I will add to the about damn time. YAY. When the issue first came up I was just wait isn’t this at the root a legal contract between two people and so why should anyone give a care if it is two men/women/homo/bi/asexual etc? Cause every religious muckety muck says by the power vested in me by the state of (insert current location here). So I just could never figure where the religious trappings figured in other than hey we are part of community X and would like to share the ceremony, and later learned that yeah, historically the Church wanted nada to do with marriage until people wanted it to be somehow recognized by the church and the state said hey, you know this would cut out some of the work we have to do, here church you do this. I was already aware that the whole marriage for love over economic reasons was a totally current thing though humans, and 'murricans in particular seem to have short memories for that kind of thing.
As far as the traditions of marriage this got linked to by Dan Savage today. It rocks. Sorry no need to go back to women as property and being able to legally beat and rape them because ‘tradition’. Fuck tradition.
There was another great decision at the State level yesterday… Hopefully it will set a useful precedent.
Conversion therapy (ungayin’) was essentially banned in NJ via a court decision that it amounted to consumer fraud. Jury rules against conversion therapy
My guess is that you worked very hard to make Scalia’s dissent understandable to average citizens. Thank you for your effort; it’s slightly less deranged gobbledygook now…but only slightly. I know you had to work with what you were given, though.
According to Article III of the US Constitution, judges “shall hold their offices during good behavior”, which in practice means life tenure unless they are impeached and convicted by Congress, resign, or retire. Despite the Clinton impeachment nonsense of 1998-9, even a partisan Congress would be loath to try to remove a sitting Supreme Court judge for anything but blatant criminal behavior (taking bribes, etc.) or physical/mental incapacity, because the precedent thus set could boomerang on their party at any time in the future. Their window of opportunity to keep someone out is the confirmation hearings and the vote of approval (or not) by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate.
Back in 1937, FDR attempted an end run around Article III by promoting what became known as his “court-packing plan” – a bill that would let the President add an extra judge (with a maximum of six) for every judge over 70 1/2 years old – in order to stop the then-conservative court from ruling against New Deal legislation. The (Democratic) head of the House Judiciary Committee sat on the bill until it (and its main advocate in the Senate) died, and public opinion ended up heavily against what was seen as a power grab – fortunately for FDR, enough of the judges retired soon afterwards that he was able to get his programs in order.
Thanks, it’s not easy! Most of his dissent consists of mocking the majority opinion by saying stuff like “Huh?” “Really?” and “What say?”. He states that if we want to know about Freedom of Intimacy, we should “ask the nearest hippie”.
He concludes: “The stuff contained in today’s opinion has to diminish this Court’s reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis. Hubris is sometimes defined as o’erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall.”
If the union is only two people, regardless of gender, there’s already a social and legal structure in place with a well-defined framework model. Most polycules vary so much that each one would essentially be its own model - so more of a contract structure than one resembling an existing model. If I marry just one of my partners, the laws of inheritance, etc. already say what to do if I die without a will, for instance, but it isn’t really set up to handle the situation for more than one. Taxes and insurance are similarly flawed. Changing these for fair multiple partner use would be a lot of work, and even then, probably can’t be universally applied. (Does my metamore inherit a share of my estate if they live in the same household as our mutual partner, but they are not also my partner?)
I’m very much in favor of legalized multiple person marriages, but I also think that it won’t be quite as easy as just removing the gender requirements for monogamous ones.
Well good. While I am not completely shocked it wasn’t unanimous, I am disappointed. I am curious what their logic or lack of logic is for voting no. I wish they could vote on issues using rational thought and the word of the law and not interject political leanings and feelings.
As I noted above, most of the dissents weren’t about politics at all – Roberts’ dissent was just on the basis of feeling that marriage is a legislative issue, not a judicial one, since it’s not in the Constitution. He and Thomas both stated that they shouldn’t be ruling on this case at all. Of course, then they start going into stuff about ‘religious liberty’ and bla bla bla.
I’m not going to even read the dissents, because, guess what, they mean absolutely nothing. They are anti-legal precedent, views of the wrong. The decision is the only thing that matters, the losers opinions are relegated to the footnotes of history.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy the decision came out the way it did, but I find it hard to get too jubilant about coming in dead-last among developed Western nations.
Also, now that that is out of the way, and we can move on to other important issues, I’d like to take this moment to remind everyone that the T in LGBT is not silent.
i still don’t understand why this is a legitimate position. whether or not the particular contract called ‘marriage’ is referenced in the constitution, why should a state be able to make a law regarding this type of contract that violates the 14th amendment? it seems like a very weak technicality that they are trying to hide behind… the feds are compelled by the 14th to get involved when a state law is contrary to the constitution, so that should trump any concern that the federal government does not have standing here.
