Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?emc=edit_na_20150626&nlid=63565976&ref=headline&_r=0

by _hv99 • 11 years ago

1905 1147 11 years ago

nytimes.com

danceswild• 11 years ago

this is great! congratulations US!

troycarlson4• 11 years ago

Hopefully this whole "issue" will just go away soon...so many more important things that deserve the public's attention.

Edit: To clarify, I support marriage equality and believe this is great news that deserves celebrating.

ebbv5• 11 years ago

Spoken like a straight person who has never been denied the ability to do something straight people take for granted.

feld• 11 years ago

I don't think he meant it like that. I echo the sentiment: it shouldn't have come to this. It should not have been a social, political, or legal issue. There's so much hate and bigotry in this country that needs to go away.

edit: at least I hope he didn't mean it like that :(

yummyfajitas• 11 years ago

Spoken like a person who's never been locked in jail for 10 years and been repeatedly beaten and raped during that time, all for selling pot.

There are a lot bigger problems than being refused a small amount of government subsidies for your relationship choices. (Note that I am also refused those subsidies since I'm single.)

greenpizza13• 11 years ago

I hear it as "issue" with some sarcasm. As in, I can't believe this isn't settled already since it's such an obvious answer. I believe he is saying it wouldn't be an "issue" if people actually appealed to reason.

But I get why you would be offended, the struggles and hardships should not be taken lightly. In effect a white male could make the same comment about women's suffrage and it would not be cast in a good light at all.

Anyway, congratulations! I'm so glad people are finally seeing reason and you can take one more step towards being treated truly equal!

troycarlson4• 11 years ago

I think you're misinterpreting my comment. I absolutely believe that all people deserve equal treatment and opportunities. We obviously aren't there yet, and far too many LGBT folks have been treated horribly for far too long. I find it shameful and embarrassing that our lawmakers have persisted these backwards "anti-X" policies that "should" have never taken root at all. I'm hopeful that soon we'll look back at these anti-LGBT policies the same way we look at racist, sexist, etc. policies from the pre-60's US.

JohnTHaller• 11 years ago

I think it was meant more that this decision and this right for LGBTQ to get married should have been made ages ago. As a society, we're continuing to spend resources fighting amongst ourselves to combat bigotry, anti-intellectualism, etc. In an ideal world, we'd have stomped all these out already and would be working together towards the future. Sadly, we don't live in an ideal world, so we must expend these resources and effort fighting injustice and inequality.

ewzimm• 11 years ago

The hope expressed here, which I share, is that settling marriage equality can help move us to a world in which politics isn't dominated by a discussion of what or who people consent to do with their own bodies.

You don't need to be straight to think that there are deeper issues which which still exist that, if solved, could have made marriage equality something which was never controversial. For example, why should any government have any say over whose relationship is legitimate?

There's an old idea that the government exists to serve the governed and that any situation in which it intervenes should only be to protect them, not to dictate the terms of their religion or their private lives. And yet the US government is in a situation where it seems to often serve the interests of only those who can hire lobbyists. Protection is redefined as protecting the wealth of those few, and elected representatives focus their campaigns on the most divisive cultural and religious issues over which they have minimal influence to distract from what they actually do on a daily basis, which is mostly meeting with lobbyists.

Plenty of people will vote for one party solely based on their support or opposition to a single issue such as abortion or marriage equality, and while those are important issues, they have allowed politicians to get away with whatever else they have wanted to sneak into their agendas.

4tacos• 11 years ago

Could not agree more! As a straight person I couldn't give a st

rayiner7• 11 years ago

What's more important. Denial of a basic social rite to the 5-10% who are gay, or something like NSA spying that gets tremendous attention on places like HN but only has a material impact on almost nobody?

Thriptic• 11 years ago

I would argue that the state of the economy, mass political failure, infrastructure decay, wars in the Middle East, how the US deals with globalization, climate change, and income inequality are more important from a national perspective than both. We (Americans) spend an inordinate amount of time debating religious and social issues (which are ultimately irrelevant for most people involved in the debates) while ignoring huge systemic problems. People should be focusing their attention on real, pressing problems, not opposing social change which has little to do with them. Get out of the way and let progress occur so we can be productive. I think this is what the parent commenter meant.

usaphp• 11 years ago

5-10%? Are you saying that every 10th person is gay in America?

bdcravens3• 11 years ago

As a straight Christian who isn't against gay marriage, I agree, but I know the energy that the "church" puts into opposing it is why it as required this much energy. There are so many issues deserving of the church's time and energy (divorce rates, addiction, child trafficking, etc) yet too many are stuck on this one.

DominikD• 11 years ago

It's possible to pay attention to more than one thing at a time. Just because drought in California is much more serious problem than Vibrio vulnificus in the Baltic Sea doesn't mean we should disregard bacterias altogether. Gay rights are not a distraction from Something More Important, it's just one of many issues that have to be taken care of in parallel.

agd• 11 years ago

Great decision. It's amazing how quickly gay rights have advanced in the western world.

Unfortunately it's still legal in many states to discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation. Hopefully that's next to be fixed.

toomuchtodo3• 11 years ago

You eat an elephant one bite at a time.

EDIT: I did not mean to cause a trainwreck below this comment. It was the quickest way on mobile to communicate "all big problems are tackled one task at a time".

jackmaney2• 11 years ago

It helps if you have a lot of people taking bites at once.

ionforce4• 11 years ago

Are you calling me an elephant? Now I'll never fit in my wedding dress! /runsaway

(guys, it's a joke)

taki12• 11 years ago

not to mention how hard it is for gays to land a job in early years education. So backwards! The worst are these mothers. Once they see a male working in a Child Care Center there is going to be lawsuit, that's for sure. Gay male employee at Child Care Center? I hope there will be some progress too!

jessaustin2• 11 years ago

OK downvoters [EDIT: previously parent post had been grayed-out, now it appears this one is?], do you really not know that this is a thing? Lots of mommies and daddies don't want little Jenny and Billy looked after by a dude. I don't know what being gay has to do with it, except perhaps 'taki1 is telling us that gay dudes are more likely to want to work in child care than straight dudes are. Maybe that's true?

sliverstorm4• 11 years ago

Once they see a male working in a Child Care Center there is going to be lawsuit, that's for sure.

Isn't this a gender discrimination problem, not a sexual orientation problem?

ionforce4• 11 years ago

I blame Glee.

I say that a bit tongue-in-cheek but it definitely helps to have gay culture and gay icons just out there in the world, melded seamlessly with the rest of society. This includes things like trashy teen comedies and musicals and what not.

Having equal marriage rights is just one more step in the right direction of having a more tolerant, loving earth society.

surge• 11 years ago

I blame the Dean, although it's been established he's not gay, that's putting him in a box, he's much more...he's a politician.

hackuser23• 11 years ago

it definitely helps to have gay culture and gay icons just out there in the world, melded seamlessly with the rest of society.

On one hand I agree, but it's never been sufficient. There have been gay icons for a long time (probably forever); Oscar Wilde springs to mind, and Alan Turing (though I don't know if he was well-known to the public). And even with their status, they were still persecuted and ruined.

sumedh• 11 years ago

It's amazing how quickly gay rights have advanced in the western world.

The irony is that in India right now we are using a very old colonial British India law to put gay people in jail.

tosseraccount6• 11 years ago

If love is about ignoring race,class,gender,age shouldn't it be about ignoring numbers, too?

Polygamy is the next hurdle for society.

The judges should declare all consenting marriage legal !

SCHiM• 11 years ago

I agree with your sentiment, but no with your account name. I don't think you deserve to be downvoted.

tosseraccount6• 11 years ago

Why restrict love to one person?

Lawtonfogle4• 11 years ago

The judges should declare all consenting marriage legal !

If it is truly consenting, taking into account the modern defined limits on who can give consent, why not? A polygamous relationship is already legal in practice (adultery and extra-marital sex are not crimes). The paperwork and law changes aren't going to be simple, but besides for that I don't see a justification in continuing the ban.

toomuchtodo3• 11 years ago

Polygamous/polyamorous relationships can easily be supported from a property rights standpoint using corporate entities (LLCs). I see it as the ultimate social/political hack for a right.

jedberg2• 11 years ago

adultery and extra-marital sex are not crimes

It's still illegal in 21 states[0]. Those laws however are rarely enforced.

[0] http://www.theweek.co.uk/62723/adultery-laws-where-is-cheati...

sigzero8• 11 years ago

It absolutely should be restricted by age.

tosseraccount6• 11 years ago

Historically it wasn't.

zxcvcxz3• 11 years ago

A minor can't consent.

talmand8• 11 years ago

Why the downvotes? Is that not a valid point? Or is it bad because it's a point used by the opposing side? Or is the problem the way it was stated?

coldpie3• 11 years ago

SSM and polygamy are not really related issues. You run into very complicated issues when you consider how children and property ownership would work in a many-person relationship. Marriage specifies shortcuts for these kinds of things, but they only work for two-person relationships. Polygamous relationships would basically require unique contracts given all circumstances, which is a pretty high burden. It's also not clear that polygamous marriages would have the same kind of societal benefits that two-person marriages have.

I think it's a point that can be convincingly argued, but the legalization of SSM does not imply a requirement for polygamous marriage's legalization. They're entirely different issues.

pavanky2• 11 years ago

Or make all marriages inconsequential.

Dirlewanger• 11 years ago

I wish more people saw it this way. The fact that a government has any say in who can/can't marry and be with in their private lives is absurd. The concept of marriage should be left up to religious entities.

taytus3• 11 years ago

It should be restricted by age, but even when I don't agree with you on that point, I don't understand the downvotes (not that I really care about internet points BTW)

Tiktaalik• 11 years ago

I doubt the USA keeps an eye on Canadian legal cases (though Commonwealth countries certainly do) but Canada's polygamy laws were tested by a high court very recently (2011). The existing laws were upheld.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/canada-s-poly...

s_kilk• 11 years ago

I think I prefer the term 'polyamorous', but agreed :)

empressplay• 11 years ago

Hopefully Australia's next!

Lancey• 11 years ago

Best of luck!

Lawtonfogle4• 11 years ago

Is there a general summary of the arguments made by the dissenting 4?

FlannelPancake2• 11 years ago

It's almost assuredly a "States Rights" argument. I'd be really shocked if it wasn't.

bwy2• 11 years ago

Not sure why you got downvoted because I'm reading Roberts' decision now and that's a big part of it.

birdman3131• 11 years ago

From what I read it is not a states right argument but an argument that the supreme court is supposed to interpert the laws not make them. Some quotes:

"Today, however, the Court takes the extraordinary stepof ordering every State to license and recognize same-sexmarriage. Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their celebration. But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority’s approach is deeply disheartening. Supporters of same-sexmarriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens—through the democratic process—toadopt their view. That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriageas a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much moredifficult to accept."

"But this Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us.Under the Constitution, judges have power to say whatthe law is, not what it should be. The people who ratifiedthe Constitution authorized courts to exercise “neither force nor will but merely judgment.” The Federalist No. 78, p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton) (capitalization altered)."

Shivetya• 11 years ago

Well all rights not defined in the Constitution are inherently in the domain of the states. Marriage is not within the Constitution and this was not a Constitutional issue. This came before the courts mainly because Federal Law needed to be applied to all states for issues concerning pay, benefits, visitation, and so on. So it was more similar to interstate commerce than anything, it certainly wasn't under the equal protection clause because there had not been a national law denoting the designation as existing. No any attempts to say other wise can be slapped down by 14th Amendment challenges - as in gay couples are designated properly within the confines of the law (likely it may take a bill similar to the civil rights law to make it unquestionable)

tptacek8• 11 years ago

Don't get the tl;dr summary of Scalia's dissent; actually read it. Scalia is obnoxious and mean-spirited (and in fine form this time), but he's a really good writer, the fun- to- read kind.

IIRC, he wrote a book on writing with Brian Garner, of usage dictionary fame.

Lawtonfogle4• 11 years ago

I plan to read both sides later, but I don't expect to be able to fit them in during lunch time.

rfrey2• 11 years ago

I respect Scalia as a scholar and philosopher. But I couldn't find anything in his dissent that couldn't equally apply to desegregation.

gamblor956• 11 years ago

Ironically, Scalia's language in Windsor and Lawrence before that were what opened the door to federal courts nationwide overturning gay marriage bans:

"The real rationale of today’s opinion, whatever disappearing trail of its legalistic argle-bargle one chooses to follow, is that DOMA is motivated by ‘bare … desire to harm’ couples in same-sex marriages. How easy it is, indeed how inevitable, to reach the same conclusion with regard to state laws denying same-sex couples marital status" (Windsor, J. Scalia, dissenting).

“[W]hat justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising ‘the liberty protected by the Constitution’? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry.” (Lawrence, J. Scalia, dissenting).

Roberts also argued Scalia's own logic back at him in this week's decision upholding the ACA, noting that in 2012 in the decision upholding the requirement to buy health insurance Scalia had stated in his dissent that without the subsidies (for low income insurance buyers), "the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended" because health insurance would be too expensive for low-income taxpayers.

dsr_2• 11 years ago

Roberts: definition of marriage should be made by legislation.

Scalia: The Supreme Court has too much power any time it does not agree with me.

Thomas: Due Process doesn't include right to be married.

Alito: Power in this matter is reserved to the States individually. Also, the Supreme Court has too much power any time it does not agree with me.

robwilliams• 11 years ago

Extended version w/ quotes:

Roberts:

- "[T]his Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be."

- "The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage."

- "Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens—through the democratic process—to adopt their view. That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept."

- "It is important to note with precision which laws petitioners have challenged. Although they discuss some of the ancillary legal benefits that accompany marriage, such as hospital visitation rights and recognition of spousal status on official documents, petitioners’ lawsuits target the laws defining marriage generally rather than those allocating benefits specifically. The equal protection analysis might be different, in my view, if we were confronted with a more focused challenge to the denial of certain tangible benefits."

Scalia:

- "This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves."

- "We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment’s ratification. Since there is no doubt whatever that the People never decided to prohibit the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples, the public debate over same-sex marriage must be allowed to continue. But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law."

Thomas:

- "[T]he majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a 'liberty' that the Framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government."

- "Whether we define 'liberty' as locomotion or freedom from governmental action more broadly, petitioners have in no way been deprived of it. Petitioners cannot claim, under the most plausible definition of 'liberty,' that they have been imprisoned or physically restrained by the States for participating in same-sex relationships. To the contrary, they have been able to cohabitate and raise their children in peace."

Alito:

- "The question in these cases, however, is not what States should do about same-sex marriage but whether the Constitution answers that question for them. It does not. The Constitution leaves that question to be decided by the people of each State."

- "To prevent five unelected Justices from imposing their personal vision of liberty upon the American people, the Court has held that 'liberty' under the Due Process Clause should be understood to protect only those rights that are 'deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.’ ...And it is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among those rights."

------

Disclaimer, IANAL - just picked the quotes that stuck out at me in each dissent.

Roberts' and Scalia's central theme was the Court overstepping its bounds and ending the legislative process prematurely. To me Roberts was essentially saying, "You guys are winning this on the legislative front easily, this is not something SCOTUS needs to decide." Thomas' was pretty cryptic and relied on lots of quotes from 18th and 19th century thinkers to define "liberty." Alito appealed to tradition and worried about this outcome producing a rush of lawsuits from religious institutions who were left in a limbo by the decision; he would have preferred state or national legislation that could clarify how this affected religious schools and such.

jmilloy• 11 years ago

I think they summarise their arguments themselves. For example

"Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same-sex couples, or to retain the historic definition."

[p. 2 of Robert's opinion, p. 41 of the pdf] http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf

Retric2• 11 years ago

Considering there are plenty of examples of "gay" marriage from thousands of years ago, calling strait marriage traditional seems factually incorrect.

Edit: http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1367/gay_marriagenot...

Liquix• 11 years ago

"A recent Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans – an all-time high – support extending the same rights and privileges to same-sex marriages as traditional ones."

only 60% of US citizens support same-sex marraige? in my area it is more like 90-95%, this was surprising and sad for me to hear

screwedup• 11 years ago

The other 40% are not necessarily against it completely - they may want gay marriage but want to call it civil unions.

jackmaney2• 11 years ago

Culturally, rural areas tend to be quite a bit more...backwards. And I say this as someone who grew up in a farm house.

camelNotation• 11 years ago

It's hardly a new concept, either. In fact, the root of the latin word "pagan" just means "rustic villager in the country". When Christianity became en vogue in the Roman Empire, it was the rednecks out in the country who were resistant to it, so the word "pagan" became synonymous with "heathen".

talmand8• 11 years ago

It's statistics, it's as accurate as a national weather report. Correct for the most part, wrong in some areas.

Depends on the questions but I'm willing to bet a large majority of that 40 percent could care less either way and therefore don't show up as "supporting" the idea.

Regardless, getting a large number of people like this to change their viewpoint on an ingrained ideology within a generation's time is impressive.

iMark• 11 years ago

But look at the rate of increase.

It's only in the recent past that it broke the 50% barrier.

The trend is upwards - 60% is not the end point.

giarc• 11 years ago

When you say "in my area it is more like 90-95%" are you referring to your perceived thoughts on what the rate would be, or are you referring to an actual poll?

If the former, than your area is probably not 90-95%, your social community is 90-95%. People tend to surround themselves with people with similar views. So it seems like in your town everyone is for gay marriage, when in fact it's the people in your town that you interact with that are for gay marriage. You don't know the opinion of those in your town who you don't associate with.

For example, if you asked me what percentage of the population smoked cigarettes, I would say 5-10%. That's because very few people I hang out with smoke cigarettes. If I were to walk into a bar (well... outside the bar) in a different neighbourhood, I might be surprised to see that 90% of people there are smoking.

mikehawkins• 11 years ago

Absolutely - and this trend is only accelerating... as Americans, we're surrounding ourselves more and more with people of a similar world view. I can see how it happens (and I'm the same, with the vast majority of my friends and social circle university-educated, reasonably progressive, etc.) but it does distort our ability to imagine what the rest of the society's thinking.

evgen• 11 years ago

An additional factor is that opposition to gay marriage is heavily skewed toward the elderly. I doubt the OP has a large social circle among the medicare crowd, but that is where the pool of opposition remains the strongest. We are just going to have to wait for them to die off.

hawkice• 11 years ago

Honestly, without knowing the exact question it's hard to predict what the numbers will be. For example, there used to be a ~15% spread between people who supported gays and lesbians in the military vs. homosexuals in the military. [With another ~15% gap between 'serve in the military' vs. 'serve openly in the military'. The things we choose to care about...]

There is almost certainly a question phrasing that would yield something similar to your general sense of people's opinions (once you adjust for the fact you do not interact with randomly selected people, and tend to discuss the issue only with those who feel safe sharing their opinion with you).

dba7dba• 11 years ago

Because you can choose read/watch/work/live that is agreeable to your preference, yes one's perception can be very skewed.

Visit some parts of US and it's not 90-95%. And I think some that say they support it but privately they don't care or don't actually agree. It's not cool to oppose SSM in certain industry, age group, etc etc.

fweespeech2• 11 years ago

Yeah, I'm still slightly pissed they basically waited until the majority was clear before they'd rule on the matter. Its another clear sign our Judiciary is really just as political as the politicians are, even if no one says so openly.

As late as October, the justices ducked the issue, refusing to hear appeals from rulings allowing same-sex marriage in five states. That decision delivered a tacit victory for gay rights, immediately expanding the number of states with same-sex marriage to 24, along with the District of Columbia, up from 19.
Largely as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision not to act, the number of states allowing same-sex marriage has since grown to 36, and more than 70 percent of Americans live in places where gay couples can marry.

rayiner7• 11 years ago

Yeah, I'm still slightly pissed they basically waited until the majority was clear before they'd rule on the matter. Its another clear sign our Judiciary is really just as political as the politicians are, even if no one says so openly.

I'm a strong supporter of gay marriage, but I'm glad the Court waited until the consensus was clear. At bottom, this isn't a right flowing from the dictates of the Constitution. Nobody in 1789 would have said that gay marriage is a fundamental right. We acknowledge the right today for the same reason we acknowledge many other rights we did not acknowledge then--society as a whole has agreed to recognize the right and bind itself to enforcing it. It is important that the Court not act ahead of society.

I'm also a strong supporter of abortion rights, but I can't help but wonder if in the long run abortion rights wouldn't be in a stronger position today had the Court waited a bit longer for public consensus to catch up before dictating a result.

sigzero8• 11 years ago

The SCOTUS shouldn't wait on consensus. They don't need that. They need to decide if it is legal or not. If it is not, send it back to Congress to fix. While I agree with the ruling, this court has been doing things clearly outside its purview.

fweespeech2• 11 years ago

Nobody in 1789 would have said that gay marriage is a fundamental right.

Its marriage. Its a fundamental right.

It doesn't matter if you are gay or straight.

It is important that the Court not act ahead of society.

That is another way of saying "Yes, the judicial system is as political as politicians."

One of the primary purposes of the Court is to make sure the political majority can't deny equal rights to everyone in the country. The idea they have to wait for that political majority to exist before "giving people" rights is an awful idea.

I'm also a strong supporter of abortion rights, but I can't help but wonder if in the long run abortion rights wouldn't be in a stronger position today had the Court waited a bit longer for public consensus to catch up before dictating a result.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#/media/File:Roevwa... http://www.gallup.com/poll/160058/majority-americans-support...

They did wait for a majority before Roe v. Wade as well. :/

hackuser23• 11 years ago

I generally agree, but ...

At bottom, this isn't a right flowing from the dictates of the Constitution. Nobody in 1789 would have said that gay marriage is a fundamental right. We acknowledge the right today for the same reason we acknowledge many other rights we did not acknowledge then--society as a whole has agreed to recognize the right

Looking at just the legal aspects, in 1789 (and 1776) we did recognize that 'all men are created equal' and equal protection (and due process might apply too). From those rights flows the idea that a right conferred to some, such as marraige, should not be denied to others.

It is important that the Court not act ahead of society.

I wonder how much of this is due to the Court being unable to act far ahead of society. The Court has no real power of enforcement; for example, when the Supreme Court ruled for Indians whose land was siezed in Georgia, President Andrew Jackson (now on your $20 bill) famously said "[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."

If they rule and are ignored, they lose credibility and influence and gain nothing. I wonder how often judges take than into consideration (especially judges in lower courts, such as municipal courts).

amyjess3• 11 years ago

Support for interracial marriage didn't pass 50% until the '90s, but SCOTUS ruled decades before that.

The fact that they waited until after support for SSM passed 50% is what's unusual.

Zigurd• 11 years ago

Nobody in 1789 would have said that gay marriage is a fundamental right.

That's one of those assertions that relies on present-day society always believing they are more socially advanced than earlier ages, and that society moves forward monotonically in lock step around the world.

In fact, modern American society is a lot more prudish about same-sex unions of various types than earlier societies in Rome, Greece, and China at various times. It's very likely that one could find contemporaries of the authors of our Constitution, in comparable circumstances of economic and cultural development, who thought same sex unions are perfectly OK.

The men of 1789 who wrote the Constitution wrote a document they aspired to. Pretty obviously in the case of slavery, but in many other ways.

They explicitly said they could not enumerate rights. If you think otherwise, I'd like to know what you think of the following:

If someone invented a brain accelerator that imparted god-like intelligence, would you have a right to use it, or would the government grant such a right?

If someone cured old age, would you have a right to access that cure? Or would government have a say in this novel, unprecedented thing?

If someone invented an unbreakable code, would you have a right to what amounts to an uncrackable safe for your "documents and effects?"

If someone invented a personal spaceship, would you have a right to go to space, assuming you could do it without endangering others?

andor4362• 11 years ago

I don't know. They had to start by striking down the federal benefits part of DoMA, and then return the issue to the lower courts to build up sufficient decisions (and precedent.) It takes time to do this. Frankly I'm astonished (and proud) that public opinion has shifted so quickly.

mkr-hn4• 11 years ago

It's all the people coming over the last 15 years. It's easier to hate an abstract notion of a person--all those gay stereotypes, plus what you hear in church--than someone you know and care about.

masklinn12• 11 years ago

They really waited until they had no choice: they refused to hear all cases until there was a circuit split, then they had no choice but to resolve the split.

__z14• 11 years ago

RGB specifically addressed why the supreme court wasn't previously hearing marriage cases at that time - they don't generally hear cases when the circuit courts are in agreement. Once the circuit split then they addressed the issue, but only then. In fact the dissent in DeBoer v. Snyder (which is one of the four cases that was combined for the Supreme Court) said "Because the correct result is so obvious, one is tempted to speculate that the majority has purposefully taken the contrary position to create the circuit split regarding the legality of same-sex marriage that could prompt a grant of certiorari by the Supreme Court and an end to the uncertainty of status and the interstate chaos that the current discrepancy in state laws threatens."

slayed03• 11 years ago

Great news. Glad this won't be an issue going into the next presidential election. There's been so much time wasted on this issue when, at the end of the day, any 2 consenting adults should have all of the same rights as any other 2 consenting adults (barring felony conviction, poor mental health eval, etc).

talmand8• 11 years ago

I agree, I'm tired of hearing about this topic and the time wasted on it.

Although, I'm waiting for the 3 consenting adults lawsuit, that will be interesting.

EDIT: since the world is full of reactionaries that love to take things out of context; my public disclaimer on this is that I have no issue with this ruling.

sseveran• 11 years ago

This will start shortly if it hasn't already.

vidarh4• 11 years ago

Though sometimes it can be entertaining. In the UK the debate included one lord embarrassing himself by "warning" that gay marriage might lead to a lesbian queen giving birth to a future monarch through artificial insemination, as well as musing about how it could allow said lord to marry his son to escape inheritance tax [1]

I'm already looking forward to reading some of the tripe that will be written about this SCOTUS decision...

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/21/tebbit-gay-ma...

bdcravens3• 11 years ago

Felony convictions and mental health evals have no bearing on marriages currently

slayed03• 11 years ago

They do have a bearing on other rights though. I issued a blanket statement and wanted to make sure to list that there were exceptions.

probablycorey• 11 years ago

Glad this won't be an issue going into the next presidential election.

I wish this was true. But I think the decision will increase the discussion of marriage equality in the next election. Just look at the political impact abortion had after the supreme court decided Roe v. Wade. Abortion was used to galvanize conservative votes against liberals and SCOTUS.

mason2403• 11 years ago

Glad this won't be an issue going into the next presidential election.

Has this been an issue presidential elections? I don't remember it being discussed at all.

mkr-hn4• 11 years ago

For me and a lot of friends and family, marriage equality. Yay.

"It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality . . . Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry." (page 22, from the coverage on SCOTUSBlog)

For others, the opinion also reasserted that people who are really mad about this can continue to be mad and vocal about it, as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

"Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. The same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for other reasons. In turn, those who believe allowing same-sex marriage is proper or indeed essential, whether as a matter of religious conviction or secular belief, may engage those who disagree with their view in an open and searching debate." (page ~32)

The full majority opinion [PDF]: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf

hackuser23• 11 years ago

opinion also reasserted that people who are really mad about this can continue to be mad and vocal about it, as guaranteed by the First Amendment

Was this a question? I don't think I've heard anyone ever say otherwise.

I'll add though, that people long have cloaked oppression in religion. People justified (and still justify) slavery, segregation, and oppression of women under the guise of religion, for example. Some might have been sincere (not that it justifies oppressing others), but for some the 'ultimate' authority of their God is an effective defense against any mortal criticism.

EDIT: To be clear, this is not a problem with religion in particular. I'm only discussing religion because that's the issue on the table. Thanks to chrisguilbeau for pointing that out; I agree with his comment below.

mkr-hn4• 11 years ago

There's been a dull hum of religious conservatives worrying about consequences like this ever since the 2013 ruling.

pjc502• 11 years ago

There are quite a lot of people who argued that changing the definition of marriage was an infringement of their religious rights. I've never been clear on how that was supposed to happen but maybe you can dig it out of the oral arguments.

Bedon292• 11 years ago

I think people may have a hard time separating the two. They feel that it is infringing upon their religion, and they associate that religion with the First Amendment which they use to express it.

I also think they are putting it in there as a covering themselves, preempting the argument from others.

chrisguilbeau• 11 years ago

To be fair, the things you mention (slavery, segregation, oppression, even genocide) have been justified by people led by pure atheistic humanism effectively cloaking oppression in logic, academia and scientific theory (Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot). I think it's fair to say that people with all sorts of ideologies have treated those they fear, don't understand or just plain don't like pretty poorly.

I'll add that some who have been at the forefront of fighting for the abolishment of the oppressions you list have done so while following Christianity (MLK, Wilberforce)

dennisbest• 11 years ago

Kennedy is addressing the idea (myth) that churches would be compelled to perform same-sex marriages or somehow face legal consequences for speaking on the issue.

coryfklein2• 11 years ago

Was this a question? I don't think I've heard anyone ever say otherwise.

As a former Mormon, I'll give a resounding YES. Mormons have a persecution complex. And whenever Prop 8 or gay marriage is brought up it gets even worse. They tend to inflate opposition - you say "we should legalize gay marriage" and they will respond "I have a right to talk about my religious beliefs!!"

mrgoldenbrown4• 11 years ago

Was this a question? I don't think I've heard anyone ever say otherwise. You live in a very optimistic world! 2 quick examples: First, Glenn Beck and other popular conservatives have said exactly that, and worse: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/30/glenn-beck-if-gay...

Second: Do you remember the Mormon funded ad blitz in California, which promised all kinds of (patently untrue) negative consequences if prop 8 went the wrong way? Kids being indoctrinated in grade school, churches of all kinds forced to cater to same sex couples, etc.

raldi• 11 years ago

I think Kennedy knew this was going to be read by far more laypersons than a typical opinion, and wrote it accordingly. It reads like a FAQ, going through all the common objections and concerns one by one and addressing them in order.

quizotic2• 11 years ago

I'm glad that my LBG friends can now marry anywhere. But damn, Scalia's counter opinion (and Roberts' opinion) strike me as well-considered and well-argued in the 2nd half of http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf . In brief, their view was that resolving this issue in the courts erodes the democratic process.

Can anybody counter Scalia, and say why the issue of gay marriage couldn't wait to be resolved by the states? Why is this class of license inequity different than other classes, where the states' right to license something is not resolved by SCOTUS?

gibsonje• 11 years ago

This is a case of states violating the constitution of the united states. It's a pretty clear violation of equal protection. It's not up to the states to decide this.

Rights of a minority should not be left to the democratic process.

lisper34• 11 years ago

Can anybody counter Scalia, and say why the issue of gay marriage couldn't wait to be resolved by the states?

For the same reason that slavery couldn't be resolved by the states. For the same reason that racism can't be resolved by the states. Because these things haven't gotten resolved by states. The United States of America, sadly, has a significant minority of people who Just Don't Get It, and there are enough of them that if (when) they congregate they can form majorities in a number of states. And so the federal government needs to step in and dope-slap these people from time to time.

npinguy• 11 years ago

The same reason that the Civil Rights act had to be passed in the courts and the first students in integrated schools in the south had to be marched in with armed guard.

"Democracy" is frequently used interchangeably with freedom, but never underestimate the power of a close-minded majority to rule with tyranny and impose their will and discrimination on a minority - racial, sexually-orientatated, or otherwise.

tych0• 11 years ago

What happens when a member of a gay couple gets sick in a state that doesn't recognize gay marriages? What do gay couples do when they file their federal taxes?

shepardrtc• 11 years ago

Marriage is a legally-binding contract. Since it is in the domain of public law, allowing religious beliefs to support or interfere with it would, in essence, allow the religion to be intertwined with the state itself. So, in my humble opinion, separation of church and state alone would require it to be legal for all people. In addition, just as states can't pass a law to allow for racial segregation of contracts, they can't pass a law to allow for class-based segregation of contracts.

Of course, I am far from a lawyer, and this is a pure layman's point of view.

discardorama• 11 years ago

In brief, their view was that resolving this issue in the courts erodes the democratic process.

Basic human rights should not be subject to the "democratic process".

mhurron2• 11 years ago

Can anybody counter Scalia, and say why the issue of gay marriage couldn't wait to be resolved by the states?

Why should the States have the rights to prevent the exercise of a citizens civil rights granted by the US Constitution?

The Constitiution, and the Bill of Rights explicitly, exists because there are things that are just not left up to 'the majority' to come to a democratic decision over. They are rights that were recognized to be inalienable rights. Time and again, courts have had to step in to once again assert that these rights already belong to all citizens because the States have used the democratic process to trample and curtail them even though the highest law of the land already should have put such questions to rest.

The Courts ruling says this. "the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry." Their dicision is not based on new law, it is simply stating that the US Constitution already recognized these rights.

Letting the States decide is letting the States pick and choose what parts of the Constitution they feel like following.

hackuser23• 11 years ago

Can anybody counter Scalia, and say why the issue of gay marriage couldn't wait to be resolved by the states? Why is this class of license inequity different than other classes, where the states' right to license something is not resolved by SCOTUS?

Certainly with all the imagined legal expertise on HN, someone will answer. I have no expertise, but here's a shot at least from a moral point of view and based on some limited legal and political principles:

1) It can't wait because people are suffering now, today. Read Martin Luther King's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail', where he points out that people who are not suffering always helpfully advise the oppressed to wait until later, 'until a more convenient time'. After I read that, I began to notice that pattern often.

2) We're not a democracy; we are, and this is essential, a constitutional democracy. Democracy is mob rule, or as someone said (Isaac Asimov?), 'democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner'. The Contitution, the Bill of Rights in particular, protects minority rights. It's not up to legislatures or the majority to grant or take away those rights. Civil rights are purposely excluded from the democratic process.

3) It's disingenuous to describe an issue of civil rights and the long-time oppression of millions as a dispute over licensing. Was segregation about hotel accommodations? Slavery and women's rights about employment disputes?

jodah• 11 years ago

In brief, their view was that resolving this issue in the courts erodes the democratic process.

Sounds like an argument against their existence. They didn't have to take up the case...

tptacek8• 11 years ago

Scalia's argument isn't that marriage equality is an issue for the states. It that it's an issue for the legislature; that is, that the people should decide on it, rather than an interpretation of our secular scripture.

It's helpful to remember that the balance of powers were carefully designed, with an overarching purpose of not centralizing power into a monarchy or aristocracy. We are by design not a nation governed by a panel of philosopher-kings.

Because the Supreme Court has lifetime tenure --- a design feature intended to isolate the justices from politics, not embed them in it --- there's a lot of tension involved in their powers. Unlike politicians, they can't easily be removed if there's a popular outcry against their decisions. They're the guardians of the Constitution. But the Constitution is first and foremost a document of procedural safeguards: it is most coherently and powerfully understood as a mechanism to ensure that all citizens have open channels to the decision-making of their own governance. The procedures of US government are meant to be zealously protected, but the substance is supposed to be left to the people.

So a lot of the dissent in today's result is best read as, "regardless of what we think of marriage equality, who are we to override the decisions of the people?" And further militating against today's substantive intervention by five pro-equality justices is the fact that marriage equality isn't really a process right. Whether or not your marriage is recognized has actually not much bearing on whether you're capable of making your voice heard.

Of course, there are even more powerful arguments in favor of marriage equality. For one thing, the black letter language of the Constitution, right smack in the beginning of it prior to any amendments, requires all the states to honor each other's judicial proceedings, public acts, and records. To allow Mississippi to reject a Massachusetts same-sex marriage is to contravene the process set up in the Constitution directly. That can happen, but probably not when the conflict is animated entirely by discrimination against a class of people.

All this is just to say: don't be too quick to discard the intellectual argument against Supreme Court-enforced marriage equality. There will be times in your life where the same arguments are going to make a lot more sense, applied to other issues.

kraig911• 11 years ago

As a point in examining history the supreme court I thought was usually the case where issues like this bubble up. i.e. Abortion Women Voting (I think?) Corporate Entities etc.

btown• 11 years ago

Wow. I just read it (for the interested, it starts on page 69 and is well worth the read for anyone even the slightest bit interested in constitutional law), and it brings up some very good points.

My counter would be this: Of course it would be hubris to think that SCOTUS can "create 'liberties.'" But that is not what SCOTUS is doing in this case. There's a clear reading of the Bill of Rights where it is up to SCOTUS to clarify the definition of "liberty" or "equal protection" in the 14th Amendment as the general human understanding of human rights expands - as ambiguous language in the amended Constitution, it is very much in the federal judiciary's domain.

Now, if the states or the citizens feel strongly that this interpretation oversteps what should be the judiciary's domain, then there's a process for the other branches and the citizenry to tighten the limits of the judiciary's domain. That is the process of a Constitutional amendment. But to say, as Scalia implies, that SCOTUS should wait for an amendment or legislation before being able to expand the interpretation of ambiguous language in the amended Constitution, is counter to the very mandate SCOTUS was given in the first place - it should not wait or falter when a reasonable case is presented to the body, and where constitutional language is ambiguous. I applaud the Court's courage in living up to that mandate today.

...

And at the end of the day, Mr. Scalia, when it comes to bodies-not-representative-of-the-human-citizenry broadly interpreting ambigous language in the fundamental Laws, we should truly be glad that this is what we're seeing, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict ... :)

woodchuck64• 11 years ago

"The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. "

I can change this paragraph only slightly to come up with an absurdity.

"The fundamental right to vote does not include a right to make a State change its definition of suffrage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of suffrage (to be those related by blood to the historically dominant culture taking part in the political process) that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational."

States are not free to define away your rights, it's that simple.

guelo• 11 years ago

Scalia says striking down campaign finance laws passed by congress and supported by the people was vital but striking down discriminatory marriage laws is extreme judicial overreach. There's no principle there, it's just the politically expedient argument for his ideological battles.

aclimatt• 11 years ago

I believe the issue is that by passing a law prohibiting granting a marriage license to a same-sex couple, a State is violating that couple's Fourteenth Amendment right to life, liberty, and equal protection, among other things.

I will admit that there were a lot of high-soaring words that might have covered up the legal basis, but to me, the legal component of the ruling was simply:

1) The court finds that marriage is an inherent part of life and liberty (arguably the shakiest part)

2) A State passing a law prohibiting marriage by one specific group of people is taking away their rights of life and liberty

3) Therefore, said law is found to violate the Fourteenth Amendment which grants life, liberty, and equal protection under the law to all United States citizens, and is thus unconstitutional.

DannyBee7• 11 years ago

Sorry, but as a lawyer totally in favor of gay marriage, Roberts, at least, is completely right on the legal theory.

There has been basically nothing, in the history of our country, considered more of a state right than defining marriage.

The supreme court is not a ruling council. Our constitution is about freedom from government intervention, not guaranteed government benefits.

The debates over everything in the past that led to amendments looked roughly the same as the debate over same sex marriage. The only difference is this time a court ended it by deciding to change the constitution.

api5• 11 years ago

I agree with them in a sense -- it's not democratic. Neither was desegregation. As the saying goes: democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.

DannyBee7• 11 years ago

Sorry, but as a lawyer totally in favor of gay marriage, Roberts, at least, is completely right on the legal theory.

There has been basically nothing, in the history of our country, considered more of a state right than defining marriage.

The supreme court is not a ruling council. Our constitution is about freedom from government intervention, not guaranteed government benefits.

The debates over everything in the past that led to amendments looked roughly the same as the debate over same sex marriage. For example, people beat each other on the floor of the senate chamber over slavery. The only difference to this debate is that a court ended it by deciding to change the constitution.

This is not how the process is supposed to work. The fact that the majority of the US may be tired of a broken political system does not change this.

snowwrestler5• 11 years ago

Essentially, the question is whether marriage is a right, or is it a privilege.

If it is a right, then it should not be subject to the democratic process in the first place, so taking it out does not count as erosion. If it is a privilege, then it can be granted (or not) through the democratic process. The Court held today that it is a right.

Disclaimer--I have not finished reading all the opinions yet.

nmrm213• 11 years ago

IANAL. FYI, this is a constitutional issue that goes back to the early days of the court. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_review_in_the_United_...

The essential response from Kennedy et al. was two-fold:

1. Marriage is a Right because the due process and equal protection clauses were designed to be interpreted broadly as society came to "understand" liberty in new ways. I think this is actually pretty damn accurate -- I have no doubt that some of the founding fathers had slavery on their minds, even though at the time the amendments we're interpreted in that way.

2. Rights are not subject to the "vicissitudes" of public opinion -- the democratic process doesn't get to take away rights.

Roberts and Scalia mostly disagreed with (1), but there was very little substance to their argument. Read through the four justifications given by Kennedy. Roberts and Scalia doesn't respond to these. They just sort of complain about a slippery slope to tyranny. But this court is by far less activist than previous courts and we have yet to devolve into a dictatorship-by-SCOTUS. So I'm sceptical of the veracity of their slippery slope argument. It would have been more compelling if that had talked more about this specific case.

Roberts and Scalia also made some more practical arguments, e.g. that democratically selected policies are more robust protections because they can hash out the details. I mostly believe that's a false dichotomy because there's very little evidence that courts conferring Rights upon groups of people actually shuts down legislative action or debate on either side of the question. Look at abortion or civil rights. Ultimately, I find this argument extremely ahistorical and massively empirically denied.

(As an aside, I think Scalia's "o'weening pride will be our fall" thing was a pretty dickish thing to say, given the overloaded connotations associated with pride in this case.)

haberman• 11 years ago

Should the courts have waited for the state legislatures in the deep south to desegregate schools? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education#/m...

Should the courts have waited for the state legislatures in the deep south to legalize interracial marriage? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage#/media/Fi...

The court needs the power to overrule legislatures because democratic majorities have consistently failed to protect the rights of minorities.

zzleeper2• 11 years ago

You could apply that to a lot of other situations. What about the right to own slaves? Southern states certainly preferred if that was handled at the state and not federal level.

Sure, marriage is a "license" but you could make "negro ownership" a license thing and it wouldn't change things.

golemotron• 11 years ago

The best argument is: that's the way we do it in the US. We've never waited for complete agreement among the states before acting on the Federal level, regardless of whether it is a Constitutional Amendment or a SCOTUS decision.

This article shows the number of states that have reached consensus on Women's Suffrage, Interracial Marriage, Prohibition and a few other issues. Same-sex marriage has actually had more consensus than many of those other issues did before SCOTUS jumped in.

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-pace-of-social-change...

TheBeardKing• 11 years ago

Can you imagine if the repeal of Jim Crow laws had been left to the states? How long would it have been before Mississippi integrated?

peterwwillis• 11 years ago

Scalia's opinion is that, effectively, the courts should be judging based on Scalia's personal opinion of the "legal culture’s conception of constitutional interpretation". He thinks the culture no longer interprets the constitution in, well, "the right way".

In the previous paragraph he points out how, effectively, any majority-leaning set of judges can just invent new rights to assign to the country and they will be permanent [or at least, until a later court overturns them]. And he's right. But this is not news. Presidents have been trying to assign judges that lean their way on issues since... a long-ass time. The judges are human, moral, and they change their minds about how to interpret the law as the mob's mood changes.

And he's right that the majority simply shoving it's way down the minority's throat is unjust and is going to breed contempt. When the North defeated the South, racial tension didn't just disappear overnight. Those in the South kept a grudge and an ignorance that persists to this day. We may be using the power of the majority to force the removal of the flag, but those people who find that force offensive will not forget it. We didn't convert them, convince them, or make them understand; we held the proverbial Public Relations gun to our leadership's heads.

You ask why the states shouldn't have resolved the issue over time. Should the federal government have allowed some states to continue slavery? We all know it's a crime against humanity now, but what actually makes it a crime? Is it some old english scribbled on some parchment centuries ago? Or is it merely an intangible, unwritten law that reversed itself naturally as society changed over time?

The truth is, human civilizations have been morphing and evolving for thousands of years and they aren't going to stop doing so because some old farts had an idea a couple hundred years ago and we're trying to stick to their idea as hard as we can. Never changing, no matter how hard our society demands it, becomes simple fundamentalism, and our country was not founded on fundamentalism. Our country was founded - no matter how trite this sounds - on the idea of liberty over tyranny. We're always going to lean more towards liberty than tyranny.

We have a pretty good track record so far of not letting the states or federal government erode our liberty just because of the color of our skin, or our gender, or sexual identity, or religion. We protect people, always. But we don't limit people just because we don't like them or are afraid of them. Any time a state is asking to do that, we will eventually push back hard enough that the state will lose.

vacri8• 11 years ago

In brief, their view was that resolving this issue in the courts erodes the democratic process.

That the issue made it to the supreme court shows that it is following the democratic process laid out in the constitution. If it has to be decided on by SCOTUS, the issue has already been through a number of other checks and balances. SCOTUS decisions are part of the American democratic process, and it's incredibly disingenuous of Scalia to complain about it.

Basically the "this is not democratic process!" is a standard dog-whistle cry put forward when conservatives lose a vote. Progressives have their own cries, of course, but "this isn't democratic, and the proof is that I didn't win" is a standard losing conservative trope.

sytelus3• 11 years ago

Scalia is the same clown who opinionated that corporations are people and politicians can accept all the money lobby throws at them anonymously. When he gave this ruling, he never thought his Court was a threat to the democracy or he grossly misinterpreted constitution or completely disregarded founders original intent or violated deeply held belief of most Americans. But apparently gay marriage does all of that for him. His other dissents includes things ranging from teaching creationism in schools (yes, he supported that) to environmental law cases. In all of those dissents he openly accused his colleges for relying on their "private" opinion instead of actually adhering to their job of interpreting constitution. If you look at how he himself did his job so well to interpret constitution so that corporations have same rights as people even years before gay people can dream of, you see how his twisted view of the world is.

Overall, I would expect justices in supreme court have display some level of courtesy, dignity and respect to their own colleges on the same bench. Accusing them as being unprofessional, incompetent and even intentionally so malign to declare them threat to nation every time they disagree with him - all these is clear indicator that Scalia is not fit for the bench. Unfortunately people have to suffer through him because of the rule that he can't be replaced til life.

ctdonath9• 11 years ago

So what happens to clergy who refuse to perform such "weddings" on religious grounds? All major religions have at least a majority, if not uniform, disapproval of "marrying" any other than man & woman. We already have cases of punishing & re-educating bakers for adhering to their religious views on the subject, how much more so those who may face compulsion to perform a union they cannot religiously condone?

ETA: to wit, how to reconcile the court's ruling with the court's claim none will be compelled to facilitate such unions against their faith?

clavalle5• 11 years ago

Luckily their participation is not necessary.

lisper34• 11 years ago

I don't recall any bakers being punished for refusing to perform a gay marriage. When did that happen?

smackfu2• 11 years ago

Nothing happens to them. Even today, Catholic clergy won't perform many opposite-sex marriages unless certain conditions are met, like having it in a Catholic church and requiring pre-marriage counseling.

masklinn12• 11 years ago

So what happens to clergy who refuse to perform such "weddings" on religious grounds?

Nothing.

We already have cases of punishing & re-educating bakers for adhering to their religious views on the subject, how much more so those who may face compulsion to perform a union they cannot religiously condone?

Clergy are not public accommodations and are not subject to non-discrimination law. Clergy in the US can still refuse to officiate interracial marriage for instance.

The bakers you're talking about were not "punished and re-educated for adhering to their religious views", they were punished for discriminating against a protected class in the state they operated in. Just as they would have been punished for refusing cake to an interracial marriage, even if condoning it were against their sincerely held religious beliefs.

But you really shouldn't worry about that: this SCOTUS decision only forces states to issue and recognise marriage licenses to same-sex couples, it does not force them to make sexual orientation a protected class.

And in all 29 states where sexual orientation still isn't a protected class, same sex couples can have a cake-less marriage in the morning because businesses aren't forced to serve them, and then get fired in the afternoon because their bosses can discriminate against them for reasons of sexual orientation.

lmm10• 11 years ago

Clergy have every right to refuse them. Other people have every right to express their views in peaceful, democratic fashion, e.g. picketing such churches, just as they would with a church that advocated any other distasteful view.

No-one, those bakers included, is legally compelled to support gay marriage. Some people may find themselves economically compelled to do things they find distasteful, but to a certain extent that's always true for anyone who has to work for a living.

There are some things that we consider it unfair to economically compel people to do, e.g. OHSA. Do you think that should be extended to e.g. making it illegal to make someone's job contingent on officiating gay marriages? What is the natural boundary there - should it be illegal to fire someone for doing something they're politically opposed to? Should a barman have the right to e.g. refuse service to women because they don't think women should be allowed to drink?

intopieces6• 11 years ago

The four dissenting opinions in this case are interesting. They deal mainly with the fact that, strictly, such pronouncements are not within the authority of the Supreme Court. They are correct, in a sense. But by that logic, Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. V. U.S. (1964) should not be; by that logic, we should have waited for America to realize, of its own volition in 50 states, that allowing a business to deny a black man a hotel room is fundamentally wrong. But for the group wronged -- consider the same-sex couples facing the death of a spouse, the endless and expensive legal hurdles, or the millions of black Americans who couldn't sit at a lunch counter -- waiting for all 50 states to come to the right conclusion is cruel. No, the court has a moral obligation, where it can, to stand up for the people for whom justice for all would come too late. It's certainly not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. But the Founders were not infallible, were not seers of the future; it is just as incongruous to hold them responsible for their failures as it is to hold us responsible for our failures we have not yet realized.

ForrestN• 11 years ago

On my birthday in April, my partner Andrew proposed to me in a Minion mascot costume, handing me a solid gold Ring of Power from Lord of the Rings, which was set into a Chicken McNugget, while a live vocalist sang "I Say a Little Prayer for You." When we get married I will feel so grateful to have fallen in love in the present.

octatoan2• 11 years ago

That's beautiful :)

baakss2• 11 years ago

In my lifetime, I think this is the social issue that has seen the most positive change.

As a kid, gay people were practically lepers.

Eleven Years ago, Dave Chappelle just outright said "gay sex is just gross, sorry it just is", and it was considered funny and acceptable. (Not harping on him specifically, just pointing out what it was like in 2004)

Seven years ago prop 8 passed, if barely with some caveats about lack of understanding.

And now? SCOTUS upholds gay marriage and it's socially reprehensible to mock homosexuality. It's a strange and very positive feeling watching a country's world view shift like this.

taytus3• 11 years ago

Dave Chappelle is a comedian, they say stuff like that all the time, it's part of their job. If you are going to quote somebody (specially on these issues), I'd recommend not to quote a comedian.

baakss2• 11 years ago

I did think about that a bit. That's part of why I added the disclaimer. I included it more because I was watching it this weekend, saw that bit, and thought, "That would be a really unacceptable thing to say today, but back then it was considered funny." Edit: And you're right, comedians are on a different standard. Sorry, forgot to include that.

ceejayoz4• 11 years ago

And, in fairness, sex - gay or straight - is fundamentally pretty gross. Fun, but gross.

aedocw• 11 years ago

Quoting a comedian as a means of reflecting what's popular or at least socially acceptable is an appropriate and accurate way to say "at one point in recent history, it was socially acceptable to say demeaning things about gay people."

Michael Richards is a comedian, and made anti-Semitic remarks that resulted in a significant backlash. Again, looking back this is a good indication of someone saying something that was NOT popularly acceptable.

tomp• 11 years ago

I still think that gay (two men) sex us gross... or any sex with a man. Which is why I don't engage in it, but I'm pretty grateful that about 50% of the inhabitants of Earth enjoys it!

arprocter• 11 years ago

Eleven Years ago, Dave Chappelle just outright said "gay sex is just gross, sorry it just is", and it was considered funny and acceptable. (Not harping on him specifically, just pointing out what it was like in 2004)

iirc the bit you're referring to was how saying outrageous things is viewed as acceptable when a white woman does it.

In the black Bush piece he said 'and no gays settling down!' to poke fun at the GOP.

dntrkv• 11 years ago

You can't just pull a quote like that out of context. Chappelle said the "gay sex is gross" thing twice, once was in the black bush character (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoDpghAaXT4) and the other was when he had a white girl sing his thoughts:

"Gay sex is gross; sorry, I just think it is. (gets another card) Unless, of course, they're lesbians. (gets another card) I like lesbians. (gets another card) I like lesbians."

Which is super tame compared to a lot of the other things Chappelle said back then, or even Louis CK says nowadays.

ElComradio9• 11 years ago

Any straight guy will, if given the choice, avoid scenes of man on man sex as much as possible. They might say it's "just not my thing" out of politeness or tact but watch what they do. When Chapelle said it it was funny because everyone watching can relate and it's a tension reliever to hear what you've been bottling up is actually true. Much comedy works this way.

asddubs4• 11 years ago

I dunno, I'm a straight guy and it doesn't bother me. It used to but one day I realized it was just socially instilled gay panic.

DanBC10• 11 years ago

Any straight guy will

A small change makes your sentence more truthy: "Many straight guys will".

This isn't just a quibble. Public safety gave up using "gay men" because so many men do not identify as gay but do have sex with men. Thus, MSM is now used instead.

mreiland• 11 years ago

DADT was in 1994 IIRC? This idea that gay people were lepers 10 years ago is false, 21 years ago the military was already doing everything it could to put off the pressure of allowing gays in the military (and DADT was their compromise).

This is a generational thing, this latest is but 1 victory in a long procession of victories. To pretend otherwise is balderdash.

anti-shill3• 11 years ago

good...now maybe the so-called "leftists" can put this issue aside and concentrate on issues that matter to more than about 1% of the population...I refer to these really "silly" issues like wages, single-payer healthcare (obamacare is a mess), trade, flooding of the labor supply, the drug war, worker rights and benefits, more time off and vacation, monopolies, regulatory capture, NIMBYized zoning/regs (aka affordable housing)...you know, the issues that matter to all americans, the issues that used to occupy leftists before they got sidetracked with The Most Important Issue Of All Time.

ceejayoz4• 11 years ago

Civil rights should matter to all of us, not just the people who lacked them.

digitalneal• 11 years ago

It wouldn't have been such a big deal if there weren't so many legal things tied to it. Taxes, medical, property rights etc.

bdcravens3• 11 years ago

To be fair, it's that big of an issue among conservative Christians as well, when I reality there are much bigger issues that fall under that group's area of concern.

Tagbert• 11 years ago

What makes you think that people have not been and do not continue to fight for those issues at the same time as they have been fighting for this issue? There is not one "leftist" who can only address one issue at a time and there are lots of other people besides that "leftist" who are pushing for progressive change.

I wonder why this bothers you so much and why you seem so dismissive of the issue.

rndmind• 11 years ago

I agree with you strongly. There are more pressing issues that could be detrimental to the global population that should take prescience.

woofyman2• 11 years ago

Tell that to the widow who lost custody of their children since their state didn't recognize their marriage and didn't have 2 party adoptions.

api5• 11 years ago

Interesting how hard you got down voted.

I don't disagree with marriage equality at all, but I also believe that the whole "culture war" has been horribly destructive to our ability to address more pressing issues. It's been a fantastic divide-and-conquer tactic to con lower income (and usually socially conservative) people into voting against their economic best interests, and to prevent the formation of any meaningful progressive coalition on these issues.

Hopefully we can reach some kind of consensus here and put some of this to bed so we can move on to things that are, I hate to say it, much more important -- like the things you list.

anti-shill3• 11 years ago

the readers here are young and educated, which for practical purposes translates to being fascist.

Fascism is best defined by the degree to which the overclass controls the youth of a nation by propaganda. Because the youth of today have been pushed into college, that means they are highly propagandized.

And of course the overclass loves it when they can force the youth of the nation to focus on an issue such as gay rights. Not only is it a natural wedge issue, making it harder for the people to unite against the overclass, but by leading youth into social issues leftism and away from hardcore economic leftism, this is a win-win for the overclass.

Anyway, this dynamic in play here with gay marriage is a perfect window into american fascism.

tommorris16• 11 years ago

Gay people fighting for their rights doesn't stop anyone else fighting for anything else.

Zero-sum fallacy.

If you want gay people to stop being all annoying and campaigny, then get people to stop persecuting us all around the world.

tibiapejagala2• 11 years ago

Just calling something a fallacy makes you seem smart, but doesn't make you right.

Is media attention infinite? Does your government can discuss infinite number of issues? I don't think so.

tptacek8• 11 years ago

Congratulations to everyone who worked on this. A truly epic win.

pavanky2• 11 years ago

As a non american, does the US Government have an official definition of marriage that is going to change today?

I understand the social consequences. But what legal rights have been granted now that did not exist previously ?

disantlor• 11 years ago

I don't know all (or many) of the specifics but I know a big one is that in certain states/situations partners were not guaranteed visitation rights in the hospital on the grounds that they weren't legally married.

teraflop2• 11 years ago

There are a ton of legal ramifications, including tax benefits (it's advantageous for a married couple to file income taxes jointly), immigration (spousal visas etc.), inheritance, and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of...

vinay427• 11 years ago

I believe immigration and federal taxes, which are handled solely by the federal government, are not affected as the US (on a national level) already recognized same-sex marriages after the DOMA overrule.

jgroszko2• 11 years ago

The big ones are hospital visitation rights, being able to file joint federal taxes, and estate planning and inheritance benefits.

ohitsdom4• 11 years ago

I think estate planning and inheritance all could have been done before (you can leave your money/assets to whoever). This just ensures your spouse gets it even if you don't have a will.

andor4362• 11 years ago

Social security, tax benefits, death benefits (including child custody), health insurance coverage, legal (marital communications privilege) There are probably thousands of these baked into our state and federal laws.

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of...

and http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/marriage-rights-benef...

mjhoy• 11 years ago

The oral arguments are worth a listen, from back in April.

http://www.oyez.org/cases/2010-2019/2014/2014_14_556

Mary Bonauto argued it perfectly, I thought.

brudgers• 11 years ago

The title of the post is incorrect.

coldpie3• 11 years ago

Yeah. Technically gay marriage bans were struck down. Whatever.

keedot• 11 years ago

How so?

sctb• 11 years ago

Thanks, we updated it to that of the article.

nlake44• 11 years ago

I'm happy for the gay community. At least the Supreme Court is not fully corrupted.

MrZongle22• 11 years ago

I'm a straight conservative (more fiscal than social, and sure as hell not Republican any more), and my reaction to this is: "meh". The writing has been on the wall for a while now, and anybody surprised by this hasn't been paying attention.

Any social conservatives on HN -- that is to say, both of you -- should keep in mind that if you're worried about how this affects the sanctity of marriage, that institution has long since been sullied by a) allowing government to get involved with it, b) easily-obtainable divorces and c) that whole Henry VIII business. Same-sex couples can't possibly do any more damage than that.

Of the threats to American culture or even Western Civilization as a whole, the SSM boogeyman pales in comparison to a feckless electorate, unaccountable government with Big Brother aspirations, crushing debt and even Islamic extremists.

That's why my reaction is "meh": as a "problem", SSM isn't even on the radar.

jrs23523• 11 years ago

I guess we found each other. The things that irritate me the most is that people believe that marriage is a right. It is not. It is a government granted legal status privilege. The privilege grants those recognized as married numerous benefits. Now, with that said, I can't see why allowing any two consenting adults who wish to extend the government recognized benefits to each other should be infringed. One question though is, what benefit does the state/government gain from [recognizing] marriage? I think the quickest and easiest answer is that a) two people sharing and taking care of each other is beneficial [to society] and b) should a divorce occur, the state can get involved ensuring that a[n ex-]spouse is treated fairly and taken care of.

ADD: Also, people keep mixing love and marriage. While the two often go hand in hand that isn't always the case.

jrs23523• 11 years ago

Marriage is not about love. It is about property. The government/state doesn't give two flying ducks about whether two people get married because they love each other, are in love (infatuated) with each other, or just like each other. Love is not required to get married.

Marriage involves determining and transferring property rights (before, during, and after a marriage).

A marriage license and a state recognized marriage is a three party agreement. It's an agreement between the two spouses and the government. It gives consent to the government to arbitrate marital issues and in return the government gives benefits to the individuals getting married.

ADD: Due to a marriage being a three party agreement, state recognized polygamy gets really complicated really fast, especially when multiple states might be involved.

hackuser23• 11 years ago

That's why my reaction is "meh": as a "problem", SSM isn't even on the radar.

I realize I'm approaching the question from a different angle than you are, but I want to point out that it was a very big problem for gay and lesbian Americans and their loved ones.

MrZongle22• 11 years ago

Oh, I get it, and my intent is not to downplay the significance of this to same-sex couples.

My point is that anybody wailing and gnashing their teeth over this is being incredibly short-sighted.

th0br0• 11 years ago

You argue with the sanctity of marriage. But which modern authority makes it sacred?

malkia2• 11 years ago

"No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."

Al-Khwarizmi• 11 years ago

Does this formally mean that gay marriage has been legal in the US since the 18th century, but no one noticed until recently? (half-serious question)

Congratulations to Americans and to gays worldwide for this great step forward.

monocasa• 11 years ago

Basically. That's how most constitutional arguments work.

ninkendo• 11 years ago

Strictly speaking it means the laws against gay marriage were themselves illegal. (As with any law deemed unconstitutional.) It's a matter of word choice to say "gay marriage was always legal" versus "anti-gay marriage laws were always illegal". There's some semantic difference between the two, but I'm not sure what the difference is from a judicial standpoint.

bane2• 11 years ago

That's basically correct. It's always been legal, and efforts to stop gay marriage have basically been efforts to narrow the scope of this already legal right.

return02• 11 years ago

"In forming a marital union, two people become something greater"

I wonder if the american constitution has the word "two" hardwired anywhere.

samatman2• 11 years ago

While this is excellent news for my gay and lesbian friends, I see no progress on polygamy.

Which, unlike same-sex marriage, is an institution with deep roots both in America (the Mormons were forced to give up this sacrament as a condition of statehood) and in the majority of world cultures, where it ranges from condoned to celebrated.

Without getting unduly personal, let's say that I have a stake in that question being resolved. I know several triples living quietly among us; they face the same kind of problems (child custody, hospital visitation, inheritance rights) as same-sex couples faced prior to this decision.

What the polygamists of the nation lack is a powerful lobby. <shrug> One may hope that nonetheless, reason and freedom will prevail here as well.

EDIT: nation, not world. Worldwide the situation is different. America is suffering from its Christian legacy here. Most Christian countries are adamant about denying this right to their citizens.

koverstreet• 11 years ago

One step at a time. It'll happen...

baddox19• 11 years ago

While this is excellent news for my gay and lesbian friends, I see no progress on polygamy.

Or indeed, on the fundamental issue, which is the need to get permission from a tiny group of powerful people in order to get married.

smackfu2• 11 years ago

...get permission from a tiny group of powerful people in order to get the government to recognize your marriage.

dublinben2• 11 years ago

Polygamy is a deeply troublesome arrangement, with a storied history of abuse. It has been steadily abandoned and outlawed as societies grant more legal rights and self-determination to women.

There is simply no way to legally recognize poly* relationships under the law in a way that resembles binary marriage.

baddox19• 11 years ago

Polygamy is a deeply troublesome arrangement, with a storied history of abuse.

As is traditional marriage, but to a much larger extent.

_delirium• 11 years ago

In Europe in the modern era, the trend is more in the other direction: as society gains more respect for both men and women's choice of sexual self-determination, instead of being fixated on traditional opposite-sex, pair-courtship rituals, polyamorous relationships are becoming more accepted. They were once strongly disapproved of and even illegalized, but are now increasingly being seen as a legitimate personal choice. On the activist side, many (most?) LGBTQ organizations also include poly activists, especially the organizations which have a more left-wing flavor.

I think the more likely path than legal polygamy, though, is to expand a more flexible set of legal arrangements for families, as a replacement for traditional marriage being the legal framework. The fact that a huge proportion of couples here (Denmark) no longer get married is already forcing that for another reason. Since many families which otherwise look traditional — long-term cohabitation of an opposite-sex couple, jointly raising children of which they're parents, etc. — don't get married, marriage as the organizing principle of families is becoming less relevant, so the law already has to start handling things differently.

totalcookie• 11 years ago

Replace Polygamy in your comment with marriage and see what happens:

Marriage is a deeply troublesome arrangement, with a storied history of abuse.

Yes, there is probably more abuse in marriages then outside, but this is not an argument against marriage, but against abuse.

Jimmy• 11 years ago

"Polygamy will further the deterioration of society!" "Polygamy has a history of abuse!"

And where have we heard precisely these arguments before?

People are great.

philwelch2• 11 years ago

Monogamy also has a storied history of abuse. Up until the 1970's it was perfectly legal for a man to rape his wife. This does not make it fundamentally impossible for healthy and consensual monogamous relationships to exist, and neither does the supposed behavior of 19th century Mormons make it impossible for healthy and consensual polygamous relationships to exist.

nate_meurer6• 11 years ago

Polygamy is a Christian institution. It was pointedly prescribed in the old testament. Modern anti-polygamists will argue that the old testament prescription was a matter of necessity, and that new testament language (particularly Paul's) prescribes monogamy, but to my eyes the new testament's position is pretty casual, while the old testament's is quite strong.

ziotom782• 11 years ago

Polygamy is a Christian institution. It was pointedly prescribed in the old testament.

Correction: "Christian" refers to Jesus Christ, which does not appear in the old testament. Catholics, Ortodoxes and many protestant churches are against polygamy.

humanrebar8• 11 years ago

It was pointedly prescribed in the old testament.

That's a common misconception. It was described, but not prescribed. The polygamy in the Old Testament is universally portrayed as dysfunctional.

spdustin2• 11 years ago

I think that's the wrong argument to make. There were a lot of things said in the Old Testament that aren't considered by most Christians to be applicable to them. The "Old Covenant" was, as the Jewish maintain today, between God and the Jews. For most Christians (more specifically, Catholics and several other groups), the laws in the Old Testament ceased to be valid when Jesus proclaimed the way into Heaven.

That said, it is true that the bible doesn't disapprove of polygamy. The Old Testament is filled with examples of God condoning it (Lamech, Esau, Jacob, Gideon, Solomon... The list of men with multiple wives goes on and on - God even gave Saul's wives to David), and the New Testament has a few "mentions", so to speak: Paul's letter to the Corinthians, which explicitly says it's his opinion and not law, Ephesians, and a few others that are suggestive of opinion and not law. But honestly, appealing to biblical authority is fraught with oppositions that focus on the numerous inconsistencies in the bible.

I believe that polygamy is a personal and/or moral belief, and while I'm personally an atheist, and personally do not have an interest or stake in debating the morality or religious support of it, I recognize that there are potential and actual inconsistencies with how rights and responsibilities are handled with respect to polygamists, and hope they're able to find the path to equality.

Selfless love knows no bounds, frankly. It's the selfish ones that need to find humility before they find peace.

sigzero8• 11 years ago

No. Polygamy happened in the Old Testament. It was never prescribed and it never ended well.

venomsnake• 11 years ago

Without getting unduly personal, let's say that I have a stake in that question being resolved. I know several triples living quietly among us; they face the same kind of problems (child custody, hospital visitation, inheritance rights) as same-sex couples faced prior to this decision.

I made that argument to a couple of friends - that they were not fighting for equality (which will be fairly easy to set up) but for inclusion in the privileged club. They responded with "Well marriage is between couples, but defining the sex of the participants is discriminatory".

One of the problems with polygamy/andry is that we could hollow out the lower social classes of mating opportunities (it happens in india and china right now due to girl infanticide and it is not pretty).

Anyway - congratulations to the winners.

samatman2• 11 years ago

Worth noting that at least one of the triples I referred to is a woman and two men. At least one is a man and two women. I'm being vague here, because bigamy is a felony.

We really have quite a long way to go on this front.

Lawtonfogle4• 11 years ago

One of the problems with polygamy/andry is that we could hollow out the lower social classes of mating opportunities

And this doesn't already happen? M/Dating does not require marriage.

return02• 11 years ago

polygamy is a correct term. polyandry/polygyny are specializations

knodi1232• 11 years ago

One of the problems with polygamy/andry is that we could hollow out the lower social classes of mating opportunities

Let's not bring up the argument of legislating for maximal gene propagation, unless you're willing to ban all forms of marriage that don't serve maximal gene propagation. Fertility tests before marriage! No marriage among the elderly, because what's the point! Let's set up a new 3-letter agency for matchmaking!

Marriage is not a government mechanism to encourage mating. Stop trying to put government in the business of animal husbandry. We're not animals.

edko2• 11 years ago

I would bet the biggest opposer to polygamy will be the INS ... imagine the Green Card businesses that would enable!

Pinckney3• 11 years ago

I would bet the biggest opposer to divorce will be the INS ... imagine the Green Card businesses that would enable! After all, it should make little difference to INS whether people choose to have their multiple marriages in series or in parallel.

k__• 11 years ago

I'm poly and I'm more for abandoning marriage-laws all together and keep this stuff to religions.

IanDrake3• 11 years ago

I have no problem with polygamy, as long as it is a consensual relationship between all adults involved.

The real problem is that government has gotten into the marriage business and it doesn't belong there. The issues you mentioned (child custody, hospital visitation, inheritance rights) really have nothing to do with marriage and should all be assignable without a government endorsed marital contract.

ufmace3• 11 years ago

That's much more along the lines of what I think. It's kind of the libertarian dilemma - with Gay Marriage, there's one huge, loud camp of religious homophobic bigots demanding that big daddy Government say that Gay Marriage is an illegal abomination, and another huge, loud group of homosexual-rights activists demanding that big daddy Government say that Gay Marriage is a-ok and governments everywhere are required to perform it. It was never really about marriage or anything - it's about getting the Government to bless your side of the argument with a magical scepter of rightness.

Meanwhile, my/our camp of libertarians saying hey, the Government really shouldn't be in the business of deciding who can be in what sort of relationship with who else or blessing either side of a controversial argument is disappointingly small and quiet and usually ignored.

giaour8• 11 years ago

The key word there is "adults." Polygamist communities have a documented tendency to seek out younger and younger women for marriage. (http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1589/657)

EDIT: added source; had previously assumed this was common knowledge

eropple6• 11 years ago

I'm not saying you're doing this, but this line of thinking is very often employed to minimize the damage done by discriminatory decision-making under the guise of "waiting for the perfect solution". Fixing what hurts people now is better than telling them to wait for something that will in all likelihood never actually come.

nutate4• 11 years ago

How could it be consensual between all adults? The marriage "license" in polygamy is between man and women, yet by secondary effects the women are fully entangled with one another. Yet if you watch any show on polygamy you'll see that a guy will keep adding new, younger wives while holding their current wives hostage (due to their lack of another option in terms of housing, money, etc). It's absurd to think that any thinking person would get in on the wife side of the polygamy pact when in the end they have their equality divided by X wives.

Smart folks have said that the reason homosexual marriage even became a thought was because of the transformation of marriage from a bond of ownership of man over woman to a shared partnership. A polygamous arrangement (as per the mormon church, not the polyamorous relationships of the hippies, etc) ends up with a hierarchy of power with one man controlling multiple wives, with the power to divorce, ruin, etc the others if they don't allow him to wed again.

I think an argument for polyamorous marriage could be made, but polygamy is essentially a raw deal for whoever isn't the hub of the marriage wheel (one man in the case of traditional mormonism, islam, etc.).

sgnelson2• 11 years ago

One problem I have with Polygamy is that I have never seen a 1-woman, multi-husband community. Sure, I've seen a few relationships in which this was the case, but when you look at the historic aspects in the US, it seems a very rare thing. That makes me wonder if there is a severe power imbalance in the relationships and what is truly occurring.

It's well known that in some modern US polygamy situations, there is a great deal of abuse of power, both in terms of controlling the wives, as well as controlling and abusing the young men who will not be allowed to have a wife. This further increases the societal costs and leads to more abuse of power, which is not what we need.

edit: I should add: It's a numbers game. Given that on average, there tends to be just slightly more women born than men, what happens with all the extra unmarried men (or women, though this is rarer)?

adventured5• 11 years ago

That same concern already equally applies to traditional marriage, in which some % are abusive. If you have a problem with polygamy on that basis, then you've got a drastically larger problem with the already existing system of marriage, in which millions of instances of abuse occur annually.

The best solution is to bring polygamy out into the open, legalize it fully nationally.

The government has no business dictating who can get married, or what the structure of marriage looks like, so long as the people in question are of sound mind and adults.

If I want to form a ten person marriage, with five men and five women, whose business is it to control us and stop us? There are only bigoted 'answers' as to why that shouldn't be allowed.

gaymarriage2• 11 years ago

what a bogus argument. You're saying because 'some modern polygamy situations' are unhealthy, we should hope to keep it illegal?

You're going to freak out when you learn about the divorce rate.

jsmthrowaway3• 11 years ago

The only plurals I know are multi-husband communities and everyone involved are happier than clams. Your concern trolling to equate happy relationships with domestic abuse, simply because you don't understand them and think that everyone in a plural relationship is FLDS and lives in Utah, is pretty striking and antiprogressive (which is odd, considering you're attempting the progressive argument against their happiness).

And no, what you're saying is not "well known." You are arguing against certain fundamentalist groups, not plurals. They are not equivalent, despite this thread's clear goal to say otherwise.

yourapostasy2• 11 years ago

The term of art for 1-woman, multi-husband arrangements is "polyandry". The Wikipedia entry [1] has a citation to a survey that finds about 50 out of about 1230 known societies in a 1980 ethnographic atlas practicing polyandry, so it is a distinct minority community-scale arrangement.

The next public, conventional taboo to broach is group and line marriages. As economic conditions worsen for some nations' middle class in the upcoming decades, line marriage can potentially offer a coping mechanism, trading off resource collectivization and time in exchange for recapturing increased security of various forms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry

zxcvcxz3• 11 years ago

You've only seen polygamist relationships like that because that's what you've been fed by society to make you believe that it's wrong and can't work.

vectorjohn2• 11 years ago

So basically, "I don't know about it, so it doesn't happen."

News flash, 1 woman multi man, and (prepare to have your mind blown), multi women multi man communities can and do exist.

ZanyProgrammer• 11 years ago

Saying it has deep roots in America is disingenuous, because Mormonism is the only religion, in a well defined geographical area to do so. There's a lot more to American religious (and demographic) history than Mormons. EDIT: And hasn't been a part of Ashkenazi Judaism for a millenium at least.

lmm10• 11 years ago

Mormonism is very much a part of America. The claim wasn't "it has deep roots everywhere in America".

nutate4• 11 years ago

Polygamy makes no sense from a power structure standpoint, it is inherently unequal. The man (generally) gets X women and each woman gets one man (the same man). If polygamy meant a web of relationships, where everyone was equally married to everyone else, that would be conceptually more fair, but as is, the power structure of polygamy as defined by the only religious sect with much influence in the US is an inherently less than equal partnership.

Void_• 11 years ago

10 years from now.

HN Headline: Polygamy upheld by supreme court

Comment:

While this is excellent news for my polygamous friends, I see no progress on [insert new deviation here].

---

So what do you all think will be the next big thing?

gadders2• 11 years ago

Incest amongst consenting adults.

angersock2• 11 years ago

Polygamy is hardly a new deviation, if indeed a deviation at all.

krapp2• 11 years ago

Robosexuality.

lmm10• 11 years ago

Furries

towelguy• 11 years ago

AI+VR

Edit: Just remembered this is already happening http://travel.cnn.com/tokyo/none/love-plus-scourge-takes-ano...

mchaver• 11 years ago

Legalized polygamy could create a lot interesting legal issues, particularly marriages of convenience. It would challenge a lot of traditional legal structures that assume a union between two people. If there is no restriction on how many people you can marry at once then you can start giving out residence rights via marriage or multiple wealthy individuals can amass large estates via marriage. I am sure there is a lot more.

This is not meant as an argument against legalized polygamy, rather to point out some of the obstacles it faces.

gaymarriage2• 11 years ago

it's an argument against marriage as a metric at all. No one should have to be romantically interested in someone to consider them a life partner.

This decision was awful IMHO. Government has no place in marriage.

So long as they are already involved with it, I'm happy that they're at least making the mistake equally for all genders.

But the real solution is to stop validating this religious rite at all.

toast0• 11 years ago

California passed a law allowing more than two parents, which while intended for other circumstances may help to some degree with this as well http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?...

pgeorgi3• 11 years ago

Since it's about the civil aspects, same sex marriage is the logistically easier topic.

Take taxes: tax codes cover singles and pairs, optionally with children. Same sex marriage doesn't change much here, polygamy does. The same for lots of other provisions that are affected by civil unions (no matter what they're called).

It can be done, but it's a lot more work (and as such, a lot more legal attack surface) than declaring "we don't care anymore for the sex of the pairs' members".

vectorpush3• 11 years ago

I don't have any moral objections to poly-marriage, but I don't think it's the same thing as gay marriage. Prohibition of gay marriage is rooted in the identity of individuals, but prohibition of polygamy is based on the amount of participants in the union. No one is discriminated against in the face of poly-marraige prohibition because it has nothing to do with the traits of any individual.

kstenerud11• 11 years ago

Sure it does: The trait of whom you choose as a partner. The trait of the structure of your union.

The difference between the number of participants vs the gender distribution of the participants is academic.

verisimilidude2• 11 years ago

How does polygamy benefit the state? It's a serious question.

With regular two-people marriage, you're roughly giving almost everyone a shot at finding a partner for marriage. This means you don't get large roaming populations of one sex or the other without any hope of finding a partner, and all the problems that can bring (see China). Those people will not be able to participate in the state-approved stability that marriage can bring.

Gay marriage is actually positive for the state in these respects, since it expands the number of people who can participate in the current framework. Polygamy is much more complicated at scale, and I think you'd need to find solutions to many other potential problems before you could convince the state to accept it.

AnimalMuppet4• 11 years ago

The majority opinion in the comments here seems to be that polygamy would be OK. So is there anywhere where you would draw the line? Incest? Underage? Anything at all?

Is everything really acceptable?

kstenerud11• 11 years ago

What do either of those have to do with polygamy?

AndrewKemendo• 11 years ago

While this is excellent news for my gay and lesbian friends, I see no progress on polygamy.

Isn't this literally the slippery slope that conservatives "warned" against?

I even just saw a politico article today saying basically the same thing:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/gay-marriage-...

I'm all for polygamy but I think it's just funny to see this called for as the next step, literally the same day that gay marriage was passed.

XorNot4• 11 years ago

Any relationship grouping that is greater then 2 requires very extensive legal changes before it becomes practical to implement. The law is incapable of addressing the possibility of a marriage which can outlast all it's original participants, for example.

braythwayt• 11 years ago

  > Lawyers for the four states said their bans were justified by
  > tradition and the distinctive characteristics of opposite-sex
  > unions.

Reads like they dusted off the old arguments in favour of slavery and/or segregation and remixed the recipe for marriage.

Take a dollop of “tradition says it should be so,” and sprinkle on “distinctive characteristics” to taste.

thisisdave• 11 years ago

"distinctive characteristics" reminds me of "The peculiar institution of the South---that, on the maintenance of which the very existence of the slaveholding States depends"

http://users.wfu.edu/zulick/340/calhoun2.html

WorldWideWayne• 11 years ago

Gay Marriage is a controversy that is constantly used to to distract people from much bigger problems.

The ruling that had vastly more wide-reaching effects this week is that they upheld the the terrible "Affordable" Care Act. This act is a capitalist abomination of much more well thought-out socialist single-payer plans. Now that health insurance companies have a state granted monopoly, there's no reason to bring prices down or change anything.

ceejayoz4• 11 years ago

This act is a capitalist abomination of much more well thought-out socialist single-payer plans.

It was what was possible - it barely passed as-is, and only via some technical processes that let it slip through Congress - and I think history'll show it to be a first big step towards single-payer.

Now that health insurance companies have a state granted monopoly, there's no reason to bring prices down or change anything.

How so? Before the ACA, there were a number of insurance companies that had to compete between each other. After the ACA, there are a number of insurance companies that have to compete between each other. ACA just removed the "I won't buy any and use the ER when I get cancer" option.

jscheel• 11 years ago

I've never really given credence to the people that suggested a ruling would be a slippery slope. However, after reading the opinion for myself, I can see how the court's stance on marriage (opposite-sex and same-sex) can now be extended to polygamy and incest. I understand the need to define it as a fundamental right within the context of this ruling, but it seems that some of the wording opens the way for other marriage relationships that are not explicitly defined in the court's opinion.

baddox19• 11 years ago

However, after reading the opinion for myself, I can see how the court's stance on marriage (opposite-sex and same-sex) can now be extended to polygamy and incest.

Good. If only they (or society) would decide that no consenting people need permission from anyone else to call themselves "married."

repsilat• 11 years ago

no consenting people need permission from anyone else to call themselves "married."

I agree, but nobody did needed permission to call themselves married before today. If we haven't been referring to gay couples as "married" before today, it has been for political reasons, not legal reasons. To wit,

- Gay couples refused to call themselves "married" because doing so would have detracted from impetus to change the legal situation (which actually does change their real rights), and

- People opposed to gay marriage refused to call gay couples "married" because doing so would confer legitimacy on gay relationships.

The real issue here is about the rights and responsibilities that are associated with marriage, and while I'd like people's legal ability to voluntarily enter into those arrangements expanded, I'm not sure they should be expanded without bound.

notNow4• 11 years ago

If you are so intent on redefining/bastardizing marriage, while we're at it, please take a look at family bonds and friendships and see what we can come up with "novel" and "progressive" ideas to add to the conversation.

FlannelPancake2• 11 years ago

Incest - maybe. There's a clear harm involved there (inbreeding depression) that's much more substantive than anything used to argue against gay marriage.

Polygamy - We probably will revisit our stance on polygamy in decades to come. Historically it's been used in a way that's profoundly imbalanced towards women (i.e. almost exclusively polygyny), but it's not hard to imagine a future where that's not the case.

matt-attack• 11 years ago

There's a clear harm involved there

You conflation of marriage with breeding should be rethought. I suppose infertile couples should be allowed to marry since they cannot bear children?

pgeorgi3• 11 years ago

The risk to offspring is definitely higher with certain genetic diseases than with relatives.

The case against incest can be made on that base when eugenics are re-established and codified into law. As-is the only argument that holds water is "yuck" - one that same sex marriage proponents should be vaguely familiar with.

anonz_• 11 years ago

Historically it's been used in a way that's profoundly imbalanced towards women (i.e. almost exclusively polygyny)

Any biologists care to chime in on this? It cuts both ways, and is more complicated than that.

I don't understand how polygamy is imbalanced toward woman. They get a stake of the alpha's attention and him providing for them. In the current system, it's AFBB. The beta male foots the bill for alpha seed.

pgeorgi3• 11 years ago

Incest is legal in France since 1810 - and the new law from 2010 that seem to forbid it really doesn't. It's some additional protection law for minors.

As far as I can tell, it didn't lead to the entire French population growing an additional eye (and I doubt that incest rates are extraordinary in the first place), so the impact of lifting that ban probably isn't all that bad.

ohitsdom4• 11 years ago

Agreed. The "slippery slope" arguments always seemed weak to me, yet it didn't take long for polygamy comments to pop up here. So seems like they weren't that weak after all...

jayess• 11 years ago

My partner and I are discussing getting married, but the federal income tax "marriage penalty" is giving us serious pause.

jedberg2• 11 years ago

Getting married was the worst thing I ever did for my taxes.

That being said, it has a lot of other benefits that outweigh the cost.

arenaninja• 11 years ago

Welcome to marriage. Fish and chips on the right, taxes all the way down

tdees40• 11 years ago

I have friends who "got married" in a legally unsanctioned way. No tax penalty, but they still feel like they expressed their commitment to one another.

And yes, obviously there are massive downsides to this approach.

teepo• 11 years ago

Now you can suffer like the rest of us. :) I recommend adopting children to lower your tax burden.

ryandrake• 11 years ago

Marriage penalty? My taxes went way down when I got married. Additionally, all of the income limits where benefits phase out go up when you're married, so for instance, you might qualify for a Roth IRA when you're married filing jointly, but not if you're single. In my experience, getting married is one of the best things you can do for your tax bill.

differentView• 11 years ago

Not everyone marry someone who make much less than them.

mrgoldenbrown4• 11 years ago

Don't pause yet, unless you've actually run the numbers. Whether you end up with an actual penalty or not depends on a number of inputs like each of your actual incomes, deductions, how your benefit packages, insurance, and other things are structured. It sounds like you haven't actually run the numbers yet, and are operating out of FUD. Talk to a tax expert, or do some research, before despairing.

BurningFrog• 11 years ago

I'm glad we'll have full gay marriage now.

But the idea that "the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage" is pretty laughable.

Does anyone really believe this right was in the Constitution for 250 years, only to be discovered recently? In reality public opinion and culture changed, and 5 justices decided to change the law.

BocceBaal• 11 years ago

The dissenting opinions make that point. While I support gay marriage, the Supreme Court overstepped their authority in this case. The Legislative branch writes laws, not the Judicial. Public opinion on the definition of marriage should change future laws, not past laws.

notNow4• 11 years ago

It's a slippery slope when you allow a bunch of unelected middle aged and old folks gather in a room and decide what is good and what is not for the rest of the population.

The US political system is a big joke in my opinion.

mason55• 11 years ago

What is your opinion on Loving v. Virginia? Do you believe that anti-miscegenation laws should be allowed if the populace decides to vote for them?

seszett• 11 years ago

Does anyone really believe this right was in the Constitution for 250 years, only to be discovered recently?

That seems to be the case to me. I'm not completely familiar with US history, but don't you think the right of black people to be free and equal to the other people was already written in the constitution 250 years ago, for example? Or women's suffrage. It just took a while to actually recognize it.

Homosexuality was legalized in France in 1791 according to the same set of ideals, during the same movement that gave birth to the US constitution. Slavery was abolished as well, and women's suffrage was discussed, because it was well recognized that these were all questions of equality. It isn't a stretch to think that the US constitution would also fundamentally allow homosexuality and forbid discrimination according to sexual orientation (and therefore allow gay marriage as well).

Homunculiheaded• 11 years ago

I'm not disagreeing with your general premise that the fundamental right for equality is the basis of the constitution and therefore equal marriage is implied by it. But to your points:

"the right of black people to be free and equal to the other people" (specifically the abolishment of slavery) Is made explicit in the 13th amendment[0]

And "women's suffrage" is the 19th amendment[1]

So for both of your examples, these things are explicity added to the constitution.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

randyrand2• 11 years ago

No. Simply because we already had equality as far as the law was concerned.

Everyone was entitled to marry someone of the opposite sex. Everyone was barred from marrying someone of the same sex. The law applied equally.

monochromatic2• 11 years ago

don't you think the right of black people to be free and equal to the other people was already written in the constitution 250 years ago, for example?

No, of course it wasn't. Slavery was common and accepted when the Constitution was written, and the Constitution didn't say there was anything wrong with it until it was amended in 1865 with the passage of the 13th Amendment.

themoonbus• 11 years ago

I'm not an expert, but it is often claimed that the constitution is a living document, that is, it is designed to be broad and flexible

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Constitution

coryfklein2• 11 years ago

It takes a lot of imagination to think that the founders had any vision of the laws that the commerce clause would be used to justify today.

It took me a long time to realize that whether or not the constitution was designed or intentioned as a "living document" is completely irrelevant. What matters is how the process actually works today, and it works as if the constitution is a living document, therefore it is a living document. See also: Duck typing.

cjbprime2• 11 years ago

I don't think that same-sex marriage rights were encoded in the Constitution or thought of as being rights by its drafters, but that doesn't matter -- the same was true of the interracial marriage rights granted as a result of Loving v Virginia. Your method of narrowly interpreting the Constitution is not shared by the court.

snowwrestler5• 11 years ago

The Constitution guarantees that the government will be fair to citizens, and places certain restrictions on its powers. It does contain any rights in it at all. Rather, it assumes the pre-existence of rights, and works from there.

When it comes to rights, the onus is on the side of proving something is NOT a right. This goes all the way back to the founding of the nation and is enshrined in the 10th Amendment.

So yes, people have a right to same-sex marriage. Why? Because they want to. That's enough in the United States. If the government is going to intervene to prevent that, it needs to demonstrate a compelling reason to do so. No one has demonstrated such a compelling reason when it comes to same-sex marriage.

mikeash6• 11 years ago

Since the decision rests on the 14th Amendment, it's only about 150 years.

But yes, the right was there all along, but the implications weren't realized before now. It's generally been accepted for quite a while that the government can't discriminate on the basis of a person's sex, but for some reason the obvious implications for marriage haven't been accepted until now.

Sure, the people who wrote the 14th Amendment didn't intend it to say this. But that's because they had a great deal of implied context that didn't go into the law, like "women can't vote," which no longer applies. But if the context disappears and the law as written pretty clearly says X without that context, are we supposed to ignore that?

TheCoelacanth• 11 years ago

No, they believe this right was in the Constitution for 147 years (since the 14th amendment was added) and was only recently discovered. To be fair, the clause in question only says that they can't "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" which is extremely vague, so it's inherently prone to being reinterpreted every few decades.

mason2403• 11 years ago

I for one am glad that we got the opportunity to show, state by state, that we supported supported same sex marriage.

An earlier SCOTUS decision would have taken away our ability to show consensus on the issue.

I'm glad that I was able to personally vote "No" to an amendment in MN that would have banned marriage rights.

cpursley• 11 years ago

Fantastic. Now the next step is to get government out of the marriage business completely (which was the case before the 1900s). Free people should not need to obtain a license from governments to enter a voluntary social contract.

michaelsbradley• 11 years ago

A sad day for our country, our highest court and much of our culture has succumbed to social insanity. For my part, I will never under any circumstances recognize by word or deed that any so-called marriage can be or has been established between two persons of the same sex. No government on earth has the power or authority to do that, anymore than a legislature could repeal the law of gravity or a judge could declare a human person to be a toaster oven. With kindness and charity, but with firm resolve, persons of good will should give civil disobedience to this court ruling and all that flows from it.

therobot24• 11 years ago

> With kindness and charity, but with firm resolve, persons of good will should give civil disobedience to this court ruling and all that flows from it.

lol wut. In a single sentence you basically just said to nicely riot

_ls7m6• 11 years ago

Civil disobedience: the refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form of political protest.

Sevzinn• 11 years ago

Well argued. I clicked and noticed that you happen to be religious, but I see nothing religious about your message here. Thanks!

serve_yay2• 11 years ago

lol

rmxt6• 11 years ago

What "social insanity" is it to recognize and legalize a completely natural phenomenon? Or are you going to tell me that all those ducks and bonobos are sinners too?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

And, if you're a fan of beating people over the head with that book that tells you to primarily love others (e.g. turn the other cheek, see the beam in your own eye, etc.), here's a good money quote (Matthew 19:11-12)

"Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”"

_ls7m6• 11 years ago

Should we legalize and support through marriage all naturally occurring sexual desires and acts?

I think that questions almost answers itself, but you never know after a ruling like this.

geekamongus• 11 years ago

So, you are saying it's OK to give privileges to one set of people but not to another. How is that OK?

jfaucett• 11 years ago

I'm sad to see this happen, not because LGBTs can marry, in my personal opinion I think they should be able to. I just dislike systems in general that force any global mandate and prefer those in which entities can freely compete against one another to decide between one another what works and what doesn't. The two party, winner takes all system the USA has right now, is already too totalitarian IMHO, this just seems like another step in that direction.

I think in the long term all less efficient, less happiness producing systems will loose out anyway. All you need to do is ensure that your system protects the minority enough so that they can freely compete and coexists with all the rest.

But I'm a libertarian, so I think all laws regarding sexual relations between consenting adults should be repealed whether gay or straight...

dataker• 11 years ago

Beyond YAY!'s, the state is saying it will 'let' you love someone of the same sex.

Can someone sense the creepiness in this? It tells you how/who/why you should love.

It still doesn't include certain groups and it could revoke such 'rights' in other circumstances.

notNow4• 11 years ago

Gays wanted this way to be a top down authoritarian decision not a bottom up democratic one so there you have it.

The govt should not be in the business of meddling with personal affairs in the first place except voluntarily and for minimum legal purposes.

kstenerud11• 11 years ago

It doesn't tell you how/who/why you should love. It simply states the kinds of unions that gain property sharing rights.

You're free to love who/how/why you want, but don't expect special property rights or tax credits unless the government has recognized them as such.

innguest• 11 years ago

Gay people finally earned the right to have their relationships meddled with by the government. Let's see if they remain "gay" (happy). Watch the parades dwindle!

amyjess3• 11 years ago

I'm really happy about this.

Not just because I'm a lesbian (I'm happily single, so no marriage for me regardless), but because it's a fundamental right that shouldn't be denied to anyone. It really warms my heart that everyone can finally marry the people they love.

Pxtl• 11 years ago

As ecstatic as I am about this, I'm disappointed that it had to come from the Supreme Court instead of the American voters. I do believe that gay marriage is an obvious extension of the non-discrimination clause, so it's perfectly appropriate for the Supremes to act on this. I guess I'm just more disappointed in the voters than anything else.

anon43277332• 11 years ago

What a crappy ruling. Yes the answer they got was right, but they never bothered to rule that sexual orientation is a (partial) suspect class. Now we have to wait for another ruling to get that resolved. Stupid lazy evaluation of courts.

anon43277332• 11 years ago

Great job. Don't read more than the first sentence before voting.

sbt• 11 years ago

America continues its slow march forward. Congratulations.

curiousgeorgio• 11 years ago

Well, I know I'm probably a minority in saying this, but I'm disappointed - not because I don't think everyone should have access to the government rights attached to marriage, but because it seems our country doesn't actually want to fix problems at the root.

What is the root problem? People on both sides of the debate agree (if given the option) that the government probably never should have messed with marriage, at least not as the cultural/religious thing that it is.

In a nation where we care so much about the separation of church (broadly defined to include ideologies that may not be formal religions) and state, I don't understand why we're seeking to only expand that connection.

What should happen is the government should stop defining marriage of any form (leave that to religion or personal tradition), and simply define all these rights under civil union (or a similar phrase with no significant religious/cultural attachment).

nostromo• 11 years ago

I'm gay and I agree with you.

But, it's not fair to ask gay people to wait around until marriage is removed from our entire legal system (taxes, immigration, property rights, family law, custody...). So in the mean time marriage equality is a much easier fix.

Maybe someday there will be a ruling based on the Equal Protections Clause that bans treating married people differently than unmarried people under the law. Wouldn't that be interesting?

brownegg• 11 years ago

I can't upvote this hard enough. OP is right in my mind, but....

I'm straight (and divorced), and we got married for many of the same reasons that LGBT folks want to--it makes sense. Visitation rights, inheritance, tax treatment, etc.

It's unlikely that marriage would be removed as something of concern to lawmakers--has that kind of thing ever happened anywhere, any time, any way?

I respect OP's opinion, but it's ivory tower and we're talking about real people right now.

possibly unnecessary edit: just want to reiterate that I think OP is _right_, it's just not practical, and I'll sacrifice rightness for a rather-large "quick and dirty win".

nmrm213• 11 years ago

Very interesting, because it would undermine basically everything SCOTUS has ever said about marriage.

(undermine in the sense of reverse a principle upon which the arguments used by SCOTUS to defend various decisions depend.)

primroot• 11 years ago

Wouldn't you agree something similar applies to workplace discrimination? For example, I would never be willing to work with someone who discriminates against gays. However it is only due to my own economic circumstances that I'm able to act based on that preference. One could as well conclude that the root of the problem is people having to tolerate unfavorable conditions just to get by, and that addressing the issue of discrimination is just a temporary solution. I live in Panama not in the U.S.

InclinedPlane• 11 years ago

Indeed. An excellent example of the perfect being the enemy of the good.

More so, by expanding the institution of marriage to gays (as it was not long ago expanded to interracial couples) it will ultimately help build public support for redefining marriage.

vehementi3• 11 years ago

This is the critical thing for me and what makes that particular dissent so baffling ("This issue has been stolen from the democratic process!"). It is a crime and tragedy every day we go on where gay people can't marry. People are (were) suffering emotionally, materially and in principle - millions of people - because of that law. It's already been excruciatingly, unbearably, unjustly slow to get this far - and people should wait around for a better fix? No.

cordite• 11 years ago

Not just from the legal system, but what about software systems out there?

How many Human-to-human systems out there have invariants coded in for gender/sex settings? It might make for some interesting scenes of discriminatory software in court for businesses that utilize them.

DonHopkins4• 11 years ago

Precisely! And that "concern troll" argument is also commonly used by bigoted opponents of gay marriage who don't want to admit their real motivation. As soon as the concern trolls can come up with a plan to convince all the right wing religious bigots to abandon the institution of marriage, we can start taking them seriously.

JakeAl• 11 years ago

I'd say in the laws the government should simply recognize all unions as civil unions, leave marriage to your "religion" but I still agree that discrimination based on relationship status is wrong. Every individual should be able to specify who can visit them in a hospital, who is entitled to be the beneficiary of any social security benefits etc. Social Security and health care is dooming this nation and there's a clear timeline for it's demise unless the way they are handled changes, so maybe inheriting government benefits should go away and everyone should only be entitled to what was deducted from their own checks or willed to them by others. The US is looking at austerity in 10 years max, 5 years minimum and the people are too busy sticking up for their favorite party like sports fans on a bus arguing about astroturf and logos while the bus goes over a cliff.

beering• 11 years ago

But you know that the gov't is not going to just drop marriage any time soon, so it's good that this is happening.

Would you rather continue the (imo) injustice in pursuit of a pie-in-the-sky reform?

jasonjei19• 11 years ago

What's shocking to me is that we need permission from the state to marry, whether gay or straight. Why do we need the blessing of the government to marry anyway? We can have kids without permission from the state (so long as you aren't in China), why do we need to ask for permission and "apply for marriage"? In theory, applying for marriage implies the government could deny a marriage, gay or straight. Why do we implicitly give this power to the government?

fixermark2• 11 years ago

Because the unions carry legal consequences, and are therefore the purview of the state.

That having been said, one could imagine that a government that didn't evolve from a religiously-knitted culture would have grounded those unions of family more firmly in contract law, not in a construct that's bound up with gender requirements.

... and when you can find such a government on the entirety of Earth, let me know. ;)

bighi3• 11 years ago

It's the opposite. You can be together whoever you want. What they mean, in this case, is the government recognition of your union. As the government need defined laws to operate...

And why do the government need to recognize the union? To give them some rights that united people need. Like keeping important possessions (like a house), becoming responsible for kids, taking important medical decisions when the other person can't take them, etc.

lukifer• 11 years ago

One of the most brilliant ideas I've heard on the subject is a couple of proposed constitutional amendments stating that (a) your body is your personal property, and (b) you have an inalienable right to define who is a member of your family. When framed in that way, even most social conservatives would agree with the underlying principles.

ffn• 11 years ago

Tax, immigration/emigration, and will/inheritance reasons. For one thing, the government gives you a tax break if you marry; this was particularly useful because, in the old days, women didn't work so it made sense to not tax the man (who did work) because he was effectively making money for two (and possibly more if they had children). Similarly, getting married changes your defaults if you die intestate (that is, you didn't draw up a will giving all your money to some slap-up blond or something), then your spouse (as oppose to your next-in-line) gets your $$. As for the immigration reason, if you're an US citizen but your wife (or hubby) is another nationality, you can get him or her over here and move onto getting him/her a resident alien card much more easily than through other methods of immigration (presumably this is so that families can be together, which is nice).

If you don't care about any of that and love another person, place, thing, or idea, you can just announce you're married to him/her/it without recognition from the government and just sort of be together.

unfamiliar• 11 years ago

You don't need permission from the government to marry, you can do it yourself in the woods. But if you want all the benefits of a government sanctioned marriage then you have to be married in the eyes of the government.

MichaelGG3• 11 years ago

Correct. And the restriction on two people is also a cheap hack. It should be more like an LLC where multiple entities join for tax and other concerns. Full stop.

mkr-hn4• 11 years ago

"Will you form a corporation with me?" doesn't have the same ring to it.

cafard• 11 years ago

Stop defining marriage of any form? Isn't it shorthand for a collection of rights and duties that would be inconvenient to spell out by other means?

bighi3• 11 years ago

But marriage is not a religious thing.

Before most popular religions were created, marriage was already old.

For cultural reasons, it's popular to do a RELIGIOUS CEREMONY along the marriage. What's religious there is the ceremony, not the marriage.

You can have religious ceremonies without marriage, and marriages without the religious ceremony. Two independent concepts that, by happenstance, often come together.

wyager• 11 years ago

Even if it's just a social ceremony, the government should not give it special legal allowance. The government doesn't recognize Quinceañeras or bar mitzvahs.

If you believe that marriage has an important legal function, it's also not fair to preclude polygamists from getting those same legal utilities.

A much better generalized solution is to expand the purview of contract law to allow it to do everything marriage does.

baddox19• 11 years ago

Marriage need not be a "government thing" in the modern sense, with all the legal distinctions we currently have. Marriage is inherently a legal thing, in the sense that it's a contract between people.

aikah2• 11 years ago

marriage certainly predates Christianity. Therefore marriage shouldn't be associated with Christianity or Islam or whatever. Marriage is a social construct before being a religious one.

williamle8300• 11 years ago

I think it's trickier than that because tax laws are deeply intertwined with institutions like marriage.

eropple6• 11 years ago

What should happen is the government should stop defining marriage of any form (leave that to religion or personal tradition), and simply define all these rights under civil union (or a similar phrase with no significant religious/cultural attachment).

Sure. And that was not in the cards. What you want is not on the table and likely never will be. But expanding the rights of people because of basic fairness is a step in the process of making the lives of our fellow Americans better.

Asking gay people to wait for a unicorn is bullshit. Please don't be That Guy. Ideological purity is so often the enemy of making the world better.

kefka• 11 years ago

Asking gay people to wait for a unicorn is bullshit. Please don't be That Guy. Ideological purity is so often the enemy of making the world better.

But, why not?

I'm a male. And I'm bisexual and polyamorus. I understand, and accept if a family wants to have 3 adults. Or 4 adults. I'm even OK if children are raised in that atmosphere.

Right now, there are rules and restrictions on polygamy (which is a subset of polyamory) mainly created for the Mormons in the 18 and early 1900s.

Doing as the GP said would have these archaic rules also overturned.

baddox19• 11 years ago

And that was not in the cards. What you want is not on the table and likely never will be.

How do you figure? Nothing is objectively on or off the table. Nothing is on the table until people make it on the table.

shas3• 11 years ago

It is about Government benefits primarily. The government incentivizes marriage through tax breaks, etc. So the definition of marriage matters in administering these benefits. The legislative branch should first start with redefining the eligibility for these benefits to keep religion out.

verisimilidude2• 11 years ago

Marriage is really important to people. If you define the legal part of that as "civil union", people will add new cultural/religious significance to that new definition. Then when polygamy or whatever becomes popular in 2115, the conservatives of that time will cry out about the "sanctity of only two people in civil union, the way it's always been!" And around the circle we go.

What's important today is that our country has expanded our liberties and rights, and a lot of people can now live fuller and more secure lives as a result.

bdowling2• 11 years ago

2115? Something tells me it won't be nearly that long.

bargl• 11 years ago

I have a question about this. I'm not saying I feel this way, but does this mean that religions that are opposed to gay marriage have to perform marriages for people who are gay? I.E. Catholics?

The only reason I ask is because many Catholics I know say this is basically her argument against gay marriage. They don't always care about civil unions (some do) as long as it doesn't affect their church.

Jtsummers• 11 years ago

No, they won't have to. I'll speak to this from the perspective of the Catholic Church, and how they'll avoid having to perform same sex marriages.

The Catholic Church can already deny anyone a church/religious ceremony. Suppose I'm a Catholic and was married within the Church and later divorced. If I don't receive an annulment, the Church will not allow me to remarry within the Church. I can still go elsewhere, but the Church will not perform the marriage or acknowledge it as valid (a later annulment can get the Church to change its stance on this marriage).

Similarly, the Church (in the US) typically requires 6 months of marriage preparation. If you refuse to go through it, they will deny you a marriage within the Church (a friend of mine went through this last year, they were impatient and couldn't wait the extra 4 months apparently).

With regards to same-sex marriage, the Church's stance will not change (certainly not in our lifetimes), they'll continue to view same-sex relationships as sinful. Consequently they cannot, from their perspective, sanctify a marriage of that sort. This is not, fundamentally, different from the other reasons they use to deny people a Church marriage.

Edit: Regarding your second paragraph, yeah, I hear that a lot. But they're ignoring the cases where the Church already denies marriages. I already had this discussion with a coworker who happens to be a Catholic deacon this morning. It's frustrating that so many Catholics (and others) don't realize that they've already got the freedom to deny anyone access to the sacraments. I can be refused communion by a priest if he knows that I'm an (unrepentant) philanderer or drug dealer or murderer or that I've been excommunicated by a bishop. They are not obligated to perform baptisms just because someone asks if those asking aren't willing to go through the steps and agree to the things the Church requires. They won't ordain me just because I walk up to a bishop in a cathedral and ask to be ordained. A church marriage is a similar sacrament that the Church has laid out requirements for, and refusing to comply with those means you won't get married in the Church.

mjm1138• 11 years ago

No, your local Catholic priest is not required to open the church to gay wedding ceremonies, just as they are not required to perform weddings for mixed-religion couples, or divorced persons, or any of a number of other reasons why they might object. Now, your local Justice of the Peace who happens to be Catholic? That's a different story. As a government employee they cannot discriminate.

brlewis2• 11 years ago

Currently, are Catholic priests required to perform marriages for non-Catholics? I think they are not, even though the right to not be Catholic is constitutionally protected.

But just in case, the majority did insert language making clear that this is about what the government can and can't do, not about what religions can and can't do:

Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. The same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for other reasons. In turn, those who believe allowing samesex marriage is proper or indeed essential, whether as a matter of religious conviction or secular belief, may engage those who disagree with their view in an open and searching debate. The Constitution, however, does not permit the State to bar same-sex couples from marriage on the same terms as accorded to couples of the opposite sex.

nly• 11 years ago

I agree, but I believe it's seen as more complicated to reclassify existing unions in law. The UK recently promoted 'civil unions' to 'marriage' status rather than downgrading traditional heterosexual marriages to unions.

drcube2• 11 years ago

Marriage has always been a government institution. Religion co-opted it for themselves at a later time. This "leave marriage to the churches where they belong" cry is disingenuous. Marriage is about a contract between individuals. It provides government granted privileges in regards to taxes, healthcare, inheritance, court testimony and child custody. It has nothing to do with religion. If you want to have a religious ceremony to celebrate and "sanctify" your government granted marriage, so be it. But don't pretend this is a religious tradition meddled with by government. It is a government institution that has been meddled with by religion since before religion and government were separate.

edko2• 11 years ago

There was almost no difference between government and religion when marriage originated, so it makes little sense to argue who invented it. Was Moses a political or religious leader? Were pharaohs political rulers or gods? Etc. What is very clear is that, in our society, civil and religious marriage are two different things that share a common name, and that one should have no influence over the other.

baddox19• 11 years ago

Marriage has always been a government institution. Religion co-opted it for themselves at a later time.

I don't think that's the full story. I suspect that religious marriage existed long before nation states and most of the current legal distinctions associated with marriage.

andrewmcwatters• 11 years ago

What a joke of a comment.

rustynails2• 11 years ago

"Marriage is about a contract between individuals" Interestingly, I view it as the exact opposite. My wife and I knew of our bond together. I got married only because it was a public recognition of that bond. It was to share that bond with friends and family. It did not change our relationship or commitment at all.

As to the legal situation many have mentioned, that could have easily been covered by a will for us. It may vary by country, but a will and defacto status offer the same protection in some parts of the world. I sought legal advice when I considered my options of marriage because marriage means little to me. I think its significance to a couple's commitment is highly over rated.

Spooky23• 11 years ago

I think that's a flawed assertion. Civil marriage has been around forever, and is nearly universal in western society.

Civil Union / domestic partnership is a compromise solution that addresses the realities of modern society. You get the benefits of partnership without involving assets. Marriage has always been a more binding thing, and for good reason.

ohitsdom4• 11 years ago

I agree, but I don't think you can be disappointed from this ruling. Getting the government out of marriage is not an option for the court to take, and it wasn't the issue before them.

If we want government out of marriage, it'd have to be done through Congress and a reformed tax code.

ctdonath9• 11 years ago

Some states have started looking at dropping the formal recognition of marriage entirely. Increasingly devoid of any meaning, and given enough harassment for limiting who it applies to (consider, say, 12 people and a goat), comes a point where the state decides there is simply no point in recognizing the institution at all.

ProAm• 11 years ago

Marriage is not about religion or personal belief in the eyes of the government. It's a business contract that has everything to do with money.

yes_or_gnome• 11 years ago

Unions? That sounds like some commie bullshit. /s

I agree, but that's just not going to happen. Besides, it's tom-ay-to/tom-ah-to.

kisna72• 11 years ago

I agree with you. An example of how bad things can get, we can look at ISIS. people governing a with religious rules will never go any good, mostly because religious rules were created a very long time ago for a completely different world.

nathan_long2• 11 years ago

That's an extremely selective example to support your view. For an example of the opposite, look at the Khmer Rouge, which governed with a specifically anti-religious stance, committed genocide and torture, and starved a large portion of their population. Or consider Stalin and Mao, who killed tens of millions each, or even the French Revolutionaries, who killed tens of thousands without trial.

Religion is not the source of evil, either in individuals or in governments. Evil is in people's hearts. Sometimes it is expressed via religious action, unfortunately. But the two should not be conflated.

mikeash6• 11 years ago

What's the difference between a "civil union" and a secular marriage? It seems like the separation you wish for is already here, effectively. You can get a religious marriage without a government-recognized marriage, or you can get a government-marriage without a religious marriage. If you want, you can do both. Looks to me like the only difference is the name.

jasonlotito2• 11 years ago

Looks to me like the only difference is the name.

That's literally what it is. People could get married in all 50 states before this ruling. At issue was whether it was officially recognized or not, which has been fixed.

Chinjut• 11 years ago

Marriage is not primarily a religious institution. Many non-religious people get married, and see no incongruity in it.

nickhalfasleep2• 11 years ago

The Government only got into the Marriage business when they wanted to start denying it.. to interracial couples.

rodgerd6• 11 years ago

You aren't even wrong.

kaonashi• 11 years ago

What functional difference does it make?

jasonlotito2• 11 years ago

That's what happened. Your problem is that they are using the word marriage. Prior to this, gays could marry in all 50 states. Just not all 50 states would recognize that marriage. And if the government doesn't recognize your marriage, does it really matter what religion or personal tradition you are following? Apparently, it does.

There is nothing religious about this. It's merely the a similar phrase, one that happens to have religious or cultural attachment.

but because it seems our country doesn't actually want to fix problems at the root.

That's because it can't be fixed at the root. The root has already happened, and the only people with a problem with the fix now are people who think this has anything to do with religion, which it does not.

ctdonath9• 11 years ago

The state has a vested interest in procreation (i.e.: creation of new citizens & taxpayers as others die off), so takes an interest in "marriage" as a means for facilitating the most efficient & effective means of promoting procreation, doing so by giving special benefits in return for parents taking on special obligations. Expanding the beneficiaries of those benefits to those to whom there is absolutely no chance (to the point of the notion being preposterous based on just 2 literal bits of information) of procreation is giving benefits to those whom will give nothing back in return.

The problem, as you sort of touch on, is that between evolution, religion & politics we've added abstractions & tangents to the issue, making most people think it's really about feelings etc instead of the base issue of procreation.

stephencanon• 11 years ago

My cousin and the two kids that he and his husband adopted beg to differ. As do many, many other kids who might otherwise be in the foster care system consuming the resources of the state. The state has an interest in stable household formation, full stop.

saturdaysaint• 11 years ago

Right, so we should add fertility tests to remove other people that have no chance of procreating from the marriage pool. We should also eliminate many of the benefits if couples don't produce children after a certain age and maybe even eliminate tax benefits after a certain number of years since a married couple's last child. Thanks for bringing this discussion back to the true soul of marriage: procreation incentives.

Terr_• 11 years ago

So you're saying the government's "vested interest" should let it prohibit/nullify the marriages of heterosexual couples don't (or can't) pop out a child?

What about couples whose prospective offspring would be... undesirable to the state? Eugenics?

No, it's not about procreation, it's about social structures. Adoption is always a possibility.

tommorris16• 11 years ago

The state has a vested interest in procreation (i.e.: creation of new citizens & taxpayers as others die off), so takes an interest in "marriage" as a means for facilitating the most efficient & effective means of promoting procreation, doing so by giving special benefits in return for parents taking on special obligations. Expanding the beneficiaries of those benefits to those to whom there is absolutely no chance (to the point of the notion being preposterous based on just 2 literal bits of information) of procreation is giving benefits to those whom will give nothing back in return.

So, you think marriage shouldn't be available for straight people who are both infertile?

You ignore the important role that marriage plays in mutual care. Marriage gives legal backing and support (in the form of certain tax and other financial and non-financial benefits) to a reasonably large set of people in long-term care relationships. Those people who care for each other aren't going to be needing as much support from the public purse to care for them when they get older, because they care for each other.

My dear old grandparents cared for each other when they were old - when my grandma died, my grandfather had to go into a residential care home. But because they were together, they provided care for each other that prevented both from needing that social care for a long time. Long term gay couples will give something back in return: caring for each other, providing health and wellness benefits that would otherwise be something that the welfare state may need to provide.

The state has a strong vested interest in people caring for each other. Here in Britain, the support given to parenting are done for parenting regardless of marital status in the form of child benefit payments.

__z14• 11 years ago

"Spouse" and "parent" are not synonyms. Fertility was never a requirement of civil marriage. Post-menopausal women were always allowed to marry, just one example.

MisterBastahrd• 11 years ago

The state has a vested interest in the prevalence of emotionally and financially stable, productive citizens. Anything more than that is emotionally charged fluff.

vilmosi2• 11 years ago

Marriage has nothing to do with procreation.

The government doesn't care if you plan to have kids when you get married, there's no tick box saying "You agree that this marriage license is only valid if you have kids.".

Marriage is about a union, that's it.

lettergram• 11 years ago

I actually was somewhat angry that this didn't happen, the supreme court has the right to alter laws in the way mentioned.

Certainly, specific aspects of the rights/laws protected under marriage would need to change. Case in point, visitation rights for children. However, that could be altered more simply by creating visitation rights "emotionally invested parties" or something (which also would have worked for the gay or straight communities).

The fact is, all legalizing gay marriage does at a national level is reduce states rights. Yes, there is an emotional argument, that gay couples should be recognized, and I agree they should. However, there were many means to that end, and they chose one that appeased the masses, but perhaps was "less correct," in the sense that it is probably wrong for the government to interfere with any sort of bond between people in private.

FrankenPC2• 11 years ago

Is it possible that LGBT marriage rights were officially recognized because it was becoming apparent that the next step was to strip religion out of the discourse? Thereby losing a valuable beachhead in society? Nah. To conspiracy theory-ish.

FrankenPC2• 11 years ago

Due to the down votes, I feel compelled to clarify: I meant as opposed to removing marriage from contractual language and using civil union instead.

tommorris16• 11 years ago

People on both sides of the debate agree (if given the option) that the government probably never should have messed with marriage, at least not as the cultural/religious thing that it is.

No, I think religion shouldn't have messed with a societal institution. Religion has no more right over it than the state does. The state makes the laws, not religion.

thoman23• 11 years ago

If the governmental/legal aspects of marriage are captured under "civil union", what exactly is "marriage" at that point? A pretty ceremony at a church?

For all practical purposes, marriage IS a secular contract between two people that helps mediate the rights of two people in a wide variety of domains. To me saying gay people can't marry is akin to saying gay people can't form LLCs.

Maybe the religious side should come up with a new name for their ceremonies to avoid some of the confusion? How about "religious union"? (whatever that means)

ap22213• 11 years ago

Alternatively, religions can just rename 'marriage' to 'holy marriage' or something.

zzleeper2• 11 years ago

Well you have the legal/civil marriage and the religious marriage.

You can call it "civil union" or whatever you want, but the important thing are the rights attached and that's what this ruling is about. Nothing to do with church, just the civil part.

hacknat• 11 years ago

Your sentiment, while admirable, is a libertarian pipe dream. Even the most liberal countries in the world still get involved in marriage. While I am by no means a social conservative, I do agree with conservatives that the family is the foundational institution of civil society (and a lot of anthropological research supports this argument). Governments will be more or less involved with it to some degree, both to foster it economically and encourage it socially. To see the American social contract as having been set up to never have to encounter or acknowledge any spiritual/religious institutions is bad history, we have simply always held that the government cannot be in the practice of encouraging one over the other.

Taking the long view, conservatives (and others) should be rejoicing. This ruling is a broad expansion of the definition of what the government will recognize as a family, a definition that is of consequence to numerous helpful social programs, and an affirmation of what family is in civil society. The ruling will have enormous social benefits for our society.

pekk4• 11 years ago

There is no reason why governments should be involved in it, except that people can't keep their grubby hands off of it.

Doesn't make a lot of sense for us to subsidize people to do something which they are supposedly doing because they want to. The only reason there are all these fancy tax breaks is because politicians get ahead saying they are "for families".

It isn't the government's job to "acknowledge" every religious custom you have at church by also writing it into law or something. The government has its own jobs.

rayiner7• 11 years ago

I find that argument ironic. Whatever religious connotations it may or may not have, marriage is a legal construct. It's an arrangement created to deal with a whole host of practical legal problems: inheritance, property rights, etc. Even before modern government, when organized religion administered marriage, it was a function of the legal side of religion.

rodgerd6• 11 years ago

government probably never should have messed with marriage, at least not as the cultural/religious thing that it is.

Marriage is not and was never a religious "thing" in the English legal tradition.

justforthis123• 11 years ago

I don't know if others felt it but my main feeling was that of anger. After watching the great joy and thankfulness (why should they being thankful!) from the LGBT community the only thought I could have was - How are we letting this situation to exist where elected and non-elected groups of people can decide to restrict or 'grant' joy to such a vast set of humanity.

ebiggs3• 11 years ago

I used to think this was a good approach to take, to just eliminate marriage, but I eventually changed my mind, and here's why: This isn't a matter of state and religion it's a matter of state and CULTURE. You need to take it into consideration with the idea of kinship bonds as a whole.

Take for example the kinship role of fatherhood. This is something the state is rightly committed to taking a stance on, and there's a branch of law (family) to deal with rights, obligations, etc around this kinship bond.

What is a father? Is it a biological father who has not given up his rights? Is it a biological father who has no custody rights? Is it a biological father who has terminated all rights? IS it a non-biological father who has adopted? Is it a step-father who has a different name and doesn't have custodial rights but has been called daddy as long as the child can remember? Is it the man who's name is on the birth certificate but whose dna proves it's not his?

Or should we abandon the word father all together and say "civil custodial guardian." instead to try and separate culture from the state?

The separation of culture from state signifies what you hear all the time on fox news: a culture war. There was a culture war around civil rights 50 years ago too, and now nobody thinks twice about it. Eventually the same will be true around gay rights. The idea that you have to step around terms like wife, husband, or marriage - because they get folks riled up would be like stepping around "father" because it might get some folks riled up - it just doesn't happen to as much right now.

One could argue that marriage is an affinity kinship bond, not a descent kinship bond - and thus fundamentally different than parenthood. But that's a biological distinction - not really a civil distinction given all the tremendous amount of legal work that has gone into removing and assigning parental rights for both biological and non biological children.

Marriage isn't a dirty word, it's not a religious word, it's a cultural word that describes an incredibly important affinity kinship bond. A society with plural cultures does not require that we rename everything under sterile newspeak words.

pohl4• 11 years ago

What should happen is the government should stop defining marriage of any form...

It's not a difficult thought experiment to imagine the consequences of this: hospitals refusing to allow visitation from people who are – but they do not accept as – members of your family. Employers refusing to extend health coverage, etc.

Government will have a place here so long as there is dispute over the definition of "immediate family".

mrgoldenbrown4• 11 years ago

It sounds like you have bought into the fox news talking point that "marriage" is fundamentally a religious word and civil union is a legal thing. Merriam Webster's first definition talks about marriage as a union in law. It doesn't even mention religion at all in fact. Dictionay.com mentions both, though "legally" is mention before "religiously". The English word marriage, in the United States, can refer to either the government approved legal contract, or a religious ceremony. If we want to separate the church and state, let's invent a new word to refer to the religious aspects.

bippi• 11 years ago

You're talking centuries of property and estate rights laws in all states and counties. It would be a freakin' mess.

But yeah, this ruling eschews poly relationships.

SwellJoe3• 11 years ago

I agree with you on the end goal, but perfect is the enemy of the good, and I could not more strongly disagree about waiting until that perfect solution is on the table.

Having every gay couple wait another couple of decades until everybody gets their head out of their ass to have basic rights like visitation of their partner in the hospital, inheritance rights, co-parental rights of children, etc. is an unacceptable moral compromise, and it is heartless to demand that millions of gay Americans make that sacrifice so that the law can look like I want it to.

We still have a long way to go to recognize all of the shapes relationships take (I'm non-monogamous, for example, and don't really expect to see multi-party legal unions in my lifetime), but making one huge group of people suffer while those other things get sorted out is an ethically untenable option, for me. And, honestly, I suspect this is a step in that direction...the religious loons will continue to campaign for changes, because of this. And, we can continue to push for reform.

ElComradio9• 11 years ago

The perfect being the enemy of the good is one thing. It's something else when the compromise actually reinforces the root problem. We now have reinforced the idea that government gets to decide who can get married. Wrong direction.

bcheung2• 11 years ago

Equally the government should not discriminate based on whether you are married or not for tax purposes.

They need to treat everyone the same in the eyes of the law.

millstone6• 11 years ago

What would this look like? My wife has no income because she is raising our children. Should she be eligible for welfare? Do I owe gift tax if she orders a pizza from our joint checking account?

justonepost• 11 years ago

Yeah, absolutely. I think Christians should have their own concept of marriage, but it should have nothing to do with the state.

akssri• 11 years ago

Exactly. I think the libertarian way to go would be to limit the role of the Govt. to enable Tax breaks for spouses, and other impersonal things.

__z14• 11 years ago

It's a practical matter.

"Getting married" is very easy and requires almost no expense and only a little bit of time. You don't need to plan at all for a civil marriage, just sign some paperwork. Drafting all the documents you'll need (will, medical directive, etc.) without a marriage takes lots of time and money (lawyer fees). Writing marriage into laws is a way to save families time and money and make everything simple for them.

hawleyal• 11 years ago

Trouble is, state governments have been messing with it. This is an attempt to stop it.

threatofrain• 11 years ago

Why should the government stop addressing marriage, which is a cross-cultural structure involving people officially declaring their relationship to a community, sometimes via a legal vehicle? Marriage has been independently constructed by many peoples with many variations. Often times we talk about Christian marriage but not Chinese or Greek marriage.

Why do you frame marriage as principally religious, and something the government should keep out of?

There's one way in which governments have screwed up, including state governments, and that's allowing priests to have legal authority. The wedding industry is a revenue stream. In what other way does religion have relation to marriage? Through the laws of Moses, transferred from God?

The government shouldn't be afraid of words. The government should feel free to not trespass upon religion by creating as many alternative marriages as it wants. The government can create a "high-fecundity during wartime" category of marriage if it wants, and grant extra tax benefits. That's a matter of secular policy.

"I really suggest the A41 form for marriage for your case in particular. My cousin and his girlfriend got married under A41 and they've structured their finances like so and so."

ajays2• 11 years ago

What should happen is the government should stop defining marriage ...

Sure. But gay marriage and getting government out of marriage altogether are not mutually exclusive. Government can still get out of the business of marriage (and divorce). Please feel free to petition your legislators to pursue that approach. In the meantime, it is only fair that the gays enjoy the same rights that the rest of us do.

cmurf• 11 years ago

There's no possible way this can happen. There's zero political will by two branches of government at the federal level, times 50 at the state level. And the Supreme Court can't do it on its own, because it would have to reverse itself on over a dozen cases in 100+ years specifically stating marriage is a right. And the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights considers marriage a right, Article 16.

ryanSrich• 11 years ago

It has far less todo with what people want than it does with just taking what you can get. If gay couples had to wait around for the government to change the way it handles marriage they might as well just count on never having the option to join each other in a civil union.

Your ideas are great in theory but they don't really fit into the corrupt framework of modern day politics (or even throughout written history).

sbassi• 11 years ago

Why should the government stop defining marriage? what is wrong with this?

ggchappell• 11 years ago

Correct me if I'm misunderstanding things, but your comment suggests that you think marriage started as a religious thing and then later became a legal matter.

This is not the case, at least in western/european culture. In fact, the reverse is true. Marriage was not thought of as a religious institution until pretty late in the game -- certainly not until after 1000. (For example, marriage was not declared a sacrament until the Council of Trent in the 1500s.)

crystaln• 11 years ago

"the government should stop defining marriage of any form (leave that to religion or personal tradition), and simply define all these rights under civil union"

I don't see this as anything other than arguing a trivial semantic distinction - that we should use the word "union" for government rights granted to couples instead of "marriage"?

Even if you are right about a slightly better word, who cares? What is the effective difference? Religious and government marriages are different. A "marriage" license issued by a government is indistinguishable from a civil union license.

Why grant religions a monopoly on the use of the word.

In all honesty, this is a non-sensical frankenstein remnant of the separate but equal argument for marriage and civil union. It really has no value.

snambi• 11 years ago

Its a just marriage. But the noise created by politicians and media is out of proportion. Now that we have a verdict, hope all the noise goes away.

skywhopper• 11 years ago

"Marriage" is the term under which those rights are defined. Marriage is not a religious construct. Rather, religion and culture are deeply intertwined, but you seem to be accepting the Christian Right's assertion that it alone can define marriage. But I reject that claim. They are free to place their own restrictions on marriages their churches will endorse, but they are not free to define my marriage. Turning the word "marriage" over to "religion" (and ignoring the millions of religious people who fully support same-sex marriage) does more harm than good to reaching our goal of equality.

XorNot4• 11 years ago

Religions don't have a monopoly on words. The government, and the people, have a right to name things whatever they want. If the only thing holding your institution up was it's name, then you had other problems to start with.

intopieces6• 11 years ago

People on both sides of the debate agree (if given the option) that the government probably never should have messed with marriage, at least not as the cultural/religious thing that it is.

They don't actually believe this, they only say they do. Take any person who says "Get the government out of marriage!" and ask them if they'd like to pay higher taxes and give up the rights that come with marriage. They'll say, "Well, no..."

Simply put, the libertarian cry you suggest is red herring. It's a way to disguise a disgust for gay marriage by making it sounds like you're for "smaller government." If they really believed what they said, they'd have gotten married in a church and then just never filed the documents with the state. Remember, you can get married in a church and not have it recognized by state. Gays were doing it for years.

lifeisstillgood• 11 years ago

Not until the meaning of marriage changes in people's heads too.

For some years my gay friends were "civil unionised" and I always had to do this two step in my head from the words to the meaning I had for life long loving partnership that still has blazing rows and .... You know - Marriage.

So, this is not about religion (really this is from a country where most people under 60 attending church are doing so they can get their kids into the associated school) - it's not about the tax laws, it's about what society sees, expects and hands out to a married couple.

It makes a difference - there is a difference between a couple who are "to all intents and purposes" married and a couple who are married. Because for the 95% straight relationships out there we read something into why that couple has not gotten married. And we are then forced to read the same into a gay couple. That's why marriage matters. Living together is not quite the same. And we know it.

analog313• 11 years ago

What should happen is the government should stop defining marriage of any form (leave that to religion or personal tradition), and simply define all these rights under civil union (or a similar phrase with no significant religious/cultural attachment).

The state that I live in passed a constitutional amendment specifically prohibiting civil unions. The only remaining recourse was the supreme court.

bsder• 11 years ago

What should happen is the government should stop defining marriage of any form (leave that to religion or personal tradition), and simply define all these rights under civil union (or a similar phrase with no significant religious/cultural attachment).

Hopefully this ruling will cause exactly that.

If the churches don't want same-sex "marriage", they now MUST lobby their legislatures to separate marriage from the civil contracts that it is conflated with.

Until this ruling, nobody was going to take up the task. States that might have done this were already legalizing it anyway. States that would be opposed weren't going to spend the time and energy to fight their own constituents.

Now, there will be motivation in the most conservative states to actually get that done.

mirimir2• 11 years ago

Yes, we want separation of church and state. But this decision says nothing about church. It affects only the state's role in marriage.

Here's a concrete example. Two people of the same sex want to marry. They get a marriage license. They find someone who's qualified and willing to marry them. They submit paperwork to the state, proving that they're married, and they become legally married.

The Supreme Court ruling doesn't require someone who's qualified to marry them, unless that qualified person is a state official. It doesn't, for example, require a Catholic priest to marry them. The Catholic church can still prohibit marriages between people of the same sex.

However, for purposes of employment, or involving government contracts, the Catholic church must recognize all legal marriages, including those between people of the same sex. But how much of a change does that actually represent? Before this decision, the Catholic church had to recognize legal non-Catholic marriages of all sorts for those purposes.

chx• 11 years ago

Marriage as an institution dates from the Neolithic. Nothing to do with religion. Source: http://www.econ.ku.dk/okojwe/filer/MEHR/adshade_kaiser_10_08...

jamesrcole• 11 years ago

As far as I can tell, on a societal level incremental change is the only sort of change that tends to happen. On a larger time-frame bigger shifts tends to come about as the result of lots of incremental changes.

iovrthoughtthis• 11 years ago

I am relieved that this is the top post on this thread.

I feel like this is another case statement in the giant switch that is government legislation and that the god class that is government could do with factoring out the freedom for individuals to voluntarily associate.

imaginenore2• 11 years ago

Modern marriage in the US is a civil union that has nothing to do with any religion, and the rights are already defined.

Notice that you have to apply to get married in the government office. Whether you have your ceremony in some church or elsewhere or not have it at all is your choice, and affects absolutely nothing.

What you're suggesting is that we rename "marriage" into "civil union" and do the same with all the laws and precedents. It's an expensive and stupid proposition, all in the name of dealing with some hurt feelings of religious fanatics that try to get their hands into the government business.

hobarrera• 11 years ago

Indeed. IMHO, I should be able to share with one (or more) people all the rights that marriage currently grants without it somehow being linked to an ancient religious ritual, even if only be name.

Marriage should be handled as religious rituals and nothing state-related at all.

anonbanker• 11 years ago

Toasting in epic bread.

chippy• 11 years ago

I seem to find it funny when people talk of things killing "marriage". Divorce kills marriages, not more marriages! Let there be more happy marriages!

malkia2• 11 years ago

Came to work today, opened the internal web page and saw this - #ProudToLove - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSiehK2asbI

daily_dose_420• 11 years ago

This has nothing to do with technology.

dang• 11 years ago

Please read the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. There is no need for stories here to be about technology.

urda• 11 years ago

I'll tell you it upsets me to see so many homophobes here on Hacker News attempting to argue that those in same-sex situations should be denied the right to marriage.

Hacker News you disappoint me.

bcheung2• 11 years ago

Just my 2 cents.

The government should not enforce marriage contracts, they should enforce legal contracts. Marriage is a private matter, not a government matter.

They shouldn't officially recognize marriage at all, nor should they discriminate on marital status for tax purposes. All people should be equal in the eyes of the law.

People should be free to enter into legal contracts with whomever they want.

interlocutor2• 11 years ago

Given this ruling, what do you now teach children? Do you tell your 5-year-old that "when you grow up you marry either a man or a woman"? Are both choices to be equally preferred? Or do you say, "by default" you marry someone of the opposite sex, but if you choose someone of your own sex that's OK? Is it OK to teach that being straight is "the default"?

delecti3• 11 years ago

Being straight has always been significantly more common, and will continue to be so.

You teach them that when they grow up, they can marry someone they love. Which, now, is now true no matter whether you're talking to a kid who happens to be gay or not.

interlocutor2• 11 years ago

>> You teach them that when they grow up, they can marry someone they love.

That's avoiding the question. Do you, for example, show kids pictures of gay/lesbian couples and straight couples in equal proportion? Or do you show them mostly pictures of straight couples, and gay/lesbian couples only occasionally? Is it bigoted to teach kids that being straight is the "default"?

trhway2• 11 years ago

as it is a technical nerds forum lets throw in a bit of technology aspect of it - today's ruling lays groundwork for protecting the interests of children which will be "born", or more specifically - created - using something like the DNA mix-up of the 2 same-sex parents (with, at least at the initial stages of the technology, may be throwing into the mix a biologically minimally necessary of bio-material from an opposite sex donor)

acd• 11 years ago

I'm happy for this decision, way to go!

Cyberis• 11 years ago

So, shouldn't plural marriage, intra-family marriage and inter-species marriage be made legal as well?

parwell• 11 years ago

Plural and intra-family, yes. Inter-species no, because animals can't sign a contract or give informed consent.

ajays2• 11 years ago

Rant time.

This talk about "church's definition of marriage", etc. is a red herring, and just a couched way of saying "we don't like homosexuality and homosexual behavior".

I got married in India. In a ceremony presided over by a local priest. There was no "church" involved. But guess what? No Christian here (in the US) has ever doubted the authenticity of my marriage.

And then I got divorced in the US. The courts here had no problem recognizing my marriage, even though it was performed in some other country, by some unknown religious authority. The officials had no hesitation in breaking up this marriage. Why don't we require the Church's blessing to break up a marriage (I am aware that Catholics have a certain process of appealing to the Pope, but not all churches do)?

If you don't support the idea of the government getting involved in marriage, you shouldn't support the idea of government-approved divorces either! Go to your church and get a divorce!

jakeogh• 11 years ago

Why is the gov in the business of approving who is married anyway? There is no reason to need "licenses".

habosa• 11 years ago

Pretty crazy to think how far America has come on this and related issues. America isn't so good at changing as soon as we should but we've made a lot of social progress in our short ~300 years.

The other day I was watching Eddie Murphy's "Delirious" special [0]. It's widely considered one of the best standup specials ever and it's Eddie in his prime. But he spends the first ~5 minutes just spewing anti-gay jokes. Not hateful stuff, but just saying over and over how he's scared of gay people, etc. And he was probably the biggest star in the country at the time and at the peak of his abilities as a comic. I don't think that would go too well now (even if it is comedy).

Anyway, congratulations to anyone who was previously unable to get married and can now do so. It's a real victory for the good guys.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Murphy_Delirious

3zzy2• 11 years ago

Honest question: Do gay couples have to commit adultery to produce children? — OR — Rely on straight couples to produce children whom they can adopt?

mynameisvlad• 11 years ago

Those are two options, sure. Another that comes to mind would be IVF.

vacri8• 11 years ago

Adultery isn't a problem if it's performed with the consent of the spouse. There are tons of open marriages out there.

3zzy2• 11 years ago

So polygamy is illegal, and adultery is a misdemeanour, but "open marriages" are fine? So with gay marriages everything else becomes legal too?

JoeAltmaier10• 11 years ago

Just like infertile couples, or single parents that want children, yes. My cousins foster children, then file to adopt them as appropriate. They've raised 4 fine young people who had a rough start, and done a stellar job.

sytelus3• 11 years ago

One of the interesting thing is how severe disagreements are between the supreme court judges[1]. You might think these judges are debating with cold logical arguments and finally either understand other person's argument or be able to convince others of theirs. Instead what we are seeing is judges literally and personally attacking other judges in same panel and accusing them to derail the very constitution and democracy they are expected to protect. Can they make any ore serious accusations? It's also very interesting that judge votes were highly predictable based on their political leanings and which administration appointed them. This just boggled my mind. First, why we should allow any person strongly conforming to any political ideology as a supreme court judge? Why a political leader who almost always have represented as head of certain political ideology be able to even appoint a supreme court judge?

1. http://www.nationaljournal.com/domesticpolicy/marriage-same-...

DonHopkins4• 11 years ago

This is going to mean a lot of jobs for database programmers!

http://qntm.org/gay

15 years ago we solved the Y2K problem. Now we've got to solve the SQL2Gays problem!

PebblesHD• 11 years ago

I have nothing to say other than good. This is how it should always have been. To all the people who disagree, you are entitled to your opinion, and to all those who can now celebrate their love with all the peace and respect of any other person, congratulations and I wish you all the best.

moioci• 11 years ago

Just wanted to point out that certain counties in Alabama have announced that they are getting out of the marriage license business. To avoid sanctioning sanctioning same-sex unions and avoid legal trouble, they won't issue licenses to any couples. That way they can't be accused of discrimination.

once-in-a-while• 11 years ago

What's next? I would like to marry myself!! When will I finally be able to do that?

Do I have to wait another century?

octatoan2• 11 years ago

My goodness, the barely-concealed hate in this is shocking. It's a very, very sad thing these people do. And I can't help but find "black robes" a bit telling, although maybe that's just some sort of bias or psychological effect.

http://www.afa.net/the-stand/government/rainbow-jihadists-of...

pluma2• 11 years ago

That website is so many levels of fucked up. Glad the SCOTUS is less insane than these sites make the US seem.

Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules

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