California gets gay marriage and very hot weather

[Middle-aged Europe]

OMG, gay marriage is being legalized in California. Run! Get to the chopper!!!

[dead0man]

"Christian" opposition to gay marriage is on the same level of dumbness as the Xenu story of Scientology.

No it's not.  Xenu is all kinds of stupid.  Opposing gay marriage is dumb in the same way forced public schooling is.  You can make halfassed arguments for both, but at the end of the day the people arguing for either one just come across looking stupid and irrational to everybody that hasn't had that particular flavor of koolaid.

[Josh/Devilman88]

As go Cal so go the rest of the nation. 

[dead0man]

As go Cal so go the rest of the nation. 

Sometimes, not always.  (thank God)

[Franzl]

I love activist judges!

Oh, I see. Judges that issue rulings with which you don't agree are activists. Good to know for future reference.

[Josh/Devilman88]

I love activist judges!

I believe 6 of the 7 judges were republican or appointed by republican governor. 

[Josh/Devilman88]

This is how it will play out, They said last night on the news that anyone in the Untied States can go to Cal and get married. So a gay couple from Ohio can go to Cal get married and then turn around and take it to their state court trying to get them to up-hold the stauts of the marrage.

[ChrisFromNJ]

I love activist judges!

YEAH!

DAMN THOSE REPUBLICAN ACTIVIST JUDGES!

[The Mikado]

This is how it will play out, They said last night on the news that anyone in the Untied States can go to Cal and get married. So a gay couple from Ohio can go to Cal get married and then turn around and take it to their state court trying to get them to up-hold the stauts of the marrage.

The Defense of Marriage Act (from our dear friends in the Clinton Administration) states that states don't have to recognize other states' gay marriages.

If DOMA didn't exist, this decision would be irrelevant, because as long as Massachusetts had marriage equality, people from other states could just go to Boston for the wedding and have it recognized back home.

[Josh/Devilman88]

This is how it will play out, They said last night on the news that anyone in the Untied States can go to Cal and get married. So a gay couple from Ohio can go to Cal get married and then turn around and take it to their state court trying to get them to up-hold the stauts of the marrage.

The Defense of Marriage Act (from our dear friends in the Clinton Administration) states that states don't have to recognize other states' gay marriages.

If DOMA didn't exist, this decision would be irrelevant, because as long as Massachusetts had marriage equality, people from other states could just go to Boston for the wedding and have it recognized back home.

You have to live in MA to get a gay marriage, but I was saying people will go back to their home state taking it to the courts. I believe some state will follow CA and let gay marriages happen.

[Brittain33]

By the way, the entire issue was about the label. Domestic partners in California have all of the rights and duties that married couples do, both as to the rights and duties. It that sense, it was quite odd. It was all about the deprivation of a word.

I used to feel that way, but there have been such persistent and irritating problems with the implementation of civil unions as equivalent to marriage in New Jersey and Connecticut that they functionally weren't. And given the comparative scarcity of same-sex couples in the total population, the average individual working in his or her job isn't going to have many opportunities to learn that civil unions are the same as marriage without getting it wrong many times, inadvertently or deliberately.

[Brittain33]

You have to live in MA to get a gay marriage, but I was saying people will go back to their home state taking it to the courts. I believe some state will follow CA and let gay marriages happen.

The law isn't observed in Massachusetts and lots of couples did get married here and took their marriages back to other states. Most places don't recognize them, New York as of this year being a huge and prominent exception.

The reason no one has taken a Massachusetts marriage to Alabama or Indiana and tried to start an anti-DOMA test case is because the gay rights organizations recognize this would be a strategic mistake at this moment in history and only trigger a constitutional amendment if successful. Better to let several states have same-sex marriage for a while before moving forward.

[Emsworth]

There is some very open-ended language in the (might I say rather poorly drafted) California Constitution that could, I suppose, be interpreted to require legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Thus, I won't comment on the correctness of the actual holding, implausible though it may be.

It is interesting to note, however, that the California Supreme Court expressly declared that its opinion would not compel legal recognition of incestuous or polygamous relationships because "our nation’s culture has considered [such] relationships inimical to the mutually supportive and healthy family relationships." To be fair, however, the nation's culture has historically believed--and for that matter, a large segment of the nation's culture today still believes--that same-sex relationships are harmful to families and to society. Whether those beliefs are right or wrong is quite immaterial. The point is that the very same logic that allows the California Supreme Court to retain the ban on polygamy seems to force the Court to retain the ban on same-sex marriage as well.

Come to think of it, let us disregard constitutions and laws for a moment. I would be interested to hear a single robust philosophical argument (as opposed to a merely practical one like "there are a lot of same-sex couples, and it would be more efficient to allow them to have visitation rights, etc.") that anyone can make for allowing same-sex marriage that is not also an argument for allowing polygamous marriage.

[7,052,770]

"Christian" opposition to gay marriage is on the same level of dumbness as the Xenu story of Scientology.

No it's not.  Xenu is all kinds of stupid.  Opposing gay marriage is dumb in the same way forced public schooling is.  You can make halfassed arguments for both, but at the end of the day the people arguing for either one just come across looking stupid and irrational to everybody that hasn't had that particular flavor of koolaid.

The only arguments against gay marriage boil down to bigotry.  As least the Xenu story isn't inherently bigoted.

[Alcon]

Come to think of it, let us disregard constitutions and laws for a moment. I would be interested to hear a single robust philosophical argument (as opposed to a merely practical one like "there are a lot of same-sex couples, and it would be more efficient to allow them to have visitation rights, etc.") that anyone can make for allowing same-sex marriage that is not also an argument for allowing polygamous marriage.

One that isn't entirely theological, axiomatic or tradition-based?  Can you give one for heterosexual marriage that isn't, and isn't rather tortured?

[Brittain33]

Come to think of it, let us disregard constitutions and laws for a moment. I would be interested to hear a single robust philosophical argument (as opposed to a merely practical one like "there are a lot of same-sex couples, and it would be more efficient to allow them to have visitation rights, etc.") that anyone can make for allowing same-sex marriage that is not also an argument for allowing polygamous marriage.

Sure, but you won't like it, because it relies on fuzzy cultural markers instead of absolutes.

The California Supreme Court recognized a legal space for same-sex couples because there are hundreds of thousands of such couples across the country, setting up households, many of us raising children, and interacting with the institutions of government in a normalizing way.

There are lots of individuals who don't like gays and try not to think about our relationships, but it has become a matter of legal stature not to harass or outlaw same-sex couples setting up households and a question of professionalism to at least defer to our relationships in many forms where it is not a legal question, certainly in California. There are hundreds of thousands of us with mortgages, children, health care arrangements, and other totems of couplehood that are legally recognized and bind us publicly and privately as couples in dedicated, loving relationships. 

You see, this issue is one for dorm-room philosophizing (or better, nursing-home philosophizing) only if same-sex couples are an abstraction or a rarity, like an animal with two heads. For many Americans, we are. Others deal with us on a daily basis, but some of them lack imagination or are just mean when it comes to viewing us as equals. (Ha, won't that statement get a response.) However, in the aggregate, we aren't, which is why decades after gay couples started coming out of the closet and adopting conservative forms of living, we are being recognized.

Not only does my partner have legal rights stemming from our relationship, even pre-marriage, but he has a social identity as my partner that we would never have if we were in an incestuous or polygamous relationship. He comes to social events with me at work. Our families introduce us to others. We go to charity benefits together. I've got a picture up at work. Not all gay relationships can do this, but no incestuous relationship can.

If polygamous families, let alone incestous families, ever achieved the numbers, diversity, and public visibility in their relationships that same-sex couples had, they might be in a place where they could make that argument. Suffice to say, though, just as the Supreme Court could uphold sodomy laws in 1986, they could argue there is no compelling reason to recognize relationships that do not exist in the eyes of the vast majority of Americans and which have no tolerated legal standing or place in our society. As opposed to same-sex couples, who may not be in leadership positions in Southern Baptist Churches or leading national tickets, but who have achieved a degree of visibility and integration that people deny only from a position of ignorance or limited experience.

[Emsworth]

One that isn't entirely theological, axiomatic or tradition-based?  Can you give one for heterosexual marriage that isn't, and isn't rather tortured?

I did not mean to exclude arguments based on tradition. A very strong philosophical argument could be made that in a democracy, the government is bound to respect the traditions and values of the society from which it derives its power. And as it so happens, the traditions of the American society, as well as the current values held by a majority of the people, oppose the notion that two members of the same sex can be "married." This argument, although it is not one that I personally accept, is at the very least reasonable, but I cannot really conceive of an equally reasonable philosophical argument for allowing same-sex marriage while prohibiting other unconventional marital relationships that people want to have.

Not only does my partner have legal rights stemming from our relationship, even pre-marriage, but he has a social identity as my partner that we would never have if we were in an incestuous or polygamous relationship.

So you recognize that social identity, or to be more precise, the extent to which society is prepared to recognize a relationship, is relevant? If so, then I don't see how you're getting anywhere. Sure, society is more prepared to recognize same-sex couples than it is to recognize incestuous ones, and this might justify giving same-sex couples a higher level of government sanction. But society is even more prepared to recognize heterosexual couples. Why, then, does your argument not allow society to give marriage rights only to heterosexual couples, and create domestic partnerships for homosexual ones?

[Alcon]

I did not mean to exclude arguments based on tradition. A very strong philosophical argument could be made that in a democracy, the government is bound to respect the traditions and values of the society from which it derives its power. And as it so happens, the traditions of the American society, as well as the current values held by a majority of the people, oppose the notion that two members of the same sex can be "married." This argument, although it is not one that I personally accept, is at the very least reasonable, but I cannot really conceive of an equally reasonable philosophical argument for allowing same-sex marriage while prohibiting other unconventional marital relationships that people want to have.

If there is a tradition that heterosexual marriage is an axiom in this nation, there is an even stronger tradition that 1:1 marriage is.  Unless you reject one argument solely on the basis that it is traditional, there's no requirement to simultaneously reject the other, so it stands on its own.

[Sam Spade]

Emsworth!

[Emsworth]

If there is a tradition that heterosexual marriage is an axiom in this nation, there is an even stronger tradition that 1:1 marriage is.

Sure, there is a hierarchy of traditions. Nevertheless, one cannot really deny that the tradition of heterosexual marriage is an extremely strong one. But for judges in two states, it would still prevail today across the entire nation. So one can still make a plausible philosophical argument that supports conventional marriage, but that does not support any other type of marriage. On the other hand, I am still unable to find an even remotely convincing philosophical argument that would reject the majority's definition of marriage, compel same-sex marriage, but not compel polygamous marriage. After all, the polyamorous are probably just as incapable of controlling their sexual orientation as the homosexual.

[Brittain33]

Why, then, does your argument not allow society to give marriage rights only to heterosexual couples, and create domestic partnerships for homosexual ones?

I suppose it could, but in my understanding, America aspires to not work that way and has done so since the Declaration of Independence. We often fall short of that ideal, but we don't seek to do so with pride.

[Sasquatch]

Long over due IMO.

[Alcon]

Sure, there is a hierarchy of traditions. Nevertheless, one cannot really deny that the tradition of heterosexual marriage is an extremely strong one. But for judges in two states, it would still prevail today across the entire nation. So one can still make a plausible philosophical argument that supports conventional marriage, but that does not support any other type of marriage. On the other hand, I am still unable to find an even remotely convincing philosophical argument that would reject the majority's definition of marriage, compel same-sex marriage, but not compel polygamous marriage. After all, the polyamorous are probably just as incapable of controlling their sexual orientation as the homosexual.

There is nothing philosophically unsound with "everyone should have the right to marry the one person they love."  Yes, it is somewhat arbitrary.  I'd argue that I can't find a convincing argument for it being more arbitrary than "everyone should have the right to marry the one person they love, as long as they are of the opposite sex."

You don't have to argue that somewhat arbitrary "lines" are unacceptable to advocate for pushing the line in a certain direction (if you consider something "pushing" because it goes against tradition).  So, yes, there id as philosophically salient of an argument for gay marriage/against polygamous marriage.  It's philosophically arbitrary but, accepting that one man/one woman is too, I don't see any demand to argue against arbitrary philosophy when arguing for gay marriage.

And I'd argue that there are more practical repercussions, bureaucratic and otherwise, for polygamous marriage.  Honestly I believe it should all be a matter of contract.  The government should not be in the business of bestowing emotional value upon contracts.

[ottermax]

Yes! Next comes Washington, New Jersey, and more!

[Verily]

You have to live in MA to get a gay marriage, but I was saying people will go back to their home state taking it to the courts. I believe some state will follow CA and let gay marriages happen.

The law isn't observed in Massachusetts and lots of couples did get married here and took their marriages back to other states. Most places don't recognize them, New York as of this year being a huge and prominent exception.

The reason no one has taken a Massachusetts marriage to Alabama or Indiana and tried to start an anti-DOMA test case is because the gay rights organizations recognize this would be a strategic mistake at this moment in history and only trigger a constitutional amendment if successful. Better to let several states have same-sex marriage for a while before moving forward.

Rhode Island and New Mexico also recognize Massachusetts (and foreign) same-sex marriages.