[wagglebee]

Because these rights are not only due to individuals as a matter of justice but also desired by individuals as important goods, however, it has always been easy for people to confuse fundamental rights with intensely desired goods—and thus wrongly to invest the latter with the moral urgency and primacy of the former. This is a serious mistake, and it is one that clearly has been made in the case of the “fundamental right to marry.”

Perfectly stated!

[wagglebee]

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[ctdonath2]

Freedom of association.

A core problem in this discussion is complete lack of WHY the state has any interest whatsoever in certifying marriage. There is a reason, that reason inherently limits who can, and the certification guarantees certain benefits intended to balance & facilitate the responsibilities & consequences of that reason. The current issue is due to people utterly incapable (based on literally two bits of information) of invoking that reason, but demanding the government-provided benefits without any possibility whatsoever of producing that which the government is taking an interest in and establishing the sociopolitical institution to facilitate.

[Tax-chick]

I want to stay alive, and I also want a million dollars. These are both legitimate desires, but only the former involves a fundamental right.

Even with something as basic as "life," we have to be careful using "rights" language, because every asserted right is the imposition of a duty on others. A "fundamental right to stay alive" would impose upon the rest of the world a duty to keep you alive. This is impossible, to start with.

In addition, the duty of others to safeguard your life is actually quite limited. They have a duty not to kill you except in immediate self defense. They have a duty to exercise care in activities that might harm you (or others), such as driving, shooting, or setting off fireworks.

However, they do not have a duty to take you for regular medical checkups. They do not have a duty to stop you from skateboarding, skydiving, or motorcycle-riding. They do not have a duty to force you to eat a healthy diet and get sensible exercise. And so on.

[Phlap]

Before the Catholic Church created the sacrament of Marriage, men owned women, just as they owned cattle. Well at least real men did. I’m not sure how the lavender crowd acted back then. lol

[kingu]

The state’s role is in recognizing marriage, not in creating it. That was where the problem began, and extended further when the state started ending marriages as well.

Again, Mitt Romney did the US a terrible disservice when he refused to reply to the state supreme court that ‘fine, then all marriages are unconstitutional.’

The state’s interest is in recording, not in making. And just like any government produced product, it is now full of defects and hardly worth the paper it is printed on.

[Arthur McGowan]

Perfectly stated—provided you believe that natural rights are granted to humans by the Supreme Court, or John Locke, or Martin Luther King, Jr.

Every man has the natural right to marry some woman, and every woman has the natural right to marry some man. The right to marry some particular person is contingent on that person’s consent. The right to marry is called a “right” because no one other than the parties to the marriage has the authority to dictate that it may not take place.

[Romulus]

The author errs both in asserting there is no human right to marriage and in asserting there’s such a thing as self-ownership.