Gay And Interracial Marriage

[dairygirl4u2c]

please state reasoning.

i dont disagree that gay marriage bans 'should' be allowed, if i were just making the laws myself. per consistency though, im not sure how to say they shouldnt be able to ban interracial marraige too. one could ultimately say, 'gay marriage isn't natural' etc etc, but it's ultimately about your values, and less about saying the constitution does not allow one to ban interracial marraige.
the court used hte reasoning of 'equal protection' to ban interracial marriage. the same reasoning they use for gay marriage.

"The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions in a unanimous decision, dismissing the Commonwealth of Virginia's argument that a law forbidding both white and black persons from marrying persons of another race, and providing identical penalties to white and black violators, could not be construed as racially discriminatory. The court ruled that Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In its decision, the court wrote:

“ Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. ”

The Supreme Court concluded that anti-miscegenation laws were racist and had been enacted to perpetuate white supremacy:

“ There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. ”

Despite this Supreme Court ruling, such laws remained on the books, although unenforceable, in several states until 2000, when Alabama became the last state to repeal its law against mixed-race marriage
"

Edited August 5, 2010 by dairygirl4u2c

[dairygirl4u2c]

and while i dont think marriage is a right, per the state, if the government does start calling it a right, as it did with interracial marraige, that opens a new can of worms, per precedent.

for those who support the right ot ban gay marraige, but think states can't ban interracial marraige... id like to hear your reasoning, or for you to state that you hold this view.

for those who think states can ban interracial marraiges, id like for you to have the cajones to state this view. and reasoning is secondarly important.

Edited August 5, 2010 by dairygirl4u2c

[CatherineM]

My great uncle married a woman whose father was "passing" in the early part of the 1900's. Her father was a Kansas state senator. He would have lost his position at the least if discovered. She was so afraid of outing her dad, that they didn't have children out of fear that one might look too negroid.

I suppose it can seem quite similar to some of the obstacles that gay couples believe they have encountered. That's the problem. It just seems that way. It's an easy trap to fall into by comparing the two.

[Semper Catholic]

[quote name='CatherineM' date='05 August 2010 - 06:48 PM' timestamp='1281052131' post='2152920']
My great uncle married a woman whose father was "passing" in the early part of the 1900's. Her father was a Kansas state senator. He would have lost his position at the least if discovered. She was so afraid of outing her dad, that they didn't have children out of fear that one might look too negroid.

I suppose it can seem quite similar to some of the obstacles that gay couples believe they have encountered. That's the problem. It just seems that way. It's an easy trap to fall into by comparing the two.
[/quote]


What does "looking to negroid" mean?

[dairygirl4u2c]

so it sounds like some here would say 'marriage, even in hte federal government, is a right.... just not a right for homosexuals'. which seems more of an argument from natural law, than constitutional law.
where does the constitution protect your right to marry even in the federal government?

[ardillacid]

[quote name='Semper Catholic' date='05 August 2010 - 07:52 PM' timestamp='1281052345' post='2152921']
What does "looking to negroid" mean?
[/quote]
Are you kidding?

[CatherineM]

[quote name='Semper Catholic' date='05 August 2010 - 06:52 PM' timestamp='1281052345' post='2152921']
What does "looking to negroid" mean?
[/quote]
She was 50% African American. She was fairly light complected, but they were afraid that they might have a child that was very dark complected and with other negroid features such as kinky hair. Back then, it might have led to many consequences up to possibly being lynched.

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='CatherineM' date='05 August 2010 - 08:23 PM' timestamp='1281054192' post='2152935']
She was 50% African American. She was fairly light complected, but they were afraid that they might have a child that was very dark complected and with other negroid features such as kinky hair. Back then, it might have led to many consequences up to possibly being lynched.
[/quote]
Feedest thou not yon troll.

[CatherineM]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' date='05 August 2010 - 08:25 PM' timestamp='1281057952' post='2152963']
Feedest thou not yon troll.
[/quote]
Can't be a very good troll. I didn't even notice. That's too bad too. I love feasting on trolls.

[Luigi]

Not every single, solitary right of the people is specified in the Constitution. There's some general statement - if it weren't so late, I'd look it up myself - to the effect that 'any rights not mentioned in this Constitution remain under the purview of the states.'

The Constitution is a primarily political text, but it is also culturally situated. The writer(s) held certain cultural assumptions about right/wrong, good/bad, moral/immoral, legal/illegal, and normal/abnormal. These assumptions were also broadly held by the citizens at the time - otherwise, the writers would have specified & elaborated on them. Marriage as a right would have been one of those broadly held assumptions; the fact that homosexuals didn't/couldn't/shouldn't marry would have been another society-wide broadly held cultural assumption.

Cultures change; written documents do not. One function of the courts is to interpret the frozen text of written legal documents in light of current cultural practices. Legalizing miscegenation (interracial marriage) is an example of such an interpretation. Neither marriage generally nor interracial marriage specifically are mentioned in the federal constitution, although they probably were mentioned in all states' laws; as the political status of African Americans evolved, laws related to cultural racial practices also needed to evolve. It wasn't quick, it wasn't easy, it wasn't always accepted, but it happened - often but not always through the courts.

Interestingly, the courts don't generally stray too far from the will of the people (which we can also call the cultural norms) most of the time. The Supreme Court supported slavery until Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, they generally voted against unions until unions were pretty well established, I don't think they were particularly friendly to Native Americans for most of our history, and so forth. In fact, the majority of popular opinion may have been against slavery (if you consider that the North was more heavily populated than the South), but the Supreme Court supported it because it was written into law and because of its legal history.

Since the 1960's, American culture has been changing rapidly. Various courts - individual judges, appellate courts, state Supreme Courts, and the federal Supreme Court, depending on who held the majority - seem to have broken out of that traditional role of supporting the cultural norms. The banning of prayer in school was clearly out of synch with the cultural norms of the times, as were many of the civil rights decisions, Roe v. Wade (abortion was illegal in all 50 states prior to Roe v. Wade), and lots of other decisions, including the very recent decision to overturn California's voter-approved ban on gay marriage. The voter approval doesn't necessarily indicate a broad-based social norm - a bare majority of voters, which is always a minority of citizens, doesn't necessarily constitute a broad social norm, but it is the accepted way that citizens express their will.

Personally, I don't want the courts (local, state, appellate, state Supreme, or federal Supreme) dictating social norms to me on any issue. The very detachment that is supposed to make judges objective also contributes to their alienation from social norms - they're richer, better educated, more privileged, whiter, male-r (even with Kagan's approval, the Supreme Court is only 1/3 female), and so forth than the people.

I'm sure the courts will eventually require the legalization of gay marriage, even in the face of popular opposition. But I still don't think that it will be "consitutional. "

[Resurrexi]

Guys, I think that what we need to do is to be accepting and inclusive of all different people, no matter what their lifestyles are. Isn't that what Buddha and Mohammad would do? We need to be a united force against all homophobia and discrimination, or else the forces of tolerance and communal sharing will be impeded from spreading to all countries throughout our environmentally endangered planet.

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Luigi' date='05 August 2010 - 11:12 PM' timestamp='1281067952' post='2153100']
Cultures change; written documents do not. One function of the courts is to interpret the frozen text of written legal documents in light of current cultural practices.
[/quote]

The function of the courts was to interpret the frozen text of written legal documents in the light of . . . the frozen text of written legal documents. The Constitution was written with unchanging human nature in mind, not cultural trends. They gave it a good try, but ultimately, men can only be ruled by themselves choosing to live moral lives, a phenomenon that has its source in God and the free will, not in words scrawled on the scraped-off skin of a dead sheep.

~Sternhauser

Edited August 7, 2010 by Sternhauser

[thessalonian]

Is child molestation illegal because it is wrong or wrong because it is illegal? Gays have decided to change what the word marriage means. Child molesters could as well. So can polygamists, those who encourage beastiality, etc. We have thrown morality out of our laws. There is no reason to bound them any more. There really is little reason to have them.

[CatherineM]

Polygamy is going to be the next thing here, and I'm not talking about the uber-Mormans out in BC. Immigration Canada has already allowed refugees with more than one wife. That makes them quasi-legal.

[Jesus_lol]

[quote name='thessalonian' date='08 August 2010 - 02:55 PM' timestamp='1281304510' post='2154292']
Is child molestation illegal because it is wrong or wrong because it is illegal? Gays have decided to change what the word marriage means. Child molesters could as well. So can polygamists, those who encourage beastiality, etc. We have thrown morality out of our laws. There is no reason to bound them any more. There really is little reason to have them.
[/quote]

I know that the Church position on gays, pedos and bestiality is that they are all bad sins, but you cant really compare gay marriage to child molestation. certainly not legally. Two gay guys marrying is an act between two consenting legal adults. Children are not adults, obviously and as such cannot consent to a sexual relationship. same thing with the farmyard romancing. it just aint the same.