No MrIndigo, I had already related the story of Catholic Adoption Services in Massachusetts being closed down because of litigation from a gay couple who *knew* there were other adoption services that would cater to them and *knew* the Catholic service would not support their adoption on religious grounds. I also reiterated the case of a preacher in Canada banned from speaking based on his religious principles.
This isn't really relevant, it's almost a non-sequitur. There are isolated individuals and groups on both sides of any debate who engage in this kind of douchebaggery. Should we be making rules on abolishing religious freedoms purely because of the behaviours of Fred Niles?
There are of course also other issues in play with those examples; the former is whether religious organisations should be permitted to be in charge of particular services ordinarily provided by the state (i.e. issues of abdication), which is open to argument. The latter is the classic freedom of speech issue.
The reason religious freedom is so vexed and so often causes conflicts like this is because there is a very real danger that unrestricted religious freedom will allow people to do whatever they want and dress it up as a religious belief in order to avoid prosecution. Religion is by-and-large too broad to be navigated into it's own particular sector of freedoms, which means in any nontheocratic (or anarchistic) society, religious freedom is constantly going to be under scrutiny and shifting borders.
No, the only people forcing anything on anyone is judicial radicals forcing their definition of marriage on the rest of us. Those activists believe it is a statement of fact that gender is irrelevant to the marriage relationship (in fact, directly per the "facts" the judge in the most recent case found), but most Americans believe that gender is definitional to the relationship.
The judicial activists aren't forcing a definition of marriage
on you. The definition of marriage (in a legal sense) does not change your rights in the slightest as a heterosexual Catholic; it doesn't change your relationship, it doesn't even change your religion. It doesn't actually affect you in the slightest.
On the other hand, enforcing a heterosexual-only marriage definition does actually affect homosexual couples materially. They don't get the benefit of constructive trust when purchasing property together, they don't get visitation rights, they get worse taxation positions, etc. etc. There is an actual, tangible effect when this interpretation of marriage is enforced.
Furthermore, even under your rhetoric of the judges forcing their definitions on the public... that's what their role is. They are supposed to do that.
Finally, I believe a recent newspoll after the Prop8 overturn showed a 52% support for gay marriage. So "most" Americans, according to that poll, don't support.
They believe this because they also believe marriage has an actual function outside of government recognition of love or whatever liberals believe the definition of marriage is (because they will not define what they believe marriage is, only that opposing their definition is bigoted.) They won't go further then to say it is "a right" and it "deserves equal protection," but not once will they tell you specifically what marriage actually represents.
One function is for the Government to incentivise people to make formal relationships with each other because that typically means they can support each other financially and hence the Government needs to support them less. It also incentivises cohabitation, etc. etc. (although you could, in theory, do this equally well by splintering off the economic benefits of marriage into their own particular categories, but that tends to be legislatively messy and more complicated than just creating a class of relationship that attaches all the privileges to it).
Canada's campaign to ban speech the Canadian government does not approve of leads me to believe that clashes of religious liberty and other liberties are at the forefront of their civic debates, not just in gay marriage but in others. For example Canada remains the only Western nation with the black mark of prosecuting a paper for publishing the Mohammed Cartoons. Whatever their definition of constitutional rights, it would seem either a) speech is not among them or b) speech takes the lowest preference. As religious expression is often synonymous with speech, I worry about it the most.
Assuming it is like Australia, it's not that speech is the lowest, but simply does not take uniformly highest priority. When you consider that most 'freedom of speech' extends to nonverbal communication as well, giving a blanket immunity from liability for freedom of speech would imply a carte blanche on any law (for instance, assault would be impossible to prosecute since people could simply say they were communicating their discontent).
It is not as if they are physically unable to have relationships that match the general moral characteristics of marriage already, it's the imprimatuer of government approval that is the objective. As marriage has the implication of consummation, the activists now have free reign to teach how they "consummate" as a legitimate discussion topic in a curriculum, for example.
Actually, you're wrong. Consummation is irrelevant to marriage. Even if it was, it's not in the curriculum at the moment so why would it be any different if you changed the definition of marriage?
This is specifically why I do not support gay marriage but do support all of the visitation, inheritence, and other benefits associated with marriage applied to homosexual couples at the individual level (which is where these benefits should be applied anyway, for gays and straights alike). This makes it impossible for gay activists to use clearly unfair individual examples as an argument that we must recognize gay marriages to guarantee these rights. By removing the substantive concerns away from the socially heavy word "marriage," we preserve the latter as most Americans view and live it while securing the former, as no significant opposition to it exists.
So your issue is not about the rights to be afforded, but just the semantic choice of words? What if the Government abandoned any control of marriage (as in the religious institution) and implemented a new relationship recognised by the state, and simply had the documents to be signed at the end of the religious marriage ceremony be replaced by the ones for the recognised relationship?
Parenting is pretty simple when your only standard is "the kids are doin' fine." In reality, there are volumes of studies on fatherhood in the home and its immense positive impact when present and impense negative impact when absent (I point to fathers as absentee fatherhood is the greatest immediate social problem in family structure.). A good society must demand that children have a mother and father in the home if at all possible. No waffling, no pretending that "it's complicated" and that it can be fudged because "the kids are doin' fine anyway." I don't support substandard societial notions, and any family outside the mother/father model already has serious inherent problems. Being "better than nothing" is not a good enough standard. Should there be a condition outside of the mother/father model, it should be by happenstance not official policy.
The argument that marriage is about childrearing has been debunked earlier in this thread, but to restate: The mother-father component is not sufficient (and arguably not necessary, since there are arguments that parental roles are not the same as gender roles) to contribute to a healthy upbringing, as evidenced by all the shithouse mother-father pairs there are, and how the children raised in same-sex family can and do often develop into healthier and more well-balanced individuals than those in the shit mother-father pairs (I also seem to remember seeing a study in Australia recently that children raised by same-sex couples outperform those in opposite-sex couples academically on average, but I can't recall exactly).
If you say that you only accept the perfect standards of relationship for childrearing, then your allegation of same-sex couples being worse maybe stands, but it must follow logically from your position that single parents should also be banned from childraising, as should any parents that could be considered to be unsuitable for drugs, insufficient monetary resources etc.
If you don't support this, then you're inconsistent which would suggest an underlying bias, or at least an irrationality. If you do support this concept, you must surely see that it is totally impractical to enforce, since you can't stop people from having unprotected sex even when they're incapable parents.
MrIndigo, which political party is it that supports all sorts of bans on currently legal activities? Which one wants to ban smoking, the consumption of trans fats, and inhibit all other forms of choice (school choice esp.)? Which one wants to force you to purchase health insurance under penalty of law? I sincerely doubt you have a problem with "telling people how to live their life" via laws when it is your preferred policies being implemented. (I am to take it you live outside the States, but I'm sure you have at least one equivalent, if not two or more).
The former impacts upon those not choosing to smoke, so it can be differentiated in that regard. The rest follow from the government provision of healthcare, which is an entirely other issue that can be debated at length elsewhere.
I have a problem when one person in a black robe believes it is their duty to define social institutions for huge numbers of Americans. That is not the place of a judge; judges are not social arbiters. If the judge had decided that the state of California is not required to recognize gay marriage as gay marriage is not part of the social understanding of marriage, would you view that judge as a hero or a monster?
Such a judge is a monster regardless of how he decides if he makes a decision in that manner. I oppose giving judges that authority. You apparently support judges having that authority, but only if they decide in a way that alligns with your beliefs.
Or am I wrong, and you do not believe judges should be social arbiters?
You can't have a legal arbiter without a social arbiter. The concepts of law and society are inherently intertwined. As a scholar of law, if a judge here made an enforcable decision that I didn't agree with (and it often happens), I would either point out the
legal error (and not just say waaaaaah democracy) if there was one, particularly as part of a judicial appeal mechanism, or appeal to the legislative arm of the government to legislate contrary, or if in the case of a Constitutional interpretation issue, appeal to call a referendum.
Courts in the United States are supposed to interpret laws, not make them. Whenever courts make laws they are acting as a legislature, which is entirely outside their constitutional duties. Also not all judges are elected in the US, many of them are appointed (as this judge was, being part of the federal judiciary).
*Continued ramble* :)
I'd point out the problem with this, but the poster above just said exactly what I would have.
