I enjoy Benja fires; why oh why were you not here when I was drunk the other night.

Judges cannot enforce democracy. They can rule on the constitutionality of written laws (and that is not even their primary function). What you have in these situations is a lazy and apathetic legislature that instead of codifying the contract between two individuals they borrowed the religious sacrament of marriage for convenience's sake many years ago. Now that the structure of that sacrament no longer seems to apply to the wishes of a minority of voters, the legislators rather than actually putting into law the structure of a civil marriage merely kick the can down the road and do nothing in an effort to keep themselves in office and not get booted out of office by the majority. That minority then tries to seek social justice from the judicial branch. The judicial branch however has no law on the books from which to judge such matters. To stay in the good graces of the minority they offer token decisions that perhaps in some cases is their attempt to get the legislature to do something but as often as not are merely personal judgments based upon no settled law whatsoever. Having not read every state constitution, I cannot say this with complete certainty, but constitutions generally do not even mention marriage. Amending them to provide for same-sex marriage is not at issue. However, as a reaction to the judicial branch's ruling by fiat you now have several state constitutions either working toward or already have amendments that outright ban same-sex marriage.

So you see, it is a cascade of errors that bring us to this point. Legislators should not assume conventions in one decade will prevail. Legislators should not borrow concepts from other institutions and not rigorously define them for their intended purposes. Judges should not rule on cases where there are no laws written.

I have said this often, but I will reiterate once more. Marriage has nothing to do with government, it is a religious sacrament. The fact that lazy and apathetic politicians use it as a shortcut to allow various civil benefits (and detriments) does not change reality. There needs to be a distinction between the religious marriage and the civil marriage and that civil marriage (union) needs to be codified into law. People that only want the civil are welcome to seek it out via the state government, and those that want the religious are welcome to seek it out via their local rabbi, pastor, imam, or witch. The vast majority of people will want both and should have access to both in a two-step process that are separate and not contingent upon one another at all. If I want things like the ability to share insurance and have hospital visitation rights between myself and another person, I go get a civil marriage. If I want that union to be honored by my church, I go get a religious marriage. If I want both, then I go get both. If some churches don't want to honor same-sex marriages, or human-animal marriages, then so be it. None of the civil protections (or hindrances) will be effected by convictions of either the religious institution itself or its members as the civil marriage has been codified into law.

 

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To much work, just absolve all marriages.

 

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Just going to start off by saying that I agree that marriage should be dissolved and everyone given civil unions, since that's the primary purpose people want it in law. Where would the gold diggers in the world be if the law didn't support them taking half your crap?

I do not call it judges ruling by fiat or by the bench, whichever phrase you prefer. The legislature has the power to pass the law. If someone challenges that law, judges have to make sure it abides state and federal constitutions. Some states, Florida for instance, have it specifically written into their state constitution that marriage is defined as between a man and a woman, while other states do not.

Now that a few states have passed laws allowing same-sex unions, I expect a challenge to the defense of marriage act. I'm too lazy to look up the exact wording of the law, but there's some federal constitutional law that says states have to accept certain licenses from other states. That's why you don't have to apply for a new marriage license if you move to a new state. It's also why you can legally drive through different states without getting a new license.

That law combined with equal protection, should spell the end of the defense of marriage act. I'm actually surprised it has held up this long.

 

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Well, I disagree. State Judiciaries(and also on the federal level) have the responsibility to determine when laws violate the Constitution (State or Federal, where applicable), thus setting precedent.


And assuming that we could "marry" across species is foolish and just impossibly unlikely...don't even go there or one could suspect that you follow Rush or Bill O'Reilly.


Honestly, as a Catholic, imho we should remove DIVORCE completely (except for rape and incest, or violence). That should help people take Marriage (civil or religious) more seriously!


Nighy-night and happy Memorial Day Weekend!


Edit: and I thought we were off gay marriage and onto waterboarding already?!?

 

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Water boarding is awesome. I can do that one trick where you spin around by passing the rope behind your back. It took me a while to learn it, but I finally got it down.

 

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Or make them never want to marry in the first place. Why does this even need to be a law? As a Catholic, you can get legally divorced from your spouse, but you are still married to your spouse until you receive an annulment from the Vatican. A truly religious person would put God's law above man's anyway.

Passing laws based on religious views is great as long as it's your religion that's in power. When the Taliban get elected and pass laws requiring you to wear burkas, you've only got yourself to blame for setting the precedent that it's okay to pass religious based laws.

 

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Benja, as you say the primary purpose that people are citing for unfairness can be resolved with a civil marriage concept (or civil union as it were). So we are definitely in agreement on that point. You seem to disagree about the courts' involvement in such cases based upon the assumption that there existed laws that described marriage, but that was not the case prior to the courts' involvement in the '80's and '90's. The laws that you are thinking of were merely a backlash by legislators wanting to capitalize on a majority-voter push (or in the case of California by public referendum). Once the judiciary stuck its nose into the fray (whether because of personal opinion or as an effort to force the legislatures to act) the unraveling of the separation of powers began on this front (there are plenty of other fronts on various other subjects).

The Defense of Marriage Act is short-sighted. It should fail as it was merely a token voter-appeasement and has very little basis in law. Article 4 section 1 of the Constitution is not ambiguous (in my opinion none of the Constitution is). It is for this reason more than any other that the distinction between the religious sacrament and the civil marriage must be made if the rule of law is to be upheld. So often though, it is too hard for politicians to do the right thing and so much easier to just violate the laws of the land for votes.

Gofor, you wish to be as short-sighted as the legislators that got us into this mess. I have no interest in defining marriage for American citizens 100 years ago, today, or 100 years from now. If you think that no one in this country would ever espouse the view that the civil protections offered by marriage should be in place for their pet then you are not thinking clearly. I have proposed a solution that allows for revision by the government as needed without the entanglements of religious definition (mine or anyone else's). Though I could hazard a guess, I do not know Limbaugh's or O'Reilly's opinion on the matter. Nor do I know how they would feel about my solution as I have not spoken to either of them about this. I would ask you to describe their point of view so that we could contrast it with mine, but I doubt that you could articulate anything passed what you are spoon-fed by MSNBC or glean from snippets created by Media Matters.

As to torture, it's bad mmkay. What defines torture varies and is far too subjective between both generations and cultures to be a usable global metric. I'm all for a 'take no prisoners' solution in all future military conflicts if that will resolve the problem. And then of course as a Conservative I would not engage any any military conflicts without a justifiable cause that could support the 'take no prisoners' mindset and was actually declared as a war by Congress.

 

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So what it boils down to is you don't like the roll the judicial branch plays in our system of checks and balances, or the demon more commonly referred to as "legislating from the bench"...then you assert that I am "spoon fed" my opinion by a cable news channel.


2 Talking Points in the same arguement?

 

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@Marriage
I still don't get what your complaint is about the judges. It seems like they are serving their purpose. If there wasn't anything in the law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, then it's the judicial branch's duty to say you can't stop two people of the same sex from getting married. The legislature can rectify this oversight by passing a new law and/or voters can ammend their constitutions.

@Torture
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/22/mancow-waterboarded-video_n_206906.html
Mancow Waterboarded (VIDEO): Conservative Radio Host Say It's Torture

I give him props for going through with it and even more for going back on his statement afterwards.

I don't feel bad that our enemies were tortured. However, I don't want to belong to a nation that tortures people. I don't want to pay people to torture other people through my taxes. It's a philosophical issue for me. I want to believe we're the "good guys" and good guys don't torture people.

I don't want to sacrifice personal freedom for security. I don't want to punish 99.9999% of the populace to protect them from 0.0001% of the populace.

 

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Gofor, I think that you are confused. I happen to like the federal separation of powers immensely as without it this republic would fail. What I do not like is when one branch of the federal government goes further than their Constitutional mandate. However, in this discussion we are talking about the individual states which are not Constitutionally required to adopt that same model of separate of powers but they have done so for 200 years if not by decree then by tradition. I do and will continue to complain about any state that does not maintain that traditional balance of power in their state government if for no other reason than it causes chaos. When I say that the California judiciary created the confusion in their government because they ruled by fiat rather than render a judgment based upon the rule of law in that state I mean exactly that. I am saying very explicitly that they did not retain their traditional role in the separation of powers, but rather attempted to right a wrong without regard to their place as a judicial branch of a state government that traditionally interprets written law in individual cases between citizens or between the citizen and the state. They may have done so with good intentions, but that is irrelevant if you care about separation of powers.

It is you who does not like the traditional role of the state judicial branches. It is you who began accusations of borrowing thoughts from media personalities, and clearly you still think that is true when it is not. Maybe I am in err with thinking that you are merely confused; it would seem that there is more to it than just that.

 

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