The Daily Universe -- Defending Proposition 8

[wuapinmon]

Perhaps this is more in order:

Baby, when I think about you
I think about love.
Darlin, couldn't live without you
And your love.

If I had those golden dreams of my yesterday
I would wrap you
In the heavens
And feel it dyin (dyin, dyin) all the way

I feel like makin

[LA Ute]

LA Ute does try to assume a mother-type role here. One that gives her kids a complex through guilt trips and passive-aggressive behavior. That kind of mother.

There is beauty all around, when there's love at home.
There is joy in ev'ry sound, when there's love at home.
Peace and plenty here abide, smiling sweet on ev'ry side.
Time doth softly, sweetly glide, when there's love at home.

Chorus: Love at home, Love at home.
Time doth softly, sweetly glide, when there's love at home.

In the cottage there is joy, when there's love at home.
Hate and envy ne'er annoy, when there's love at home.
Roses bloom beneath our feet, all the earth's a garden sweet,
Making life a bliss complete, when there's love at home.

Chorus: Love at home, Love at home.
Making life a bliss complete, when there's love at home.

Kindly heaven smiles above, when there's love at home.
All the world is filled with love, when there's love at home.
Sweeter sings the brooklet by, brighter beams the azure sky.
Oh, there's one who smiles on high, when there's love at home.

Chorus: Love at home, Love at home.
Oh, there's One who smiles on high, when there's love at home.

[wuapinmon]

There is beauty all around, when there's love at home.
There is joy in ev'ry sound, when there's love at home.
Peace and plenty here abide, smiling sweet on ev'ry side.
Time doth softly, sweetly glide, when there's love at home.

Chorus: Love at home, Love at home.
Time doth softly, sweetly glide, when there's love at home.

In the cottage there is joy, when there's love at home.
Hate and envy ne'er annoy, when there's love at home.
Roses bloom beneath our feet, all the earth's a garden sweet,
Making life a bliss complete, when there's love at home.

Chorus: Love at home, Love at home.
Making life a bliss complete, when there's love at home.

Kindly heaven smiles above, when there's love at home.
All the world is filled with love, when there's love at home.
Sweeter sings the brooklet by, brighter beams the azure sky.
Oh, there's one who smiles on high, when there's love at home.

Chorus: Love at home, Love at home.
Oh, there's One who smiles on high, when there's love at home.

[YOUTUBE]jg4TGF_AgDM&feature=related[/YOUTUBE]

[UtahDan]

I thought the part where it said he enjoys wearing suspenders was funny. Has anyone commented on the fact that this in the DH at all? I'm a little surprised, and a lot encouraged, that it didn't get correlated. Whether anyone agrees with him or not, it is certainly not the party line. I do agree very strongly with his comment that people really, really ought to read that opinion. I'm not saying it is going to persuade anyone but I have not personally seen the argument against Prop 8 better articulated anywhere. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will end up being more famous than it is now.

[LA Ute]

I thought the part where it said he enjoys wearing suspenders was funny. Has anyone commented on the fact that this in the DH at all? I'm a little surprised, and a lot encouraged, that it didn't get correlated. Whether anyone agrees with him or not, it is certainly not the party line. I do agree very strongly with his comment that people really, really ought to read that opinion. I'm not saying it is going to persuade anyone but I have not personally seen the argument against Prop 8 better articulated anywhere. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will end up being more famous than it is now.

Not surprisingly, I couldn't disagree more, unless you are talking about a well-argued polemic as opposed to a well-reasoned court decision. Here is a rather pointed rebuttal of Judge Walker's decision that I find persuasive:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articl...ters-drop-dead

[SoCalCoug]

Not surprisingly, I couldn't disagree more, unless you are talking about a well-argued polemic as opposed to a well-reasoned court decision. Here is a rather pointed rebuttal of Judge Walker's decision that I find persuasive:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articl...ters-drop-dead

If by "rebuttal" you mean "rant" then I guess I can't argue.

It wasn't very in depth - he kind of attacked Judge Walker's conclusions without identifying what evidence Judge Walker "discarded". It's my understanding there wasn't much evidence at all put on by the defense. He also didn't clearly (to me) indicate why his interpretation of the evidence is better than Judge Walker's.

He seems surprised that Judge Walker took it upon himself to make a decision about the rationality of millions of people. What was he supposed to do, refuse to make a ruling at all, because it might affect too many people?

[LA Ute]

If by "rebuttal" you mean "rant" then I guess I can't argue.

It wasn't very in depth - he kind of attacked Judge Walker's conclusions without identifying what evidence Judge Walker "discarded". It's my understanding there wasn't much evidence at all put on by the defense. He also didn't clearly (to me) indicate why his interpretation of the evidence is better than Judge Walker's.

He seems surprised that Judge Walker took it upon himself to make a decision about the rationality of millions of people. What was he supposed to do, refuse to make a ruling at all, because it might affect too many people?

SCG, you're a good man with whom I will probably never agree on this issue. I'll just say that the article was an op-ed that did make specific points in a pointed way, but calling it a "rant" is really a stretch. Also, whether it is proper for a trial court judge (or any court, at any level) to take on the responsibility of making sweeping decisions about social policy is a subject of legitimate debate. Nagel's point here is sound:

In at least one place, however, Judge Walker’s opinion actually seems to insist that there can be no risk in allowing same-sex marriage because that innovation would not change the historical understanding of marriage. He says same-sex marriage would be “an evolution in the understanding of gender rather than a change in marriage.” The exclusion of homosexuals from marriage is, the judge explains, “an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage.” That time, he opines confidently, “has passed.” Left unexplained is how a trial judge can know that the genders are no longer seen as having distinct roles in society and marriage. Isn’t disagreement about that issue one cause of the current battle over gay marriage?

You may like Walker's opinion, but those who don't like it have intelligent reasons for doing so. That I even need to say that speaks volumes about the debate.

[UtahDan]

Not surprisingly, I couldn't disagree more, unless you are talking about a well-argued polemic as opposed to a well-reasoned court decision. Here is a rather pointed rebuttal of Judge Walker's decision that I find persuasive:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articl...ters-drop-dead

You disagree with me that it states their case well? I said I didn't expect it would persuade anyone, just that it is well articulated.

I skimmed the article SU style. I understand he main complaint to be this:

The simple fact is that, despite the patina of legal authority alluded to in Walker’s opinion, religious and moral reasons are not illegitimate bases for public policy. And the traditional definition of marriage is rationally related to those reasons.

He almost gets it right. Insert the word "alone" after the word "reasons" and he has properly characterized the opinion. There are people out there who think that no law should be based upon someone's religious beliefs. I have argued against that time and again. The source of the the moral or belief that animates the law should not matter at all. And that is the straw man he is attacking here, but it is not what the opinion says. What is says is that it can't be religious belief alone that furnishes a rational basis. There has to be something more. You and I may not like that, but that ship sailed when Kennedy penned the Lawrence case, as I noted in another thread, and Scalia pointed it out and jumped up and down about it in the dissent.

Now I do appreciate that some will say there are in fact rational reasons apart from religious belief. That is fine and is where we obviously differ. But some of them are the same arguments made in the Loving case, which I probably ought to re-read.

[UtahDan]

Here are some interesting snippets. As back ground, the Loving v. Commonwealth case is the landmark case where the SCOTUS struck down VA's law making in a crime to intermarry between races. The Lovings had claimed that their equal protection and due process rights had been offended and the Va Supreme Court in that case essentially said "we decided this issue in the Niam v. Niam case ten years ago and see no reason to over turn it."

From Niam v. Niam

It is the considered opinion of the people of more than half of the States of the Union that the prohibition against miscegenetic marriages is a proper governmental objective, and all the courts which so far have dealt with the question, with the one exception noted, have held that that is so.

From Niam v. Niam

We are unable to read in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, or in any other provision of that great document, any words or any intendment which prohibit the State from enacting legislation to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens, or which denies the power of the State to regulate the marriage relation so that it shall not have a mongrel breed of citizens. We find there no requirement that the State shall not legislate to prevent the obliteration of racial pride, but must permit the corruption of blood even though it weaken or destroy the quality of its citizenship. Both sacred and secular history teach that nations and races have better advanced in human progress when they cultivated their own distinctive characteristics and culture and developed their own peculiar genius.

Regulation of the marriage relation is, we think, distinctly one of the rights guaranteed to the States and safeguarded by that bastion of States' rights, somewhat battered perhaps but still a sturdy fortress in our fundamental law, the tenth section of the Bill of Rights, which declares: "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."

Loving v. Commonwealth (SCOTUS):

In upholding the constitutionality of these provisions in the decision below, the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia referred to its 1955 decision in Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 80, 87 S. E. 2d 749, as stating the reasons supporting the validity of these laws. In Naim, the state court concluded that the State's legitimate purposes were "to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens," and to prevent "the corruption of blood," "a mongrel breed of citizens," and "the obliteration of racial pride," obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy. Id., at 90, 87 S. E. 2d, at 756. The court also reasoned that marriage has traditionally been subject to state regulation without federal intervention, and, consequently, the regulation of marriage should be left to exclusive state control by the Tenth Amendment.

***********

There can be no question but that Virginia's miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race. The statutes proscribe generally accepted conduct if engaged in by members of different races. Over the years, this Court has consistently repudiated "distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry" as being "odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality." Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 100 (1943). At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the "most rigid scrutiny," Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 216 (1944), and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate. Indeed, two members of this Court have already stated that they "cannot conceive of a valid legislative purpose . . . which makes the color of a person's skin the test of whether his conduct is a criminal offense." McLaughlin v. Florida, supra, at 198 (STEWART, J., joined by DOUGLAS, J., concurring).

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. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.

These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942).See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888). 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 discriminations. 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.

These convictions must be reversed.

It is so ordered.

I'M NOT SAYING IT IS EXACTLY THE SAME THING LA, I JUST THINK IT IS INTERESTING.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I have been accused of exhibiting passive aggressive behavior. I find this really frustrating as I do my best to be active aggressive.

[SoCalCoug]

Here are some interesting snippets. As back ground, the Loving v. Commonwealth case is the landmark case where the SCOTUS struck down VA's law making in a crime to intermarry between races. The Lovings had claimed that their equal protection and due process rights had been offended and the Va Supreme Court in that case essentially said "we decided this issue in the Niam v. Niam case ten years ago and see no reason to over turn it."








I'M NOT SAYING IT IS EXACTLY THE SAME THING LA, I JUST THINK IT IS INTERESTING.

What's the position of the Anti-Prop 8 side? That marriage is a fundamental civil right or that it is not a fundamental civil right?

[New Mexican Disaster]

LA Ute does try to assume a mother-type role here. One that gives her kids a complex through guilt trips and passive-aggressive behavior. That kind of mother.

Are there any other kinds of mothers?

[LA Ute]

Are there any other kinds of mothers?

I am not sure I like the direction this has taken.

[Surfah]

This is a weird ass thread.

[LA Ute]

This is a weird ass thread.

You always say that. Clearly you do not appreciate weird senses of humor. Or maybe you're just normal, in which case,what are you doing on this board?