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

[afleitch]

I have a question for the gay marriage boosters on this forum.

If you think that the 14th amendment forbids consideration of gender differences when issuing marriage licenses, why do you think segregating bathroom facilities is perfectly lawful?

Because a crapper is a crapper. As long as everyone is catered for it doesn't matter whether you have unisex facilities or stalls. You don't even have to provide urinals.

[afleitch]

However, the bathroom analogy isn't a good one as we don't have a situation where everyone isn't provided access to a bathroom for their gender.  (Unless you're going to argue we have more than two genders by using a definition not based on physical attributes.)

Everybody has access to a public bathroom so long as they choose the one that matches their sex. In a like manner everybody has access to marriage so long as they choose an opposite sex partner.

Yes of course marriage is not the same thing as going to the bathroom but the legal principals are the same. Also, unwanted interest situations already exist in bathrooms as gay men and straight men are required to use the same facilities.

Terrible analogy. We all need to take a leak. Marriage is a government recognised union of two people who are not related. That union has traditionally been, in good faith between a man and a woman who love each other with a sexual intimacy (scam marriages aside). That union may, or may not result in children. As to what sex, if any happens within that marriage is also of no business to the state. Even gay marriage opponents are generally not interested in policing that area. The reason why state sanctioned marriage has been between a man and a women was because of general ignorance or dismissal of the fact that two men or two women may love each other with that same level of sexual intimacy. And that love is innate within them. Whether or not they raise children or what intimacy they have should be of no business to the state for the same reason the state should not have an interest in prohibiting a post menopausal woman from marrying.

[afleitch]

Just out of interest CJK, and moving this away from your more scatological concerns, would you agree with your own position expressed earlier, that by extension it is possible to uphold the ban on interracial marriage as that didn’t stop blacks from marrying, as long as they married other blacks.

The fact that blacks could actually love a white person (and vice versa) and there wasn’t anything suspect about it, there wasn’t anything unnatural about it, there wasn’t a threat to the family, or to marriage or society or the church of whatever didn’t count for anything when that law was still in place. And the only reason it didn’t count for anything in law, was that the state arbitrarily decided that black people marrying white people was a threat.

[afleitch]

Just out of interest CJK, and moving this away from your more scatological concerns, would you agree with your own position expressed earlier, that by extension it is possible to uphold the ban on interracial marriage as that didn’t stop blacks from marrying, as long as they married other blacks.

The fact that blacks could actually love a white person (and vice versa) and there wasn’t anything suspect about it, there wasn’t anything unnatural about it, there wasn’t a threat to the family, or to marriage or society or the church of whatever didn’t count for anything when that law was still in place. And the only reason it didn’t count for anything in law, was that the state arbitrarily decided that black people marrying white people was a threat.

It was in my opinion completely constitutional, whether or not it was morally right. The court should not be reinterpreting the constitution no matter how noble minded. Even if the court had done nothing the racial restrictions would have eventually have been abolished. It would have been better to do that than traumatize both races. But I don't think you can equate racial restrictions on marriage, which was a pure American invention with the fundamental gender restrictions on marriage.

Well that's me out of here.

[afleitch]

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?

Personally I'm glad it's maintained, so I can nip into the disabled toilet should I ever be in a restaurant with you given your obsession over people's toilet habits.