A question about the opponents of gay marriage

[bedstuy]

It's kind of irrelevant.

My religion says so is not a valid public policy reason for anything.

We have secular law in the United States.  You can believe that homosexuality is a sin, eating pork is a sin or that music is a sin.  But, you can't ban music, pork or homosexuality because you think God hates those things.  I think that's pretty clear. 

[bedstuy]

I must oppose it, no matter whether I want to or not, or I am going directly against the word of god, which I am always striving to avoid.

If you see married same sex couples, some who have been together for years, decades even and they are caring for each other, supporting each other, nursing each other through illness and death, do you see in that 'sinful acts'?

When my husband was in hospital and I held his hand as he went under general anaesthetic and he came out of it, do you think that was a sinful act? When I changed his bandages and washed his scars was that a sinful act? I did these things because I love him more than I've ever known how to love. Was it the result of 'sinful' lust?

Gay Marriage is a sinful act. Now, caring for someone else is fine, and spousal hospital visitation rights are something  I'd be willing to allow under a civil union.

Homosexuals should be able to resist the urge to enter a full fledged marriage. I don't consider being/acting homosexual, or entering into a civil union that has clear differences from a marriage,  a sin. Caring for homos is not a sin, and I don't support conversion therapy or discrimination against homosexuals in education, employment, or provision of non-wedding-related services.

But once you enter into a full fledged gay marriage, or a gay civil union that is indistinguishable from a gay marriage, you are sinning and should be ashamed.

Hilarious!

[bedstuy]

I must oppose it, no matter whether I want to or not, or I am going directly against the word of god, which I am always striving to avoid.

If you see married same sex couples, some who have been together for years, decades even and they are caring for each other, supporting each other, nursing each other through illness and death, do you see in that 'sinful acts'?

When my husband was in hospital and I held his hand as he went under general anaesthetic and he came out of it, do you think that was a sinful act? When I changed his bandages and washed his scars was that a sinful act? I did these things because I love him more than I've ever known how to love. Was it the result of 'sinful' lust?

Gay Marriage is a sinful act. Now, caring for someone else is fine, and spousal hospital visitation rights are something  I'd be willing to allow under a civil union.

Homosexuals should be able to resist the urge to enter a full fledged marriage. I don't consider being/acting homosexual, or entering into a civil union that has clear differences from a marriage,  a sin. Caring for homos is not a sin, and I don't support conversion therapy or discrimination against homosexuals in education, employment, or provision of non-wedding-related services.

But once you enter into a full fledged gay marriage, or a gay civil union that is indistinguishable from a gay marriage, you are sinning and should be ashamed.

Hilarious!

Sin is never hilarious. It is filthy and abhorring to the eyes of god and all good christians. No one is perfect and everyone sins sometimes. But it is something that all good christians should strive to avoid.

The Bible doesn't mention gay marriage, right?  It talks about sodomy.  So, it seems like your position makes no sense.  If that's the basis, why not ban sodomy, assuming the Supreme Court is ok with banning sodomy?

And, again,

My religion says so is not a valid public policy reason for anything.

We have secular law in the United States.  You can believe that homosexuality is a sin, eating pork is a sin or that music is a sin.  But, you can't ban music, pork or homosexuality because you think God hates those things.  I think that's pretty clear. 

[bedstuy]

Gay marriage is saying you are proud of sin. Entering into a lesser relationship indicates you have some degree of shame and can therefore be tolerated by society. But once you enter a gay marriage, you have no shame for your sin, and worse, are directly telling society that sin is o.k.

Gay sex is not a good thing, but it is a far lesser and much more tolerable sin than that of gay marriage.

What your religion says is irrelevant to public policy.  We don't live in a Christian theocracy.  You can't just say that gay sex or pork or dancing is haram and thus needs to be illegal or disfavored by the government.  You need to have a rational basis for legislation.  You need to have a reason why gay sex or gay marriage is in some way harmful.  And, you don't, so shut your pie hole.

[bedstuy]

Gay marriage is saying you are proud of sin. Entering into a lesser relationship indicates you have some degree of shame and can therefore be tolerated by society. But once you enter a gay marriage, you have no shame for your sin, and worse, are directly telling society that sin is o.k.

Gay sex is not a good thing, but it is a far lesser and much more tolerable sin than that of gay marriage.

What your religion says is irrelevant to public policy.  We don't live in a Christian theocracy.  You can't just say that gay sex or pork or dancing is haram and thus needs to be illegal or disfavored by the government.  You need to have a rational basis for legislation.  You need to have a reason why gay sex or gay marriage is in some way harmful.  And, you don't, so shut your pie hole.

True.  But, and this is me speaking as a gay man, perhaps the biggest issue I have with the pro-SSM lobby is that the United States being a secular nation =/= voters not being allowed to take into account a politician's position on gay marriage/abortion/euthanasia/any other type of "religious" issue when they vote.

I'm seriously confused, do most people here think that Christians should have to "check" their values at the door before walking into a voting booth?  And, is voting based on one's religious convictions a form of "theocracy"?

This isn't about individuals voting.  You can vote based on which candidate's haircut you like better.  That's totally unrelated to the issue at hand.  You may support a policy because your religion tells you to, I agree 100%.  You can't justify a policy purely on that basis however.  You need to have a secular basis for any law.    

This is about passing laws that everyone has to abide by, not just you and your Christian cronies.  So, here are a few examples.

Let's say the state of Utah wanted to ban interracial marriage in 1950.  Their religion clearly stated that black people could not become Gods in the afterlife or join the Mormon lay priesthood, so it religiously made sense for them to ban interracial marriage.  That's no basis for a law that binds both Mormons and non-Mormons. Just because your religion believes in invidious, arbitrary discrimination doesn't mean that you can enforce it on everyone else.

Conversely, "thou shalt not steal" is one of the ten commandments.  However, you have create a secular, non-discriminatory justification for banning theft.  It almost goes without saying.  

So, in the case of gay marriage, what should count and what shouldn't?

Should not:
God hates sexual intimacy with same-sex couples.  
The Quran says that sodomy is the worst thing ever.
If we allow gay sex, God will shoot magic fireballs at us.
I hate gay people.

Should:
Gay marriage will lead to crime and economic blight.
Gay marriage causes straight couples to commit mass suicide
Homosexual couples being married creates a Voltron-like robot which lays waste to cities.

Opponents of gay marriage need to claim empirically supportable harms of gay marriage.  They can't just say, God says no or I want to express my hatred through laws to punish people.

[bedstuy]

bedstuy, the idea that is the basis of your last post: that secularism is inherently rational and objective; it is laughable.  Secularism is just as prone as any other -ism to disparate treatment of groups.

The reason for extending government recognition to all marriages regardless of the genders of the two people is not secularism but that our constitution has made the philosophical choice to be biased in favor of equal treatment over other factors a society might choose to use in deciding policy, regardless of the rationality of them when applied to a specific policy.  I happen to think that philosophical choice is a good one, but I'm not about to claim it is a rational choice.

Alright.  How did you get that from what I wrote?  That clearly is not what I said.  I know you like being willfully obtuse, but I don't follow you.

Here's my point yet again:

If the only basis for a law is that it conforms to religious doctrine, it has no rational basis.  I think that's an obvious consequence of the 1st Amendment.

[bedstuy]

It's telling that the words "due process" have not been used once in this thread. Anyways:

Opponents of gay marriage need to claim empirically supportable harms of gay marriage.  They can't just say, God says no or I want to express my hatred through laws to punish people.

Isn't the whole point of the remnant opposition that gay marriage hurts their identity as constituted by religious principles, leading to observable, valid harm in society?

If they could muster a valid, observable harm in society, they would have won a lot more of these cases.  But, they've lost almost all of them, so it appears that most people agree that they haven't found a "rational basis" for banning same-sex marriage. 

Can you think of such a harm?

[bedstuy]

bedstuy, the idea that is the basis of your last post: that secularism is inherently rational and objective; it is laughable.  Secularism is just as prone as any other -ism to disparate treatment of groups.

The reason for extending government recognition to all marriages regardless of the genders of the two people is not secularism but that our constitution has made the philosophical choice to be biased in favor of equal treatment over other factors a society might choose to use in deciding policy, regardless of the rationality of them when applied to a specific policy.  I happen to think that philosophical choice is a good one, but I'm not about to claim it is a rational choice.

Alright.  How did you get that from what I wrote?  That clearly is not what I said.  I know you like being willfully obtuse, but I don't follow you.

Here's my point yet again:

If the only basis for a law is that it conforms to religious doctrine, it has no rational basis.  I think that's an obvious consequence of the 1st Amendment.

This is how I got that:

You need to have a secular basis for any law.

And you just reinforced with your last post your equation of secularism with rationalism by asserting that religion is nonrational.

The consequence of the 1st Amendment is not that religious reasons are nonrational, nor is it that religious doctrines cannot be used to choose various policy positions of the government.  Rather it is the limited consequence that you cannot be required to worship in a particular manner or to pay the costs of a particular religion.

While it is not how we've chosen to do things here in the US, I think the scheme common to many European countries, of paying a religious tax with the taxed getting to choose which religion is thereby funded by the tax collected from them would not be unconstitutional here.  Only if the government controlled which churches could be funded would it be repugnant to the 1st amendment. (And by religion, I include the religions of secular humanism and atheism.)

Yeah, like I said, willfully obtuse. 

Some parts of religion could be rational.  But, that's incidental to being religious.

"Thou shalt not steal" = rational
"Thou shalt not make graven images" = irrational

So, you would have to find something that doesn't require I believe in your religion, that would justify your law.  If this law makes sense, if and only if, you believe in your particular religion, how is that the least bit appropriate?  You might have your own version of the 1st Amendment that you cooked up in your garage or whatever, but the one that we have in America would not allow that.

[bedstuy]

That's not how the US Supreme Court interprets the First Amendment. 

What about this law?

Married women may not have their hair exposed in public.  Violaters will be subject to a fine of not more than $1000.

Legislative Findings:  We're passing this law because this is the belief of Hasidic Judaism according to the Talmud. 

I don't think that would fly.

[bedstuy]

With those legislative findings, of course it wouldn't pass muster, but laws that ban or regulate practices or activities that happen to be religious are perfectly constitutional as per Employment Division v. Smith as long as the reasoning given is not religious.  That's why the Federal Government passed RFRA and many states passed similar laws.

OK.  Irrelevant though.

Those who favor laws giving state recognition to only opposite-sex marriages have put forth non-religious reasons for doing so,

Nope!  That's why they've lost.  They can't say strictly, same-sex marriage should be illegal because of the Bible, so they've had to attempt to find a basis aside from religion or animus.  I would submit that the anti-SSM side has failed to do that.

tho strictly speaking those reasons aren't necessary as nonrecognition is not a punishment,

No.  That's not how the American legal system works.  Where are you getting that from?  When you just boldly make stuff up, I can't really have a discussion with you.  The 14th Amendment applies to the entire body of law, right?  But, you've decided that it only applies to punishments or penalties from the government?  OK.  In your fantasy land, maybe you have a point, but I thought we were discussing the real world. 

nor does it interfere with people not in opposite-sex relationships from being married.

Well, I guess you solved the problem.  Same-sex marriage isn't an issue if you choose to ignore everyone who it affects.  I guess ovarian cancer isn't a problem because it doesn't kill men.

It isn't the First Amendment that does those laws in, but the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

OK, that's not what I said.  I said that the First Amendment limits the permissible bases for banning gay marriage, specially excluding the basis, "Christianity forbids sodomy." 

[bedstuy]

Bedstuy, the opponents of government recognition of SSM have put forth non-religious arguments for their position.  You may not find them persuasive, and compared to the principle of equal protection, I don't either, but without the Fourteenth Amendment, there would be no constitutional basis for a court to insist upon equal protection taking priority other concerns a legislature chooses to consider.

They don't have something that meets the rational basis test.

Why were you bringing up the 14th, we were discussing the 1st. And as I already pointed out, the 1st is not an absolute ban on religion in government.  Speaking of the real world, the government is all the time choosing to provide benefits to some and not to all.  Indeed, without that ability to discriminate between recipients, much of the machinery of the modern welfare state would be effectively too expensive to implement.

The 14th Amendment is the relevant law in regards to legalizing same-sex marriage.  The 1st Amendment is the relevant law in disqualifying a purely religious justification for purposes of rational basis review under the 14th Amendment.  They're both relevant to what I said.

In regards to your other point, you just made up a distinction that doesn't exist outside of your head. 

Just play this out, can the government provide welfare benefits to brown haired people but not red haired people?  No.  There's no rational basis for excluding people based on hair color.  Could they provide not welfare benefits at all?  Sure.  Can you refuse to grant zoning variances to gay people?  No.  Can you refuse to grant zoning variances at all?  Sure.  There's no idea that you can discriminate however you would like as long as you're not explicitly punishing someone.  You just made that up! 

We were discussing same-sex marriage, not sodomy.  The two aren't the same.  The non-religious reasons for not recognizing same-sex marriage have not dependent upon the idea that sodomy is in some way bad.  (Tho some do advance that argument, it is not the only argument.)

I think one difference in what we are talking about is that you are assuming marriage requires government recognition to be a marriage, and I'm definitely not making that assumption.

You're living cuckoo-crazy land dude!

We are talking about lawsuits against government entities which recognizes marriage.  Either the result of that is the government recognizes your marriage or it doesn't.  You could have a commitment ceremony or a zoning variance "in your heart," it wouldn't matter vis-a-vis the government.

If you have a law, with no premise, besides its congruence to a religious doctrine, you have an unconstitutional law. 

Listen we can argue about whether gay marriage bans meet the rational basis test.  I think there are somewhat logical arguments to that effect, even if they fail on a factual level.  You haven't made any, you just insist that rational basis review either:
-Doesn't imply to non-penal legislation
-Can be satisfied by resort purely to a particular religious doctrine and nothing else.

On both counts, you're blatantly, blatantly wrong.  You can throw pedantic ticky tack chestnuts around and be obtuse as much as want, you're wrong.

[bedstuy]

bedstuy, the problem with rational basis is that there never has been an objective definition of it.  It always is what the court thinks it is.  I come at this from the viewpoint of a democratic libertarian (small d and small l).  I don't think the government should do too much, yet I also think that unless there are objectively determinable reasons, the judiciary should defer to the legislative (or the executive as the case may be) in deciding what is to be done and leave it to the voters to correct problems.

Oh, you don't like the 14th Amendment.  Quick, somebody inform the Supreme Court!

Screw what you like or don't like.  Easy for you to say that individual and minority rights are less important than judicial restraint and letting the states decide whether fags are gross or whatever.  You're a straight, WASP man.  Individual rights wise, you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.  Come to think of it, that silver spoon might be shoved up the other end pretty deep. 

Gay people aren't asking for anything but equal rights under the law.  This pedantic hemming and hawing is pathetic honestly.  You can't even bring yourself to make the counter argument.  You look a the scales of justice, "Gay people's human dignity and equal protection under the law, hmmmm, pretty important vs. well, actually, maybe there's some colorable counter argument and what about the state legislatures getting overruled by the courts, they'll be sooo sad about that!!!"  Give me a break.

The only other point of yours I wish to address is where do you get the idea that the 1st amendment is ever needed (or used) to support the 14th amendment. The only way I could see you thinking so would be if by some odd reason you neglect the 9th amendment so that only explicitly named groups get equal protection, in which case same-sex couples would be out of luck.  But beyond that, the 1st amendment has been and continues to be used to exclude religious groups (and now thanks to Hobby Lobby, religious people) from being required to engage in equal treatment.

(As an aside, while Hobby Lobby produced an absurd result, once the Obama administration allowed religious groups to opt out of the contraceptive mandate on the basis of a religious objection in hopes of defusing a political hot potato, the Hobby Lobby result was fairly inevitable given Citizen United's view that legally corporations are people too.  The free exercise clause is an individual right, not one enjoyed only by organized religious bodies.)

What?  This isn't about religious groups.  This is about marriage law.  I don't understand what you're talking about at all.

[bedstuy]

The only other point of yours I wish to address is where do you get the idea that the 1st amendment is ever needed (or used) to support the 14th amendment. The only way I could see you thinking so would be if by some odd reason you neglect the 9th amendment so that only explicitly named groups get equal protection, in which case same-sex couples would be out of luck.  But beyond that, the 1st amendment has been and continues to be used to exclude religious groups (and now thanks to Hobby Lobby, religious people) from being required to engage in equal treatment.

(As an aside, while Hobby Lobby produced an absurd result, once the Obama administration allowed religious groups to opt out of the contraceptive mandate on the basis of a religious objection in hopes of defusing a political hot potato, the Hobby Lobby result was fairly inevitable given Citizen United's view that legally corporations are people too.  The free exercise clause is an individual right, not one enjoyed only by organized religious bodies.)

What?  This isn't about religious groups.  This is about marriage law.  I don't understand what you're talking about at all.

You're the one who keeps bringing up the 1st Amendment as if it has relevance to this issue.  The 14th is perfectly capable of dealing with it all on its own.  Also, don't confuse my dislike of the rational basis test with an opposition to striking down bans on the recognition of SSM.  Civil marriage today is a partnership of two individuals.  There's absolutely nothing in the definition used that is dependent upon the gender of the individuals involved.  Now, if we were back in the 19th century when the definition of marriage included distinct legal roles for husband and wife would not necessarily fall foul of equal protection.  (To the degree it would, it would only be because of a determination that limiting the role of husband and/or wife to only one gender failed equal protection.)

I explained my point like 12 times dude.  Go back and read what I said if you're interested. 

And, another great point, it is the year of our lord two thousand and fifteen, not the nineteenth century.  Perhaps, we can assume that this can be taken for granted, unless we stipulate  otherwise?  I don't think there is a robust debate about whether it is currently 2015 or the nineteenth century.