Supreme Court Issues Ruling On Same Sex Marriage Legalizing Marriage Nat.

[Fuzzy Bear]

I recognize that SSM is "the law of the land" and that the likelihood of a Constitutional Amendment reversing this is pretty near nil at this point.

What I DO think ought to happen is that Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan ought to all be impeached and subjected to a Senate trial for exceeding their authority.  Marbury v. Madison states that it is the duty of the court to say what the law is.  The Court went far beyond that; they made law and created a right out of whole cloth.  And it is a right that promises to conflict with ENUMERATED Constitutional Rights.  Whether or not they are removed is immaterial; they ought to explain their reasoning to the American people as a whole, and they ought to be made to admit that they, indeed, legislated from the bench.  This, to me, would be a proper application of the principle of balance of power between our branches of government.

[Fuzzy Bear]

What's the difference between this decision and Loving v. Virginia in 1968? Was striking down bans on interracial marriage "judicial tyranny" and "legislating from the bench"?

This is a very valid question that goes to the heart of the current issue.

LOVING v. VIRGNIA did not RE-DEFINE marriage.  Until the last 15 years, marriage was defined by every society and every religious group as the union of a man and a woman.  The idea that marriage was a union between one man and one woman was AXIOMATIC.  No one quibbled with that.  And marriage between persons of different races, tribes, nations was nothing new either; it was axiomatically assumed to be part of marriage.  Virginia placed a racially-based restriction on who persons could marry (within the existing definition of marriage) that was a deprivation of liberty; indeed, they placed a criminal penalty on interracial marriage (arguably a cruel and unusual punishment). 

Friday's decision does much more than LOVING.  It re-defines marriage to be a union of two persons, regardless of gender.  Whether you believe in this or not, this is something that has not even been imagined until the last 15 or so years.  And it re-defines the purpose of marriage.  Whereas marriage was once for setting formal framework for the continuation of the biological family, now, marriage is defined as a means by which persons in a "loving" relationship can enjoy the same "dignity" as folks in a traditional marriage.  (This is the short form, but it does explain the basic differences.  I'm not a lawyer; this is a layman's understanding.)

I would assert that it is NOT the place of the SCOTUS to redefine something such as marriage that is CLEARLY and AXIOMATICALLY defined and has been for millennia.  When fashioning laws governing marriage, the intent of legislatures was clear.  Whether one supports redefining marriage is another issue, but redefinition of terms (something LOVING did not do) is something that ought to be left to the LEGISLATURES, and the remedy for legislative inaction is to vote in like-minded legislatures. 

A Court that can make "rights" out of whole cloth in a system of specifically enumerated rights is not my definition of "The Least Dangerous Branch" of government.  Indeed, it's the same thing they did in CITIZENS UNITED; they redefined corporations as people.  (And Mr. Justice Kennedy was the key player in that decision as well.)  This is the issue; Friday's decision was SUBSTANTIALLY different from LOVING v. VIRGINIA.  And while I'm not normally a "judicial tyranny" guy, I do agree that if the SCOTUS is free, in deciding cases, to substitute its judgment for the judgments of legislatures, and not merely "say what the law is", then we have arrived at a point in history where the people don't really rule.  At least not if the SCOTUS decides that they shouldn't rule on a certain issue.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Actually lots of Polynesian societies include a "third gender" of effeminate males who marry other men. I wonder why you never hear the "bbbbut EVERY SOCIETY has always said marriage is man-woman!!!" crowd address that fact?

That really is a stretch.

[Fuzzy Bear]

This issue is not settled. 4-3 Traditional marriage wins because the advocates of marriage supremacy (gay marriage) have no honor in recusing over conflict of interest.

It's fun to pretend!

I believe that the issue of SSM is now settled.  There will be no Constitutional Amendment,  and I doubt that there will be a reversal, even if a Republican President takes office and appoints a conservative to the bench.  By that time, there will be tens of thousands of married same-sex couples, possibly more.  Obergefell will be a precedential case, and regardless of whether or not a new Justice believes the decision to be bad law, the effect of a reversal on both the public and the Court will be considered, discussed, and the Justices will probably choose to adhere to precedent.  

I do believe that impeachment on the grounds of abuse of power is possible, and I would recommend that the impeachment process go forth, even though removal certainly will not occur.  It is the only way to bring any kind of accountability to the Court's Justices.  

[Fuzzy Bear]

Actually lots of Polynesian societies include a "third gender" of effeminate males who marry other men. I wonder why you never hear the "bbbbut EVERY SOCIETY has always said marriage is man-woman!!!" crowd address that fact?

That really is a stretch.

What? Are you seriously arguing that the fa'afafine somehow aren't a direct, indisputable counterexample to typical right-wing argument of "marriage was defined by every society and every religious group as the union of a man and a woman"

Colleges and universities do not accept Wikipedia as a source for scholarly writing because of its inaccuracies.

Let's say I give you this one example, out of all the societies and civilizations that existed.  If the shoe were on the other foot; if such a group of people were the ONLY group you knew of in the annals of civilization that practiced only man-woman monogamous marriage, would you consider that enough to ban SSM?  This example is so idiosyncratic . . . I mean, I'm at a loss for words if one actually believes that this one counterexample offsets the assertion that marriage being between a man and a woman is how every society has defined marriage.  OK, every society but one, until 15 years ago.  I suspect that this counterexample was known to the plaintiffs who did not point it out because it would appear to support the opposite point of view.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Actually lots of Polynesian societies include a "third gender" of effeminate males who marry other men. I wonder why you never hear the "bbbbut EVERY SOCIETY has always said marriage is man-woman!!!" crowd address that fact?

That really is a stretch.

What? Are you seriously arguing that the fa'afafine somehow aren't a direct, indisputable counterexample to typical right-wing argument of "marriage was defined by every society and every religious group as the union of a man and a woman"

Colleges and universities do not accept Wikipedia as a source for scholarly writing because of its inaccuracies.

Let's say I give you this one example, out of all the societies and civilizations that existed.  If the shoe were on the other foot; if such a group of people were the ONLY group you knew of in the annals of civilization that practiced only man-woman monogamous marriage, would you consider that enough to ban SSM?  This example is so idiosyncratic . . . I mean, I'm at a loss for words if one actually believes that this one counterexample offsets the assertion that marriage being between a man and a woman is how every society has defined marriage.  OK, every society but one, until 15 years ago.  I suspect that this counterexample was known to the plaintiffs who did not point it out because it would appear to support the opposite point of view.

Do you not know what the word "every" means? You said every society believes in man-woman only marriage. A single counterexample is enough to disprove, and I gave you several,  since this is common across traditional Poynesian societies. (Not sure where your 15 year stat comes from. Guessing you meant 1500?)

You alleged 100% by saying every. Don't say "every" if you don't want to be disproven so easily.

OK, you win.

[Fuzzy Bear]

I'm assuming that if we look hard enough, we'll find another off-the-grid civilization numbering 100 somewhere on God's Green Earth to where we can elevate such a society to "mainstream" status and really get away from the point that marriage, across all of major western civilization, eastern civilization, African civilization, and even primarily in Polynesian civilization has been AXIOMATICALLY defined as a man and a woman.  That way, we can pretend that SSM has been a cultural norm throughout time, and not something that has been clamored for only in the last 15 years or so.  I'll even give you the last 20 years, which is when Hawaii and Vermont first proposed Civil Unions.  Frankly, the SSM crowd on this point are, in spirit, as intellectually dishonest as the Climate Deniers and Obama Birthers, but they hope to gain acceptance for their view by repeating it over and over.  I try hard here not to impugn other posters for their arguments, but the intellectual dishonesty of people who try to assert that SSM has been a norm throughout the years is something that truly leaves me at a loss for words.