One Judge vs 7 million votes

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Aramike

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

You fail to make the distinction between natural rights and legal rights. You argue that it does not discriminate, but the truth is that it actually guarantees the "right" to marry only whom you say they can marry.

What is certainly being denied is the "right" to marry whom they want to marry.

Deny it all you like, it is without question discriminatory.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Aramike

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

If a straight person has the right to marry the person of his/her choice, and a gay person doesn't, they do not have the same rights, period. One person has a right to do something, and the other person has been denied the same opportunity. Wanting the right to do the same thing that someone else can do is not wanting a "different right." It's wanting the same right. How is that not obvious?

That's like arguing that suffragettes were demanding "different rights" because they wanted to be able to vote just like their menfolk did. Winning the right to vote didn't give them "special rights" on account of them being female. It gave them the SAME RIGHTS that non-females already had, and rights that they had to qualify for in the exact same way that non-females did.

Saying that giving another citizen a right or opportunity they are denied but which you already have just by virtue of being a citizen same as them, is giving them a "special" right - it's basically admitting that their citizenship is already of the second-class variety and that a special exception msut be made to allow them the privileges that "real" citizens get just by being alive.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Under Prop 8 marriage was defined as a union between a man and a woman.

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.

[Platapus]

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.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Platapus

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

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.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

For the simple reason that, contrary to the belief of some, judges cannot arbitrarily 'legislate from the bench',

you are quite correct, and I apologize for poorly wording my comment. What I meant was that the people proposing Prop 8 should have gotten some guidance from constitutional lawyers on the constitutionality of the proposal before putting it to a public vote.

If the constitutional advisers has said "hmm this is in a gray area constitutionally" then the proposers could have had a chance to modify it, or formally requested a pre-legislative judicial ruling.

[UnderseaLcpl]

This discussion is getting ridiculous now. Gay rights have very little to do with heterosexual polygamy other than at a philosophical level. Not that I'm against polygamy, or the female equivalent. I consider relationships of any kind to be the business of the involved parties, and nobody else.
However, at the risk of pissing off the frau, I'm going to break this down like Bobby Brown.

There are societies where women are dominant, but there are no societies in which women are polyamorous. The reason for that is simple biology. Every biological organsim on earth today exists because the genes that built it were successfuly passed on. This means that only organisms who raise young that achieve sexual maturity survive.

So, how does one create an organism that survives to sexual maturity? It's not by having a female choose from and breed with a large group of males. A female can only ever produce one offspring, maybe multiples in rare circumstances. It's from having one male breed with a large group of females. That makes more sense in evolutionary terms. Males that breed with many females will produce more offspring, which is exactly what males are designed to do. It's why we have hundreds of millions of gametes for every egg and why we're such competitive jerks. Females that are more choosy about which males they breed with will produce more successful offsrping. This is why females are such impossible bitches and why they have such a long list of requirements for a lifelong mate. It's the result of natural evolution.

So... this is why societies of polyamorous females don't exist. They die out because they are not efficient in a reproductive sense. Well, that's not entirely true. Unlike any other species, women actually have a built-in mechanism for concealing ovulation so they can mess with the village pool-boy while being married to the village elder. It's a by-product of these marvelous brains we were endowed with. It's also why young couples face the "is she pregnant!?" anxiety. In that way, women can be polyamorous, though they are still limited in their production of offspring.

What were we talking about, again? Oh, yeah, gay marriage and it's relation to polyamory. Female polyamory is fine with me, and I'd allow it, assuming anyone could ever make it work outside of the porn industy. It'll never beat male polymory, though, because of sheer human biological nature.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

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

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.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

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.

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

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Aramike

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

What about them? It's a whole different issue.

If someone wants to argue that "marriage is about procreation" (which means making babies, not raising children other people made) and therefore same-sex couples should not marry because they cannot bring forth offspring without the help of a third opposite-sex individual, then logically marriage should only be allowed to couples who are able to do just that.

If the purpose of marriage is to procreate, and the state is supposed to uphold that, then no one who is unable or unwilling to procreate should be allowed to marry regardless of their sexual orientation.

When the people who argue that marriage is about procreation start calling for the nullification of childless-by-choice marriages, or for the denial of marriage licenses to couples who can't prove they're at least able to produce offspring, then I'll be willing to believe they actually believe it and aren't just using any excuse they can find to oppose same-sex marriages.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Ultimately this is nothing more than an attempt to usurp the term marriage from its traditional meaning

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.