Supreme Court Same Sex Marriage Argumet

[Anima]

Anima,
I heard a slightly different argument. The state interest was specifically characterized by the need to ensure the bond between parents and children. The reason for excluding homosexual couples was based on the unsubstantiated claim that changing the definition of traditional marriage for their inclusion would result in fewer heterosexual couples entering into marriage which would legitimize the exclusion based on the stated state interest.

In my opinion there were no substantive answers when challenged by the extremely high increase in out of wedlock births since 1970 and the evidence from Maine or Massachusetts (can't remember which) that indicated no such decline in heterosexual marriage rates have been noticed in the past ten years. I think I remember the answer to the latter was a hand wave at ten years not being sufficient time for demonstration.

Cato;

I meant to respond to this and got side tracked. My apologies for the delayed response.

As a legal right the states may restrict marriage under rational basis scrutiny. Under rational basis the state must have a legitimate interest and the discrimination must be reasonably related to that interest (even if tenuously).

As such the respondents stipulate, under rational basis the state as a legitimate interest in tying children to the biological parent to establish parental right and liabilities in regards to a child. The discrimination is reasonably related (even tenuously) to the interest as evidenced by the impact of previous change to marriages in history. With the introduction of no fault divorce in the 1970s the amount of children born out of wedlock increased substantial.

The impacts of no fault divorce were an increased rate of divorce (this is evidenced by its implementation) an unanticipated impact of increased divorce is a sentiment that there is no point in getting married as it will just result in divorce. A further unanticipated impact of this sentiment is that while the quantity of marriage is decreased the rate of births did not decrease proportionally, resulting in a greater rate of children born out of wedlock, due to the decrease in sentiment to marry, cause by no fault divorce. (As I said, under rational basis the reasonable relation needs to exist no matter how tenuous!!)

An effort to rebuttal this argument is being provided in regards to 2 data points of Maine and Mass. who studies show no noticeable decline in the rate of marriage over the last 10 years. Rebuttal to this rebuttal has been made in regards to statistical outliers and the law of diminishing return. The argument is that 2 data points in contradiction to the great body of data in affirmation of the impact of no fault divorce do not constitute sufficient proof of no reasonable relation. The other argument is that the impact of no fault divorce was most prevalent in the initial years following its implementation and the institution has modified to account for this impact (which is akin of saying the base of the comparison has change from Xnow/X1970 to Xnow/X2000); once again holding that the impact is the same but the rate of the impact is diminish due to the limitation of the study range, which does not constitute sufficient proof evidence of no reasonable relation.

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"2)Incestuous relationships are psychologically harming to the people directly and indirectly involved (such as the resultant children)."

Proof??

Umm... Internet search. I would prefer not to have to comb through the myriad of websites that will popup in regards to incestuous relationships. But I am confident you can find it.

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So going back to what the procreation centric definition is, all you gave me is a list of people who either can't procreate or if they did procreate might have children with some defects. 

So what is the actual definition and where does it come from?  Is it a term used in law?  The only time I can see it is related to Christian marriage and Christian arguments against gay marriage.

I'm quite far removed from this argument because (1) I'm not gay (2) I wouldn't want to get married if I was gay (3) I don't know about law.

I don't know the difference between gay marriage and civil partnership if there is a difference and I don't know why/if homosexuals are wanting to get married within the Christian church and if they aren't wanting to get married within the Christian church why Christians would have any opinion on gay marriage anyway.

I could google all this stuff but (1) I have no motivation to do so because of the 3 points I listed previously and (2) Google has been working slow for me the past few days.

The procreation centric definition comes from biology, it is how we got here

Furthermore, it has been explicitly and implicitly included in the definition of marriage and inheritance throughout the world as far back as may be historically recognized.

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Fucking civil partnership. That pisses me off. It might as well be called, "Underclass marriage".

If there is a good reason why it is called that, I'd love to hear it. But my guess is it's to appease the religious/homophobic aspect of our country. Maybe one day it can just be called marriage and people can grow the fuck up.

Passions aside. There is very little legal distinction between civil partnership and marriage. Even the European Civil Rights Court in 2015 has stated that civil partnership is legally equivalent to marriage.

With that said it is recognized that there is a moral distinction between civil partnership and marriage. Society has assigned a moral rightness to marriage of heterosexuals that it is has not assigned to homosexual civil partnership. The argument of the petitioners (initially made in US V Windsor) is that the moral assignment is attached to the marriage moniker and is transferable to homosexual marriages by their inclusion.

Respondents argument is that the states and the court are not in the business of conveying or withholding social moral rightness. Social mores being assigned by the populace cannot be legislated. The example given in US V. Windsor is that if you tell a child to be friends with another child he does not like, and further compel him to call that child his friend to his previous existing friends that he does like. The child will naturally create a new moniker to distinguish one group from the other. He is my friend, you are my buddies. He is my buddy, you guys are my pals. etcetera.