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

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Now they ordered a stop again. I guess they don't understand federal supremacy. Alabama deserves all the ridicule they get.

YES! YES! Rally against the unjust activist judges! Show the supreme court the ridicule they'll receive if they rule in favor of SSM!!!

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Now they ordered a stop again. I guess they don't understand federal supremacy. Alabama deserves all the ridicule they get.

YES! YES! Rally against the unjust activist judges! Show the supreme court the ridicule they'll receive if they rule in favor of SSM!!!

On what legal grounds specifically do you disagree with the federal district judge's decision?

On the grounds that the state need only subsidize man woman relationships, as they are most beneficial to the state’s interest in procreation. The courts are destroying the instution of marriage with this horrible activism.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Now they ordered a stop again. I guess they don't understand federal supremacy. Alabama deserves all the ridicule they get.

YES! YES! Rally against the unjust activist judges! Show the supreme court the ridicule they'll receive if they rule in favor of SSM!!!

On what legal grounds specifically do you disagree with the federal district judge's decision?

On the grounds that the state need only subsidize man woman relationships, as they are most beneficial to the state’s interest in procreation. The courts are destroying the instution of marriage with this horrible activism.

So you also are against subsidize marriage for people who are infertile? I hope so.

Addressed that in this post:

Wulfric, the Bible is against divorced people remarrying. Why don't you feel equally strongly that remarriage should be illegal? Do you see an inconsistency here?

In an ideal world, that would be banned. However, that's not realistic in my wildest dreams. Banning SSM potentially is, at least for now. And in any case, remarriage is ineffective on the strength of the institution of marriage - it doesn't harm the sacred 'one man/one woman bonded together, primarily to raise children' definition of marriage, SSM is destroying that sacred and essential definition as we speak.

Now, comes the obvious question of "Why allow infertiles to marry?". First off, being required to show an official regulating marriage a significant part of one's medical record is a serious infringement on one's privacy. And secondly, the man-woman definition is still kept intact and is not destroyed. Finally, this sort of prohibition is not needed for rational basis review. Rational basis allows for an imperfect fit - as long as it does not destroy the logic behind the policy, and infertile couples marrying does not destroy the logic of man-woman marriage, which is to encourage the kind of relationships that most help the state's interest in procreation, which is obviously man-woman marriage and not same-sex marriage.

I'm not in favor of prohibiting gay couples from living together or adopting. But the state should simply not be required to subsidize it because it is not the situation that best advances the state's interest in procreation.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

On the grounds that the state need only subsidize man woman relationships, as they are most beneficial to the state’s interest in procreation.

That's just a conclusory statement, not a counterargument to the judge's decision. What levels of judicial scrutiny are you arguing should be applied to (1) sexual orientation and (2) restrictions on the right to marry?

The courts are destroying the instution of marriage with this horrible activism.

Destroying? How so? Can you explain in detail what will happen when the institution of marriage is destroyed? Do you mean that people will stop getting married, or what? Has the institution of marriage been destroyed in Massachusetts yet?

Marriage will lose almost all its meaning. It will be seen as little more than a friendship. This is probably already the case in Massachusetts.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Man, not even Oklahoma took the news this badly. Alabama is going to eat itself.

Nor Kansas or Utah, and they certainly seemed a little unhinged about it. And I think gay marriage is still quite unpopular in WV, and WV actually got it when the Governor and Attorney General decided it was pointless to continue defending the ban.

Kansas did take the news pretty badly though. The Brownback administration refuses to provide state marriage benefits to any gay couples, and there are some counties in Huelskamp's district that aren't even issuing the licenses. Essentially, a rebellion against the decision, just by different means than in AL.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

CJK, Race is treated with strict scrutiny, sex is not.  And, it's different.  A black woman and a white woman are not different in any relevant way such as to justify segregated bathrooms.  Men and Women are different.  Everyone agrees on that.  You're wrong.  And, your analogy doesn't work.

Well, in 1954 "everybody agreed" blacks and whites were different. At a bear minimum blacks had statistically vastly higher rates of committing violent crime than whites (and still do).

But get this... I actually AGREE with you. Men and women are different. So why do you fail to apply that logic to same sex marriage?

This. Activist judges don't say that it's unjustified to discriminate between rich and poor on welfare, health care subsidies, and tax subsidies, or unjustified to discriminate between women and men on roles within the military (yes, this is done less now, but it's not gone by any means) and the right to use a certain bathroom, or unjustified to discriminate between old and young on all sorts of health and income related assistance, so the idea that marriage is this "special issue" in which we must widen it until no one can possibly complain about its scope being too small is really kind of silly.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

CJK, Race is treated with strict scrutiny, sex is not.  And, it's different.  A black woman and a white woman are not different in any relevant way such as to justify segregated bathrooms.  Men and Women are different.  Everyone agrees on that.  You're wrong.  And, your analogy doesn't work.

Well, in 1954 "everybody agreed" blacks and whites were different. At a bear minimum blacks had statistically vastly higher rates of committing violent crime than whites (and still do).

But get this... I actually AGREE with you. Men and women are different. So why do you fail to apply that logic to same sex marriage?

Because the right to marriage is a profoundly important right, and the choice of who you marry is intensely personal. For the government to deny any person that right is to mark them as inferior to other people. That far outweighs the fact that you might be made uncomfortable by gay marriage. Nothing bad will happen to you if the gay couple down the street gets married.

The right to choose where you go to the bathroom when not at home? Meh. Not as important.

Nothing bad will happen to you (in most cases) if you use an unsegregated bathroom....

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Note that opponents of gay marriage 99.99999* times out of 100 oppose homosexuality in general (because gays are icky).

_{with the remaining fraction of a percentage being statistical noise.}

Thank you for putting me in your special, little 0.1%.....

I don't think gays are icky, I'm simply told that assisting gay marriage isn't okay by my lord and savior. And god doesn't need a reason to oppose something.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

You just dismiss this all as absurd, but how do you really know? In the 1980s gay marriage was universally seen as an absurdity as well.

You have been dismissed as absurd.

Look, Nutmeg, CJK is talking in terms of unlikely possibilities, but I can assure you that the chance of things like banning polygamy, segregating bathrooms, and banning incest becoming illegal between now, and say, the year 2090, is significantly higher than "statistical noise" levels.

Keep in mind that up until Utah's ban lost in federal district court, it was considered pretty much unthinkable in ALL of society that SSM would come to atlas blue states anytime before the 2020's. (No one outside of Atlas seriously thought the Supreme Court would do it at the same time the Supreme Court struck down DOMA) The courts have pretty much been responding to majority opinion of the entire nation, not majority opinion of a given atlas blue state.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

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.

Everything that I have read suggests that even a perfectly functioning civil union would not satisfy them. The 2008 California marriage ruling explicitly said civil unions weren't good enough because they deny "dignity and respect" to homosexual couples, despite the fact this would change the very definition of what a marriage is.

The leftist idea is that by not calling it a marriage, you're implying a lower status, even if the rights are equal to full marriage. This 'don't imply a lower status' thing is also why many SSM supporters use the phrase 'marriage equality' rather than 'gay marriage'.