Posted on 08/19/2010 6:18:04 AM PDT by throwback
Together with my good friend and occasional courtroom adversary David Boies, I am attempting to persuade a federal court to invalidate California's Proposition 8—the voter-approved measure that overturned California's constitutional right to marry a person of the same sex.
My involvement in this case has generated a certain degree of consternation among conservatives. How could a politically active, lifelong Republican, a veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, challenge the "traditional" definition of marriage and press for an "activist" interpretation of the Constitution to create another "new" constitutional right?
My answer to this seeming conundrum rests on a lifetime of exposure to persons of different backgrounds, histories, viewpoints, and intrinsic characteristics, and on my rejection of what I see as superficially appealing but ultimately false perceptions about our Constitution and its protection of equality and fundamental rights.
Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one's own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Government needs to get out of marriage and leave it to those in churches who understand it.
makes you wonder the kind of marriage he had with his late wife who died on 9/11
He seems to be weak minded.
None of which has anything specifically to do with marriage. You can make a will and leave your stuff to your spouse, or somebody else, or your cat, or whatever. The government's only role is to register the documentation, adjudicate disputes (Is it genuine? What does this clause mean exactly?), and enforce the results.
The term “graphic” does pale in comparison to the pictures.
it is all part and parcel of marriage benefits society not the individual.
the homo-con is any “love” is marriagable.
There is no love test in marriage.
There is only the primary function of marriage offspring.
Society rewards the institution not the individual.
Your argument is a pathetic “no its not” which is contradicted by a few millenia of practical experience.
We have no need for the empty future you advocate.
ding, ding, ding...'potato vs poatoe' for human beings to try to 'define' an institution created to serve HIM...
what God has joined, let no man separate thingy applies...
be on the lookout for trolls folks.
It doesn't effect inheritance. I'm not married. I can leave my estate to my girlfriend if I want to. I can leave it to anybody. All it takes is a will. Intestate inheritance is archaic and rarely used anymore.
We used to have a non-government system. it was full of fraud and abandonment. Who needs divorce and childsupport payments, just leave and abandon and you have no fear of consequence.
Abandonment occurs today (not to mention murder to avoid payments). So do bitter divorces that some people never recover from. Some people don't get legally married because of the divorce system.
I'm Catholic. When I get married, it'll be in the church, in front of God and family. That's something I'll be taking very seriously. Government out of marriage is the goal of the left and a specific goal of the homosexuals.
Homos wants government in marriage. It's about governmental sanction and more importantly, money. They want their gay lovers to get all the benefits, including social security, etc.
now just make the same argument without religion.
I desire to marry my pet porcupine, but even my closest friends warn me it is a prickly situation....
Olson’s a lawyer and has litigated many cases so he must know that the opposition is hardly ‘knee-jerk’ (his words). But use of that term is common when people are attempting to dismiss the mountains of evidence that damn their own case.
In the eyes of the law god has nothing to do with marriage.
by you out of government red hering:
brothers and sisters can marry
blood relatives can marry
children are all defacto wards are the state.
thanks for buy the ABA homo-con.
Sowell calls such tactics “arguing without arguments”.
It’s much easier to dismiss your opponent or his argument
than to actually address it and refute it.
The government should get out of the marriage business, its true. Marriage should be returned to the religious rite or sacrament it was meant to be (apart from a financial transaction which it became). Domestic Partnership Contracts between two consenting adults should be available from the state to any one or all domestic union contracts discontinued and alternative waivers and releases built to accomodate health decisions and inheritence.
As for the turncoat line, that was pretty lame. Ted Olson made a good and solid argument which you reduced to more knee jerk dismissal. I liked Olson when he represented President Bush in 2000. I like him more for standing up for his convictions, representing people who need fair and honest representation and for speaking the truth as he sees it. In the end, Olson will be remembered as perhaps one of the strongest attorneys this nation has ever produced. He ought to get a statue one day for the work he has done (or at least a law school somewhere, named after him).
“what God has joined, let no man separate thingy applies... “
Always.
Yep let’s march out the red herrings of polygamy and pedophilia. Wouldn’t be an intelligent discussion without doing that now would it?
Yep let’s march out the red herrings of polygamy and pedophilia. Wouldn’t be an intelligent discussion without doing that now would it?
Yep let’s march out the red herrings of polygamy and pedophilia. Wouldn’t be an intelligent discussion without doing that now would it?
“Government out of marriage is the goal of the left and a specific goal of the homosexuals”
The homosexualists certainly love that gov’t is involved, otherwise there would be no weapon or punishment to use against regular folks who know that “gay marriage” is an impossibility. The homosexualists love that the state has conditioned many folks to think that marriage is defined and derived from the gubberment.
Freegards
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