Correct me if I am wrong but it appears that the Proposition 8 and DOMA cases are being argued by opponents on the basis of a supposed absolute right to marriage contained somewhere in the constitution of the US.
This is quite different from a challenge that could have been made on basis of the "normality" of such marriages.
If the argument that people have a right to marry whom they please without government interference is successful, it would seem inevitable that laws banning polygamy will be challenged.
What is the social benefit derived from laws against polygamy? As a libertarian constitutionalist I do not understand the laws against polygamy as being other than derived from Judeo-Christian tradition. pl
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage-case.html?_r=0
'Hack' has already been taken and IMO, the name shouldn't be reissued, as no future holder could hope to live up to the record of the fallen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hackworth
Posted by: Ben | 27 March 2013 at 10:54 PM
Ben
He was a crippled giant. I was honored that he called me friend. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 27 March 2013 at 11:03 PM
Hahaha. "Monogamous homosexuals". Right - I see that you've bought into the Glee/New Normal Hollywood version of homosexuality. Cause homosexuals aren't notorious for random hookups. Dan Savage can't dismiss monogamy enough while he talks about having random sex and how stupid us straights are. Seriously, have you known any -actual- homosexuals beyond the ones the Media has invented?
Why should I give a single f--k about what a 90s politican did? What a giant non sequitor - Ted Kennedy got drunk and killed a woman, so we should toss laws against DUIs out the window? Do you have a point beyond "hurr dumb rethuglicans?"
The question is why you're so eager to tear down one of the last remaining pillars of Western Civ in order to prove you're more tolerant than thou.
Posted by: Tyler | 28 March 2013 at 12:09 AM
It seems ridiculous to me to ignore the proclivities of certain groups to molest young boys, commit suicide, and suffer from other mental illness with the inane justification that they were "just born that way".
Posted by: Tyler | 28 March 2013 at 12:11 AM
It's a question of "who" will do what to "whom", as Lenin posited.
Posted by: Tyler | 28 March 2013 at 12:12 AM
"... a series of associations that suggest..." That's not proof of anything.
Posted by: Fred | 28 March 2013 at 01:23 AM
Tyler I don't know how old you are but I'd assume you do not hang around with college going age groups. I don't know what things were like amongst this age group in previous generations but I can only speak for mine: random hookups are frequent regardless of sexual orientation. My experience may be anecdoctal but I've seen enough during my time at college to know this to be the case. My point being this: you may feel homosexual behaviour is tearing down one of the last remaining pillars of Western Civilization, but that unchecked hedonism you refer to is being engaged by quite a few non-homosexuals as well. I don't see why you single them out for this? Ironically the few gay friends I have in my life never hooked up with strangers, they had actual relationships. Anecdotal I know, but still I can only go on my personal experience.
Posted by: kxd | 28 March 2013 at 09:53 AM
Might the statistics have something to do with greater access?
WPFIII
Posted by: William Fitzgerald | 28 March 2013 at 10:35 AM
Tyler's comment above pretty much expresses my feelings.
Except I hardly think it's a slippery slope anymore, we're at the brink of a cliff with the jagged rocks below of dangerous changes to society.
Posted by: John Minnerath | 28 March 2013 at 11:02 AM
no one, I can only know what I read, & interpret it based upon accumulated experience & insight. I am not always correct.
Tax code impacts are both a reflection (or filter, or measure) of any policy having value-structure impact, & the issue itself... & so on & so forth, on every matter of public policy. For the individuals who have standing in the case based upon the inheritence tax, I am willing to concede it means something both in $$$ & in their beliefs about freedom & liberty. I don't understand why you would not concede that to them.
bringing up the flat tax... now that's a pretty pink fish... imo. cheers!
Posted by: ked | 28 March 2013 at 11:43 AM
from some points of view, EVERYTHING is an attack on the family.
Posted by: ked | 28 March 2013 at 11:43 AM
yes... because all of us, regardless of where we reside along the continuum of social life can be discriminated against. the "fat part of the curve" is where the herd has so much mass & momentum that our Founder's insistence on enumurated minority rights are among our best (& only?) defense of freedom & liberty. maybe even for same-sex couples - we shall see.
Posted by: ked | 28 March 2013 at 11:50 AM
Show me a bath house culture that is as rampant among heterosexuals as homosexuals. There isn't - you just have more false equivalency of 'well they do it too!' There's no heterosexual version of 'Grindr' either, nothing like what happens at the Folsom Street Fair.
Female hypergamy is another issue entirely, but stems from the same source: the Left, feminism, and its cultural marxism. It too is tearing apart Western Civ, but that's not what we're talking about here.
Posted by: Tyler | 28 March 2013 at 12:18 PM
Not all polygamist communities function along Warren Jeffs’ lines(although they may raise issues about the status of women in those communities). The Feds didn’t get into the marriage regulation business by passing laws against polygamy because Brigham Young was raping young girls. They used those laws as a stick to beat the Mormons with.
Posted by: Stephanie | 28 March 2013 at 01:52 PM
Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly, in which the spider is marriage and divorce law and the fly is those people of the same gender who want to be able to have a traditional marriage.
Right now, those in a homosexual relationship are in the most flexible and least intrusive legal situation and can assist one another and even resolve disputes and separation. They can live together, accumulate property together or separately without worrying about a common law marriage or community property laws, provide for any adopted children if they are permitted to adopt, provide for the children through trusts that can have tax advantages, and arrange for the disposition of all of their individual estates by a Will to whomever they want upon their death.
If they cannot get along together and separate, they can, at least in Texas, go to court to have a property division done between them. Texas has developed some "common law" rules and doctrines, which are created by courts of appeals from the litigation and appeal of lawsuits, to deal with property division in which there was no marriage. This began from situations in which an old rancher would start living with a woman but their relationship did not fit the definition of a common law (non-ceremonial) marriage. Courts, as opposed to legislatures, began fashioning common law rules to deal with the division of property accumulated while the couple was living together.
The "gay rights" people pushing for the "right" to get married under existing law have no idea about the tangled web they are getting into.
The State will dictate the conditions under which they can get married including any blood and medical tests. Community property laws in States that have them will apply to all property from the date of marriage forward. So upon divorce or death, was the item of property or the business in which they have an interest community property or separate property or "mixed" as part community and part separate? The court will appoint a well-paid accountant to help with that, and then you can have a jury trial on property division. But wait ... in Texas, the jury's verdict on property division is only "advisory", and so the judge can ignore the jury's findings and divide your property how he or she wants to.
If allowed then to adopt children, the same sex couple can look forward to the law governing child custody and fights over children. Temporary possession, visitation and child support while the case is pending, often after a contested court hearing; social studies of the parents; psychologists; digging for dirt on the other party to influence the decision as to which person makes the major decisions for the child and has possession of the child the majority of the time; and so forth.
The issue of child support has become a bureaucratic, inflexible, and often unrealistic nightmare. Visitation rights for the child and the schedule for possession by the parties are almost as bad.
And don't forget alimony in the States that allow it and permit courts to order it. You may be paying your "domestic partner" money after you split up for quite a while.
Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a common law divorce, at least in Texas. You cannot remarry until you have gotten a divorce through the court system.
Those who want same sex marriage should pause and count their blessings. Leave well enough alone and let that sleeping dog lie.
Posted by: robt willmann | 28 March 2013 at 02:14 PM
An interesting back story to the increasingly common justification that "some people are just born that way and that's fine." In early 20th century (ironically, far more virulent in US than elsewhere) it was common for the more "progressive" elements of the society to condemn all sorts of alleged social ills (including poverty, morality, "intelligence," and "race") on "bad genes." Many states had eugenics laws and justified their actions on "science." People who like to talk about how people like William Jennings Bryan were reactionary backward looking people ignore that the movement he was attacking (and, literally, the biology textbook used by Mr. Scopes) were implicitly advocating that "bad genes" in society ought to be "forcibly" exterminated. (Stephen Jay Gould, in one of his books, has a choice quote from the book, to the effect that, if it weren't for "civilized morality," genetically inferior peoples ought to be killed off because of "science." Gould, despite being an evolutionary biologist, had deepest sympathy for people of goodwill like Bryan.) Now, decades later, most of this science proved to be junk, conveniently invoked and abused by advocates of certain political views to lend credence to themselves. Stuff like this should make us think twice when we blindly invoke "science" as justification for politics... Because real science is built on questions, not faith, certainly not faith blinded by political opinions.
Posted by: kao_hsien_chih | 28 March 2013 at 02:40 PM
Ked, of course tax structures reflect a value structure - it's economics in practical application. However, as far as gay couples being negatively impacted by the current tax structure, I don't buy the argument as a reason for changing the law. For one thing, if a gay couple is living together as if married, then why not simply hold everything jointly? Then there would be no need for inheritance taxes to be a problem and it would demonstrate the strength of the commitment of the couple. After all, it was - supposedly - a burdensome inheritance tax that jumped off the current SCOTUS case.
Posted by: no one | 28 March 2013 at 03:08 PM
Excellent points and hitting them in their pocket books may tamper their zeal.
As this divorce lawyerin California - a White woman - stated:
"There is no reason for a man to get married in the United States nowadays - it would be detremintal of his financial well-being."
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 28 March 2013 at 03:43 PM
"our Founder's insistence on enumurated minority rights"
Minroity rights? There is no such thing. What right to sexual conduct is in the constitution? Where is the word 'marriage'? See the tenth ammendment. The POWERS not delegate to the United States in the Constituiont are reserved to the states. The power to allow a marriage contract is not a federal power, it is a state one.
Posted by: Fred | 28 March 2013 at 03:48 PM
The more I see of this Pope, the more I like him. Certainly not cut from the same cloth as we are used to.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/9960168/Pope-washes-feet-of-young-Muslim-woman-prisoner-in-unprecedented-twist-on-Maundy-Thursday.html
Posted by: Abu Sinan | 28 March 2013 at 03:49 PM
Having been on the recieving end of discrimination because of my race (white) sex (male) age (now over 50) and religion (not attending the same church as the guy doing the promoting) I certainly understand his sentiment.
Posted by: Fred | 28 March 2013 at 03:50 PM
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.
Posted by: Tyler | 28 March 2013 at 03:53 PM
A straight 'Grindr' would do amazing business amongst guys. Getting the girls to sign up is where the wheels fall off the business plan.
Monogamy and a stable home environment is a good thing for bringing up children. Society supports this behavior with the legal advantages (tax, inheritance, custody, etc) given to those allowed to marry. If you forbid couples to marry, you're by definition discouraging two-parent families and creating single-parent ones.
Posted by: Ben | 28 March 2013 at 07:24 PM
I'm willing to admit that there are perfectly normal, healthy, polygamist marriages. But I don't know of any. All of them in this country seem to be between middle-aged, powerful men and young, inexperienced, never-left-home teenage girls browbeaten into it by their parents. In a word, they're forced. I don't support that sort of monogamous marriage, either.
Posted by: Ben | 28 March 2013 at 07:32 PM
When I said that, I was replying to Tyler, not you, Colonel Lang.
Posted by: Ben | 28 March 2013 at 07:33 PM