But do voters have the right to make that distinction for others? Is that a natural distinction or an artificial one. If the purpose of marriage is itself, as the ancient Greeks believed, to force a man and a woman into an "unnatural" alliance in order to produce and then protect the children, then marriage is a legal contract that must be between one man and one woman. If it's between two people who want to legally commit to each other, then why is it up to you, or seven million others, to say they may not.

The very act of defining marriage as being between one man and one woman is discrimination against anyone who feels otherwise and is thereby excluded. Enforcing that definition is indeed denying equality.

I am a little concerned with why did not the judicial branch in California, evaluate the constitutionality of Prop 8 before the election.

There can only be one of two outcomes of the Prop 8 vote.

It passes
It fails

With only two possible outcomes was it not possible to evaluate the constitutionality of the outcomes?

Or was Prop 8 proposed with the assumption that it would fail? If so, that is a very bad assumption and reflects poor judgment on who ever sponsored it.

If an outcome of a public vote can be unconstitutional, it probably would be a good idea to fix it before the election.

As it stands now, I can understand why people are pissed. Don't ask me my opinion, if my opinion doesn't matter.

As I indicated in my previous post, when any group allows multiple spouses to men but prohibits them for women, it is by definition "male-centric" and discriminatory and probably only one item in a long list of instances where men in that group are privileged and empowered in ways that their female counterparts are not.

In fact if anyone can find one instance of a culture that permits and encourages men but not women to take multiple spouses and in which there is no tendency towards the abuse and oppression of women overall, I will be very much surprised.

And let's be honest here: the notion that mutual love, respect and commitment have anything to do with marriage as a contract to be formalized, recognized, and sanctioned by the church and/or state is a fairly modern one. IMO anything that takes the idea of "marriage" even one more step away from its origins as a way of one person buying another (with or without the consent of the person being purchased) for the purposes of cheap domestic labor, sex on demand, and the production of a "legitimate" heir to one's property, can only be a good thing.

Personally I suspect that the reason so many fundamentalist religious types have such a problem with same-sex marriage is that when they see two men or two women together they can't figure out which one owns the other and the possibility that neither one of them owns anybody is just too much for them to contemplate without their heads esploding. :O:

By your reasoning it would also be impossible for a hetero judge to be fair in this instance, since you seem to believe that it's solely a "gays vs. straights" issue. We would need to find a judge who has been deemed suitably asexual in order to render a really fair decision.

Unless of course you're implying that hetero people are by default completely devoid of any biases and prejudices that might come into play.

Which is an assumption that the very existence of Proposition 8 makes laughable to begin with.

In the modern secular world, the word "marriage" has already been moved far beyond its traditional meaning, which had everything to do with the legally recognized transfer of property (the bride) from one man to another and very little (as far as the regulating authorities were concerned) with love, respect and commitment, or even consent if you were unlucky enough to be the property.

Unless you're willing to concede that the primary reason straight people want to get married is for the tax breaks, this argument won't stand.

Ultimately the reasons why two people choose to marry are their own business and nobody else's. That has nothing to do with whether or not they have the right to marry, regardless of the reasons for their desire to do so.

Even if it is just for the tax breaks, that still no reason why only straight people should have the option to take advantage of them.

The procreation angle does come up occasionally with the same-sex marriage question. There's always someone who says "but marriage is about raising a family, gay couples can't make babies, therefore they don't need (shouldn't be allowed) to get married!"

Funny how they never seem to extend that notion to its logical conclusion, which would be to restrict marriage to only those people who are both able and willing to procreate. We don't require straight people to prove that they are fertile and desirous of offspring in order to get a marriage license, we don't nullify their marriages if they fail to reproduce or find out that they can't or decide they don't want to. So obviously the "procreation argument" is utter nonsense from a legal perspective.

For the simple reason that, contrary to the belief of some, judges cannot arbitrarily 'legislate from the bench', though some certainly use any means they can to get around that. A case has to actually be brought before them before they can rule on it. It may be an injunction to prevent the passage of a law, or even an election, or it may be an after-the-fact attempt to overturn a law, as this was.

I'm not saying the judge ruled fairly, or properly, nor am I saying that he ruled from his own biased viewpoint. Either could be the case; I don't know. But the judge cannot initiate action - he has to wait until the action is brought to his bench.

Good points. I wasn't going after prerequisites, but I would certainly have to agree that a percentage of marriages would be considered illegal in such a case.

Mob rule doesn't allow you to vote the minority's rights away.

How dare they exercise their rights to judicial review!

The 14th Amendment: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

They should just copy the text of Loving vs. Virginia word for word, and replace every mention of "race" with "sexual orientation." That would be a fine pimpslap to the anti-gay marriage crowd.

Again, how is that discriminatory? Men and women, REGARDLESS of sexual orientation, have the same exact rights. What they want are different rights.

Too bad that doesn't work.

Loving V Virginia was about bestowing the same rights on all men and women under the premise that all men and women are created equal.

The issue of gay marriage, namely Prop 8, is specifically based upon the opposite concept, that not all men and women are created equal and therefore not placated by the same laws. A law that marriage is between a man and a woman applies EXACTLY THE SAME to ALL men, and ALL women, despite their sexual orientation. What gays are asking for is something quite different, and although you've cited this ruling repeatedly, it makes no sense in this context.

How is it "utter nonsense"? What about adoption regulations?

Good point, and it helps bring into focus the difference between a reason to get married and the right to get married.

I don't care why people marry each other as long as they do it by mutual consent (which implies mutual respect), with each person free to make an informed decision about it and for reasons that they themselves have agreed make marriage a desirable option.

Whether or not they have a right to get married has nothing to do with their reasons for wanting to do so, and IMO no list of presumed "acceptable reasons" put forward by anyone else should have any bearing on their right to do so.

But that's not the case either, now is it. Homosexuals are free to marry a person of the opposite sex just like everyone else.