SCOTUS strikes down gay marriage bans, legalizing marriage equality nationwide

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A_Gorilla said:
1.) Openly gay.

2.) ThatAJokeSon.gif
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Yes I know, I was just clarifying... because even if you're not openly gay, you're still gay if you're gay. I think that makes sense as I wrote it out lol

CornBurrito said:
What?
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James Buchanan was very, very obviously gay.

A source of this interest has been Buchanan's close and intimate relationship with William Rufus King (who became Vice President under Franklin Pierce). The two men lived together in a Washington boardinghouse for 10 years from 1834 until King's departure for France in 1844. King referred to the relationship as a "communion",[72] and the two attended social functions together. Contemporaries also noted the closeness. Andrew Jackson called them "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy" (the former being a 19th-century euphemism for an effeminate man[74]), while Aaron V. Brown referred to King as Buchanan's "better half".[75] James W. Loewen described Buchanan and King as "siamese twins". In later years, Kat Thompson, the wife of a cabinet member, expressed her anxiety that "there was something unhealthy in the president's attitude".[72]

In May 1844, Buchanan wrote to Cornelia Roosevelt, "I am now 'solitary and alone', having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone, and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection."
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Link
 
hosannainexcelsis said:
Whether you define marriage as between a man and a woman or marriage as between any two consenting adults or marriage as anything else, arguing about it is always going to come down to an argument about definition. I don't think there's any way to avoid that. There's not really a way to define marriage in a way that's completely agnostic as to its makeup and then argue from there as to what marriage is. So yes, the question ultimately comes down to who defines marriage and what they define it as.
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You say "arguing". Simply asserting a definition is not arguing, because it does not contain an argument. An argument is a non-circular conclusion that follows from premises. You don't make an argument, you just say a thing. Also, while different people can define different things differently, all definitions are also not equal. Defining marriage to mean doorknob and doorknob to mean tanker truck and tanker truck to mean multi-platinum selling R&B artist Drake are definitions, but they are clearly nonsense definitions. Some definitions are more reasonable than others.

Allow me to offer my suggestion for squaring away the "definition" of marriage. When it comes time to actually discuss public policy, we generally come up with some sort of theory about costs and benefits to society, costs and benefits to individuals, and standards. I do not believe marriage has a "definition", I believe whatever it is, gaining access to it should have some set of requirements that are rationally connected to its benefits and costs, and take a form to serve important public and private roles. This is why we have changed the requirements in the past, in recognition that the previous set of requirements were unduly permissive or limiting or achieved undesireable social outcomes.

This is also incidentally why we can argue that an ideal marriage is loving without requiring love, or that marriage as an institution promotes procreation and stable child-rearing without requiring procreation and child-rearing. We can explore the incentive structure for social benefits and costs without arguing that each purported benefit is a requirement to marriage. That's my position. It has the benefit of not requiring me to exclude gay folks or having to be inconsistent when I allow shit straight marriages.

But setting aside my arguments that marriage doesn't have a "definition", let's evaluate your definition: The "complementarity" thing is nonsense because it's incoherent on any level that isn't simply "We need to exclude all gay couples and allow all straight couples". The idea that a guy and a girl are the only marriage possible because (among other reasons, since you also bizarrely mentioned "emotional" complimentarity, which is just baffling) according to you one has a penis and one has a vagina.

Okay, why are a penis and vagina considered complimentary? Because you can put one in the other? That's true of a bedpost and an eyesocket too, but we don't require those for a marriage. No, what you are expressing is their use for procreation. But the requirement cannot be procreation, because then you exclude barren and postmenopausal couples, and you don't opt in the procreating and non-married. So then you construct some sort of scaffolding about "intent"--you still do the act even if it doesn't amount to anything.

You might say, as the book "What is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense" does--side note: that title has two colons in it, so you know it's a serious academic work--that a gun without bullets is still a gun, but a gun without a hammer isn't a gun. Of course that's a nonsense analogy that deliberately reduces a complex social issue into a dumb linguistic game. But I just mention it because the last guy on GAF who made a weird argument about some sort of Platonic / Aristotelian ideal form and complimentary body parts recommended the book, so... Anyway, for the time being, sure, barren couples are allowed as long as they have sex or "intend" to procreate or whatever.

But there are no shortage of sexless marriages. Most because couples grow apart and being middle aged is tough, but some because they never intended for marriage to be a sexual thing to begin with... like, say, a green card marriage.

Okay, fine, so you retreat to "well, even if you don't want to have complimentary sex and even if you don't have complimentary sex, at least you theoretically could have complimentary sex".

But then clearly you think John Bobbitt can't get married against since his wife cut his willy off. Talk about victim blaming. Fine, the new position is simple. If someone, at birth, had the right genetics to generally give them a penis, then they ought to be able to marry, at any point in their life, someone who, at birth, generally had the right genetics to give them a vagina. I guess those angry LBGT activists at some point are going to bring up genetic conditions or whatever. it feels like we're being backed into a corner.

It feels like you'd be better off just saying "God made marriage between straight people; gay people are lesser and don't deserve it". It's a logically consistent definition and it certainly doesn't play coy. Of course, it's also pretty cruel.
 
It is really disappointing that the news is focusing on the escaped inmates and not this. On the other hand it's kind of a good thing that it's seen as so normal that it doesn't need to be talked about that much
 
metalslimer said:
It is really disappointing that the news is focusing on the escaped inmates and not this. On the other hand it's kind of a good thing that it's seen as so normal that it doesn't need to be talked about that much
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I think its partly because this has been ongoing process and just finally the last dominoes fell. It was already legal in many states and I think both sides have pretty much exhausted themselves arguing over it. Besides, only a few states were left.
 
FoneBone said:
I gather you're just posting this trollishly (bravo), but while this is hyperbolic she's raising very real and legitimate concerns.
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I mean, not really. You could make the same argument that once immigration reform passes, Hispanic voters will abandon the Democratic party.

But it would be a dumb argument, because Hispanic voters aren't single-issue voters, and neither are LGBT voters. That's what makes us a coalition! What makes you think that gay marriage was not only the only LGBT reform, but literally the only progressive reform significant numbers of gay people wanted? Because I really don't think that's the case.
 
FoneBone said:
I gather you're just posting this trollishly (bravo), but while this is hyperbolic she's raising very real and legitimate concerns.
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Nah, they've still got to get orientation discrimination protection in place, so they'll still keep rolling the ball forward for now. Once that's in place though, yeah I bet polyamorous, trans, and incestual peeps are on their own in the quest for rights and recognition. Maybe not entirely, but definitely not the primary issue any more.
 
pigeon said:
I mean, not really. You could make the same argument that once immigration reform passes, Hispanic voters will abandon the Democratic party.

But it would be a dumb argument, because Hispanic voters aren't single-issue voters, and neither are LGBT voters. That's what makes us a coalition! What makes you think that gay marriage was not only the only LGBT reform, but literally the only progressive reform significant numbers of gay people wanted? Because I really don't think that's the case.
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Speaking as someone who's been active in the gay rights movement for a good number of years... the donor base that got us here is heavily skewed towards affluent, white gay men. Those people don't necessarily oppose other LGBT issues (transgender rights, anti-discrimination legislation), but they are unlikely to feel personally affected by them, and that makes reform much harder to achieve.

One of my good friends wrote an op-ed (in the NY Times!) about this. it may have been posted, but the thread's too big to keep track. It's well worth the read.
But the graver danger comes not from the religious right, but from the risk that our newfound clout will blind some of us to the struggles of others. More gays are insiders than ever before; a gay man leads Apple, one of America’s most valuable corporations. A lesbian, Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, was elected to the Senate in 2012. Prominent Republicans, libertarians, financiers and chief executives have given their names, time and money to the cause of same-sex marriage.

But many more gay and transgender Americans are permanent outsiders. Some churches are doubling down on anti-gay rhetoric, which fuels family rejection and contributes to youth homelessness. Violence against transgender Americans is on the rise. Gay people in prison remain subject to rape and abuse. Rates of new H.I.V. infections are rising among young black men.

Just as feminists learned after the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, a social movement that throws most of its weight in pursuit of a single policy may falter and stagnate when it achieves a resounding victory.
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braves01 said:
Nah, they've still got to get orientation discrimination protection in place, so they'll still keep rolling the ball forward for now. Once that's in place though, yeah I bet polyamorous, trans, and incestual peeps are on their own in the quest for rights and recognition. Maybe not entirely, but definitely not the primary issue any more.
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Good fucking god.
 
Where's tumblr logo? We all know they are the dens of gay artworks, shipping, pics, porn, and some more. Don't be shy, tumblr! It's your time to shine.
 
pigeon said:
I mean, not really. You could make the same argument that once immigration reform passes, Hispanic voters will abandon the Democratic party.

But it would be a dumb argument, because Hispanic voters aren't single-issue voters, and neither are LGBT voters. That's what makes us a coalition! What makes you think that gay marriage was not only the only LGBT reform, but literally the only progressive reform significant numbers of gay people wanted? Because I really don't think that's the case.
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There is very clearly a tendency when progress is made for the pressure level to go down. For example, when the most obvious legal restrictions against people by gender and race were solved, the movements to address remaining deficiencies largely stalled out. This is generally accepted as true with respect to both the women's liberation movement and the civil rights movements--after the right to vote and late social acceptance of women working, subsequent issues lacked broader popular support and the most marginalized people stayed marginalized (the entire women of color third wave critique of second wave feminism is basically this kind of thing); after the end of miscegenation, forced school integration, the VRA, and housing laws, a broad tendency emerged to view racism as "solved" or "mostly gone" or "individual racists" rather than a systemic thing that required more work. Literally hundreds or thousands of books and accounts of these movements have come to these conclusions.

Certainly the language is hyperbolic and buzzkill-y and even seems a little selfish and callous to be dumping on a moment where a real victory was won, but the purported problem seems fairly reasonable. I suspect that for many Americans, the idea that gays occupy an unequal place in society ends with this issue, and subsequent issues like broader employment protections, for example, will have less gas in their engines. I think one of the reasons why trans activists over the last few years have increasingly tried to establish their voices as distinct from the general LBGT umbrella is in part the fear that this kind of scenario will occur.

I think we can best be served by listening to groups pleas for help rather than writing our own checklist of what people ought to expect and declaring the job done. If we approach issues with this kind of empathy, we help avoid this kind of problem.
 
Stumpokapow said:
There is very clearly a tendency when progress is made for the pressure level to go down. For example, when the most obvious legal restrictions against people by gender and race were solved, the movements to address remaining deficiencies largely stalled out. This is generally accepted as true with respect to both the women's liberation movement and the civil rights movements--after the right to vote and late social acceptance of women working, subsequent issues lacked broader popular support and the most marginalized people stayed marginalized (the entire women of color third wave critique of second wave feminism is basically this kind of thing); after the end of miscegenation, forced school integration, the VRA, and housing laws, a broad tendency emerged to view racism as "solved" or "mostly gone" or "individual racists" rather than a systemic thing that required more work. Literally hundreds or thousands of books and accounts of these movements have come to these conclusions.

Certainly the language is hyperbolic and buzzkill-y and even seems a little selfish and callous to be dumping on a moment where a real victory was won, but the purported problem seems fairly reasonable. I suspect that for many Americans, the idea that gays occupy an unequal place in society ends with this issue, and subsequent issues like broader employment protections, for example, will have less gas in their engines. I think one of the reasons why trans activists over the last few years have increasingly tried to establish their voices as distinct from the general LBGT umbrella is in part the fear that this kind of scenario will occur.

I think we can best be served by listening to groups pleas for help rather than writing our own checklist of what people ought to expect and declaring the job done. If we approach issues with this kind of empathy, we help avoid this kind of problem.
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Bless you.
 
Two friends of mine (both female) tried to get their marriage license today. Both Mississippi and Alabama denied them, even with that SCOTUS ruling.

Salty fucks down here in the south aren't going to let go so easily it seems.
 
The Sum of Zero said:
Two friends of mine (both female) tried to get their marriage license today. Both Mississippi and Alabama denied them, even with that SCOTUS ruling.

Salty fucks down here in the south aren't going to let go so easily it seems.
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Yup. Louisiana isn't issuing licenses at all.

We're not driving to another state and coming back; we want to get married at home here in New Orleans. I hope that the feds come down on our state officials like a shit-ton of bricks if this continues on for too long.

...

On a happier note, check-out this live feed of the White House:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/live/live-white-house

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I'm tearing-up all over again. What a remarkable day.
 
braves01 said:
Nah, they've still got to get orientation discrimination protection in place, so they'll still keep rolling the ball forward for now. Once that's in place though, yeah I bet polyamorous, trans, and incestual peeps are on their own in the quest for rights and recognition. Maybe not entirely, but definitely not the primary issue any more.
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Holy shiiiiiit
 
The Sum of Zero said:
Two friends of mine (both female) tried to get their marriage license today. Both Mississippi and Alabama denied them, even with that SCOTUS ruling.

Salty fucks down here in the south aren't going to let go so easily it seems.
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I've heard conflicting reports on the news as to if the ruling is in effect or not.

Some have said its immediate, others said up to two to three weeks.
 
Greg Abbot (TX Gov) telling county officials not to discriminate against gay couples, but don't punish anyone who does on the grounds of "religious liberty".

http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/The-Latest-US-Supreme-Court-clears-way-for-gay-6351232.php

Gov. Greg Abbott's office says the governor's directive that ordered state agencies not to reprimand those who deny benefits to gay couples does not condone discrimination.
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The hoops one jumps through to rationalize his or her backwards stance on this issue continue to amaze me.

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The governor's memo didn't stop county clerks in many parts of the state who had already begun issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.
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So yeah Abbot's "directive" is mostly useless at this point. Counties with the major metro cities in Texas are pretty liberal so I don't see this "directive" having much of an impact regarding issuing marriage licenses.
 
linkboy said:
I've heard conflicting reports on the news as to if the ruling is in effect or not.

Some have said its immediate, others said up to two to three weeks.
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Even if it the proper legal channels need to be dealt with, it's nothing more than stalling. This has one endgame, and it's not like a lot of this (except for Kansas) is actively trying to nullify the ruling.

"Herp derp we have to wait for it work through the proper legal channels!"

To do so is only stalling the inevitable. It actively harms gay couples. And, maybe more gravely, it's acting in violation of the United States Constitution. There's a reason almost every other state has allowed for gay couples to marry even if their governor is personally opposed.
 
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