gay marriage roll call

[Emsworth]

No; rather, the government should completely end its involvement in marriage, and provide civil unions for everybody. Let marriage be defined by society, not by the government.

[Emsworth]

I would support abolishing the formal process by which a state recognizes marriage, and editing our laws to instead simply reflect relationships based on rational criteria, similar to the common law.

Hmm, that actually seems like a much more sensible view.

[Emsworth]

Not close enough attention.  The countries of Europe, (Sweden, Denmark, and Norway), that have legalized gay marriage/civil unions have the highest divorce rates and illegitimacy rates in the world (outside Iceland).  Before they legalized these changes, this was not true, and all three have seem a marked shift towards more divorces and more illegitimacy at a time when divorces and illegitimacy in other western countries have remained steady.

There is statistical evidence that gay marriage at the very least correlates with a collaps of traditional marriage.  Its not some religious hysteria.  Perhaps you simply don't value traditional marriage, but for those who do, the arguments against gay marriage have in fact not been universally refuted.

Sorry, but correlation does not imply causation. Your own marriage is not in any way being affected by some same-sex couple getting "married." After all, they would have been living together anyway, whether or not the government calls them "married." Why should the labeling of their partnership affect others in any way whatsoever? How would one same-sex getting married somehow affect another's decision to get a divorce? Unless I can see a coherent explanation of how labeling one partnership as "marriage" somehow affects another totally unrelated couple, I would not accept this argument.

Secondly, the concept of "illegitimacy" is not something that I think is particularly meaningful to talk about. Just because a child is "illegitimate," it does not follow that his parents will be bad at raising children. Similarly, just because a child is "legitimate," it does not follow that his parents will be particularly good at doing so either. There are, for example, several instances in which a legitimate father or mother abuses his or her own child, and several instances in which an illegitimate father or mother takes care of him very well. Thus, the statistic of the number of illegitimate children is not (IMO) an appropriate argument. Rather, it is the unquantifiable variable of how the children are actually brought up by their parents (whether they are legitimate or not) is much more significant. I don't think that there should be an automatic stigma associated with illegitimacy.

[Emsworth]

Since you've just said you don't think there's anything wrong with illegitimacy, I have to question whether being reasonable with you is a valid use of my time.

Adultery is repugnant to my own personal moral standards. However, my personal standards are not universal; I have no right to impose my view of morality on the whole of a society. Hence, I would question whether the number of "illegitimate" children should be a relevant statistic.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

There was a time when marriage was defined in some states as the union of a man and a woman of the same race. Should this definition never have been changed, because of the potential threat to how people would have behaved towards the institution?

[Emsworth]

I am very opposed to the breathtakingly arrogant attempt by the left wing to force their POV on everyone else via the court system. It smacks of the 'we know what's best for everyone so we're just going to MAKE you live by our rules'* attitude that is highly elitist and anti-democratic, leading to, well, damn near the entirety of the Warren and Burger Courts' decisions.

Well, if the plain text of a state Constitution actually does happen to require recognition of same-sex unions, then the courts are indeed the appropriate venue. (Whether the state Constitution actually does so or not is a different matter.)

[Emsworth]

Fair enough, but we both know that the underlying goal of the groups in Massachusetts was to then use the Full Faith and Credit Clause to force gay marriage upon the entire country...correct?

Yes, that is probably true, and in that sense I agree with you. The FFCC does nothing more than require each state to respect another state's public acts, etc., as evidence in courts without questioning them. It does not require a state to actually grant any benefits to a couple merely because some other state says that they are married.

[Emsworth]

What the constitution says is and always has been a matter of interpretation with regard to social issues.  For me it's really more a matter of popular soverignty; that is what I believe in for most social issues.

Well, Preston, the Constitution is the result of popular sovereignty. "We the People" have made it the supreme law of the land. Accordingly, if the Constitution does require or prohibit something (and I mean in reality, based on the plain text, not in the minds of judges like Ginsburg or Stevens), then I think that it should be respected just as much as a popular referendum, and even more.