Just in. No time to read or comment further — I’m literally running out the door. More later.
UPDATE (by Bob). This just seems so wrong to me. Society should encourage people to get married: it’s an excellent institution and part of many happy families. I think history is very much on the side of the pro-marriage pro-family activists here and the direction of public opinion supports that theory. NYT:
Attitudes of Americans toward same-sex marriage favor liberalization of the practice. In an April CBS/New York Times poll, 42 percent of those surveyed favored same-sex marriage, up from 21 percent at election time in 2004, when it was a wedge issue during the presidential campaign. That poll suggests the trend will continue into the future: 57 percent of the respondents favored legal recognition for same-sex marriage, compared with 31 percent of respondents over the age of 40.
What we need is more ground-level political organizing in California and around the country to support marriage and families. You can donate to the good people at MassEquality here if you want to support this cause close to home, support Equality California here, find one of the many pro-marriage pro-family rallies nationwide tonight here, and add your own suggestions for activism in the comments.
This ruling allows the majority to rescind existing rights from any minority it chooses to shit on. Who should be next?
People who make over $250K per year?
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p>Oh wait
What democratically controlled, social Darwinist-leaning Massachusetts is doing to it’s disabled population. Got it.
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p>Right on, Bob, but bear in mind what question the California Supreme Court was deciding–was Proposition 8 an “amendment” to the state constitution, or rather a “revision”? Based on the little I know of California law on the subject, it seems to me that today’s decision was plainly correct, and indeed, a foregone conclusion. I made the case a few months ago here.
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p>This is why your comment about the need for a new political effort is important. The demographic and political trends make it pretty clear that with a good political effort, Proposition 8 will, sooner or later, be repealed.
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p>TedF
With respect to the specific court decision, I think they could easily have ruled the other way. They can rule however they want: they’re the top court in the state. Your mileage may vary.
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p>In any event, our conclusions are the same.
some interesting reading on the matter here.
The CA court will take a lot of heat for this from pro-marriage activists, of course, but criticism of the court in this case is largely misplaced given that legally this appeared to be the correct decision.
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p>The biggest problem, of course, is California’s ridiculous system of direct democracy. We’ve seen in a short matter of time propositions and initiatives help bankrupt California and take away the right to marry from an entire class of people. Many on BMG like to criticize the Mass. legislature for their actions (or inactions), but it could be worse — look what happens when “the people” vote on issues properly dealt with by institutions.
…when the state rep, state senator, Congressman, U.S. Senator, and president I voted for were all elected. How much more democracy do you need? The only purpose for the California initiative process is so that losers can propose discrimination and sell it as Mom and apple pie.
As I hope you know, direct democracy is not the same as representative democracy.
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p>In any case, you look at California’s budget and tell me how it’s worked out for them.
MCRD hasn’t put much meat on the bones of his point, but there’s something to it. There’s no question that our procedures for constitutional amendments in Massachsusetts are superior to California’s procedures, because they require a clearer, stronger, and more sustained effort by the people to enact amendments. The same goes for the federal Constitution. But ultimately, even under the better regimes, the people can amend their constitution in all kinds of unsavory ways if they want to.
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p>It’s interesting to me that traditionally (at least in recent times) it has been the Right that has made natural law arguments. Some of the arguments are explicitly religious and thus not, in my view, serious arguments about the secular law. Some of the arguments are pretty sophisticated (I’m thinking of John Finnis and Robert George. But the Proposition 8 debate, and the Schulman case in Massachusetts, show a new tendency on the Left to adopt natural law arguments. Now, to be sure, in both cases the Left has not expressly used that kind of language. In the Proposition 8 case, the plaintiffs made a technical argument about the difference between “amendments” and “revisions”, and in Schulman, the plaintiffs made an argument about whether the attempt to put an amendment on gay marriage to a popular vote would be an attempt to “reverse” Goodridge. (The one exception to this is Attorney General Jerry Brown’s brief in the Proposition 8 case, which pretty explicitly made this case.) But in both cases, my sense was that the impulse behind the arguments was not technical, but instead was the notion that there are some things about the constitution, like equal protection, that are so fundamental that it is wrong to put them to a popular vote. We see that argument from non-lawyers in threads like this all the time.
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p>I think what MCRD is reacting to is the attack on popular sovereignty that these kinds of appeals to natural law represent. I happen to agree with him. That doesn’t mean I want the people to amend the constitution in bad ways. It just means I think that the Proposition 8 case and the Schulman case were rightly decided. It’s important to keep this point clear.
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p>TedF
When your side wins a vote, THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE MUST BE UPHELD! When the opposing side wins, we must go to court.
I believe in marriage, but when my choice was matrimony or life, I chose life.
Where is the line for this equal rights thing? I want some too.
Given that political positions are essentially moral positions, the asymmetry to which you point should surprise no one.
here’s the thread.
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p>The main choice you seem to have made is to use your disability to justify homophobic comments:
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Brands me a homophobe. I can deal with that. My friends know me better. A couple of weeks ago, at a Pawtucket Red Sox game, I was uncomfortably witbessing a heterosexual couple playing suckface with attendant groping. There were FAMILIES there! More than one parent thanked ,me for complaining. Hetero or homo, I don’t care, just get a room with a door. And close it please.
There’s more in this thread:
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p>and
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p>I would have gone with “ignorant” if all this hadn’t been covered previously. Either way, your words are deliberately offensive and doubly so when you use your disability to justify them.
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p>2. Your Pawktucket anecdote is either irrelevant or offensive. Are you suggesting that because you, King William the Eleventh, don’t like the sexual expression of some random heterosexual couple that you are hereby granted a regal get-out-of-being-accused-of-intolerance card?
1. Please cite me a source, I can’t recall ever being given one. All seriousness and sincerity intended.
Martin E. P. Seligman, What You Can Change And What You Can’t, Fawcett Books, 1993, pp. 154-157. Professor Seligman is former President of the APA, developer of the theory of learned helplessness, and founder of the discipline of positive psychology. So this is not a book by a psychological faddist.*
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p>I have not followed the more recent science, but Seligman cites twins studies, for example. There is some evidence that the presence or absence of homosexuality is a result not just of genetics but the uterine environment. In any case, its origin is biological.
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p>I might add that a great many gay people have tried very hard to become heterosexual.
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p>Until quite recently the stigma associated with homosexuality provided a powerful motivation for a change in orientation. The psychiatric profession regarded homosexuality as a sort of neurosis and large segments of our society regarded it as an excuse for ostracism or even violence. That adds up to a very strong motivation to “go straight”.
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p>Despite that, despite so many committed psychotherapy clients, conversion therapies demonstrated the scantest success. Seligman points out that some exclusively homosexual men can have sexual relations with women — but only by fantasizing about men while doing so. The ability to participate in such charades hardly implies that heterosexuality can be “chosen” by such men.
*Wikipedia: “According to Haggbloom et al.’s study of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, Seligman was the 13th most frequently cited psychologist in introductory psychology textbooks throughout the century, as well as the 31st most eminent overall.”
For a well thought and civil answer.
So that’s it people…. all you heterosexuals out there having very public weddings, you should be keeping that stuff private. Your flaunting in our faces that your going to be having sex and become a family. Consenting adults shouldn’t be public about all that stuff.
What does the notion that homosexuality is a choice have to do with your objection to the heterosexual couple “playing suckface” at the baseball game? You make an assertion of fact as to which you have adduced no evidence, then complain about public displays of affection by heterosexuals. Why bring up homosexuality at all? Nothing you write relates to the topic at hand.
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p>I can assure you I made no choice to be gay. I was raised Southern Baptist and devoutly believed that my attraction to boys would land me in hell, which I visualized in the most compelling terms. No way I wanted something that would get me in trouble with God, my parents, the community, and my peers. I so didn’t choose to be gay that I twice attempted not to exist at all, the only alternative to being gay that I had.
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p>Even gays who are unhappy with their sexual attraction to the same sex can’t change their sexual orientation. The most they can do is to fight their nature. If they try reparative therapy, now condemned by the psychiatric profession, the risk of self-destructive activity is heightened. It’s a lot healthier just to accept yourself.
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p>Still, folks maintain that gay is a “choice” because it makes it easier to justify unequal treatment. That’s the whole reason for the fraudulent “ex-gay” movement, which is essentially an arm of the religious right (e.g. Focus on the Family). It’s a case of rearranging the facts to fit a preconceived argument. Intellectually untenable, your position reduces to prejudice against LGBT people. Homophobia does exist, and your post gives voice to it.
Is equal rights too.
Upon reading more about Dr. Seligman I am unable to find the definition of the gay gene, or allele. As so many of you have referred to. I thank KBusch for the citation. It gave me pause for thought. But I will not be bullied. I owe it to my disabled brethren to not allow us to be ignored or flushed by the social Darwinism leaning democrats.
If President Obama would like to lend me his ear, I can match him racial jokes for disability jokes.
It’s been a very long time since anyone advocated for eugenics. It is simply antithetical to liberalism to imagine purposely letting life be worse for the disabled so that they would be less likely to reproduce. Finally, no one on the liberal left is favorably quoting Spenser or any other noted social Darwinist. There may be progressives of about 100 years ago who did think in such terms, but none of them are alive now and we are not even their direct ideological descendants.
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p>Our friends on the right are inclined to talk about the purifying effects of competition and the market. They are disinclined to see things like health care as a human right rather than a commodity. I don’t know where you get the idea that liberals are the social Darwinists.
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p>Have you mixed us up with libertarians?
Seligman’s book was simply sitting near me as I wrote the comment above. You’ll note that the origins of sexual identity and orientation are not his field and that the book he was writing summarized the work of others. Anyone really interested in this subject would be reading other others — for example the works Seligman cites.
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p>And no, to my knowledge, no single gene has been found. Does that mean that it is freely chosen until its etiology has been fully described? No, it does not. All the evidence right now points the other way.
I detect in your writing an odd kind of competition. It’s as if disabled folk must elbow aside racial minorities and gay people so that their legitimate needs are recognized.
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p>Probably not the best strategy.
I did notice in reading a short bio of him that he was well-rounded. I must confess, I’m not really interested in LGBT doings. I am actually ambiguous on the matter. But with the militant’s philosophy of “if you’re not wholeheartedly with us, you’re against us!.” Then fine, I will take the adversarial role. But I sincerely believe that environment affects sexual preference more than biology. Neither view is the be all, end all answer.
If I, as a disabled person, do not raise my voice, we will be left to die. I have died twice, I am not ready for it yet.
On this site, we try to base stuff on evidence. If it’s sufficient for you to adorn your uninformed prejudices with a fancy title, then you lose the right to be taken seriously.
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p>Nor do I understand how your embracing random prejudices will protect you from being left to die.
… is what exactly you’re raising your voice about?
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p>This statement, while incorrect on many levels:
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p>seems unconnected from this statement:
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p>What does homosexuality being biological have to do with Social Darwinism or ignoring disabled people?
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p>We had almost exactly this discussion last December and I still don’t understand either your insistence that homosexuality is a choice or your insistence that embracing gay rights involves leaving the disabled to die.
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I had to get a divorce and lose all my assets to go on Medicare to be able to stay alive. I don’t believe homosexuals should have any more rights than me. Since you obviously dwell on my every word, maybe choose some valid points. I know, I’m not a homosexual ass-kissing dem, I have none.
This is sad and unfair, but you’re not making any sense.
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p>Other than words, there’s little else here. What do you want us to focus on?
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p>Your punctuation?
Speaking of which, Medicare, a distinctly un-social-Darwinist program, would not even exist but for Democrats. Were the Fairy Godmother of Progressives ever to grant our wishes for healthcare reform, Medicare would likely be better.
Why do you keep repeating it? As a disabled person, you were and are eligible for SSI and mediCARE. Need is a condition for MediCAID, but that shouldn’t even enter into the picture.
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p>Some basic questions, which I’m pretty sure you won’t answer:
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p>What’s keeping you from getting married now?
What rights do gay people have that you don’t?
What does gay people having rights have to do with ignoring or flushing disabled people?
What would a “valid” point be to you?
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p>BTW, no one in this discussion besides you has ever brought up there being a gay gene.
…..story bends credulity to the breaking point.
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p>I think you are lying, in fact, it is my sincere belief.
it’s a known fact that homosexuality is not a choice! Whether people are homosexual or heterosexual, they’re born with an innate sexual preference–it’s biological!
have a vote on people who’ve been divorced. They clearly suck at marriage, let’s ban them from the institution too.
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p>See how that holds up. After all, constitutional rights can be stripped from people with a simple majority + 1 vote in California now.
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p>Who should be next? Old people can’t have kids. What’s the point of letting Grandma get married? That would just be oh, so wrong. Let’s ban her future marriages, too.
in the MA Constitution. He understood the shortcomings of popular opinion. Its nothing new. Popular opinion has often been on the wrong side of justice. That is why the founders went with a Bill of Rights and a Constitutional Republic instead of a direct democracy.
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p>Governance by petition often falls short.
We know the point you’re making. We got it. Repetition doesn’t make it more convincing. It just turns it into spam.
Repeating the same point in many short posts really doesn’t help make your case. Please try to make substantive comments.
Where exactly did I suggest that? Didn’t I just argue for a few more elections — if only to make a point. I’m very, very serious that I’d like to see something like a petition against old-people marriage on the ballots. It may just make people think twice about voting on the rights of minorities.
Your being a buzzkill to conservative victimhood.
The question before the CA Supreme Court was different than the question before the MA Supreme Court. The MA Supreme Court upheld the Constitution, so did the CA Supreme Court.
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p>The wrong decision was made by the CA voters who passed the Constitutional Amendment.
I’m not too familiar with the legal basis for the ruling. However, if the terms were changed somewhat to, say, exclude a particular ethnic group from the right to marry, would the Court have ruled in the same way? Or would they have felt constrained by a very compelling sense of fairness and even by the looming presence of the US Constitution? I think maybe so. Something tells me that the ruling is based at least somewhat on the relative lack of support that same-sex couples have in society.
Since the example you used is covered by Federal stataute – unlike DOMA which specifically relegates marriage law to the states – wouldn’t THAT question have been refused for the ballot? I’m not a lawyer either, but it would seem that the Federal decision to allow states to create their own law on this issue has more to do with this that support/lack thereof by society at large. Even the MA decision said that the legislature WAS free to enact a statue, but they chose not to do so.
The vice of the “Defense of Marriage Act” is that it takes the definition of marriage for federal law purposes away from the states in some instances. So the feds recognize some state law marriages, but not other marriages equally valid under state law. Basically DOMA enshrines the tradition of the “gay exception” to equal rights long familiar to advocates–marriages are for the states to decide, except where same-sex marriage is concerned. Accordingly, same-sex marriages in Mass. or Connecticut carry no federal tax, social security, or immigration law benefits, in contrast to what Carrie Prejean calls “opposite marriage.”
I happen to agree that laws such as Prop. 8 violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment of the federal constitution. The question before the court, however, was whether or not the PROCESS of amendment to the California constitution was followed. I’m not sure how much leeway the court has to address a question not raised in the case.
The system in CA has been broken for years, and by that I mean the way it’s easier to make law through the initiative process than through the legislature, because of some insane requirements for 2/3 majority in the latter. I lived there through Prop. 13 and saw every half-assed petition a sociopathic handful could get on the ballot threaten to become law, and some did. The court basically said they were not going to fix it by ruling on this case, unfortunately.
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p>My impression from afar is that the effort to ward off Prop. 8 was nowhere near as well-organized as the excellent work done by Mass Equality in advance of the State House vote that provided for gay marriage here, and they may have underestimated their opposition. They won’t make that mistake twice.
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p>(PS: The same group’s posture toward Sotomayer could best be described as cautious).
which would make citizens petitions and Consitutional Amendments more difficult to pass.
Massachusetts does have part of this right.
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p>Is it true that the legislature requires a 2/3 vote? That is a reverse rule of the minority.
That’s right, to pass a budget. So, until and unless the Democrats can hold 2/3 of the seats (and maybe not even then), they just don’t have a budget. That’s why they’re on the brink of disaster.
I don’t care if you’re Gray or the Terminator, California has gotten screwed up thanks to the initiative process.
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p>We’re essentially at the point where initiative petitions have limited revenue gathering to about 97% of the spending mandated by…initiative petitions. It’s like the whole state is run by an addled town meeting.
I think shilltone’s point that it requires 2/3rds +1 of a legislature to pass a budget is far more devestating than the initiative petitions. The initiatives are just the salt in the wounds at that point. Whenever it takes 2/3rds of a body to pass something, it makes 1/3rd of the people – if they’re well organized – more important than the body as a whole. It’s anathema to democracy, with positively disastrous consequences in California.
But not surprising. At least those married before Prop 8 passed had their legal status affirmed.
I’m afraid that all too many people who did get married will now be complacent. There would be riots on the streets, meanwhile, if their marriages were taken away. It’d suck for individuals who were harmed, but probably would have been exactly what we need as a movement to get our collective butts together. All too often, the lgbt movement is way too fractured and complacent. It’s time for us to be united and on the offensive, up to and including complete civil disobedience.
Will do a lot to expose the lies of the anti-marriage forces. The sky will not fall, and that should help sway votes when Prop 8 is revisited.
Good point.