6th Circuit Federal Appeals Court Gives Thumb's Up to States' Choice on Gay Marriage

[JakeStarkey]

You don't even have Sutton right, of course.

You are going to lose, just the way it is.

 

[Syriusly]

Sil, you have no substance.

Your arguments have been constitutionally, legally, morally, and philosophically rebutted irrefutably.

You are simply unhappy you are not going to get your way.

Those are arguments made and written up in legal Opinion by Judge Sutton of the 6th circuit federal appeals court. I didn't write them. Direct your criticism at him, not me. Unless the ad hominem nature of your posts require you to derail them every single post you make. I would've banned you ages ago for your disruptive behavior on these boards.

Well of course you would ban all of us who confront your posts- if you could do it.

Meanwhile- Judge Sutton represents the opinion of one judge, one appellate court- other judges have come to different conclusions

You might want to see what Judge Crabb had to say about your argument

Finally, defendants express concern about the legal precedent that allowing same-sex
marriage will set. Dfts.’ Br., dkt. #102, at 55 (“Extending the fundamental right to marriage
to include same-sex couples could affec[t] other legal restrictions and limitations on
marriage.”). In other words, if same-sex couples are allowed to marry, then how can
prohibitions on polygamy and incest be maintained?

I make three observations in response to defendants’ concern about the slippery slope.
First, and most important, the task of this court is to address the claim presented and not
to engage in speculation about issues not raised that may or may not arise at some later time
in another case. Socha v. Pollard, 621 F.3d 667, 670 (7th Cir. 2010) (“If [an] order
represents a mere advisory opinion not addressed to resolving a ‘case or controversy,’ then
it marks an attempted exercise of judicial authority beyond constitutional bounds.”).

Thus,the important question for this case is not whether another individual’s marriage claim may
be analogous to plaintiffs’ claim, but whether plaintiffs’ claim is like the claims raised in cases
such as Loving, Zablocki, Turner and Windsor. I have concluded that it is. When the
Supreme Court struck down the marriage restrictions in those other cases, it did not engage
in hypothetical discussions about what might come next. See also Lewis v. Harris, 875 A.2d
259, 287-88 (N.J. Super. A.D. 2005) (Collester, J., dissenting) (“It is . . . unnecessary for us
to consider here the question of the constitutional rights of polygamists to marry persons of
their choosing. . . . One issue of fundamental constitutional rights is enough for now.”).
Second, there are obvious differences between the justifications for the ban on samesex
marriage and other types of marriage restrictions. For example, polygamy and incest
raise concerns about abuse, exploitation and threats to the social safety net.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Yes, she would and has been herself for going too far.

SCOTUS is going to rule in favor of marriage equality.

 

[Silhouette]

You don't even have Sutton right, of course.

You are going to lose, just the way it is.

Here's what Judge Sutton of the 6th circuit federal court of appeals said. Tell me what I got wrong or be reported for ad hominem and derailing threads. (Direct quotes from the 6th's last week's Decision)

Here: (page 30) 14-1341 184 6th Circuit Decision in Marriage Cases

"Consider also the number of people eligible to marry. As late as the eighteenth century, “[t]he predominance of monogamy was by no means a foregone conclusion,” and “[m]ost of the peoples and cultures around the globe” had adopted a different system. Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation 9 (2000). Over time, American officials wove monogamy into marriage’s fabric. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the federal government “encouraged or forced” Native Americans to adopt the policy, and in 1878 the Supreme Court upheld a federal antibigamy law. Id. at 26; see Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878). The Court has never taken this topic under its wing. And if it did, how would the constitutional, as opposed to policy, arguments in favor of same-sex marriage not apply to plural marriages?...

..(pages 22-23)

... Consider how plaintiffs’ love-and-commitment definition of marriage would fare under their own rational basis test. Their definition does too much because it fails to account for the reality that no State in the country requires couples, whether gay or straight, to be in love. Their definition does too little because it fails to account for plural marriages, where there is no reason to think that three or four adults, whether gay, bisexual, or straight, lack the capacity to share love, affection, and commitment, or for that matter lack the capacity to be capable (and more plentiful) parents to boot. If it is constitutionally irrational to stand by the man-woman definition of marriage, it must be constitutionally irrational to stand by the monogamous definition of marriage. Plaintiffs have no answer to the point. What they might say they cannot: They might say that tradition or community mores provide a rational basis for States to stand by the monogamy definition of marriage, but they cannot say that because that is exactly what they claim is illegitimate about the States’ male-female definition of marriage. The predicament does not end there. No State is free of marriage policies that go too far in some directions and not far enough in others, making all of them vulnerable—if the claimants’ theory of rational basis review prevails. "

 

[Syriusly]

Yes, she would and has been herself for going too far.

SCOTUS is going to rule in favor of marriage equality.

I don't claim to know what the Supreme Court will do.

But- the more Silhouette predicts failure, the more confident I am that the Supreme Court will rule rationally, and that Silhouette will be talking about corrupt Supreme Court justices and how 'voters' rights have been stripped away.

 

[bripat9643]

No, it is not.

You are trying to redefine words.

Marriage is marriage: two people, one to another.

Marriage is two people of the opposite sex. That's the way it has been for 10,000 years. Any other arrangement is nonsensical.

In 31 states what you consider nonsensical, the law considers marriage.

I.e., the law is nonsensical. When law becomes nonsensical, society is headed for destruction.

 

[Silhouette]

Yes, she would and has been herself for going too far.

SCOTUS is going to rule in favor of marriage equality.

I don't claim to know what the Supreme Court will do.

But- the more Silhouette predicts failure, the more confident I am that the Supreme Court will rule rationally, and that Silhouette will be talking about corrupt Supreme Court justices and how 'voters' rights have been stripped away.

Like I said to Jake Syriusly, you had better knock off the ad hominems and stick to discussing Sutton's points. You are deathly afraid of doing that, I get it. But it doesn't give you license to disrupt the boards.

 

[Syriusly]

You don't even have Sutton right, of course.

You are going to lose, just the way it is.

Here's what Judge Sutton of the 6th circuit federal court of appeals said. Tell me what I got wrong or be reported for ad hominem and derailing threads. (Direct quotes from the 6th's last week's Decision)

Here: (page 30) 14-1341 184 6th Circuit Decision in Marriage Cases

"Consider also the number of people eligible to marry. As late as the eighteenth century, “[t]he predominance of monogamy was by no means a foregone conclusion,” and “[m]ost of the peoples and cultures around the globe” had adopted a different system. Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation 9 (2000). Over time, American officials wove monogamy into marriage’s fabric. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the federal government “encouraged or forced” Native Americans to adopt the policy, and in 1878 the Supreme Court upheld a federal antibigamy law. Id. at 26; see Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878). The Court has never taken this topic under its wing. And if it did, how would the constitutional, as opposed to policy, arguments in favor of same-sex marriage not apply to plural marriages?...

..(pages 22-23)

... Consider how plaintiffs’ love-and-commitment definition of marriage would fare under their own rational basis test. Their definition does too much because it fails to account for the reality that no State in the country requires couples, whether gay or straight, to be in love. Their definition does too little because it fails to account for plural marriages, where there is no reason to think that three or four adults, whether gay, bisexual, or straight, lack the capacity to share love, affection, and commitment, or for that matter lack the capacity to be capable (and more plentiful) parents to boot. If it is constitutionally irrational to stand by the man-woman definition of marriage, it must be constitutionally irrational to stand by the monogamous definition of marriage. Plaintiffs have no answer to the point. What they might say they cannot: They might say that tradition or community mores provide a rational basis for States to stand by the monogamy definition of marriage, but they cannot say that because that is exactly what they claim is illegitimate about the States’ male-female definition of marriage. The predicament does not end there. No State is free of marriage policies that go too far in some directions and not far enough in others, making all of them vulnerable—if the claimants’ theory of rational basis review prevails. "

Here is what Judge Daughtry said:


MARTHA CRAIG DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
“The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of mendo not turn aside in their course to pass the judges by.”
Benjamin Cardozo,
The Nature of the Judicial Process

The author of the majority opinion has drafted what would make an engrossing TED Talkor, possibly, an introductory lecture in Political Philosophy. But as an appellate court decision, it wholly fails to grapple with the relevant constitutional question in this appeal: whether a state’s constitutional prohibition of same-sex marriage violates equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Instead, the majority sets up a false premise—that the question before us is “whoshould decide?”—and leads us through a largely irrelevant discourse on democracy and federalism. In point of fact, the real issue before us concerns what is at stake in these six cases for the individual plaintiffs and their children, and what should be done about it. Because I reject the majority’s resolution of these questions based on its invocation of vox populi
and its reverence for “proceeding with caution” (otherwise known as the “wait and see” approach), I dissent....

Readers who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in
United States v.Windsor , 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), and its progeny in the circuit courts, particularly the SeventhCircuit’s opinion in
Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 654 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Formally these casesare about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, . . . they are about the welfare of American children.”), must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?”

I did, and I could not find the answer in the opinion. For although my colleagues in the majority pay lip service to marriage as an institution conceived for the purpose of providing a stable family unit“within which children may flourish,” they ignore the destabilizing effect of its absence in the homes of tens of thousands of same-sex parents throughout the four states of the Sixth Circuit

Indeed, with the exception of Ohio, the defendants in each of these cases—the proponents of their respective “defense of marriage” amendments—spent virtually their entire oral arguments professing what has come to be known as the “irresponsible procreation” theory:that limiting marriage and its benefits to opposite-sex couples is rational, even necessary, to provide for “unintended offspring” by channeling their biological procreators into the bonds of matrimony.

When we asked counsel why that goal required the simultaneous exclusion of same-sex couples from marrying, we were told that permitting same-sex marriage might denigrate the institution of marriage in the eyes of opposite-sex couples who conceive out of wedlock, causing subsequent abandonment of the unintended offspring by one or both biological parents. We also were informed that because same-sex couples cannot themselves produce wanted or unwanted offspring, and because they must therefore look to non-biological means of parenting that require planning and expense, stability in a family unit headed by same-sex parents is assured without the benefit of formal matrimony.

But, as the court in Baskin pointed out, many “abandoned children [born out of wedlock to biological parents] are adopted by homosexual couples, and those children would be better off both emotionally and economically if their adoptive parentswere married.”

How ironic that irresponsible, unmarried, opposite-sex couples in the Sixth Circuit who produce unwanted offspring must be “channeled” into marriage and thus rewarded with its many psychological and financial benefits, while same-sex couples who become model parents are punished for their responsible behavior by being denied the right to marry.

 

[Syriusly]

No, it is not.

You are trying to redefine words.

Marriage is marriage: two people, one to another.

Marriage is two people of the opposite sex. That's the way it has been for 10,000 years. Any other arrangement is nonsensical.

In 31 states what you consider nonsensical, the law considers marriage.

I.e., the law is nonsensical. When law becomes nonsensical, society is headed for destruction.

Your posts just convince me more and more that our society is heading in the right direction.

 

[Syriusly]

Yes, she would and has been herself for going too far.

SCOTUS is going to rule in favor of marriage equality.

I don't claim to know what the Supreme Court will do.

But- the more Silhouette predicts failure, the more confident I am that the Supreme Court will rule rationally, and that Silhouette will be talking about corrupt Supreme Court justices and how 'voters' rights have been stripped away.

Like I said to Jake Syriusly, you had better knock off the ad hominems and stick to discussing Sutton's points. You are deathly afraid of doing that, I get it. But it doesn't give you license to disrupt the boards.

I am glad to discuss judicial points:

Here is what Judge Daughtry said:


MARTHA CRAIG DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
“The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of mendo not turn aside in their course to pass the judges by.”
Benjamin Cardozo,
The Nature of the Judicial Process

The author of the majority opinion has drafted what would make an engrossing TED Talkor, possibly, an introductory lecture in Political Philosophy. But as an appellate court decision, it wholly fails to grapple with the relevant constitutional question in this appeal: whether a state’s constitutional prohibition of same-sex marriage violates equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Instead, the majority sets up a false premise—that the question before us is “whoshould decide?”—and leads us through a largely irrelevant discourse on democracy and federalism. In point of fact, the real issue before us concerns what is at stake in these six cases for the individual plaintiffs and their children, and what should be done about it. Because I reject the majority’s resolution of these questions based on its invocation of vox populi
and its reverence for “proceeding with caution” (otherwise known as the “wait and see” approach), I dissent....

Readers who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in
United States v.Windsor , 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), and its progeny in the circuit courts, particularly the SeventhCircuit’s opinion in
Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 654 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Formally these casesare about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, . . . they are about the welfare of American children.”), must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?”

I did, and I could not find the answer in the opinion. For although my colleagues in the majority pay lip service to marriage as an institution conceived for the purpose of providing a stable family unit“within which children may flourish,” they ignore the destabilizing effect of its absence in the homes of tens of thousands of same-sex parents throughout the four states of the Sixth Circuit

Indeed, with the exception of Ohio, the defendants in each of these cases—the proponents of their respective “defense of marriage” amendments—spent virtually their entire oral arguments professing what has come to be known as the “irresponsible procreation” theory:that limiting marriage and its benefits to opposite-sex couples is rational, even necessary, to provide for “unintended offspring” by channeling their biological procreators into the bonds of matrimony.

When we asked counsel why that goal required the simultaneous exclusion of same-sex couples from marrying, we were told that permitting same-sex marriage might denigrate the institution of marriage in the eyes of opposite-sex couples who conceive out of wedlock, causing subsequent abandonment of the unintended offspring by one or both biological parents. We also were informed that because same-sex couples cannot themselves produce wanted or unwanted offspring, and because they must therefore look to non-biological means of parenting that require planning and expense, stability in a family unit headed by same-sex parents is assured without the benefit of formal matrimony.

But, as the court in Baskin pointed out, many “abandoned children [born out of wedlock to biological parents] are adopted by homosexual couples, and those children would be better off both emotionally and economically if their adoptive parentswere married.”

How ironic that irresponsible, unmarried, opposite-sex couples in the Sixth Circuit who produce unwanted offspring must be “channeled” into marriage and thus rewarded with its many psychological and financial benefits, while same-sex couples who become model parents are punished for their responsible behavior by being denied the right to marry.

 

[Silhouette]

What about what Judge Sutton said? Remember the title of this thread?

Address pages 23-24 and 30's quotes in post #365

 

[Syriusly]

What about what Judge Sutton said?

Judge Daughtrey addressed that much better than I could

MARTHA CRAIG DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
“The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course to pass the judges by.”
Benjamin Cardozo,
The Nature of the Judicial Process

The author of the majority opinion has drafted what would make an engrossing TED Talk or, possibly, an introductory lecture in Political Philosophy. But as an appellate court decision, it wholly fails to grapple with the relevant constitutional question in this appeal: whether a state’s constitutional prohibition of same-sex marriage violates equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Instead, the majority sets up a false premise—that the question before us is “whos hould decide?”—and leads us through a largely irrelevant discourse on democracy and federalism. In point of fact, the real issue before us concerns what is at stake in these six cases for the individual plaintiffs and their children, and what should be done about it. Because I reject the majority’s resolution of these questions based on its invocation of vox populi
and its reverence for “proceeding with caution” (otherwise known as the “wait and see” approach), I dissent....

Readers who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in
United States v.Windsor , 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), and its progeny in the circuit courts, particularly the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in
Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 654 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Formally these casesare about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, . . . they are about the welfare of American children.”), must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?”

I did, and I could not find the answer in the opinion. For although my colleagues in the majority pay lip service to marriage as an institution conceived for the purpose of providing a stable family unit“within which children may flourish,” they ignore the destabilizing effect of its absence in the homes of tens of thousands of same-sex parents throughout the four states of the Sixth Circuit
Indeed, with the exception of Ohio, the defendants in each of these cases—the proponents of their respective “defense of marriage” amendments—spent virtually their entire oral arguments professing what has come to be known as the “irresponsible procreation” theory:that limiting marriage and its benefits to opposite-sex couples is rational, even necessary, to provide for “unintended offspring” by channeling their biological procreators into the bonds of matrimony.

When we asked counsel why that goal required the simultaneous exclusion of same-sex couples from marrying, we were told that permitting same-sex marriage might denigrate the institution of marriage in the eyes of opposite-sex couples who conceive out of wedlock, causing subsequent abandonment of the unintended offspring by one or both biological parents. We also were informed that because same-sex couples cannot themselves produce wanted or unwanted offspring, and because they must therefore look to non-biological means of parenting that require planning and expense, stability in a family unit headed by same-sex parents is assured without the benefit of formal matrimony.

But, as the court in Baskin pointed out, many “abandoned children [born out of wedlock to biological parents] are adopted by homosexual couples, and those children would be better off both emotionally and economically if their adoptive parentswere married.”

How ironic that irresponsible, unmarried, opposite-sex couples in the Sixth Circuit who produce unwanted offspring must be “channeled” into marriage and thus rewarded with its many psychological and financial benefits, while same-sex couples who become model parents are punished for their responsible behavior by being denied the right to marry.

 

[Silhouette]

Readers who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in
United States v.Windsor , 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), and its progeny in the circuit courts, particularly the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in
Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 654 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Formally these casesare about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, . . . they are about the welfare of American children.”), must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?”

What about the children indeed. Let's discuss that...

So your contention is that the children of gay partnerships and "the suffering they will encounter" legitimizes promoting legal gay marriage, polygamy and other arrangements (see next paragraph) alongside so-called "gay marriage"?

Fine, what about children of single moms? There are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more of them than of gay couples. We must first extend to them the rights to be married. Remember (see below) numbers are just as arbitrary in marriage as male/female, according to logic and Judge Sutton... One person should be able to be married to themself in order to extend the benefits of marriage to the 10s of million so fchildren of single moms that are currently being deprived through no fault of their own..

And what about gay marriages with respect to children's rights, since that seems to be your angle of the day...? A state incentivizing gay marriages is the same as a state incentivizing the lack of one of the child[ren]'s blood parents 100% of the time. So on that grounds alone a single mom could sue the state for equality in rights to marry themself. What makes one househould missing one of the blood parents more special than another? Remember, there are at least millions of children whose single parents work hard enough and bring in enough income to take care of them, or are independently wealthy. Would you deny them marriage benefits too, based on some personal moral-relativist perspective that that "just ain't right"?

And while we are arguing what is best for children, what a terrible message to tell children that "your gender doesn't matter" if they happen to be the opposite gender of the gay "parents"..

The lesbian parents of an 11-year-old boy who is undergoing the process of becoming a girl last night defended the decision, claiming it was better for a child to have a sex change when young...Thomas Lobel, who now calls himself Tammy, is undergoing controversial hormone blocking treatment in Berkeley, California to stop him going through puberty as a boy....At age seven, after threatening genital mutilation on himself, psychiatrists diagnosed Thomas with gender identity disorder. By the age of eight, he began transitioning....The hormone-suppressant, implanted in his upper left arm, will postpone the 11-year-old developing broad shoulders, deep voice and facial hair. The California boy 11 who is undergoing hormone blocking treatment Daily Mail Online

Did the "CQR-Method" APA schills consider for a moment that instead of having "gender identity disorder", the boy may have had instead "my gender doesn't matter" disorder?

Remember, the 10s of millions of children currently deprived of the benefits of marriage are suffering too. By the blind logic of your argment, unless you're going to cite "morals and longstanding tradition", single parents may marry themselves in order to extend all the benefits of marriage to currently-deprived children.

Again, Judge Sutton's sharp logic from the recent Decision from the 6th..

Here: (page 30) 14-1341 184 6th Circuit Decision in Marriage Cases

"Consider also the number of people eligible to marry. As late as the eighteenth century, “[t]he predominance of monogamy was by no means a foregone conclusion,” and “[m]ost of the peoples and cultures around the globe” had adopted a different system. Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation 9 (2000). Over time, American officials wove monogamy into marriage’s fabric. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the federal government “encouraged or forced” Native Americans to adopt the policy, and in 1878 the Supreme Court upheld a federal antibigamy law. Id. at 26; see Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878). The Court has never taken this topic under its wing. And if it did, how would the constitutional, as opposed to policy, arguments in favor of same-sex marriage not apply to plural marriages?...

..(pages 22-23)

... Consider how plaintiffs’ love-and-commitment definition of marriage would fare under their own rational basis test. Their definition does too much because it fails to account for the reality that no State in the country requires couples, whether gay or straight, to be in love. Their definition does too little because it fails to account for plural marriages, where there is no reason to think that three or four adults, whether gay, bisexual, or straight, lack the capacity to share love, affection, and commitment, or for that matter lack the capacity to be capable (and more plentiful) parents to boot. If it is constitutionally irrational to stand by the man-woman definition of marriage, it must be constitutionally irrational to stand by the monogamous definition of marriage. Plaintiffs have no answer to the point. What they might say they cannot: They might say that tradition or community mores provide a rational basis for States to stand by the monogamy definition of marriage, but they cannot say that because that is exactly what they claim is illegitimate about the States’ male-female definition of marriage. The predicament does not end there. No State is free of marriage policies that go too far in some directions and not far enough in others, making all of them vulnerable—if the claimants’ theory of rational basis review prevails. "

 

[Syriusly]

Readers who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in
United States v.Windsor , 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), and its progeny in the circuit courts, particularly the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in
Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 654 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Formally these casesare about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, . . . they are about the welfare of American children.”), must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?”

What about the children indeed. Let's discuss that...

So your contention is that the children of gay partnerships and "the suffering they will encounter" legitimizes promoting legal gay marriage, polygamy and other arrangements (see next paragraph) alongside so-called "gay marriage"?"

That is not my contention- that is the judge Daughtrey opinion:

MARTHA CRAIG DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
“The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course to pass the judges by.”
Benjamin Cardozo,
The Nature of the Judicial Process

The author of the majority opinion has drafted what would make an engrossing TED Talk or, possibly, an introductory lecture in Political Philosophy. But as an appellate court decision, it wholly fails to grapple with the relevant constitutional question in this appeal: whether a state’s constitutional prohibition of same-sex marriage violates equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Instead, the majority sets up a false premise—that the question before us is “whos hould decide?”—and leads us through a largely irrelevant discourse on democracy and federalism. In point of fact, the real issue before us concerns what is at stake in these six cases for the individual plaintiffs and their children, and what should be done about it. Because I reject the majority’s resolution of these questions based on its invocation of vox populi
and its reverence for “proceeding with caution” (otherwise known as the “wait and see” approach), I dissent....

Readers who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in
United States v.Windsor , 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), and its progeny in the circuit courts, particularly the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in
Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 654 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Formally these casesare about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, . . . they are about the welfare of American children.”), must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?”

I did, and I could not find the answer in the opinion. For although my colleagues in the majority pay lip service to marriage as an institution conceived for the purpose of providing a stable family unit“within which children may flourish,” they ignore the destabilizing effect of its absence in the homes of tens of thousands of same-sex parents throughout the four states of the Sixth Circuit
Indeed, with the exception of Ohio, the defendants in each of these cases—the proponents of their respective “defense of marriage” amendments—spent virtually their entire oral arguments professing what has come to be known as the “irresponsible procreation” theory:that limiting marriage and its benefits to opposite-sex couples is rational, even necessary, to provide for “unintended offspring” by channeling their biological procreators into the bonds of matrimony.

When we asked counsel why that goal required the simultaneous exclusion of same-sex couples from marrying, we were told that permitting same-sex marriage might denigrate the institution of marriage in the eyes of opposite-sex couples who conceive out of wedlock, causing subsequent abandonment of the unintended offspring by one or both biological parents. We also were informed that because same-sex couples cannot themselves produce wanted or unwanted offspring, and because they must therefore look to non-biological means of parenting that require planning and expense, stability in a family unit headed by same-sex parents is assured without the benefit of formal matrimony.

But, as the court in Baskin pointed out, many “abandoned children [born out of wedlock to biological parents] are adopted by homosexual couples, and those children would be better off both emotionally and economically if their adoptive parentswere married.”

How ironic that irresponsible, unmarried, opposite-sex couples in the Sixth Circuit who produce unwanted offspring must be “channeled” into marriage and thus rewarded with its many psychological and financial benefits, while same-sex couples who become model parents are punished for their responsible behavior by being denied the right to marry.

 

[Syriusly]

Readers who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in
United States v.Windsor , 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), and its progeny in the circuit courts, particularly the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in
Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 654 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Formally these casesare about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, . . . they are about the welfare of American children.”), must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?”

What about the children indeed. Let's discuss that...

So your contention is that the children of gay partnerships and "the suffering they will encounter" legitimizes promoting legal gay marriage, polygamy and other arrangements (see next paragraph) alongside so-called "gay marriage"?

Fine, what about children of single moms? There are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more of them than of gay couples. We must first extend to them the rights to be married.

Here we are in agreement- single moms should have the right to marry- and they do have that right.

Except in 19 states where a single mom can't marry another single mom.

 

[Syriusly]

[. By the blind logic of your argment, unless you're going to cite "morals and longstanding tradition", single parents may marry themselves in order to extend all the benefits of marriage to currently-deprived children. "

If you want to sue to have the right to marry yourself, I will cheer you on.

 

[The Rabbi]

Readers who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in
United States v.Windsor , 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), and its progeny in the circuit courts, particularly the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in
Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 654 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Formally these casesare about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, . . . they are about the welfare of American children.”), must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?”

What about the children indeed. Let's discuss that...

So your contention is that the children of gay partnerships and "the suffering they will encounter" legitimizes promoting legal gay marriage, polygamy and other arrangements (see next paragraph) alongside so-called "gay marriage"?

Fine, what about children of single moms? There are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more of them than of gay couples. We must first extend to them the rights to be married.

Here we are in agreement- single moms should have the right to marry- and they do have that right.

Except in 19 states where a single mom can't marry another single mom.

And married moms cant marry other married moms in all the states. Discrimination!
Bsaed on the "logic" you quoted the state should encourage every single person to marry no matter who or what they are married to since "marriage" is obviously good for everyone.

 

[Syriusly]

Readers who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in
United States v.Windsor , 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), and its progeny in the circuit courts, particularly the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in
Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 654 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Formally these casesare about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, . . . they are about the welfare of American children.”), must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?”

What about the children indeed. Let's discuss that...

So your contention is that the children of gay partnerships and "the suffering they will encounter" legitimizes promoting legal gay marriage, polygamy and other arrangements (see next paragraph) alongside so-called "gay marriage"?

Fine, what about children of single moms? There are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more of them than of gay couples. We must first extend to them the rights to be married.

Here we are in agreement- single moms should have the right to marry- and they do have that right.

Except in 19 states where a single mom can't marry another single mom.

And married moms cant marry other married moms in all the states. Discrimination!
Bsaed on the "logic" you quoted the state should encourage every single person to marry no matter who or what they are married to since "marriage" is obviously good for everyone.

You really didn't quite get that did you?

Here is the pertinent part of the judge's dissent

When we asked counsel why that goal required the simultaneous exclusion of same-sex couples from marrying, we were told that permitting same-sex marriage might denigrate the institution of marriage in the eyes of opposite-sex couples who conceive out of wedlock, causing subsequent abandonment of the unintended offspring by one or both biological parents. We also were informed that because same-sex couples cannot themselves produce wanted or unwanted offspring, and because they must therefore look to non-biological means of parenting that require planning and expense, stability in a family unit headed by same-sex parents is assured without the benefit of formal matrimony.

But, as the court in Baskin pointed out, many “abandoned children [born out of wedlock to biological parents] are adopted by homosexual couples, and those children would be better off both emotionally and economically if their adoptive parentswere married.”

How ironic that irresponsible, unmarried, opposite-sex couples in the Sixth Circuit who produce unwanted offspring must be “channeled” into marriage and thus rewarded with its many psychological and financial benefits, while same-sex couples who become model parents are punished for their responsible behavior by being denied the right to marry.

 

[Silhouette]

You keep talking about kids in marriage Syriusly, but you haven't answered my points about that.

 

[Silhouette]

Readers who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in
United States v.Windsor , 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), and its progeny in the circuit courts, particularly the Seventh Circuit’s opinion in
Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648, 654 (7th Cir. 2014) (“Formally these casesare about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, . . . they are about the welfare of American children.”), must have said to themselves at various points in the majority opinion, “But what about the children?”

What about the children indeed. Let's discuss that...

So your contention is that the children of gay partnerships and "the suffering they will encounter" legitimizes promoting legal gay marriage, polygamy and other arrangements (see next paragraph) alongside so-called "gay marriage"?

Fine, what about children of single moms? There are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more of them than of gay couples. We must first extend to them the rights to be married.

Here we are in agreement- single moms should have the right to marry- and they do have that right.

Except in 19 states where a single mom can't marry another single mom.

And married moms cant marry other married moms in all the states. Discrimination!
Bsaed on the "logic" you quoted the state should encourage every single person to marry no matter who or what they are married to since "marriage" is obviously good for everyone.

What about single parents marrying themselves?