Way to go, SCOTUS!

Parent Cafe
401

@lakewashington:
The answer to your question is that people have mysteriously placed the first amendment concerning religious beliefs as above all other rights (some of the idiots espousing this say “the first amendment is first because the founders wanted it to be above all others”). There is a local 'defender of the faith" here in NYC (Catholic), whose response to gays being able to marry is that it is bigotry towards Catholics to allow same sex marriage, that it violates their religious beliefs (I guess he hasn’t figured out that the Catholic Church is one of many faith groups, that many faith groups including roughly 60% of Catholics don’t agree with him on same sex marriage, and that the dark ages ended 500 years ago), and he is basically arguing that allowing same sex marriage violates the first amendment (not of course seeing the obvious irony, that banning same sex marriage violates the religious beliefs of those who don’t have a problem with same sex marriage, it is amazing no one tried to argue that in overturning the bans, since banning same sex marriage is based entirely on religious belief).

They don’t see it as Bigotry the way that Bull Connor and racists don’t, the racists claimed segregation was illegal because blacks were inferior, they posed a threat to society if allowed equal access, the religious like your friend throw out all kinds of justifications, that gay couples can’t have kids and marriage is about kids, that allowing same sex marriage destroys marriage, that kids raised by gay parents end up screwed up, and while racists were ‘wrong’ in their beliefs, their beliefs are justified by ‘the facts’ (racists back then gave ‘facts’, too, that they believed, that blacks were less intelligent, that black men wanted to take their women, that black kids would hurt white kids intelligence if they had to go to school together). They basically use religious belief as a justification for their bigotry, so therefore it is okay (in their eyes)

What is really funny is when the opponents are faced with conservative religious folk who are just as convinced that being gay is a sin, that same sex marriage violates the beliefs of their faith,but those people believe that allowing legal same sex marriage is a civil rights issue, that everyone is a sinner and who is to separate sins (like, for example, that we allow divorced people to marry, though divorce is forbidden by Jesus) for legal recognition, and the opponents tell their equally conservative brethren “you aren’t really Christian”.

402

QUOTE=musicprnt.

[/QUOTE]

The first amendment was originally the third amendment (and 2-10 were originally 4-12 in a package of twelve), but the original first two amendments were not ratified at the time. The original second amendment was later ratified as the twenty seventh amendment 202 years after Congress submitted it to the states for ratification.

403

@ucb-
Yep, exactly. The 27th was definitely the longest one it took to pass, and it shows the problem with trying to take anything out of literal reading and such. Actually, it is kind of like the 10 commandments, the order that shows up these days was not the original one, the commandment that is about idolatrous images was originally number 2 I believe:).

Human beings have tremendous capability to rationalize anything, and especially when not wanting to appear to be what they despise, being bigoted, they will rationalize it away with all kinds of things. When you use personal belief to hurt other people, there is no other word for it but that, bigotry.

404

We can (finally) now retire the word ‘partner’, which was always confusing. Business partner, law partner or life partner?

Now for everyone a person’s ‘other’ is either a girlfriend, boyfriend or spouse.

405

@LakeWashington It’s interesting about Jindal. He’s a highly educated and intelligent policy-wonk type guy, and the gay-bashing, education-defunding, creationist/abstinence-teaching persona just doesn’t sit comfortably on him IMO. I’d bet he doesn’t actually believe most of what he says. But unfortunately, saying those things is absolutely required of anyone who wants to get elected to high office in most of those states. And yes, these guys absolutely do see the resentment they foment. That’s exactly the point. The good of the country be damned.

Oh and there’s a reason you can’t see the difference between this crowd and the segregationists of the 50s/60s: There isn’t one.

406

We were on a road trip when the decision was handed down. I read the news to my husband and sons (12 and 14) and had goosebumps as I did so. Told my kids it was a historic day and wasn’t it great their kids would never know life any other way. We were all so happy about the decision!

Response from youngest: “Heck, it’s about time already!”

407

@musicprnt - I disagree with you here:

The argument is based entirely on religious belief, but IMO in many cases that’s camouflage for the real reason, which is that a lot of people think gay anything is just icky. But of course, there’s no constitutional protection against being made to feel icky, so that can’t exactly be used as a legal argument.

As a friend of mine said, paraphrasing: Marriage is not about sex; it’s about love and commitment. Other peoples’ sex lives – whether gay or straight, married or unmarried – are private and not your business. This friend, BTW, is a devout Christian.

408

"It’s interesting about Jindal. He’s a highly educated and intelligent policy-wonk type guy, and the gay-bashing, education-defunding, creationist/abstinence-teaching persona just doesn’t sit comfortably on him IMO. I’d bet he doesn’t actually believe most of what he says. "

I absolutely agree with you on Jindal.

409

The Ten Commandments’ numbering and organization differences based on religious traditions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments#Traditions_for_numbering

410

I thought this was kind of cute. Out of the mouths of babes. The last kid is hilarious.

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/kids-talk-about-same-sex-marriage-on-jimmy-kimmel-see-what-they-say-2015306

411

@lasma:
I can’t argue that, but the arguments they were using in Scotus in terms of defending ‘traditional marriage’ all tie back to religious belief, whether that is a cover for personal bigotry doesn’t matter, the legal argument was based that people of religious faith of a certain type don’t like it, the proponents of proposition 8 when it got to SCOTUS said so outright, that they could not make an argument that was based in anything but religious belief.

@ucbalumnus:

Exactly, which is why reading scripture in a fundamentalist way fails as well, especially since even the Jewish texts don’t agree on the ordering:). To use that in a man made artifact like the bill of rights is even more problematic, order in religion could mean something, order in a legal document like the constitution doesn’t mean all that much, the 10th amendment could be first or last, still has the same weight, since they all are rights, and no one right operates in isolation from or superior to the others.

412

“I thought this was kind of cute. Out of the mouths of babes. The last kid is hilarious.”

Kids say the darndest things.

413

This is an interesting interpretation of the conservative position about marriage. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/gay-marriage-scotus-ross-douthat-oppression-vs-love

“The tradition that is disappearing is the belief that marriage is a duty, especially for women.” and “Reading Douthat, you do get a better idea of why conservatives see same-sex marriage as a threat to traditional marriage. It’s not because straight people won’t want to get married if gays are doing it, too. It’s because it redefines marriage as an institution of love instead of oppression.”

414

If that;s in response to this, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-gay-marriage-and-straight-liberation.html?_r=0, then this link bears reading. Not an RD fan, btw.

415

@fireandrain:
I don’t doubt that, along with the beliefs that marriage is about making babies (but not having sex as a bond between the partners) and other things. The thing is, that cat went out of the bag on marriage being oppression a long time ago, what the ‘traditional marriage’ types of course deliberately overlook is that marriage itself has never been a constant. The marriage that the Jews practiced when the Hebrew scripture was written was very, very different than what we have today, in Europe despite the myth, most people did not bother to formally get married until almost the 16th century (it is where common law marriage came from), they got together and had kids. Before that point, only nobility and such bothered, generally to be able to hold on to titles and property after someone died, and it wasn’t until the common people actually had something, whether it be land or money, that marriage became common, for the legal rights. So right off the bat, thousands of years of traditional marriage is dubious. Then, too, marriage itself changed when women started getting rights outside marriage, and more importantly instead of a woman being in effect an asset used to gain the family status and such, when women and men started marrying for love, the entire dynamic changed from the arranged marriages. As women gained power in our society, and for example now most work outside the home, it changed things again, as did education, from being a marriage where the man took care of the woman, to it being more equal.

The problem is many of that type of conservative live in a time bubble, often remembering for example the ‘idyllic’ 1950’s (probably through the lens of the often mythologized families you saw on tv) ie through the eyes of when they were kids, and are promoting an institution that in many ways never really existed, or only existed as such for a relatively short period of time.

I am sure, as happened with anti same sex marriage forces in Europe, that they will show that after same sex marriage was passed, that the rate of marriage went down (but of course, leaving out the fact that the marriage rate had been dropping well before SSM, and that the rate of decline after SSM was pretty much the same as before).

Marriage has been changing for a long time, but there are those who want to pretend ‘the good old days’ never ended.

416

The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court is saying that no probate judge in the state has to issue licenses for 25 days, since parties have that many days to contest the ruling.

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/06/roy_moore_gay_marriage.html#incart_most-read_news_article

And this is even more disturbing. One of Moore’s lawyers, the guy who directs the AOC–the Administrative Office of the Courts, which runs the courts in Alabama–had things like this to say to the governor, who said that he would follow the law of the land.

Here’s the link to the whole story and letter
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/06/roy_moores_lawyer_to_gov_bentl.html#incart_story_package

417

^ OMG. These people have gone off the deep end.

418

And they are worried about Sharia law? Oh my.

419

Jindal is a Brown U grad, which has a reputation for being very, very liberal.

420

415 Wow....

ETA – Maybe it’ll be in Alabama that we see the Federal Marshals escorting the gay couple in to get a license. Don’t these people ever get tired of being known for having to be forced by Marshals to obey the law?