Jun
26th
2013
DoMA Goes Down · 2:22pm Jun 26th, 2013
This is as political as I'll ever get here, I promise. I absolutely respect that people have differing opinions about whether gay marriage is good or bad, and I'd never call someone evil or wrong just for disagreeing with me. That said, I'm quite happy about this morning's Supreme Court decision. I feel it's the right thing to do and I'm looking forward to reading the full text of the decision. Not that it'll end the controversy, of course.
For those of you who couldn't care less about any of this, the first chapter of You Can Fight Fate is off to prereaders and should go up later this week or over the weekend.
Ahh, neat.
It all proceeds apace then.
We will assimilate you all into the Canadian hive. One overturned law at a time.
I never cared much for the gay rights thing. I always found it pointless to bicker about really.
Also, can't wait for the story!
~Skeeter The Lurker
1169631
Sadly, it's often a bit different.
Everyone (almost) loves lesbians.
But, no. I wouldn't exactly expect much outcry here. The sort of adults who love shows about colourful ponies, nominally made for girls, aren't terribly overlapping with the ones who hate alternate lifestyles.
1169631>>1169646
True, this isn't the most hostile place to come out (get it? GET IT?) as supporting gay rights, but I've seen some disagreement in assorted blogs and comments. People are allowed to have their own opinions on it, of course, but codifying that sort of thing into the law is another matter.
1169654 Being in an even smaller minority with sexuality I can't judge others anyway. That said since most of the laws in the early stages where made religiously this is a fairly radical change, and people hate change. You can only wait and see what happens.
It is unbelievably embarrassing that it took this long.
BABY STEPS
I was watching the SCOTUSblog live feed this morning when the decision came down. It was pretty fascinating to watch.
I don't really know what you're talking about.
I guess I'll just go on tumblr XD
1169815
The US Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act. The oversimplified version is that it means that gay marriage is legal now.
1169819
Oh,that case from forever ago...
I didn't realize that was still going on!
That's awesome!
1169797
Same here, as soon s I read the blog post, I searched it up. Never even heard it on the news or anything..
Finally, this problem is solved.
Now an even bigger problem is going to be all the bigoted protests...
Anyway, still looking forward the Fate!
1169645 How so? It's a basic human right that was denied to a moderate chunk of the population due to stuffy old men being stuffy old men.
1169872
Exactly. A non issue made into an issue.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Huh, I had forgotten all about that. Oh well now that we got that out of the way, let's focus on some really important issues. Like the up coming Zombie Apocalypse.
Technically speaking what they did did NOT legalize gay marriage.
What it DID do is remove federal legislation preventing the recognition of gay marriage by the federal government, and allowing states to ignore gay marriages conducted in other states.
It was obviously unconstitutional (a violation of both the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the 14th Amendment, and the 5th Amendment).
Note, however, that gay marriage is still banned in most of the US. However, without DOMA, all those states are now forced to recognize gay marriages conducted in other states, and it won't be long before they all legalize it.
It was a very important ruling, it is too bad it was 5-4. Roberts is a coward.
What's DoMA?
1169961
That's why I said the oversimplified version
Still a pretty big win.
1169991
The Defense of Marriage Act which forbid the recognition of same sex marriage at the federal level.
Hurray for that.
Also, Third instalment in the time loop series incoming?
1169961 They didn't touch the part of the DOMA that allows states to ignore same-sex mariages from other states, but it's a start, and I'm happy we've come this far.
1169899 Umm.... it's anything but a non-issue. The government is telling the public that all men are created equal, but the men who want to marry other men and the women who want to marry other women are a pretty little exception to the rule. If it were a non-issue, it wouldn't be in court right now. If it were a non-issue, every LGBT person would have the same civil rights as anyone else in the US. As it stands it is very much an issue, because it's being argued like none other right now. A fairly large minority group is having a hell of a time being treated like full citizens. And that's an issue.
1170094 He's saying it shouldn't even be an issue in the first place.
Good thing that silliness is over with.
1170162 Shouldn't be, but it is. I'm pretty damn angry that some of my legislative representatives are saying that me loving the people I love and wanting to marry them should be illegal because they think it's squicky. I know it really shouldn't be an issue and that is probably why I'm saying things in a less than helpful manner right now. Sorry.
My wishy-washy position: I'm not a homosexual. I'm not an anti-homosexual bigot. Since I belong to neither of those groups, I just want both of their rights protected.
1170094
You ain't getting me, bud, 1170162 got it right.
~Skeeter The Lurker
1169627 I don't care, as long as there's bacon.
1169654 Doesn't matter which side you're on, as far as I'm concerned, for one reason: Morality shouldn't be legislated, period, point-blank.
We kinda had a good look at that when a certain sect's right to live was declared illegal.
There's still some distance to go on this issue, obviously, but today's rulings were a welcome milestone.
1170211
If he did, it was purely by chance. Remember what you said, 1169645:
‘It,’ in this case, being ‘the gay rights thing.’ Apparently, arguing the case to end state‐sanction of religiously‐motivated bigotry is “pointless bickering.”
Your follow‐up comment, 1169899, to Pokonic is ever‐so‐slightly ambiguous, though your blunder in your initial comment seemingly removes ambiguity as to which side of the ‘gay rights thing’ you support. As such it’s not so much a case of someone failing to comprehend what you were saying as it is a case of someone failing to correctly guess what you meant to say.
1170375
While that much is true, there are still people who use the defence that the state should stay out of marriage because marriage is clearly a purely religious practice — originating with advent of the world’s currently extant religions — that would be unconstitutional to legislate upon due to separation of church and state.
Nevermind the fact that isn’t what separation of church and state means, or that civil unions are still unrecognised in various important matters whereas marriages are, let’s focus on their contention that marriage was part of their religion first. Marriage — a custom whose origins lie in codifying legal proceedings regarding property and inheritance thereof with couples — antedates written history… whereas all of the world’s extant religions postdate written history; marriage is something their religion co‐opted from government, not vice‐versa.
1170528 That hardly matters. We do not need government and morality - usually defined religiously - being intertwined. There are too many examples of how badly it can go, and I'm not going to mention the Holocaust again.
Too much awful stuff was done in the name of "the right" for me to ever trust anyone who shouts about failing and crumbling morality.
1170528
Alright fine. You want a clear answer?
I find the whole issue to be stupid.
I think they're making it into something bigger than it needs to be.
Who cares who marries who, male/male, female/female, male/female, if they're happy, let them.
Now. Lets move on.
~Skeeter The Lurker
1170556
You don’t seem to have grokked what I wrote (did you simply skip the second paragraph?), but I not only agreed with your point, I proceeded to reiterate, mock, and then demolish the only legs the opposing view point had left to stand upon.
I hate talking about politics, because I always seem to offend a large number of people.
Me and PC haven't met, and I don't intend to anywhere in the foreseeable future.
With that out of the way, here's my opinion.
I don't dislike gay/lesbians, I actually know a few and we get along nicely. What I do dislike is their lifestyle. That being said, I can't force someone to change for me, and I don't want to do that anyway. People should be left to make their own choices in life, and everything has consequences no matter how small.
I think marriage should be between a man, and woman. If I was the one making the decision, that's how it would be, but I'm not the one making the choice. I know people have different opinions, and I relish a good conversation.
The people I dislike most aren't the gays, or the lesbians, or even the transsexuals. No, the people I hate most are the propaganda spreaders, the liars, the people who spew things that they hear other people say, people who just blindly accept something as truth and don't do their own research.
I probably offended about eight or ten people with this rant, but I don't have a properly working "mental filter" This is just my opinion, and I'm willing to admit that I can be biased, and hateful sometimes.
If you get anything out of my giant rant, remember this. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Not everything can be boiled down to black and white. And most importantly, it's better to instruct, and help someone to become a better person, rather than shun, and mock.
P.S. I'm going to regret posting this in about ten minutes.
1170366
You're in luck.
Canadians are the only ones who love bacon more than Americans!
We even have our own inferior version. Which we almost never use! I'm not sure why that's a positive.
1170981
I'll just leave this here.
1171496
I don't like bacon.
Good job, you pointed out a partial contradiction of mine.
1171539
Truly, such things are what make my life worth living.
Presumably I mean the pointing out of contradictions. Not the bacon. But one can never tell.
1171557
I'm going to write a counter rant to my origional rant later.
1170981
I lied, I love talking about politics, I just don't like taking responsibility for what I say. If I thought out what's coming out of my mouth more often, I'd have less problems.
I'm being a hypocrite because I do the exact same thing sometimes. I don't do my own research, and I don't always think about how law would affect society. Thankfully I've started to improve in that area.
When it comes down to it, this whole issue should be left up to the states. Just because a lot of people think it's amoral, doesn't mean it should, or could be illegal.
Porn for instance, it's disgusting, but you can't ban it.
That's a misdirection of focus. I'm bringing in something that's not directly relevant to this discussion.
I should just think about what I say, before someone has to correct me.
This is my attempt to protect myself in case someone actually is offended.
1171557
Now that I actually read the bill.
I don't have any major problems with killing Act 3, and I can see why people wanted it gone.
But you have to consider it from a legal standpoint.
States have rights, and right now, these decisions are being made on a state by state basis. Why should one state have the power to force laws on another state? That's what Act 2 prevents.
although technically, killing the whole bill wouldn't change that.
Some say it's a battle of rights, but who's defining what your rights are?
For that matter where do rights come from?
There's the Constitution, but that doesn't cover everything.
Some issues were meant to be left to the states, which is where the Constitution leaves everything not specifically mentioned.
1172872
I can honestly say I have no idea how your States/Federal Government system works, in regards to law making.
And equally honestly, my interest in it hovers so slightly above zero that tunneling electron microscopes may be involved to find the distance.
But, you ask why some state should be able to force laws on other ones. But by the same merits, why should they be able to strip it away?
If you get legally married somewhere, why should you lose that union when you're passing through somewhere else in a car?
How would you react if your possibly entirely hypothetical husband/wife/whatever and you went to different country, and your marriage wasn't recognized. Say, some theoretical crappy theocracy that forbids renting hotel rooms to unmarried couples. Where you and your wife would be forced to stay in two different rooms, because you weren't married in that particular country? It would be absurd and utterly backwards.
Nothing in the Act forces states to legally marry anyone. It just says that when people get legally married one place, that legal status doesn't disperse into the ether as they go elsewhere, much like how you don't have to get a driver's license or a new ID card for every state you pass through when driving cross-country.
1174103
As far as I know, it's about taking up residence in the state that's the issue, not moving through it.
Here's an example. In US history, there was a case of a Black man(slave) who was brought into a northern state by his owners. That man ran away, claiming that since he was in a northern state where slavery was illegal, he was now free.
This went to the courts and he lost.
Of course you have to keep in mind that they were racists, but that's an example of how it works.
So no, they wouldn't necessarily lose their marital status.
1174545
Welp, if that's the way it works. I really do hope that this bill drastically flies in the face of it. Because that sounds awful and horrifically unjust.
I shall sit here in hopes that protections for the basic equality and freedoms of your average person get enforced despite any malingering on one particular group's part. So, here's hoping they go even further than this.
Because when you get down to it, slavery and our little gay marriage issue is really just a matter of scale. Slavery is just looking at someone and saying 'Your human rights don't mean squat. Because you're inherently less deserving of them than I am.' And denying someone's marriage is just saying 'Your marriage means squat. Because it's inherently less deserving than mine is.'. Less horrifying, maybe, but basically of the same backward mental framework.
I'm sure, at the time, that they had all sorts of reasons why the slave owners had some moral superiority. And why it was okay that they had rights and protections that some other group didn't. But, honestly, the current claims for why one group are allowed to marry and another aren't sounds a lot like that.
1174545>>1174640
It's worth noting that the Dred Scott decision predates the 14th Amendment, and hasn't been the law of the land for 145 years.
1174666
*wikis*
The Dred Scott file photo on wikipedia may, in fact, be the best thing ever.
When I die, I want a photo of myself like that available for posterity.
Bcause, I'm an idiot
I knew I shouldn't have said that, and I knew that decision was made when different policies were in effect, but I ignored that little voice in my head saying "That's stupid, shut up".
I'm concerned for the precedent it sets. A majority of people in California voted on Proposition 8, only for the Supreme Court to overturn the State's decision.
What's the point in voting on a piece of legislation if nine people in black robes can overrule the voice of the people?
This really didn't change anything substantial. The only state affected by this decision was California.
Twelve states currently allow same sex marriage, while thirty-eight do not. Those thirty-eight states are not obligated to recognize gay marriages from other states.
(It's a fun game for gay couples to jump back and forth between the New York and Pennsylvania state border shouting, "Now we're married!" "Now we're not!" "Now we're married!" "Now we're not!")
elcivics.com/state-lessons/images/state-map-pa.jpg
If you believe the recent polls, more than fifty percent of Americans are in favor of gay marriages, yet less than one fourth of states allow same-sex weddings.
1176301
Do recall, the Supreme Court has always had the power to overturn the people, just as they have the power to overturn the president. If the people of a state voted to legalize murder, rape or something else that goes against the constitution, the Supreme Court is the one that must overturn their decision. The purpose of the SC is not to follow the will of the people as is the president's job, it is their responsibility to uphold the constitution, which is not necessarily the president's job.
As for why they often end with 5-4 votes often split on party lines... shut up I am pretending to live in a perfect version of our system.