LA judge upholds state SSM ban

[Brittain33]

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.

[Brittain33]

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.

Maybe in Massachusetts, but certainly not in most of the states that usually vote Republican.

Yes, I'm sure the electorate isn't there yet, especially not in states where their view is still the majority. But I do think that a lot of elected officials who, to be honest, don't like gays but really don't care that much about this issue, have clammed up about "traditional marriage."

[Brittain33]

The one constant tradition about marriage is that it reflects the dominant values of society at the time and changes easily and rapidly to do so.

Shua's argument could just as easily be deployed against the use of camera phones to snap pictures at weddings. Every civilization in history excluded camera phones from weddings; they would have considered you crazy to ask them if camera phones were involved in weddings. We should consider their wisdom and default to their judgment.

If you went back to the 1700s and talked about people of different religions marrying because they liked each other or found each other attractive, you would have been considered bonkers.

The good news is that with American society passing the tipping point on gay rights in around 2012, vacuous appeals to tradition will no longer have to be accorded gravitas they do not merit.

[Brittain33]

If you went back to the 1700s and talked about people of different religions marrying because they liked each other or found each other attractive, you would have been considered bonkers.

That isn't even remotely true. Even where there were prohibitions against it, they would have understood exactly why someone would want to marry someone of a different religion based on fondness or attractiveness. It is more our time that doesn't understand them.

There weren't prohibitions against inter-religious marriage. The idea wasn't conceivable. There was no way to get married. If a Jew and a Catholic in Russia in 1790 wanted to marry, who would have conducted it? How would they have registered it? I'm all ears.

[Brittain33]

Thinking on it some more, it's not so much that traditionally women were viewed as property (tho that view goes a long way to explaining polygynous societies) as that men and women were almost always seen as complementary aspects of humanity in which the sum of two different parts created a whole greater than the two were separately (or which was at least different than).  One simply could not obtain that by uniting two likes.

You're talking about the concept of "Separate spheres." Like mass-produced family tartans, this timeless tradition was an invention of Victorian England and was unknown in the 18th century, not to mention countries outside the Anglosphere.

[Brittain33]

Actually that wasn't your point.  Your point was that laws banning same sex marriages derived from homophobia.  My point was that laws banning same sex marriages derived from a view of sexual complementariness, which in some instances also led to homophobia.  Where homophobia occurred, it sprang from the same source, yet it was not the reason the law recognized only opposite sex marriage.  It is no coincidence that those who continue to hew to the traditional view of marriage by and large also have held to the view of sexual complementariness.

Are you positing that "gays are icky" and "I don't want my kids to think being gay is ok" we're not a factor in the referenda of the 2000s? The advertising campaigns indicated this was a winning message. I'm talking about the referenda and amendments passed then, not the original absence of same-sex marriage from earlier laws.

[Brittain33]

Actually that wasn't your point.  Your point was that laws banning same sex marriages derived from homophobia.  My point was that laws banning same sex marriages derived from a view of sexual complementariness, which in some instances also led to homophobia.  Where homophobia occurred, it sprang from the same source, yet it was not the reason the law recognized only opposite sex marriage.  It is no coincidence that those who continue to hew to the traditional view of marriage by and large also have held to the view of sexual complementariness.

Are you positing that "gays are icky" and "I don't want my kids to think being gay is ok" we're not a factor in the referenda of the 2000s? The advertising campaigns indicated this was a winning message. I'm talking about the referenda and amendments passed then, not the original absence of same-sex marriage from earlier laws.

No I was referring to the original reasons such laws were passed.

How many states had laws explicitly prohibiting same-sex marriage before the 1990s? As opposed to laws which didn't address it or where common practice had been to assume a man and woman were applying?