LA judge upholds state SSM ban

[Simfan34]

Call me a pessimist, but SCOTUS isn't going to rule in our favor here. This is an extremely partisan, activist  court that will rule yet again based on the GOP platform: that there's no constitutional right to marriage and gay marriage becomes illegal again in California, Iowa, Massachusetts, and all the other states who had their bans struck down.

Republicans would be happy to surrender on this issue and stop talking about it ASAP.

I certainly would. Here's hoping the circuit court upholds the ban and makes the SCOTUS take up the case. I'd be much happier if its becoming a non-issue meant that good candidates wouldn't be disqualified because of their position on this issue and people ceased to blindly vote for a candidate based on their views on this issue.

[Simfan34]

Call me a pessimist, but SCOTUS isn't going to rule in our favor here. This is an extremely partisan, activist  court that will rule yet again based on the GOP platform: that there's no constitutional right to marriage and gay marriage becomes illegal again in California, Iowa, Massachusetts, and all the other states who had their bans struck down.

Republicans would be happy to surrender on this issue and stop talking about it ASAP.

I certainly would. Here's hoping the circuit court upholds the ban and makes the SCOTUS take up the case. I'd be much happier if its becoming a non-issue meant that good candidates wouldn't be disqualified because of their position on this issue and people ceased to blindly vote for a candidate based on their views on this issue.

Isn't someone's position on this issue relevant to evaluating their worldview and their beliefs?  Or, are you simply saying that this issue hurts Republicans and it's better to take it off the table?

Think about it this way, would you prefer not to know that a candidate was racist?  Being homophobic or being a Christian fundamentalist is fairly relevant, is it not?

I don't consider it particularly relevant, personally speaking. I also wouldn't consider it equivalent to the issues you compare it to. I feel as if many people here are making too many assumptions as to underlying characteristics of the sort of person who would oppose same-sex marriage. I am completely ambivalent on the issue, so for me what you are saying is equivalent to holding that someone's position on, say, tort reform, was crucially "relevant to evaluating their worldview and their beliefs".

[Simfan34]

Call me a pessimist, but SCOTUS isn't going to rule in our favor here. This is an extremely partisan, activist  court that will rule yet again based on the GOP platform: that there's no constitutional right to marriage and gay marriage becomes illegal again in California, Iowa, Massachusetts, and all the other states who had their bans struck down.

Republicans would be happy to surrender on this issue and stop talking about it ASAP.

I certainly would. Here's hoping the circuit court upholds the ban and makes the SCOTUS take up the case. I'd be much happier if its becoming a non-issue meant that good candidates wouldn't be disqualified because of their position on this issue and people ceased to blindly vote for a candidate based on their views on this issue.

Isn't someone's position on this issue relevant to evaluating their worldview and their beliefs?  Or, are you simply saying that this issue hurts Republicans and it's better to take it off the table?

Think about it this way, would you prefer not to know that a candidate was racist?  Being homophobic or being a Christian fundamentalist is fairly relevant, is it not?

I don't consider it particularly relevant, personally speaking. I also wouldn't consider it equivalent to the issues you compare it to. I feel as if many people here are making too many assumptions as to underlying characteristics of the sort of person who would oppose same-sex marriage. I am completely ambivalent on the issue, so for me what you are saying is equivalent to holding that someone's position on, say, tort reform, was crucially "relevant to evaluating their worldview and their beliefs".

I understand that, but for me, it's a matter of understanding someone's overall thought process. 

If you're coming up with government policy based on the book of Leviticus or based on your personal animus for a race/gender/orientation, you don't belong in political office.  So, if someone's belief was, "I support tort reform because I hate Jews," wouldn't that be relevant?  If someone said, "we need tort reform because the angel Gabriel told me so," would that give you pause? 

So, the question is whether there are legitimate non-discriminatory or wacko religious arguments against gay marriage?  You must think there are I suppose.  Because it seems like that idea is melting away as evidenced by the fact that the government has failed to win almost every lawsuit on this subject.  Or, is it that hating gay people is benign?

Well, I mean, if you're taking every position a person has as indicative of their worldview, then sure, you have a point. But no one's position (as far as I am aware) on tort reform is based on "wacko religious arguments", as you put it.

I think it'd be safe for me to assume that you hold that opposition to same-sex marriage is derived from "wacko religious arguments" or bigotry (I'd say 'discrimination' is too loose a word to be meaningful here), or something along those lines, and that there do not appear to be any "legitimate arguments" against it. I suppose I should ask what you mean by "legitimate" here- is it just a matter of sincerity or is it a matter of objective validity? I can't answer if we're dealing with the latter, but there are certainly people who do not support same-sex marriage due to genuinely-held reasons not founded from religious bigotry or any such thing. They may not necessarily be valid arguments, but they are certainly believed.

The "procreative unit" is a good example of one such argument, and I know quite a few of its leading proponents. Now it has its holes- I remember one person who had written a book on the matter saying that he and the co-author disagreed on whether or not their framework of marriage would permit heterosexual couples who had no chance of having children to be married, which struck me as rather absurd. It might not, then, be a "valid" argument, but it's certainly genuine. So, again, unless you're defining legitimacy as objective validity, there are certainly arguments against same-sex marriage not rooted in homophobia or any such bigotry. And then it becomes a matter of whether people have a right to be wrong.

So I find the broad characterisation that many people seem perfectly comfortable making, that opponents of same-sex marriage are all religiously-motivated bigots who hate gay people, to be a complete non-sequitur. I won't pretend that many of those actively opposing same-sex marriage seem to at least possess some kind of religious motivation and appear to be less-than-entirely accepting of gay people, but it's disingenuous to automatically equate opposition to same-sex marriage to a hatred of gay people.

I say this as someone who could very well support or not support same-sex marriage with little to no change to my worldview or fundamental beliefs. My position on the issue would not affect how I regard gay people or how I would treat them. I would find it hard to believe I am the only person who would act in such a manner- that I am the only person who could imagine not supporting same sex-marriage without having to be a homophobic bigot.

[Simfan34]

If you put out an argument that gay people shouldn't be able to get married, and your argument makes no sense, it raises a legitimate question as to your actual reasoning.  Those types of definitional arguments you mention about marriage which assume that giving gay people equal rights devalues straight marriage just don't pass the basic test of logic.  Maybe you disagree with me on that, but I then would seriously question your reasoning skills or your compassion for gay people.  If the fact that gay marriage bans deprive actual gay people of civil rights doesn't register with you as much as fairly arbitrary principles about "man-woman units" that were all made-up a few years ago, I have to question your compassion for other people.  Honestly, I would prefer people just came out and said being gay is wrong or aberrant instead of coming up with this convoluted nonsense.

I mean, like I said, people have the right to be wrong. It's presumptuous to place all this moral judgement on them for this. Your point about the novelty of the arguments used by same-sex marriage is interesting though, because it misses a rather big point...  that the idea that two men or two women could be "married" is an extraordinarily novel one that you could say was "all made-up a few years ago". I mean look through all of history. At least in a Western society, the idea two persons of the same sex could be married, the same way a man and wife were married, would have been regarded as absurd until at most two decades ago.

It was an unquestioned custom- so obviously no one would have bothered to construct a defense for what was unchallenged. It is akin to asking me why I haven't painted the walls of my bedroom red and then criticising my defense as "all made-up" or "convoluted", when the thought of painting my walls red had never crossed my mind before you brought it up. Same-sex marriage is a societal innovation, you must acknowledge that much. Obviously arguments against it are going to be "all made-up a few years ago"... just as the arguments for it would be.

My position on the issue would not affect how I regard gay people or how I would treat them.

That's definitely not true.  This is a law that actually affects people.  You can't tell me, "I don't think you should be given the same civil rights as me," but then say that position is not a judgement of me.  What if I said I was against legal recognition of black people marrying white people?  I suppose you would take that as a judgement of your race, no?  That's the fundamental point here.  Saying you're against gay marriage absolutely requires a judgment between two groups, heteros and homos.  Your arguments are just saying, "well, it's not that gay people are gay, it's that they don't make babies."  It's akin to saying, well, it's not that black people are black, it's that their skin color is darker.  It's a distinction without a difference, it's just recharacterizing a trait using different words.  The question is materially, why are gay people different in a relevant way that makes recognition of their relationships a bad policy?  You, or any other gay marriage opponent, have never succeeded in finding that reason, here, in Federal court, in the court of public opinion, or anywhere. 

Where did civil rights come into the matter? When did you ask about my views on what rights or recognitions same sex couples should have? You are making more assumptions here. My primary "issue" with same-sex marriage, and remember I do not consider myself "opposed" to it per se, is that we have (had) a rather fixed definition of marriage- the union of a man and a woman. Throughout the history of Western civilisation, this is has overwhelmingly been the understanding of what a marriage is. It is almost strictly a semantic matter, for me at least, although I will admit the "slippery slope" argument, that making marriage about emotional bonds shared between people makes a far wider group of interpersonal relationships able to be considered "marriages" under such a standard, holds some appeal for me as well. I'm all for same-sex couples receiving equal benefits, legal unions, personal rights, and so forth, as heterosexual ones. I just simply cannot fully get myself to understand such a union as a "marriage" as I understand it, and as the idea has been understood throughout history.

I'm struggling to understand what you are saying after the first two sentences, but I will say that the ubiquitous (and almost always heavy-handed) equivocation of same-sex marriage with interracial marriage does not do anything to make me any more amenable towards the latter. I'm sure we can agree race is completely arbitrary and utterly useless as a substantive distinction between people. And even if it was not, where does race come into the long-held understanding of marriage as "the union of a man and a woman"? The introduction of "race" constituted an innovation in the definition of marriage. Race does not factor into the traditional understanding. Surely you can see how same-sex marriages would force a re-definition of "the union of a man and a woman" in a way that skin pigmentation would not?

For me the question is not about "recognition of their relationships". I don't see any substantive difference that would make recognition of same-sex unions "bad policy", and I don't oppose their being recognised. But it is another matter entirely for such unions to constitute marriages, as I understand them, and, again, they have been understood by most societies for most of recorded history. So I hope you will forgive me for my... slowness, if you want to call it that, in embracing this change in meaning. But it has nothing to do with bigotry.

[Simfan34]

The idea that the conception of marriage as an exclusively male-female union was explicitly derived from "homophobia and incorrect, hateful beliefs about gay people" and was meant to be deliberately exclusionary in the manner of racism is hard to fathom. Again, the idea that marriage could include same-sex unions was simply not considered until very recently. I'm not sure how to put this another way. No one ever thought of it.

It is akin to saying that a 19th century log cabin's lack of electrical outlets was derived from "the owner's hatred of electrical devices"; there were no electrical devices to which the owner could have feelings about. That person would have also had no same-sex unions clamoring to be married to desire to be excluded. One can only be excluded provided they desire to join in the first place.

But for you to say I "think [your] relationship is worth less than a straight relationship" or that I "have less respect for [you] because [you are] gay"... is without foundation and rather shocking to read. You state I condone "mistreating gay people". This, or, indeed, any sort of value judgement about gays or lesbians on my part, is something that certainly cannot be gleaned from the rhetorical issue we were talking about until just now.

You've extended the generalisations you've made to me personally... and they obviously don't apply. You are placing too much weight on semantics. I do not oppose same-sex marriage. I certainly wouldn't do anything to stop it. I am just trying to articulate that it is possible for people to oppose same sex marriage without automatically being some fundamentalist bigot.

[Simfan34]

I didn't say anything about the effect of these views on their legal bearing. The only thing I have been trying to say is that it is possible to not support same-sex marriage without being a bigot. Perhaps you equate opposition to same-sex marriage with bigotry; but you seemed to readily make all sorts of assumptions about my character earlier that were not true. Surely you can acknowledge there mere possibility that there are some people who do not support same-sex marriage without being homophobes, bigots, fundamentalists, and so forth?