Free Republic

Then it's not too late to come over to our side then, and help us form and explain positions that serve the views of the people as well as act as a bulwark against other kinds of tyranny that could encroach when people lose their faith in government and clamor for any possible solution...

Thanks, I think I'll stay libertarian. The prospect that people might lose their faith in government isn't one I find especially worrisome. (Or likely.)

As for forming and explaining positions, I doubt that FR is the place for me to do that. This isn't my sort of conservatism.

Would you rather have justices appointed who know what I'm talking about, or ones who prefer the Roy Moore point of view.

I think I've answered this long ago. I would rather have justices appointed who know what you're talking about than ones who prefer the Roy Moore point of view.

Good night.

I think I am the only poster on this forum who openly favors legalizing gay marriage as a policy matter.

I think you're not.

My casting a vote to keep my state government out of peoples bedrooms does not equate to the oligarchial federal courts issuing opinions rife with lunacy and abridging powers that rightfully belong to the people through their elected representatives.

Right. So you agree with the result but you don't think it should have come from the Supreme Court. That's what I said. If you don't want the decision to come from a state court either, this is the first time you've suggested as much in this thread.

LOL, you just can't help yourself.

Anybody who still takes you seriously can compare your opinion with Kennedy's easily enough:

[W]hat two people do in the privacy of their home isn't any of my business in this Constitutional Republic of ours. --jwalsh07

[A]dults may choose to enter upon [a homosexual] personal relationship in the confines of their own homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons. . . . The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice. -- Justice Anthony Kennedy in Lawrence v. Texas

If you think you disagree with the result in Lawrence, then you're either not reading very well or not writing very well. I don't really care which it is (and it may be both); you're clearly not worth any more of my time.

Even if we can't apply religious doctrines in our laws per se, we do not want to force Americans to pay for, or honor practices which violate their beliefs.

And as I've said, the only way to accomplish that is to make taxes voluntary. Tax funds are simply not distributed in accordance with the religious beliefs of the taxed. There are people who oppose military force of any kind for religious reasons; nobody makes sure their specific tax dollars don't go to the DOD, or even that tax dollars are allocated to the DOD in proportion to the number of nonpacifists among the taxpayers. I spend a lot of time in a local national park, paid for in part by the tax dollars of people who don't believe the government has any business maintaining such lands. You can think up lots of other examples yourself, I'm sure.

There will always be problems of this sort as long as there are taxes; marriage isn't a special case. (Similar problems infect public education, which can't possibly be performed in a way that pleases everyone who pays for it; the only way to change that would be to privatize the schools.) Either privatize everything -- which in this case would mean getting the state entirely out of the business of recognizing marriages -- or get used to the fact that there's always going to be somebody paying for something of which they disapprove.

This is why I initially suggested that you keep in mind the question whether any positive legal benefits should be conferred on civil marriages at all.

If marriage is defined as a sacred and traditional bond between man and woman based on religious doctrine common to most Americans and western civic tradition common to most other cultures, it really has no bearing on other relationships. If we change its meaning on our lawbooks, it still becomes something else.

Then I'm afraid I have bad news for you: it's already become something else. Civil marriage is not defined in terms of sacredness, tradition, or religion.

Religious marriage is defined in such terms. And private religious organizations don't have to recognize civil marriages as 'religiously satisfactory', as for example the Roman Catholic Church doesn't have to recognize civil marriages or divorces for purposes of its canon law. Civil marriage is already not the same thing as religious marriage.

As nearly as I can tell from the resolutions themselves, there's a new one passed each year designating Rabbi Schneerson's birthday that year as 'Education Day, U.S.A.' For example, the text for the 1991 resolution is here; a proclamation letter from 1986 is here; one from 1993 is here.

I don't know why it has to be re-done all the time, but apparently it's not designated as a recurring annual holiday like President's Day and so on. And I don't know any more about it than that.

What are the results, both immediate and far reaching, of the Lawrence holding Counselor and how could you possibly assert that I would agree with them after our little tete a tete here?

I wrote 'result in', not 'result of'. If you agree that other people's private consensual sexual acts are none of your business in this Constitutional republic, you agree with the Court's result in the Lawrence case.

I apologize if I've misrepresented your views.

Not misrepresented, just mildly misstated (and certainly not deliberately). No need to apologize; this has been a busy thread and a long discussion.

I'll let you have the last word if you'd like to take a minute to correct that.

Nope, no need, but thanks. This discussion has already wandered rather far from its title topic; the link between legal definitions of marriage to Christian views of marriage was the last thread tying it in.

I'm attempting to bridge the gap between Americans who only know how to talk about law in terms of their own religious ethics, and the restrictions we have placed in the interest of representational government on our motivations for law.

Yep, and you're doing an excellent job of it. The same-sex marriage discussion was a sidetrack; it got started because I was asked what I thought about it and I answered. We're not going to resolve the issue here and it's a distraction from your primary argument.

That families have an interest in protecting the limited resources government offers them, that Americans are committed to natural family structures, that there are good arguments in favor of encouraging natural family structures are all rational arguments against diluting or corrupting our official view of the marriage relationship.

Yes, they are. I continue to disagree that recognition of same-sex civil marriages will in fact dilute or corrupt that view. But I certainly don't think that anyone who disagrees with me is automatically foolish or evil, and you are neither.

Well, actually I think that the act of homosexuality is a sin but what two people do in the privacy of their home isn't any of my business in this Constitutional Republic of ours.

Do you think it takes initials after one's name to recognize that this is the basis of the Lawrence court's holding?

Well, actually I think that the act of homosexuality is a sin but what two people do in the privacy of their home isn't any of my business in this Constitutional Republic of ours. . . . [O]nce again, what bothers me is you and people like you who can't get it through their thick smarmy skulls that judicial edicts simply enflame the culture wars in this country.

Okay, then you agree with the result in Lawrence after all, but you think it came from the wrong court. Thanks for clearing that up at last.

Well, we're starting to go in circles here and you're beginning to misstate what I've said. (Not egregiously; on the whole you've dealt quite reasonably with a subject I'm well aware you have strong opinions about.) I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Sorry, meant to get back to you further on this.

You asked about the 'penalties'. The bit about 'beheading' comes, if I'm not mistaken, from the Talmud, in which it's said somewhere that this is the only civil penalty available for punishing non-Jews who violate the Noahide Laws. I don't have a source at hand for that information but as far as I know it is not strictly part of the Noahide Laws themselves. (Nor, of course, did the resolution that mentioned the Noahide Laws have it in mind.)

'Renewed every year': The resolution in question doesn't enact the Noahide Laws themselves; it just declares Rabbi Schneerson's birthday a holiday. What I think is 'renewed' every year (or at least every so often) is the holiday; the resolution seems to require that it get voted on every now and again so that the day continues to be a holiday every year.

I agree, of course, that it would be altogether inappropriate for the Noahide Laws to be posted in schools, but the resolution in question (however inappropriate it may be on other grounds) isn't calling for that. I'm not at all sure why the Lubavitcher Rebbe's birthday gets to be a national holiday, but it's not the thin entering wedge of a secret plot to submit everyone to the threat of decapitation.

Hang with me here, long sentences. . . . The point being made as I understood it is that the words and wording had meaning and the meaning that those words represented was and are indeed real meanings.

Okay, I see your point. (I like long sentences and in many respects find them easier to follow than short ones that leave out a lot of information. Hey, I'm a lawyer.)

But . . . the 'words and wording' of what? The Constitution doesn't contain any language in which the federal government is delegated any power over marriage and of which same-sex marriage advocates propose to change the meaning. (I'm sure it's possible to 'find' such a power in the 'penumbra' of the Necessary and Proper Clause, but that sounds to me like the sort of 'activism' I'm allegedly engaging in myself.)

At any rate, my ultimate point is that I don't want the fact that there are real flesh and blood people out there, with tremendous personal interests at stake, to get lost in the talk about 'words'. This isn't an issue of 'words' for either side. I know people on both sides (including same-sex couples who have been together for two or three decades), and I think it's very unfair to characterize any part of this as a verbal who-gets-to-make-the-definition issue.

We still have to answer the question: what's now in it for the state if it was never considered a rewarding investment until now?

What's the nature of the state's 'investment'? I'm not trying to be difficult here, I just don't know what you mean.

[W]e really don't want to pay taxes to support it. At least you have to recognize that to many Americans, supporting same sex unions and marriage would be taxation without representation.

In this sense, all taxation is taxation without representation. You can't possibly think that tax dollars are distributed in strict proportion to what taxpayers do and don't 'support'. If that's what you want, forget the 'marriage' red herring and make taxes voluntary.

What do you want Christian and other ethically opposed parents to tell their children when their mothers can't be home because they're serving on a jury for a contested divorce case involving a same sex couple?

'I can't be home because I'm serving on a jury for a contested divorce case involving a same-sex couple.'

[D]on't tell my children that the state approves.

I won't.

Seriously, I don't understand why the mere legal recognition of a relationship somehow teaches children that 'the state approves' of it. But if it does, you're going to have to deal with the other side of the question. Why is it okay with you that the law be used to teach my children (or Step's children) that the state approves only of Christian-sanctioned marriages?

For that matter, same-sex couples aren'y just going to go away. Why do you think it will be harder to explain to your children that 'Bob and Steve are married' than it is to explain that 'Bob and Steve live together in a committed same-sex relationship but they're not married'?

have always been up front about my personal views of morality.

I should have said 'If one wants . . . '. My remark wasn't directed at you, and I noted parenthetically that you wer, in fact, presenting your argument in terms of your own moral beliefs.

Maybe I am reading you wrong, but it appears that you are saying that words do not matter because they change (and once they change their original meanings, the one's that prove intent, they are forever lost) and the intent does not matter anyway because the supreme court is free to ignore the intent or change the intent of a law based upon nothing but vapor.

No, and I don't think I could mean that consistently with my other posts in this thread (and elsewhere). What my remarks about words were intended to convey -- and I think this will be clear if you reread them -- is that I think it's dishonest to present arguments on this subject as though what's really at issue is just a matter of linguistics. People who object to same-sex marriages and relationships are not concerned about 'definitions' or whether judges stick to the dictionary; they're concerned about the morality (or otherwise) of certain sexual practices.

Saw this just before I left, so here's a very quick reply.

What about age limits? What about family history tests for consanguinity? How about blood tests for diseases that could endanger a fetus? Certainly there is state approval.

Age limits have to do with the issue of consent, not with the form of the marriage. Consanguinity is too complicated to dispose of in a single post; suffice it to say that it's not (only) a matter or moral approval or disapproval of one's choice of spouse (or the gender thereof). Neither is disease control.

To be clear here, when I say there's no issue of approval involved, I mean that the decision of two people to get married does not involve any securing of societal approval for their personal choice of spouse or mate or of any behavior within their marriage than can properly be characterized as strictly private.

And now I really am gone. So long and thanks for the chat.

Without reproduction, the state ceases to exist.

Yes, without any reproduction. But it's not necessary that every married couple reproduce. I'd also argue that the existence of married couples without children (whether same-sex or opposite-sex) itself contributes to the societal stability necessary to raise the next generation.

Later -- I'm out of here for a while.

We've begun to think about this upside down; the courts are making too many things a right now.

Turn this around. 'We've begun to think about this upside down; the courts are stripping the government of too many powers.' Still like it?

The problem isn't 'too many' rights; it's not enough actual rights and too many pseudo-rights that confer the power to infringe actual rights.

I think that's a better way to characterize your disagreement with me over the legal recognition of same-sex marriage: you think such a recognition would 'force' people to give their approval to something they regard as immoral (in violation of their rights), and I disagree because I don't think any such consent is involved.

We don't extend marriage privileges because people have relationships. We extend them because some relationships are biologically, morally, and economically likely to produce healthy, well-adjusted children; these children are our very future, and it is they who will maintain our nation's vitality.

After my grandmother died, my grandfather remarried at the age of 90, to an 87-year-old woman. Are you seriously suggesting that 'we' extended them 'marriage privileges' because 'we' thought they were 'likely' to produce children?

Are you suggesting that mutually infertile opposite-sex couples aren't really married or aren't deserving of 'marriage privileges'?

Making Christian citizens agree to support the redefinition of marriage (by demanding their stamp of approval in the form of marriage licenses) could bring down the Republic.

Civil marriage doesn't confer the blessing of any citizen, Christian or otherwise. On the other hand, limiting the legal definition of marriage to what Christians approve (if that's what you're defending) sure looks like a First Amendment problem to me.