End Government Recognition of Marriage

16 July 2004 | Me

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Marriage is not a Constitutional institution.

Unless the Supreme Court says it is, which is likely to happen. That's why we are having this discussion in the first place.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

By the way, doesn't it just STEAM you that Utah was forced to ban polygamy before they were allowed to join the Union. I mean to say...what an outrage! Too bad the gov't back then wasn't as "smart" as we are about what the Constitution really means.

[Hacksaw]

In colonial America, homosexuality was a crime. Were the Founders "Hitler, Taliban, Stalin?" I believe the Founders did stand for a Constitution and could quite likely be described as conservative.

Good point, and needs to be repeated.

[Hacksaw]

Yeah, and slavery was legal, blacks were 4/5ths of a person, and women couldn't vote. Things and times change.

LOL!!!! The social liberals always say that when pointed out that the founders would never have agreed with them.

[Hacksaw]

Here are some others who agree with you.

Here's another:

[hunter112]

Marriage is not a Constitutional institution.

Unless the Supreme Court says it is, which is likely to happen. That's why we are having this discussion in the first place.

Did the SCOTUS make marriage a Constitutional institution in 1967, when it struck down bans on interracial marriage? Striking down bans on gay marriage would not explicitly put marriage into the Constitution, but an FMA definitely would.

[hunter112]

By the way, doesn't it just STEAM you that Utah was forced to ban polygamy before they were allowed to join the Union. I mean to say...what an outrage! Too bad the gov't back then wasn't as "smart" as we are about what the Constitution really means.

From my reading of Utah history, Utahans chose to get rid of polygamy, so they could elect their own government, rather than have the US gov't send them leaders that they did not like. They also had to disband a religious party, called the Mormon People's Party, and move toward the Democrat-Republican two-party system to achieve statehood. A plurality of the Utahans chose the Republican Party, and when the Republicans started gaining strength in Congress, they were able to usher Utah in to the Union. It was more than just a struggle over a definition of marriage.

Besides, you should be glad they accomplished it at that point in time. What if Utah had retained territorial status well into the 20th Century, then had made an attempt at statehood in, say, the late 1960's/early 1970's? Would the society of the sexual revolution have allowed them to enter with polygamy having been an established religious principle for over a hundred years? My guess is that it could have been possible. You'd have a nation with two distinctly different notions of what marriage entailed. It wouldn't have been that hard to envision a third. We'd probably have legal gay marriage by this point in time, if things had gone different with Utah.

As for government being "smart" about how it treats marriage, it was the prohibition against selling contraceptives to even MARRIED couples that gave us the Griswold vs. Connecticut SCOTUS ruling in 1965. You might recall that in that decision, the SCOTUS first started playing around with the shadowy notion of "penumbras" "emanating" to create the privacy right that was not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. If the Roman Catholic Church had not been so forceful in including married couples from obtaining the right to control their fertility, we might not have had this ruling, which spawned Roe vs. Wade a mere eight years later.

Expect the words from Griswold vs. Connecticut: "We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights - older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions," to find their way into a future decision involving gay marriage.

[asmith92008]

So let me clarify. Kicking dog in park, illegal, not in park okay?

Yet if your idea of government is no regulation so long as I'm not interfering with your rights, how could kicking my dog ever be illegal?

[asmith92008]

1. If you are going to quote the Constitution out of context, quote it correctly. Slaves were counted as 3/5 for purposes of apportioning representation. This was a compromise to dilute slave holder power. Had they been allowed to count slaves as 1 person 1 rep (even though slaves couldn't vote) then the slave holders in the south would have been given enormous leverage in the House as a result of their large slave populations. Perhaps you should spend more time reading the Constitution instead of Julian Bond or Kweise Mfume's latest screeds.

Secondly, the expansion in rights from the Constituting was an exercise in democratic governance. They were not the results of courts imposing a dictat upon the people.

So if times have truly changed, let me see one state in America where the people have voted to allow homosexual marriage. Oh yeah, none have. Even Hawaii, quite a liberal state amended its constitution when the judges tried imposing it there. Massachusetts is in the process but has quite an unwieldy process for amending so it takes years.

Times have not changed. Hedonists and libertines have simply infiltrated the courts and wish to impose their views on an unwilling majority.

2. All laws enforce morality. We deem murder immoral and enforce that through our laws. It does not stop all murders but it allows us to punish transgressors and deter future transgressions. This holds true for all laws.

Until the 1960s (maybe earlier on some things, later on others) we did quite a good job of enforcing morality. Obscenity was outlawed and distribution through interstate commerce a crime. Acts like adultery were actually allowed to be civil torts against the person who helped break up the marriage and the law punished the married party in the property split. These are jst two examples of how the law helped enforce, and reinforce, the traditional morality

3, You are correct that stopping gay marriage will not, on its own, stop immorality. It will, however help us stop our ongoing cultural slide.

Your argument is akin to saying that a house is on fire, so we should throw gasoline on it.

[Voice in your head]

"So let me clarify. Kicking dog in park, illegal, not in park okay?

Yet if your idea of government is no regulation so long as I'm not interfering with your rights, how could kicking my dog ever be illegal?"

I expained my "idea of government" in post #125. "Government's purpose is to serve as a body in which we vest our rights to self defense from force, fraud or coercion and we vest our rights to determine rules regarding use of public property."

In response to your question regarding animal cruelty, I said "On public property, it would prefer that it be illegal." If you view this in light of my position, as stated by me, then this is consistent. I think that animal cruelty is morally wrong and I think that the government is justified in making it illegal on public property. Therefore, I would prefer that animal cruelty be illegal on public property.

What does any of this have to do with the thread?

[asmith92008]

So then would homosexual activity be permitted to be outlawed on public property. I'm not talking about sexual activity but simply kissing or holding hands.

It has to do with the fact that I have found most libertarians to oppose moral regulations until you find something they don't like. Dog kicking is usually what gets them.

[Voice in your head]

"So then would homosexual activity be permitted to be outlawed on public property. I'm not talking about sexual activity but simply kissing or holding hands."

Either outlaw kissing and holding hands or don't, but it must apply equally to all, since public property is owned by all. If a bunch of homos were routinely making a spectacle, I would vote to ban it.

"It has to do with the fact that I have found most libertarians to oppose moral regulations until you find something they don't like. Dog kicking is usually what gets them."

So it has nothing to do with this thread? If not, we have FReepmail and the ability to start new threads.

[asmith92008]

So the public is not permitted to decide which kinds of displays of affection it finds immoral or distasteful enough to ban on public property?

[Voice in your head]

Yes, it is permitted. The restriction is that it must apply to all. So if you want to say no kissing, then that means everyone. You can no more legislate that two men cannot kiss than you could legislate that Bob and Jill cannot kiss. Those two homos are sick/immoral whatever you want to call it, but public property belongs to everyone and everyone deserves equal use within equal restrictions.

[Eva]

What are you a lawyer, trying to drum up business?

[asmith92008]

Why not? The law applies equally to all men. I, a straight man, could not kiss another straight man. The law punishes the action, not the status of the actor. That is why it is incorrect to say that homosexuals cannot marry. They, like heterosexuals, simply cannot marry members of the same sex.

[Voice in your head]

"Why not? The law applies equally to all men. I, a straight man, could not kiss another straight man. The law punishes the action, not the status of the actor."

For the sake of argument, okay.

"That is why it is incorrect to say that homosexuals cannot marry. They, like heterosexuals, simply cannot marry members of the same sex."

I am not proposing a ban on homosexual marriage.

[Protagoras]

Prove it

[asmith92008]

Read a book. Better yet, read the Supreme Court opinion in Bowers v Hardwick. Sodomy was illegal during the colonial and post revolutionary period. It's only our modern "enlightenment" that has made things like homosexuality and adultery virtues instead of vices.

[Protagoras]

Read a book? Learn to read.

The statement was made, I said prove it . It was about Washington. Prove it or go away.