Gay marriage is constitutional 5-4

you're not going to get it, I can only explain the same thing so many times.

actually the supreme court did that lol

@Jacanuk: you seem upset.

Another fun fact.

OJ was found not guilty in a court of law...... get it now?

Yes, mistakes can happen.

But this was not a mistake. The 14th amendment made this pretty much an inevitability. The first amendment helped too of course, establishing the USA as a secular nation.

You can't tell the difference between a murder case and one that affects a constitutional amendment?

lol

A law was edited in one case, not the other. Can you tell the difference?

in this case 'truth' isn't all that relevant, all that matters is that the minority's opinion has exactly zero force of law behind it, while the majority's opinion dictates how this country will be administered in this case.

ya lost, bud. ya lost forever.

And that is a matter of opinion not fact mate.

You can say and think that it was not a mistake but in the end you are as right as anyone thinking it was wrong.

Another fun fact

4 justices was appointed by Obama and Clinton voted for, 4 justices appointed by Reagan and Bush voted against.

And although Kennedy was appointed by Reagan, Kennedy was not the first choice and has also never hidden the fact that he has been a strong supporter for gay to marry.

So imagine if Reagan had been lucky placing a true blue republican justice.... how the tables would have been turned.

""""facepalm""""""

First of all no law was written , the supreme court CANNOT act as a legislative power. What happened was that the supreme court ruled that the 14th amendment was inclusive of same-sex marriage. IE that because it says "man and Women" that did not mean "MAN AND WOMEN period, but also extends to include MAN/MAN and WOMEN/WOMEN"

Second if you can keep your concentration this long. My use of OJ was to point out that just because a court rules something, it does not mean its right.

Do you get it now? because if not then i have to give up.

Thanks for getting the point.

And yes the ruling is final and i and others have to live with that. That is true. But it does not mean that we have to agree. I personally have nothing against marriage being for everyone. What i do however have a problem with is the same as Scalia.

@Desmonic: you forgot Mexico in the List.

The laws are meant to be objective. And the constitution of the USA applies to the entire union. In this case, the 14th amendment made same sex marriage fall into constitutional rights. As agreed with some of the finest lawyers of the land (though I have no idea how Scalia got up there).

Ultimately this is for the better anyways. Since same sex marriage was deemed constitutional anyways. Why prolong it? Why not just finish it now and now focus on more important issues?

The state is involved with marriage because it infers legal rights and privileges to those who are married. One very visible example is taxes, but there are others such as visitation rights, property rights, and medical rights.

The tenth amendment obviously exists, what a silly question.

A license is involved because we A) identify who gets the rights mentioned above in relation to the spouses and B) regulate marriage in certain respects to prevent public health issues and the like.

Definition of marriage, here´s what I found:

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

Here´s another one:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/marriage

Now enlighten us with your vast knowedlege on the subject and provide us with that defintion of marriage you talk so much about.

Absolutely fucking depressing amount of stuff I heard on the radio and TV when it was first announced. I mean, it normally doesn't bother me but hearing folks say it signifies the end of Mankind (Or that it signifies the beginning of the End of Times), that THEIR Christian rights, values, and beliefs have been violated, and other prejudice comments (Stuff you'd normally see while reading Yahoo/MSN comments sections) really pisses me off! I mean, how in the hell is it really inconveniencing their way of living?...

Yes, when I hear people say that it is the end times, that is warning sign.

You mean like this?

My favorite part is where it states that this case will lead to imprisoning preachers.

@Jacanuk: Why do you keep treating the word "women" as a singular instead of plural? The singular should be "woman", NOT "women".

You do know that you're not American, right?

The Tenth Amendment

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

checkmate, statists

A warning sign about what? That they're just bigots spouting bullshit?

Am I the only one around here who thinks the state should have no authority in declaring who can and can't be married? This goes for straights and gays -- why is it necessary that we need a license to be wed? For tax breaks? There is no feasible precedent for marriage to need legal precedent. This has and always will be the most uncomfortable aspect of any marriage debate for me. More than anything else, as happily empathetic as I am for those out there who feel like a milestone has been reached, the fact it's fruition came by way of an authority's rule rather than the free will of autonomous individuals within a country founded on the principles of liberty is bittersweet. Our government's hand has no place in the institution of marriage.

Civilized as Brazil?

We have more than 13mil murders per year, 97% of corruption (our actual president was a communist terrorist in the past and now it's part of the extreme right-wing corruption, our polictics are an aberration), we have one of the worst average monthly payments within one of the more skyrocketing prices due inflation in the World, the second highest taxes in the World, one of the worst health systems, we're at the same level as Ethiopia in healthcare, education, transportation, etc. What are you talking about?

Well, married couples receive benefits such as better social security, more housing options, more medical decisions concerning spouses, employment benefits, legal benefits, etc, etc, etc. Most of these benefits come through the government, so it's not a bad idea to make sure people are legally married and the system isn't abused. Not to mention, stuff like child support after a divorce would not exist if the government did not regulate marriage.

All the tears from this could solve California's drought problem. And I'm loving it.

I think we are in violent agreement, because that is essentially what I said; the government WAS preventing same-sex marriage, and the government NOW allows same-sex marriage.

But yeah, we would definitely have less chaos if the government continued this trend. Still, they're doing their best; same-sex marriage allowed, ACA continued, and housing equality act allowed (just barely) to continue.

A good week for the government and the people.

If you agree with the minority (in this case, the four Justices), and more importantly what they have said after the decision (in other words, their reasons for voting the way they did), you are an idiot. And I don't mean that as an insult. I mean that literally. You are a complete, actual idiot.

Worse than that, you are mean, biased, and unfair. An asshole, in other words, fond of acts of jackassery and practitioner of doucherbaggerism.

This is one of the rare occasions where there is no grey area, no room for moderatism. You are either a rational, selfless person that can make objective decisions for the betterment of society; or you are an idiotic, selfish person that can only make decisions based on personal beliefs.

It has nothing to do with truth, as some have argued. This is cold, logical, beautiful fact.

*some choice quotes from the dissenting justices

Not just that, but in cases such as this, you need to worry about the "tyranny of the majority".

What happened is the perfect example of the government saving the people from themselves. And, sadly, this needs to happen on occasion. If this were put to a popular vote, it would have never passed.

You should go look up the word idiot and bigot and then go back and read your own post again.

Also you might want to actually read the dissenting justices decisions.

This is not about marriage outright, but about the 14th Amendment which influences many things...among them, marriage. So yeah, I do believe in the law, and it's impact on marriage.

A warning about many aspects of their beliefs. If a person believes it is the end times, I wonder how differently they are treating others as a result of thinking that the world is coming to an end, soon. It is very disturbing and should be considered carefully. A bad outcome would be someone thinking that the world is coming to an end, so they treat people such as homosexuals as sinners simply for existing, discriminating against them to appease what they view as the primary deity in the universe.

Paranoia spreads easily among the ignorant. What I don't get is that marriage equality is only a sign of the "end times" when the USA does it. Other countries have done this as well, and guess what? They are all still perfectly intact.

I'm loving all the passive-aggressive saltiness ITT.

I've been reading through some of the posts made by people opposing the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 14th amendment and I can't believe what I'm seeing. The court just made a ruling that expands rights, not tramples on them. You guys are throwing around terms like 'states rights' and 'fall of democracy', etc. This part of the constitution was already in place. No new laws were created, nothing was altered, etc. So do you guys just pick and choose when you think the constitution is applicable? If your state threw out the second amendment, yet it was still intact in the constitution, you all would lose your fucking minds. "Protect the constitution!' and "My constitutional rights!" and so forth.

This goes along with a lot of Republican politicians going to war with this, bible in hand. "The law of God", etc. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? I'm sorry guys, but your God has no power here. The constitution states that "government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Fighting gay marriage in the name of God flies directly in the face of the first amendment. Banning gay marriage because God says its 'bad' is respecting the establishment of religion.

Keep on cherry picking the constitution guys. It makes you look awesome.

The main arguments against gay marriage were religious which goes no where because of the 1st amendment. The marriage is for procreation argument doesn't explain why people who are infertile or too old to have children are allowed to marry since you would then be treating them different under the law than homosexuals who also can't procreate. This would be a violation of the 14th amendment since marriage is recognized by the law as a legal contract and you would be granting some citizens this right while denying it to others. Finally state law is superseded by federal law, the court has ruled on this numerous times through a variety of issues. The states rights argument is where the 4 dissenting justices hid but none of them gave a good legal argument as to why in this case a state law should overrule a Constitutional right. It seemed to me that this was where they chose to hide so they wouldn't have to admit that their objections were either religious or homophobic. On a side note griping about the rhetorical style Justice Kennedy used in his majority ruling in their dissents was petty school yard whining.

If you want entertainment read the Fire Emblem thread in SWs.

I agree! That's my most favorite thread ever!

(I'm actually tempted to move some of my posts here since the thread was locked just now).

Taxes in regards to which section of the 14th Amendment? Section 1? Which guarantees equal protection under the law? Because our federal income tax is progressive?

The lack of comment would probably indicate a lack of opinion about it.

The state can and does determine what rights its citizens have. The state and constitution exists to protect the rights of the people.

You dont need the approval of the state to excercise it. You just need the approval of the state to have them recognize it.

Hey, prodding the willfully ignorant anti gay people people was hilarious!

Especially when they made up lame excuses to ignore evidence.

"Those bullshit articles are not only attempting to make the case that marriages are fiscally profitable by virtue of expensive weddings (and that's only assuming they're expensive), but also the fact that those initial expenditures will somehow make up for the long-term loss of revenue on marital benefits and state-filed paperwork. The state's investment in marriage has nothing to do with direct monetary returns. Its sole utility is concerned with family-building."

If the person saying this actually took the effort to read the articles they would have noticed those things were taken into account. And family building still exists in same sex marriages, which I brought up multiple times. But that was appearantly ignored.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~adamstev/research_files/Stevenson_same_sex_taxes.pdf

20-40 million dollars per year in tax revenue alone. Overall, there is supposedly a minor loss in later tax breaks and a few other benefits, but the other benefits same sex marriage gives should make more than up for that. Couples will go past certain thresholds making them no longer eligable for freebies. Increased stability and improved commitment and health has its own boons as well, which should result in less spent on healthcare. Improved stability should lead to more adoptions as well, which in turn means less spent on orphanages.

All in all, facts are facts, and I am working with the facts we currently have.

"It talks about marriage as though it were only implemented by the rich and insular and that the differing reasons for mergers somehow dissolve the family-building effects. I get the feeling that LiveScience is the HuffingtonPost of science enthusiast hubs."

Yes, the article may not have been perfectly well written, but what they listed were facts nonetheless. Production of heirs was a part of it too, but primarily, the main function was to secure or even gain political and financial power. Of course, Same sex marriages do allow for heirs regardless. In a world where overpopulation is a concern, we should probably not focus too much on the production of new humans. The more people that adopt, the better I say :)

http://marriage.about.com/cs/generalhistory/a/marriagehistory.htm

http://theweek.com/articles/475141/how-marriage-changed-over-centuries

And regarding the Ayn Rand stuff, Ayn Rand is discredited by the academia because her works did not hold up to the academic standard, she was a terrible philosopher with her philosophy being incoherent and contradictory. What she calls a philosophy isnt so much of a philosophy as much as it is an ideology. Is her ideology any good? Hell no! A society that followed her ideology would quickly collapse. Those kind of traits she promotes were weeded out by natural selection. Altruism and benevolence were favorable traits and helped populations not only survive, but also thrive.

Having her "philosophy" rejected out the academia, she instead found success in the mainstream where her ideological movement grew increasingly cultlike. In fact, it may be appropriate to consider Ayn Rand's movement a cult, sharing most characteristics. Anti-intellectualism and distaste for academia grows rampant in the Objectivist organisations and objectivists in general, with Ayn Rand being a noted anti intellectual. As people grow more enlightened, outgrowing Ayn Rand's ideology is not uncommon.

By "Objectively" coming to your own conclusions. What makes you so sure your conclusions have not just fallen prey to your own intuition and confirmation biases? That is why I keep going by this endless ammount of statististics, articles and pieces of evidence in favor of my position. Because empiricism and evidence (hence all the statistics) is the only way to make sure your hcoice is objectively the right one.