Posted on 10/20/2016 1:38:27 PM PDT by Trump20162020
I've seen this squeal in several publications.
I just want to scream every time.
Uh, maybe do you think that 1.6 billion people OF ANY GD belief system shouldn't move to the US?
I'd think that even a pea-brain liberal wouldn't like an extra 1.6 billion people here.
If you take anything far enough out of reality/context, it can be made to seem evil - HuffPo has managed to stay in the bottom muck.
You certainly accept a greatly altered concept of the middle class, when you add the bureaucrats to it. I do not even think that Mrs. Clinton would make that leap—although she basically confuses the concept in a different direction to include people at the bottom, who are dependent upon Government.
Here's what I mean by that:
If you eliminate the whole idea of "gay marriage" from the issue and look at the Federal court case in which "gay marriage" effectively became the law of the land, you'll find that the plaintiffs in that case were 100% correct in their legal arguments. In effect, they argued that the Federal tax code discriminated against them because it gave special treatment to married couples and they were unable to be "married" under the Federal definition of the law.
I would have no problem with that argument. As I said before, the logic here is hard to refute. The problem I have is that the lawsuit was aimed at the wrong target. Instead of targeting the Defense of Marriage Act (the Federal statute that codified "marriage" and was unconstitutional anyway for other reasons), this injustice under Federal law should have been rectified by eliminating those provisions in the Federal tax code that dealt with married couples filing taxes.
As a result of the court's decision in the "gay marriage" case, we now have a situation where two people who have no real interest in each other beyond friendship or a business relationship can get "married" and enjoy a whole boatload of financial benefits under Federal law. This doesn't diminish the institution of marriage as much as it makes a mockery of Federal law.
I added the bureaucrats to it because those are among the ever-shrinking number of people who fit any economic/financial definition of a “middle class.”
Which is not, in itself, unconstitutional. The government treats any number of relationships differently for tax purposes, and even applies different tax rates for identical individuals with different incomes. So a disparity between individuals in one relationship and individuals in another is hardly without precedent.
The problem was that there was no standard definition of "marriage." If that estate has two dimensions -- one sacred, one secular -- then the government's aegis is limited by the Constitution to the purely secular one. To the degree any two people -- or more, for that matter -- choose to enter into a business arrangement, the government should treat them equally, including for tax purposes. But that entirely neglects the sacred dimension of the institution called "marriage," which is "an institution ordained by God ..." By insisting that queers and dykes could be married, the government in effect forced the secular dimension to be the ONLY dimension to the estate, which hollowed it out and further reduced the role of religion in shaping our society.
Nowhere does the Constitution permit THAT! And as we've seen, "marriage equality" has morphed into this po-mo juggernaut that crushes religious rights -- explicit in the Constitution, not established by mere activist precedent. It has also led to the Wonderland idiocy that is transgenderism, with all its reality-defying distortions and absurdities.
THAT is where the federal government overstepped its authority. I would hazard the argument that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction in the definition of marriage, and that it can neither forbid nor confirm the "legality" of a union between two people of the same sex. It can only rule on secular matters, not religious ones. Asking for a decision on homo marriage is like asking the Court to rule on transubstantiation or Original Sin.
That's exactly right. And that's exactly why "gay marriage" was inevitable -- because you can't have a Federal tax code that is based on personal or business arrangements, and then leave the legal definitions of those arrangements to the states. This is why the tax code has provisions that explicitly ignore state laws in some areas. A perfect case in point is a limited-liability company (LLC) or a limited partnership (LP) that might be set up under the laws of a particular state. The IRS only recognized three types of business arrangements for tax purposes: a sole proprietorship, a partnership, or a corporation. Any LLC or LP set up under state law has to operate under one of these standards, regardless of what the state laws might allow.
I would hazard the argument that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction in the definition of marriage, and that it can neither forbid nor confirm the "legality" of a union between two people of the same sex. It can only rule on secular matters, not religious ones. Asking for a decision on homo marriage is like asking the Court to rule on transubstantiation or Original Sin.
I agree with you, but now step back and reconsider what this means. If the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction in the definition of marriage, then no government should, either. This world existed for thousands of years without marriage licenses or anything of that sort. It's very telling that if you eliminate extra-constitutional monstrosities like the Federal tax code and Social Security, there would never be any reason for the government to be involved in defining "marriage" at all.
To me, the middle class gained in prosperity, through much of our history—until we were cursed with the Clinton/Bush/Obama scourge;—but it is not just an economic concept. It is basically those above subsistence farming & unskilled or very little skilled urbanites, but still below the great Plantation owners in the old South, or the Cabots & Lodges of Massachusetts, or the Rosevelts & Vanderbilts in New York; but those who have developed skills, at least some accumulated assets, who save & accumulate wealth at a lower level than the foregoing—but maintain an independence from Government, as they climb the ladder of success. (I know that is a bit garbled but I got interrupted.)
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