmless practices is not a proper basis for prohibiting such practices, especially if the practices are highly valued by their practitioners. Gay couples and the children (mostly straight) that they adopt (or that one of them may have given birth to and the other adopts) derive substantial benefits, both economic and psychological, from marriage. Efforts to deny them those benefits by forbidding same-sex marriage confer no offsetting social benefits—in fact no offsetting benefits at all beyond gratifying feelings of hostility toward gays and lesbians, feelings that feed such assertions as that heterosexual marriage is “degraded” by allowing same-sex couples to “annex” the word marriage to their cohabitation.
On the first page of the chief justice's opinion, we read that “marriage ‘has existed for millennia and across civilizations,’ ” and “for all those millennia, across all those civilizations, ‘marriage’ referred to only one relationship: the union of a man and a woman.” That’s nonsense; polygamy—the union of one man with more than one woman (sometimes with hundreds of women)—has long been common in many civilizations (let’s not forget Utah) and remains so in much of the vast Muslim world. But later in his opinion the chief justice remembers polygamy and suggests that if gay marriage is allowed, so must be polygamy. He ignores the fact that polygamy imposes real costs, by reducing the number of marriageable women. Suppose a society contains 100 men and 100 women, but the five wealthiest men have a total of 50 wives. That leaves 95 men to compete for only 50 marriageable women. In polygamous communities young men are often forced out to reduce the competition for women.
The chief justice criticizes the majority for “order[ing] the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?” We’re pretty sure we’re not any of the above. And most of us are not convinced that what’s good enough for the Bushmen, the Carthaginians, and the Aztecs should be good enough for us. Ah, the millennia! Ah, the wisdom of ages! How arrogant it would be to think we knew more than the Aztecs—we who don’t even know how to cut a person’s heart out of his chest while’s he still alive, a maneuver they were experts at. "Just who do we think we are?"! Better than the Aztecs, that's who!
The only effort the chief justice makes to distinguish the Loving case from the same-sex marriage case is that it did not alter “the core structure of marriage as the union between a man and a woman.” But the states that forbade miscegenation considered the prohibition an important part of the core structure of marriage. For they thought part of the core was that marriage be uniracial—that whites must just marry whites and blacks just marry blacks—just as Orthodox Jews believe that the core structure of (their) marriage culture is both spouses subscribe to Orthodox Judaism.
The chief justice worries that the majority opinion has mounted “assaults on the character of fairminded people” who oppose same-sex marriage, by remarking that they impose “ ‘[d]ignitary wounds’ upon their gay and lesbian neighbors.” But of course they do, even if innocently, because a married couple doesn’t appreciate being told that their marriage, though legal, is sinful. That isn’t to say that people are forbidden to oppose same-sex marriage; it is merely to remark on one of the costs of that opposition and one of the reasons to doubt that it should be permitted to express itself in a law forbidding such marriage.
Related to the preceding point, the chief justice’s dissent is heartless. There is of course a long history of persecution of gay people, a history punctuated by such names as Oscar Wilde, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Alan Turing. Until quite recently, many American gays and lesbians took great pains to conceal their homosexuality in order to avoid discrimination. They value marriage just as straight people do. They want their adopted children to have the psychological and financial advantages of legitimacy. They are hurt by the discrimination that the dissenting justices condone. Prohibiting gay marriage is discrimination
Alito says that states that want to prohibit same-sex marriage “worry that by officially abandoning the older understanding, they may contribute to marriage’s further decay.” This doesn’t make sense. Why would straight people marry less and procreate less just because gay people also marry and raise adopted children, who, but for adoption, would languish in foster homes?
He adds: “Today’s decision usurps the constitutional right of the people to decide whether to keep or alter the traditional understanding of marriage.” But why should the people who control a state have the right to deny the right of some of their fellow citizens to marry, without a reason? Alito has no answer.
In yet another win in a dazzling string of victories for liberals the U.S. supreme court has blocked a Texas law that would have forced most of its abortion clinics to close.
Conservative heads are spinning in disbelief as the court has recently dealt them one major defeat after another!
'LIBERAL SPRING': 'Rout in the culture wars,’ starting with Caitlan Jenner – Can GOP move beyond ‘losing battles and ... lost causes’?
"The religious activities of these people when they were shot has no more relevance to the shooting than shopping would have had relevance to the shooting"
well, lazy Priya, you couldn't be wronger
it was because of their religious beliefs that these victims' families had the faith and courage to extend forgiveness and offer salvation support to the perpetrator who caused such pain
this act has so inspired Southerners that it has transformed hearts on every side
more progress has been made in a week than the decades of court orders, Federal marshals, quotas, liberal race-baiting, et al
I know it pains you to see it, but the power of the gospel that you so detest has been evident
what the conversations today have provided is a clear long look at the face of hypocrisy
and it is ugly!
lazy Priya has ranted on for years about how gay "marriage" must be right because it harms no one
when pointed out, without possibility of contradiction, that a large portion of homosexual partnerships have a specific victim, an innocent child who has been denied knowledge of and/or access to one of their actual parents,
hypocritical Priya could not possibly care less
instead, Priya cuts and pastes endless obscure legal discussions and mockery of anyone who has defended small children all to obscure anyone thinking of this
but Priya can no longer pretend not to know
homosexual marriage is not a victimless crime
and the arc of history is long but bends toward justice
For the children and the flowers are my sisters and my brothers,
their laughter and their loveliness would clear a cloudy day.
And the song that I am singing is a prayer to non-believers,
come and stand beside us we can find a better way
"an innocent child who has been denied knowledge of and/or access to one of their actual parents"
Go ask Bristol Palin about that. She knows all about raising a child herself without marrying anyone or living in the same house with her baby's daddy, in fact she's planning to do that exact thing with her second child and second baby daddy.
fascinating
what's that got to do with lazy Priya's disregard for the welfare of children?
we have been told over and over by hypocrites like lazy Priya that homosexual marriage is a victimless crime
and, yet, when children are involved, more often than not an innocent party suffers greatly
the fact that something similar happened with some child of a celebrity in Alaska is irrelevant
the harm done by Bristol Palin was by an individual
the harm done to children by homosexual marriage is institutional, and the SCOTUS has regrettably endorsed that institution
how can you make yourself an apologist for such evil
unfortunately, we have become a society that favors hedonism and self-fulfillment over the welfare of our children
pathetic
we are headed for a horrible decline if we don't change course
For the children and the flowers are my sisters and my brothers,
their laughter and their loveliness would clear a cloudy day.
And the song that I am singing is a prayer to non-believers,
come and stand beside us we can find a better way.
in more than thirty states, voters have decided the rights of children are more important than the hedonistic selfishness of sexual deviants and made a key decision on a social issue that, like most social issues, the Constitution leaves to the states:
marriage is an arrangement where the parties of two genders agree to limit sexual activity for the purposes of social order and the benefit of children
last Friday, five of the justices of the SCOTUS decided to disenfranchise these voters without even attempting to make an argument from the Constitution
who are the voters whose votes were disenfranchised?
blacks and Latinos overwhelmingly favor pro-child marriage definitions
elitists, educated at Ivy League institutions, tend to favor gay "marriage"
and who were the notorious anti-child five who voted to redefine marriage?
all five were elitists, educated at Ivy League institutions
the good news is that when the issue is debated, voters in America realize that the welfare of children is more important than providing undeserved benefits to deviant hedonists
this happened in 2008 in California when polls showed voters originally favored gay marriage but by the time they got to the ballot box, they rejected it
this can be turned
when there is no Constitutional authority for an opinion and the decision is narrowly voted, decisions can be reversed
currently working its way through the legal system are lawsuits by adults whose childhood was ruined by being raised in gay households, cut-off from knowledge of and access to one of their parents through a human trafficking scheme
the pro-child movement has begun
Confederate Flag Parade - Wait for it...
http://www.leoaffairs.com/video/nypd-gets-down-during-nyc-pride/
These 35 Companies Just Told America Exactly What They Think About the SCOTUS Gay Marriage Ruling
VISA
Airbnb
American Airlines
Target
Proctor & Gamble
Youtube
Delta
JetBlue
Orbitz
smart car
Whole Foods
Expedia
Old Navy
Gap
AT&T
UNIQLO
Starbucks
Macy's
Kellogg's
JELL-O
Hootsuite
Ben & Jerry's
Maytag
Cheerios
Coca-Cola
Absolut Vodka
Uber
Sears
Pepsi
Tide
Citi and Citi Bike
Netflix
Guess
Levi's
Mastercard
so, gays claim to want to be part of institution where they agree to limit their sexual activity?
and three old lady judges on the SC and the big corporations are on board?
is Bob Dylan a prophet?
"Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony"
gay agenda morality:
if it feels good, it's a right
real morality:
if children are harmed, it's wrong
Six men arrested after allegedly disrupting Joel Osteen’s sermon at Lakewood Church
"is Bob Dylan a prophet?"
No, Bob Dylan is not a prophet. He's a poet/artist/writer/singer/songwriter.
Once again, the times they are a changing.
That's not a prophecy, it's an observation.
Get with it or be left behind.
"No, Bob Dylan is not a prophet. He's a poet/artist/writer/singer/songwriter"
obviously, it was a joke, based on how eerily the quote seemed to apply
"Once again, the times they are a changing.
That's not a prophecy, it's an observation."
well, that's a statement that is and always will be true
the assumption that it will keep moving in the same direction, however, is false more often than not
"Get with it or be left behind."
a great morale booster for the world's conformists
who never realize they could actually move out front themselves
they are like dogs in the back of the pack
that spend their lives looking at someone else's behind
try acting on what's right
in this case, the welfare of children
and you might be a leader
scary for some, I know
you may also be interested in knowing that gays had no inclination to marry until a gay intellectual, Andrew Sullivan, in 1989, wrote an article theorizing it would be a way to move the agenda forward; gay activists at the time attacked him and the strategy became known as "legitimization"
now, that a goal I perceived as having been achieved, most gays will find little reason to "marry"
it's hardly the wave of the future
research shows most gay relationships are not monogamous
"These 35 Companies Just Told America Exactly What They Think About the SCOTUS Gay Marriage Ruling"
and what they think is that this disregard of the welfare of children will make bank for them!!
"you may also be interested in knowing that gays had no inclination to marry until a gay intellectual, Andrew Sullivan, in 1989, wrote an article theorizing it would be a way to move the agenda forward"
Your ignorance of history is astounding.
Apparently you missed the documentary Limited Partnership. The Washington Post covered their forty year old same sex marriage here. Anthony Sullivan and RIchard Adams were one of the bravest same sex couples ever. They wed in Boulder Colorado in 1975, fully forty years ago. Countless other same sex couples have sought legal protection of marriage for decades too.
Perhaps you have heard of Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer, the lesbian couple who had been living as if married since 1965.
Windor's lawsuit ended DOMA:
"Spyer died in 2009, leaving her entire estate to Windsor. Windsor sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses. She was barred from doing so by Section 3 of DOMA (codified at 1 U.S.C. § 7), which provided that the term "spouse" only applied to marriages between a man and woman. The Internal Revenue Service found that the exemption did not apply to same-sex marriages, denied Windsor's claim, and compelled her to pay $363,053 in estate taxes.
On November 9, 2010, Windsor filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking a refund because DOMA singled out legally married same-sex couples for "differential treatment compared to other similarly situated couples without justification."[5] On February 23, 2011, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would not defend the constitutionality of Section 3 in Windsor. On April 18, 2011, Paul Clement, representing the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), intervened to defend the law. On June 6, 2012, Judge Barbara S. Jones ruled that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional under the due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and ordered the federal government to issue the tax refund, including interest. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the decision on October 18, 2012.
BLAG petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision, and the Court issued a writ of certiorari in December 2012. On March 27, 2013, the court heard oral arguments. On June 26, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5–4 decision declaring Section 3 of DOMA to be unconstitutional "as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment."
There are thousands such longterm, pre Andrew Sullivan same sex couples who have been seeking marriage rights.
"disregard of the welfare of children"
Here's another history lesson for you, one of the GOP variety.
Who remembers Newt Gingrich's Contract ON America?
Are Orphanages Better for Kids than Welfare?
November 27, 1994
"Resurgent Republicans in Congress under Newt Gingrich are breathing new life into an idea whose time most people thought had already come and gone.
They want to bring back orphanages and other forms of state-supervised residences to care for the illegitimate children of young women who would be cut from welfare rolls under their proposals.
In addition to evoking images of little Oliver Twist begging for another bowl of porridge, the initiative, a part of the Republicans' Personal Responsibility Act, has sent a shiver of apprehension through the community of child-care workers.
This is because the idea collides with the principal tenet that has guided their profession for nearly a century: that children are raised better in families, even imperfect or incomplete families, than in institutions...."
And here are some facts:
The number of US children living in single-parent homes has nearly doubled in 50 years: Census data
The number of children living in single-parent homes has nearly doubled since 1960, according to data from the 2010 Census.
The Washington Times analyzed the most recent census data, showing that the percentage of two-parent families has dropped significantly over the past decade in all 50 states. Even as the total number of American households with children increased by 160,000, the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million.
Today, one-third of American children – a total of 15 million – are being raised without a father. Nearly five million more children live without a mother...
Kids with married gay dads have two father figures and kids with married gay moms have two mothers.
Disallowing same sex couples with children to wed is what deprives these children of living in a two parent family.
Boy, for a guy who said the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans was "no big deal" Wyatt/bad anonymous sure is wailing about it a lot!
He's going through the seven stages of grief
He's in stage one: Shock and Denial
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Wyatt/bad anonymous disingenously posts "children's lives matter" but gay couples marrying doesn't take away any children from heterosexual couples that would otherwise be raising them. In fact gay couples are famously known for adopting problem children that all heterosexual potential adoptive parents have passed over. Wyatt would prevent this and force those children to remain in an institution. He just started pretending to care about children now because he's stricken with grief over the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans.
He can't deny that at least some (I'm sure the vast majority) of the children of same sex parents want to be with those parents but he makes no allowance for that despite his disingenous "children's lives matter" propaganda. He wants to rip children from their parents kicking and screaming, put them in an istitution (because their biological parents are dead or don't want them) and traumatize them for life. He doesn't care about children, he doesn't care how much he hurts them as long as it suits his goal of harming gay couples. He is motivated solely by animus, to gay couples and to his own same sex attractions. Now in particular he is all the more desperate for revenge on gays and lesbians because they've dared to achieve the same right heterosexuals have to marriage.
"Disallowing same sex couples with children to wed is what deprives these children of living in a two parent family"
actually, allowing for same gender relationships to be certified by the state as "marriage" institutionalizes a system that guarantees children will have either one or no parents
it's better to have someone take care of kids than a government agency, obviously, but single people can adopt if they have the means to support a kid so your comment is baseless
when gays pay someone else to make a kid with them and then get a surrogate to bear the child, they want to pretend it's their own kid and make the other parent go away
this is cruel and heartless with regard to the child and amounts to treating them like a pet
as far as adoption, we don't have to play the gays are better than nothing game
we have plenty of couples that want to adopt in America but who go to other countries to adopt because they want a child of their own race
better to curtail this practice and get kids adopted in a better situation
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "we have plenty of couples that want to adopt in America but who go to other countries to adopt because they want a child of their own race better to curtail this practice and get kids adopted in a better situation".
There are far more children waiting to be adopted in the U.S. than there are people willing to adopt them. Gay parents are well known for adopting problem children that all heterosexual potential parents pass over. What Wyatt/bad anonymous is proposing is to deprive children of two loving parents and force them to grou up in an institution until they age out of the system.
His "children's lives matter" rhetoric is just a facade to cover up his animus towards gays and his own same sex attractions which makes him desperate for revenge on gay couples regardless of how many children that hurts. He deeply resents that these gay couples have accepted their sexual orientation without shame and are living open lives while he struggles to suppress who he is.
The dissents in the marriage equality case don't address the key arguments of the majority
Judge Posner writes of the gay marriage case: “It is very difficult to distinguish the case from Loving v. Virginia, which in 1967 invalidated state laws forbidding miscegenation.” He gets to the heart of the similarity between the two when he notes that in neither case was there any harm done to anyone else from the forbidden marriages.
Chief justice Robert's dissent fails to offer any meaningful response to the simple argument that governmental restrictions on freedom must be justified by a reason—some public harm averted. Roberts doesn’t really provide any list of harms averted. And as Posner points out, what is left when there is no real harm is the possibility of hostility to the rights of others, an impermissible basis for a governmental rule.
There is, of course, the appeal to “tradition.” But—much like the defenses of the Confederate battle flag we’ve heard this past week, “tradition” and “heritage” come to nothing unless you can show that there is a valuable tradition or heritage worth defending. Gay exclusion alone doesn’t count.
In an extraordinary passage, Alito writes in his dissent that the court’s decision “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.” He further asserts that “[r]ecalling the harsh treatment of gays and lesbians in the past, some may think that turnabout is fair play. But if that sentiment prevails the Nation will experience bitter and lasting wounds.” Here, I believe, he really jumps the rails: Does he really mean to equate whatever criticism opponents of gay rights may face in the future with the horrendous, violent persecution of gays and lesbians that is a blight on civilization? If so, he misses the first lesson from Sesame Street: “Which of these things is not like the others?”
As Justice John Paul Stevens once wrote, quoting Justice Felix Frankfurter, “Wise adjudication has its own time for ripening.” The thousands of marriages by couples of men and couples of women over the past two years had the moral force (to use a phrase of the late Charles L. Black) of “the normative power of the actual.” The way was cleared for a complete victory, and that is what Obergefell delivered.
For Wyatt/bad anonymous children are just acceptable collateral damage in his war on gays and lesbians he resents for being happy with their sexual orienation.
Come out of the closet Wyatt - all the major physical and mental health organizations agree gays who positively accept their sexual orientation are happier and better adjusted than those who do not.
"Boy, for a guy who said the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans was "no big deal"
I would surmise the fellow meant it didn't affect him directly. As I recall, you were acting as if you hoped it was some kind of personal tragedy for him.
You really are a nasty piece of work, Priya. No wonder your "boyfriend" left you.
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"
Evil really has no stages. The animus toward children. The blatant hypocrisy. The cackling like a witch. It all happens simultaneously.
"gay couples marrying doesn't take away any children from heterosexual couples that would otherwise be raising them"
Actually, what they do is use technology to create a child with another and then pay that person to leave the child's life. It's debased, cynical, vicious and selfish, treating a human being like a toy or a pet for the entertainment of some gay fantasy of normalcy. These kids want and deserve to know who their parents are. Now that gay "marriage" is here, this activity will have to be regulated and the simplest thing to do is ban gays from purposely denying a child one of its parents. Anything else is reprehensible. Doctors who participate in these human trafficking schemes should be fined and jailed.
"In fact gay couples are famously known"
Yes, for putting their own fantasies ahead of the welfare of children.
"He can't deny that at least some (I'm sure the vast majority) of the children of same sex parents want to be with those parents"
Of course, sometimes Stockholm Syndrome kicks in, but these kids all know the heartache of being denied a parent. They are trapped and do their best. But, their lives are altered by this and not for the better. They grow up and resent it.
I said "Boy, for a guy who said the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans was "no big deal" Wyatt/bad anonymous is sure wailing about it a lot".
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "I would surmise the fellow meant it didn't affect him directly. As I recall, you were acting as if you hoped it was some kind of personal tragedy for him.".
LOL, I like how you are trying to pretend it wasn't you that said "no big deal" - hahahahahahahahahaha!
That you can't even face that it was you that cried about this shows it really is a personal tragedy for you. You can't stand that you've wasted your life hating your same sex attractions instead of accepting them and being happy. So you deeply resent the innocent gay people who symbolize the desires within yourself that you can't accept and you attack them in the vain hope that if you can destroy them you can destroy your same sex attractions.
Give it up Wyatt, gays who positively accept their sexual orientation are happier and better adjusted than those who do not. Come out of the closet already and don't waste the rest of your life bitterly trying to suppress who you are.
Wyatt/bad anonymous "You really are a nasty piece of work, Priya. No wonder your "boyfriend" left you.".
Hahahahahahahahaha! You're so stung by what's happened you have to pretend my marriage haa failed. Poor, poor Wyatt, nothing bad has happened to me to make him feel better.
I said "gay couples marrying doesn't take away any children from heterosexual couples that would otherwise be raising them"
Wyatt/bad anonymous said Actually, what they do is use technology to create a child with another and then pay that person to leave the child's life. It's debased, cynical, vicious and selfish...".
Oh give it up you drama queen, no one buys that B.S. including you.
Wyatt/bad anonymous said "these kids all know the heartache of being denied a parent. They are trapped and do their best. But, their lives are altered by this and not for the better. They grow up and resent it".
In your fantasies maybe. In real live the children of gay couples do just as well, and in many cases better, than the children of heterosexual parents. Its because every child of a gay couple is wanted and planned whereas so many children of heterosexuals were unplanned and unwanted, often the result of the lust of two unwed teenagers in the back of dad's car.
Yes, the American marriage equality fight is over—the rest is just bluster
by Jeremy Hooper
I can't tell you how many times I've opened a window prepared to start a new blog post about this or that or the other ant-LGBT activist who said something ridiculous about Friday's historic SCOTUS ruling. Sometimes it's from a politician who vows to overturn what the court has done. Sometimes it's a professional (read: for pay) activist who insists that the fight will go on. Sometimes it's a media personality who ups the "shock jock" factor in order to keep the base nourished on the fattiest of red meats.
But every time, I've ultimately closed the window and returned to my weekend. Yes, one reason is because I'm both busy with and tired from family life these days, and therefore must reserve my strength for other things. But mostly, I really am having trouble even dignifying the silly defiance from a team that has lost this fight.
Their defiance is meaningless. Their vow to keep talking about this is opportunistic for the purposes of fundraising and crude support. There is literally nothing they can say or do that is ever going to stop marriage equality. While some are fighting it locally right now, that is short-lived. By the end of the summer, every single American city will be in basic compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling, or they will suffer the blowback
I have no delusions that the Mike Huckabees or the Tony Perkins will stop talking about our marriages or vowing to find that secret "off" switch that is embedded somewhere within the Supreme Court's decision, but their continued talking will be a political albatross that will weigh down 2016 presidential candidates who continue to embrace it
For the most part, however? Marriage inequality activists no longer have the floor. Once this white hot current of news leaves the cycle, I suspect even outlets like Fox News will have a hard time finding reason to give a mic to those who simply don't like the outcome
It's over. They lost it. The fight over civil marriage rights for same-sex couples is over forever. We won. They lost. It's over.
Wyatt/bad anonymous sure is wasting a lot of his workday posting hate on this forum.
Boy, for someone who says the supreme court striking down gay marriage bans doesn't affect him Wyatt/bad anonymous is sure wound up, desperate, and bitter about it.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
"It's over"
it could be
but it's not
if gays will agree to stop buying kids like pet toys and paying off one of their parents to leave
and if they agree to stop harassing believers who choose not to participate in gay marriage rituals
if could be over
unfortunately, we know homosexual advocates have no intention of that
their actions will reveal their characters and the world will notice
""we have plenty of couples that want to adopt in America but who go to other countries to adopt because they want a child of their own race better to curtail this practice and get kids adopted in a better situation"."
Even SCOTUS' John Roberts and his wife went to Ireland to get a couple of cute blue eyed blonds. Nice if you can afford it.
Surrogacy is not cheap either, up to $100K/child and climbing.
"it's better to have someone take care of kids than a government agency, obviously, but single people can adopt if they have the means to support a kid so your comment is baseless"
Every study the religious right has used to try and prove kids raised "without a mother and a father" that has shown some sort of deficit in the children compared two-parent families with single-parent family families. These right wingers try to intimate that "without a mother and a father" means "in a same-sex 2 parent family." It doesn't.
As Priya Lynn has documented repeatedly here on Vigilance, studies of actual "same-sex 2 parent families" have children who do at least as well, if not better, than children raised in "opposite-sex 2 parent families" on a variety of measures.
"when gays pay someone else to make a kid with them and then get a surrogate to bear the child, they want to pretend it's their own kid and make the other parent go away"
And what do infertile straight folks who pay surrogates to produce children for them do? Do they "pretend" the child produced by the surrogate is their own kid and make the other parent go away or do they rip the surrogate from her husband and children so they can have the "mother" live with them and this child?
Statistics from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine show that births via gestational surrogacy have been steadily increasing since 2004. In 2011, there were 1,593 babies born via gestational surrogacy – that’s up from 1,448 in 2010 and 738 in 2004, according to the latest figures from the Birmingham, Ala.-based non-profit.
It doesn't appear to be a very common route to go.
Why? It's very expensive and not covered by most insurance.
In 2013, 15 states had laws requiring insurance coverage for infertility treatment, according to the National Infertility Association. But many insurance companies consider surrogacy "a risk they are unwilling to undertake," according to New Life Agency, a California-based insurance agency that specializes in assisted reproductive-related needs.
This one goes out to poor lonely Wyatt/bad anonymous:
Wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin'
Plannin' and dreamin' each night of his charms
That won't get you into his arms
So if you're lookin' to find love you can share
All you gotta do is
Hold him and kiss him and love him
And show him that you care
Show him that you care just for him
Do the things he likes to do
Wear your hair just for him, 'cause
You won't get him
Thinkin' and a-prayin'
Wishin' and hopin'
Just wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin'
Plannin' and dreamin' his kiss is the start
That won't get you into his heart
So if you're thinkin' how great true love is
All you gotta do is
Hold him and kiss him and squeeze him and love him
Yeah, just do it and after you do, you will be his
(You gotta)
Show him that you care just for him
Do the things he likes to do
Wear your hair just for him, 'cause
You won't get him
Thinkin' and a-prayin'
Wishin' and hopin'
Just wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin'
Plannin' and dreamin' his kiss is the start
That won't get you into his heart
So if you're thinkin' how great true love is
All you gotta do is
Hold him and kiss him and squeeze him and love him
Yeah, just do it and after you do, you will be his
You will be his, you will be his
Good anonymous said "And what do infertile straight folks who pay surrogates to produce children for them do? Do they "pretend" the child produced by the surrogate is their own kid and make the other parent go away or do they rip the surrogate from her husband and children so they can have the "mother" live with them and this child?".
Thanks for bringing that up good anonymous - excellent point.
You never heard about anti-gay bigots condemning heterosexual couples for using surrogates to have a child, it only became terrible and unacceptable once anti-gay bigots figured they could use the issue to demonize gay couples with.
So of course Wyatt/bad anonymous is going all drama queen over it.
"Thanks for bringing that up good anonymous - excellent point"
yes, that's right in line with gay agenda "thinking"
I think if one of them were caught shoplifting, the first thing they'd say in court is "Dick Cheney did it too!"
the point is that infertility is a tragedy
but every gay "couple" is, by definition, infertile
it's cruel to the children
I know gays think their deviant lusts are the center of everything
but kids are people too
kids that don't know who the parents are at a loss
sometimes it happens and the best has to be done
gays design this tragedy purposely
"purposely designing tragedy, every day"
it's the gay agenda motto!!
still wondering about Anthony Kennedy's ruling on gay "marriage"
isn't interesting that he made no mention of any part of the Constitution to back his point up?
he could have made a case about "equal protection under the law"
but he just rambled on about dignity
maybe he was paid off
LOL, Wyatt/bad anonymous still desperately pushing his idea from the right wing fever swamps of banning gay couples from raising children.
He'd take away kicking and screaming the children of loving gay parents in order to put them in an istitution or to force heterosexual parents who don't want them to remarry after their divorce and take them.
Huge volumes of research show the children of same sex parents do just as well, if not better, than the children of heterosexual parents.
Wyatt's revenge fantasy of harming gay parents and their children by splitting them up is a pipe dream. Even the vast majority of Republicans wouldn't be caught dead advocating tearing children away from their same sex parents. a
Wyatt is going through the seven stages of grief, he's in stage one: Shock and Denial. He so desperately wants revenge on gay people for happily accepting their orientation he fantasizes about hurting their children as well. The pro-family side will never let that happen.
"isn't interesting that he made no mention of any part of the Constitution to back his point up?"
Not only are you woefully ignorant about history, you are woefully uninformed, most likely because you didn't both to read Justice's Kennedy's majority opinion.
The Fourteenth Amendment is part of the US Constitution and here's one of the many points Justice Kennedy made about it:
"[T]he right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth 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. No longer may this liberty be denied to them."
Martyrs to Marriage Equality
The thing that really amazes me about much of the conservative reaction to Obergefell v. Hodges, and indeed much of the religion-based complaints over LGBT rights generally, is the sense of personal grievence. I mean, on the one hand you’ve had people who’ve been persecuted, bullied, denied equal rights for ages, finally getting the right to do something the rest of us take for granted, and on the other hand you have people who are offended by them. This helps explain the hilarious fixation among conservatives about identifying the fifteen people in America who might be so homophobic that their “religious views” come into direct conflict with anti-discrimination laws—you know, the famous Bakers and Florists of Conscience. Agitating the air to make this extremely marginal “grievance” into something tangible, and then inflating it wildly with all sorts of specious slippery-slope arguments that next thing we know the Catholic Church will be forced to make gay sex a sacrament, has pretty much been the sum and substance of the “religious liberty” backlash.
And so today we find all too many Christian conservatives unable to feel empathy towards people expressing joy at their now-established ability to get married, and instead making themselves out as martyrs, to the everlasting embarrassment, I am quite sure, of the actual Christian Martyrs of the Ages who suffered harm to more than their sensitivities or prejudices.
I was driven to write this today not by Bobby Jindal or Mike Huckabee or the other pols trying to put themselves at the head of a pathetic parade of outrage, but by a post at the Federalist by “international pro-family” advocate John-Henry Westen warning of the totalitarian repression about to hit Christians.
Westen does have an alternative argument against legalized same-sex marriage that’s not about the terrible martyrdom that awaits any dissenter against the Rainbow Fascist State. In a reductio ad absurdum of the hate the sin, love the sinner chestnut, he argues love for gay people compels not letting them get married:
"[B]ecause same-sex relationships hurt everyone involved, marriage supporters have a duty to oppose inverted relationships out of love and compassion.
Despite being perhaps 4 percent of the U.S. population, the LGBT community sees devastating levels of HIV/AIDS, depression, anal cancer, suicide, shorter lifespans, and other ailments. Again, it is up to Christians, and especially our pastors, to energize society with the beautiful love of our faith. We never should have given up talking about sex [sic!], and we must start doing so anew.
As former Canadian LGBT leader Gens Hellquist said in 2006, “I am tired of watching my community die” of diseases endemic to the LGBT community. A Catholic with a master’s degree in psychology who visited a ward for HIV/AIDS patients in India, he saw it was clear that only monogamous, marital relationships are healthy for human beings."
So there you have it: we need to prevent people from getting married so as to force them into “monogamous, marital relationships.”
That’s the second biggest howler in Westen’s piece (or maybe the third, after the claim that conservative Christians don’t talk enough about sex!). The biggest is in the headline: “Same-Sex Marriage Won’t Bring Us Peace.” Nor will it bring us 4% GDP growth or a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The idea is to bring us justice. But on second thought, there is a connection, or so thought Pope Paul VI, who famously said: “If you want peace, work for justice.”
How Marriage Equality Could Make The Country Healthier
Just days after the Supreme Court’s historic decision in favor of marriage equality, wedding planners in states that used to ban same-sex marriage are already noticing an uptick in business. But there’s a less intuitive societal benefit in store, too: Now that gay couples can wed in every state, the country as a whole may get a little healthier.
As Kaiser Health News reports, health experts are anticipating that the Supreme Court’s ruling will lead to increased insurance coverage among LGBT Americans — particularly in states that previously didn’t recognize same-sex marriages.
Most Americans get their insurance benefits through work, a reality of the health care industry that has remained largely unchanged under Obamacare. The vast majority of employers also extend health insurance to their workers’ spouses. Although the Obama administration has stressed that insurers should honor same-sex couples’ marriages, that previously only applied in the states where those unions were recognized. In other states, the decision was left up to insurers. And according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, fewer than half of employers in 2014 allowed same-sex partners to claim insurance benefits if they weren’t legally married.
So, when same-sex couples’ marriages gain legal recognition, more of them are able to take advantage of this aspect of the insurance market. Previous studies have found that legalizing gay marriage leads to an uptick in LGBT residents gaining employer-sponsored health plans.
Because LGBT Americans are a historically underinsured demographic group, providing them with additional avenues to get coverage could make a big difference. Advocates for marriage equality have long argued that recognizing LGBT couples’ relationships will help address some of the health disparities — like struggling to afford medication and opting to skip doctor’s appointments — that disproportionately affect gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals.
Aside from insurance benefits, there are other ways that advancing marriage equality is expected to have a positive impact on LGBT Americans’ overall health.
Partly because our society is structured around marriage, and provides married couples with a host of additional benefits that single people do not necessarily enjoy, there’s some evidence that marriage is connected to long-term health outcomes — something that researchers refer to as the “marriage advantage.”
This advantage may be even more pronounced for LGBT couples, since that legal recognition helps address some of the stress accrued by living in a society that discriminates against gay people. A large body of research has documented the fact that facing discrimination, including being denied the right to marry, takes a psychological toll on LGBT individuals. Meanwhile, same-sex couples’ mental health improves when they are permitted to legally wed.
Post a Comment
<< Home