AL Supreme Court orders probate judges not to license same sex marriages

[Brittain33]

What, in your mind, would constitute a plaintiff with standing in a discrimination case like this?

Remember that separate but equal fell because the separate was inherently unequal. Not only did schools for African Americans get a fraction of the resources, but Linda Brown herself had to walk much, much further to get to her segregated school than if she could have gone to her neighborhood school reserved for whites.

In cases where bathroom facilities haven't been sufficient for women, women ask for more women's rooms, not integrated restrooms. The NAACP didn't sue for more African-American schools closer to where children lived.

All that said, it's not impossible that culture changes enough that integrated bathrooms become seen as the logical solution. Many restrooms already share hand washing facilities or provide a series of unisex single-serves.

[Brittain33]

I just want to clarify that I'd be fine with having civil unions as a solution, but when you push to redefine a gender-specific institution like marriage it's going to lead to have a lot of unfortunate implications. Separate but equal has been vilified over the years but it is a lot more nuanced than its critics let on.

Yeah, that was a defensible position for the right 10 years ago, but now it comes across as desperation because you recognize certain defeat on the terms of marriage.

[Brittain33]

Really? You guys think there was no traumitization going on in South in the 1950s and 1960s?

Introduced by Loving v. Virginia?

[Brittain33]

I just want to clarify that I'd be fine with having civil unions as a solution, but when you push to redefine a gender-specific institution like marriage it's going to lead to have a lot of unfortunate implications. Separate but equal has been vilified over the years but it is a lot more nuanced than its critics let on.

Yeah, that was a defensible position for the right 10 years ago, but now it comes across as desperation because you recognize certain defeat on the terms of marriage.

So again, if you think that inherent gender qualifications are illegal on marriage, why do you support them on public restrooms? If you think that a separate but equal solution stigmatizes all gays as sick freaks, why do you find the bathroom restrictions not stigmatizing all men as perverts and all women as fragile little girls?

Basically because the separation of bathrooms doesn't end up denying anyone access to the full benefits of a public restroom, while civil unions or marriage bans do deny gay people the rights of marriage. Even when civil unions says they are equivalent to marriage, inevitably they aren't because millions of minor state and local government officials and public servants get confused or stubborn and don't acknowledge civil unions (see NJ's experience).

[Brittain33]

2% is a weirdly low estimate for how many gay people there are. It also conveniently ignores the existence of transgender people who have weirdness going on with the legal status of their gender (which is, admittedly, a smaller percentage), and the existence of bisexuals who want more than a capricious and unpredictable chance of being able to marry who they end up wanting to (which may actually be a larger percentage). It's also completely irrelevant.

Why is it irrelevant? If members of a tiny group get to change ancient laws on marriage merely because they claim discrimination, then members of other groups can change long-standing uncontroversial gender related laws as well.

The reason same sex marriage has become legal is because this "tiny group" amounted to hundreds of thousands of couples raising children, and millions without children, who were public and part of our culture and whose struggles and suffering at the hand of current law was not abstract but a real cost falling hardest on children. Read the court cases. The courts were actually following the culture, not creating it.

2% is slightly larger than the population of the U.S. that is Jewish, by the way. What constitutional rights would you take away from Jews for not measuring up?

[Brittain33]

The people pushing gay marriage have made perfectly clear they do not consider a civil union good enough. So whether or not they function well is actually a red herring.

Um WHAT?! One compelling reason a civil union is not good enough is because it doesn't function well! No one knew this in 2000 when Vermont introduced them, but evidence piled up quickly after that. You can't ignore that because you prefer to argue with a different argument. Both apply.