Senate Homosexuality: the Thread

It's like saying you support "full desegregation" but want Asian Americans to have their own schools and prevent them from going to white/black schools.

 

Well, no it isn't. First, there are a completely different set of legal questions between the two. Two, denying homosexuals the same rights in a marriage license because of their sexual orientation discriminates against them by an identifiable class.

There is no class of citizens hurt by outlawing polygamy or incest and it is an entire different set of legal questions as well.

 

I fail to see how choosing to want to marry someone with the same biological sex as you makes you anymore of an identifiable class than choosing to want to marry someone related to you or multiple people. I believe that sexual orientation is not a choice. Likewise, I don't believe it's a choice to find yourself attracted to someone you're related to or multiple people. However, choosing to date or have sex with whomever is a choice.

My ancestors' belief in the religious necessity of the principle of plural marriage resulted in them being driven from their homes, and later invaded by the federal government in the pretty crappy land where they settled to evade persecution in the first place. Polygamists have suffered much the same as homosexuals in this country. It makes me mad that you are dismissing my concerns out of hand when there are in fact people who do want the right to marry but are forbidden because society finds their sexual relationship taboo.

 

anakinfan nailed is, as far as polygamy goes. I personally support it, but there are all sorts of legalities to consider... things that she mentioned--which spouse gets power of attorney, life insurance, pensions, etc? Who makes medical decisions, and what happens if not all the spouses are in agreement? How would any of that get decided? Same sex marriage wouldn't have nearly as many legal complications.

 

I, too, agree. Equality should be limited to only the things that are easiest to do and most popular.

 

I never said equality should be limited... actually, I said that I support it. I'm just asking questions.

Do you have any answers to the questions, or are you going to hurl another one lined sarcastic remark at me, mr senate mod?

 

First of all, that wasn't aimed at you, that was aimed at several other posts. If we are still picking and choosing which people's marriages we are willing to allow, and which we aren't, when we are always dealing with consenting adults, then it absolutely is NOT marriage equality, no matter how much people try to act like it is. And that has been, repeatedly, what has gone on in this debate on a large scale. So when someone says that justices support full marriage equality, then that should actually mean it.

Making marriage closer to equal by helping one group and excluding others isn't full equality, and the absurdity of that was pointed out already by OZK's desegregation example. And I think it would be ridiculous to use the measure of equality as what is easiest to do, as though if it takes work, then it's not worth doing. Pragmatically, there have been plenty of things done in history to create a more equal society (not fully equal, but to move towards more equal) that have been extremely difficult. And so conflating what is right with what is easy to do doesn't fit the past and it's a bad idea going into the future.

As for the details of how to fit polygamy in the current structure, I leave that to it's own discussion specifically as it muddies the discussion for expanding marriage to same-sex couples, but the word usage, I've found too often in the past, reveals the high horse people want to get on of claiming to be for full equality while at the same time wanting to reinforce their prejudices. Example, people that find it offensive that Scalia has, in the past, compared same-sex marriage to polygamy and incest. Because, of course, they support same-sex marriage as a case of 'how dare society tell people they can't be with the person they love' but they aren't going to miss the chance to judge and condemn another situation of consenting adults making their own choices about their own private lives. For a population that is, imo, disturbingly large, as soon as things are changed up, suddenly this isn't about letting people make their own choices anymore.

That said, it should be noted, and it was brought up earlier, that there is one supreme court justice who did seem to see this point , as Sotomayor did ask the following question: “Mr. Olson, the bottom line that you're being asked -- and -- and it is one that I'm interested in the answer: If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what state restrictions could ever exist? Meaning, what state restrictions with respect to the number of people, with respect to – that could get married -- the incest laws, the mother and child, assuming that they are the age -- I can -- I can accept that the state has probably an overbearing interest on -- on protecting a child until they're of age to marry, but what's left?”
It's an exceptionally key question, and it's blown off not just as irrelevant, but as offensive. And that is not a mindset that is remotely conducive to the concept of 'full equality' that people routinely use as they try to brand themselves as crusaders for total freedom when so many of them aren't. Which is a common tactic in politics, but it's something that deserves to get called out every time they try it. Just like how so many of the people that are fighting same-sex marriages being recognized are the same darn people that try to claim the mantle of small government, when that really means they want the government to let them have THEIR things, but at the same time want the government to tell everyone else how to live their lives.

So, basically what I said in my previous post.

 

As I said earlier in the thread...

The questions anakinfan and I asked are valid, though. If we're going to discuss polygamy in this thread, and clearly we are, I don't think valid questions about the legal aspects of it (spousal support, medical decisions, life insurance, etc) would muddle anything.

 

Homosexuals are a legally protected and identified class. "People who love their relatives" are not.

It's not that I oppose polygamy and incest (I think incest should be legal as I could care less and it's not my business. I feel the same about polygamy, but the legal complications are the only reason I would only ever say no).

I will compliment you for going beyond the "well what if I want to marry my dog" argument that many Republicans still try to bring up.

And, as I said before, they're two completely separate legal questions. Yes, as Kagan brought up, the question then extends to "who can we bar from marriage" but they are addressing separate legal questions.

Not that it would matter anyway, as rights are rights, but is there even a pressing movement for incest or polygamy? I hear it raised hypothetically by the Right, but never any actual legal cases brought up.

 

I'm aware you said that earlier. Which is, again, why the post you're taking offense to was not a response to your post, it was a response to previous posts that argued that full marriage equality really just meant same-sex marriage was allowed.

They are valid for a discussion of how to implement polygamy into the legal code, sure, but it drifts from relevance to the main topic of same-sex marriage, imo, in a way that simply discussing what the phrase 'full marriage equality' should entail. And it's certainly a discussion that I've been open to in the past in discussions more aimed at that (example, threads that have discussed polygamy). It's just tangential here, in the same sense that in a discussion on the 'war on terror' and the Patriot Act, one could, in discussing broad themes, discuss similarities to actions Lincoln carried out in Maryland that were clearly violations of ensured rights in the name of winning the war, but if the discussion became discussing the Civil War's causes and how the war was fought militarily, that would be drifting too far from the topic.

If you have interest in conducting a separate discussion for polygamy elsewhere, that's something I'm all for, but in a thread designed to discuss homosexuality, that is at the moment discussing the supreme court hearings on same-sex marriage, then to me, a discussion on the nitty-gritty of implementation of polygamy in the legal system seems too removed from the theme of the thread.

 

That's what I've always hated about that canard, as well as any context of marrying children (which is actually legal in more states than one would think). I've never understood why the concept of consenting adults is something people so thoroughly choose to miss in these discussions, and I do wish that when those attacks came up more often, the response was this more often. It shifts it out of the argument of morality, which is the only argument that opponents of same-sex marriage really can try to have, and shifts it entirely to who can, or can not, enter into a contract. At which point, I'd be highly curious to see how they would contort themselves to figure out a way to argue against that.

At the federal level, to the best of my knowledge, no they're not. It's a group recognized for hate crime legislation, but not a protected class, although there's been several attempts to change that lately (and I suspect that will happen within a decade).

 

I have nothing against polygamy. My only opposition based on it is the legal complications it would create (can they all share health insurance? what happens to Social Security benefits? who gets the estate? who gets the kids? what's the tax structure? who makes the decisions if one becomes incapacitated?) not that their relationship is any more illegitimate than another. I'd be very interested in discussing it, but I think it derails a thread about homosexuality completely off course.

My other queasiness with it rests on the whole Mormon-orthodox-cult towns where women are forced to marry their husbands out of will and are subject to them. My uncle just married a woman who escaped from polygamy when she was 21. To make a long story short, she was forced to marry him, was one of 8 wives, he raped her until she had 9 kids, and she was completely subject to him. She escaped, went to a women's shelter, and (I don't know the full details) but was only able to get gov't benefits because she wasn't married and only kept the kids that were legally hers.

So I just become annoyed when people try and equate the two and I think it should have it's own thread. I don't disagree with it because I believe it immoral, which is often the only reason opponents of gay marriage cite (and was actually the basis for DOMA) but because of the endless legal complications that opening a legal contract to an unlimited amount of people that essentially unites your property, assets, and government benefits.

 

If to the government marriage was ONLY about who could sign a contract, then all forms of marriage would have been legal since the invention of writing.

This not being the case, we must assume that marriage is (or has been) something more than a legal contract.

 

I suppose I could requote my post and put the phrase "if to the government" in bold underlined letters, but I feel like that would be obnoxious.

 

Or you know capable of giving consent that we humans can understand. Which, last I checked, gays and lesbians were completely capable of giving.

 

Has anyone brought up the difference between "marriage" and "holy matrimony" yet?

 

Gay marriage has been prohibited in every civilization, not just those that follow the Judeo-Christian tradition...

Let's all think about why that is

 

I haven't said anything that remotely endorses institutionalized homophobia, but thanks for slandering me...

 

Well just about every civilization denied equality to women, and that didn't stop us from deciding we wanted to change that.

 

Sometimes Wikipedia is a wonderful thing in counteracting sweeping generalizations.

Lesson: Don't say something about 'every' anything statement unless you've looked it up yourself to be absolutely positive.