Judge Posner’s Gay Marriage Opinion Is a Witty, Deeply Moral Masterpiece (BARF ALERT)

Slate ^ | 09/05/2014 | Mark Joseph Stern

[Responsibility2nd]

.... But Thursday’s ruling by 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner, which struck down Indiana’s and Wisconsin’s gay marriage bans, is a different beast altogether. In his opinion, Posner does not sound like a man aiming to have his words etched in the history books or praised by future generations. Rather, he sounds like a man who has listened to all the arguments against gay marriage, analyzed them cautiously and thoroughly, and found himself absolutely disgusted by their sophistry and rank bigotry. The opinion is a masterpiece of wit and logic that doesn’t call attention to—indeed, doesn’t seem to care about—its own brilliance. Posner is not writing for Justice Anthony Kennedy, or for judges of the future, or even for gay people of the present. He is writing, very clearly, for himself.

~snip~

[The] government thinks that straight couples tend to be sexually irresponsible, producing unwanted children by the carload, and so must be pressured (in the form of government encouragement of marriage through a combination of sticks and carrots) to marry, but that gay couples, unable as they are to produce children wanted or unwanted, are model parents—model citizens really—so have no need for marriage.

~snip~

Heterosexuals get drunk and pregnant, producing unwanted children; their reward is to be allowed to marry. Homosexual couples do not produce unwanted children; their reward is to be denied the right to marry. Go figure.

[Viennacon]

Upholding the law as decided by the states? Yeah, total activism!

Anyone who thinks that states do not have the right to define marriage, has never read the Constitution. It’s as simple as that. Posner has about the same integrity as Roland Freisler.

[1rudeboy]

Also funny, that you feel that way without reading his opinion. Even I will reserve judgment before I do so.

[highball]

“It appears that that is what Posner did (bear in mind, that you are in Federal Appellate Court). You want to change his mind, bring a better lawyer.”

Exactly. We don’t want judges going into their courtrooms having already decided the cases; the opposing counsels make their arguments and the judge decides which position has the most legal merit.

I’ve read the decision and listened to the bulk of the oral arguments, and as much as I hate the decision it’s hard to see how they could have ruled otherwise. The attorneys for Wisconsin and Indiana couldn’t have been less effective if they’d been paid to throw the case; when Posner talks about no rational reason for the law it’s because they were unable to articulate one. Pathetic, but that’s where our ire belongs.

[Jacquerie]

The vitals of our republic are certainly gone. One of the observable phenomena in the decline of Rome was that republican institutions were maintained in name when they had been entirely transformed in substance.

Only the forms, the outer shell of our republic remains. We still have congress, courts, president, electoral college, and other hard features.

Yes, the guts of our republic have been ripped out. It began with the 17th Amendment. Since then, no limiting clause has survived.

The hard tyranny is here, and to condone it, we are expected to dutifully vote every two years.

[a fool in paradise]

Gay journalist pushing gay propaganda. Imagine that.

[Cboldt]

When I think of federal courts, I think of “witty.” Nothing serious, they are jesters and fools.