JakeStarkey
Diamond Member
- Aug 10, 2009
- 168,037
- 16,520
- 2,165
- Banned
- #101
Exactly what the states rightists would argue in 1860 and 1960.
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Since many of the arguments against gay marriage are repeated over and over and over, I thought we should collect them all together and number them. Then, when you hear someone make a particular anti-gay argument, you can just point to this topic and say, "Number 3" and save everyone some time explaining why they are wrong.
Here are the arguments made against gay marriage, followed by an explanation of why they do not meet the rational foundation for the discriminations requirement which will eventually issue from the Supreme Court.
1. By far the most popular argument against gay marriage is that if we allow homosexual to marry, then we will have to allow brothers to marry sisters, humans to marry animals, and adults to marry children. I have never seen a topic involving homosexuality in which someone did not bring up either incest, or bestiality, or pedophilia, or two or more of these.
This is the slippery slope fallacy. And the reason it fails is because you cannot use the legalization of a harmless behavior as justification for the legalization of a harmful behavior.
Since pedophilia and the myriad other attempted equivalencies to homosexuality are all harmful behaviors, they cannot be justified by gay marriage any more than they can be justified by a heterosexual marriage.
The underlying irrational foundation behind this argument is nothing more than an intense dislike of man-on-man sex, even though one is not even participating in that act!
2. Show me where the right to marry is in the Constitution. This is probably the second most common argument. It is actually a one-size-fits-all argument used in many debates, not just the gay marriage debate. Show me were (fill in the blank) is in the Constitution. Its users believe it is a debate ender, but it really only exposes their ignorance of the Constitution.
State and federal governments have created benefits and privileges specific to married couples in their laws. The benefits and privileges therefore have the protection of the law. If you file a married federal income tax return, for example, you are exercising one of those privileges.
The 14th amendment specifically states that one must provide equal protection of the laws. Therefore, if you extend the married tax return benefit to one married couple, you must extend it to all married couples. Be they a white/white marriage, or a black/white marriage, or an opposite gender marriage, or a same gender marriage.
So the show me where the right to marry Constitutional question is a logical fallacy known as a false premise, and not a very clever one at that.
3. The third argument has many variations, but perhaps the best illustration is the one that says people who favor gay marriage got their acceptance of gay marriage from the likes of the sex expert Kinsey. Then follows a long ad hominem attack on Kinsey, with the added element that Kinsey apparently was okay with pedophilia, and therefore people who like gay marriage are okay with pedophilia.
Something like that.
Once again, an amazing amount of energy is expended trying to associate homosexuality with all manner of heinous activities.
This argument is chock full of fallacies, but it is easily turned on its head by using an identical fallacy which goes like this: Hitler hated fags. Hitler killed six million Jews. Therefore, if people are allowed to hate fags, it is just a matter of time before they start tossing Jews into gas ovens.
4. AIDS. Homos are sick bastards who screw like rabbits and spread AIDS and boy wont it be great once they have wiped themselves out. Heteros are not as depraved as homos, because AIDS is killing more homos than straight people. QED.
There are two answers to this. First, on a worldwide level, heteros are greatly outpacing homos in the AIDS category, hands-down. But we ignore this because, hey, were talking about jungle bunnies in Africa, right? And you really dont want to go there, gay-lover!
Second, syphilis. It seems some people are ignorant of the fact that syphilis was the AIDS of its time, until very recently. And syphilis killed many, many millions of people. There is a long list of famous people taken down by syphilis. And syphilis is still with us today, and it has experienced a recent resurgence amongst heteros. Lucky for them there is a cure!
So this idea that AIDS is some kind of vindication of the purity of heteros compared to the depravity of homos is ridiculously out of whack.
These illogical arguments are used to support an anti-homosexual position is how we know that at the base of all their objections, opponents really just hate homos. Very few are honest enough to just admit it.
If the anti-gay lobby has a rational foundation for the discriminations currently in our state and federal laws, they better start articulating them real soon. Because sooner or later, this will be coming up in the Supreme Court.
So far, all opposition has been irrational.
I say this as a person who voted against gay marriage when it came up for a vote in my state a few years ago. If my state held a re-vote today, I would jump at the opportunity to support it.
As the saying goes, A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Good point, however, 25% does not a majority make, and that is my point.
I know what you're saying. But "majority opinion" is the biggest fallacy in this argument. We don't live a country governed by majority rule.
There have been more times than I could possibly count in the history of this country where "the majority" of Americans were wrong.
I don't know how popular opinion will evolve over time. But I'm pretty confident in the trend of people becoming more accepting of "non-traditional" families will continue, and decades from now people will see this the same way as we see Jim Crow laws today.
Yeah actually we do. There are limits on it and protections built in, but the will of the people as paramount is an important legal principle. This is why the Supreme Court frequently defers to Congress.
And gay marriage is certainly an important enough issue to be decided state by state by popular vote rather than some faygola in a black robe.
See posts 1 and 38.
Saw it, it's wrong. Equal protection doesn't apply to marriage, gay or straight. Sorry there is no way you can spin that that makes sense.
I don't think you understand what equal protection of the laws means. If a law is written which extends a privilege or benefit to someone, then those privileges/benefits have, by definition, the protection of the law. For example, married people are allowed by law to file a joint income tax return. That privilege only exists because it was written into the tax code.
At this point, the 14th amendment kicks in. Once a law provides protection to a privilege or benefit, then everyone is equally protected by it.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Both state and federal laws extend protection to marriages. So your statement that "equal protection does not apply to marriage" is completely wrong. See Loving v. Virginia. The court plainly elucidates this fact. Everyone focuses on the other statement about marriage being a right, and completely overlook the larger part about equal protection of the law in the 14th amendment.
You cannot deny those protections to gays just for being gay. The 14th amendment requires you have a rational reason for discriminating against anyone and denying them the protections provided by law to their peers.
Simple.
Explain why it does not make sense.
I know what you're saying. But "majority opinion" is the biggest fallacy in this argument. We don't live a country governed by majority rule.
There have been more times than I could possibly count in the history of this country where "the majority" of Americans were wrong.
I don't know how popular opinion will evolve over time. But I'm pretty confident in the trend of people becoming more accepting of "non-traditional" families will continue, and decades from now people will see this the same way as we see Jim Crow laws today.
Yeah actually we do. There are limits on it and protections built in, but the will of the people as paramount is an important legal principle. This is why the Supreme Court frequently defers to Congress.
And gay marriage is certainly an important enough issue to be decided state by state by popular vote rather than some faygola in a black robe.
exactly...
some people think we elect "officials" who can do whatever they want instead of representatives......
Saw it, it's wrong. Equal protection doesn't apply to marriage, gay or straight. Sorry there is no way you can spin that that makes sense.
I don't think you understand what equal protection of the laws means. If a law is written which extends a privilege or benefit to someone, then those privileges/benefits have, by definition, the protection of the law.
At this point, the 14th amendment kicks in. Once a law provides protection to a privilege or benefit, then everyone is protected by it.
Both state and federal laws extend protection to marriages. So your statement that "equal protection does not apply to marriage" is completely wrong. See Loving v. Virginia. The court plainly elucidates this fact. Everyone focuses on the other statement about marriage being a right, but that is almost irrelevant when it comes to equal protection of the law. The marriage being a right thing is a codical at best.
You cannot deny those protections to gays just for being gay. The 14th amendment requires you have a rational reason for discriminating against gays and denying them those protections.
Simple.
Explain why it does not make sense.
polygamists may get married by whatever church they may attend....why aren't they treated equally under the 14th.....?
Because Congress so legislated and SCOTUS so opined.polygamists may get married by whatever church they may attend....why aren't they treated equally under the 14th.....?
Because Congress so legislated and SCOTUS so opined.polygamists may get married by whatever church they may attend....why aren't they treated equally under the 14th.....?
Saw it, it's wrong. Equal protection doesn't apply to marriage, gay or straight. Sorry there is no way you can spin that that makes sense.
I don't think you understand what equal protection of the laws means. If a law is written which extends a privilege or benefit to someone, then those privileges/benefits have, by definition, the protection of the law. For example, married people are allowed by law to file a joint income tax return. That privilege only exists because it was written into the tax code.
At this point, the 14th amendment kicks in. Once a law provides protection to a privilege or benefit, then everyone is equally protected by it.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Both state and federal laws extend protection to marriages. So your statement that "equal protection does not apply to marriage" is completely wrong. See Loving v. Virginia. The court plainly elucidates this fact. Everyone focuses on the other statement about marriage being a right, and completely overlook the larger part about equal protection of the law in the 14th amendment.
You cannot deny those protections to gays just for being gay. The 14th amendment requires you have a rational reason for discriminating against anyone and denying them the protections provided by law to their peers.
Simple.
Explain why it does not make sense.
If that were the case then anyone could file as a married couple and get all the other benefits of marriage, regardless of whethe they were married or not. To do otherwise would be to deny "equal protection."
Note the term is "equal protection", not "equal benefits".
polygamists may get married by whatever church they may attend....why aren't they treated equally under the 14th.....?
polygamists may get married by whatever church they may attend....why aren't they treated equally under the 14th.....?
If a rational explanation can be provided for why they should be discriminated against, then go right ahead. For example, if you can demonstrate that polygamy is a harmful practice, that would be a rational explanation.
I personally lean heavily towards the belief that polygamy is a harmful practice. Polygamy almost inevitably means one man married to multiple women. This leads, in the mean, to the exploitation and subordination of women. It is also a near mathematical inevitability that it leads to pedophilia, the forcing of minor girls to marry adult men.
Since many of the arguments against gay marriage are repeated over and over and over, I thought we should collect them all together and number them. Then, when you hear someone make a particular anti-gay argument, you can just point to this topic and say, "Number 3" and save everyone some time explaining why they are wrong.
Here are the arguments made against gay marriage, followed by an explanation of why they do not meet the rational foundation for the discriminations requirement which will eventually issue from the Supreme Court.
1. By far the most popular argument against gay marriage is that if we allow homosexual to marry, then we will have to allow brothers to marry sisters, humans to marry animals, and adults to marry children. I have never seen a topic involving homosexuality in which someone did not bring up either incest, or bestiality, or pedophilia, or two or more of these.
This is the slippery slope fallacy. And the reason it fails is because you cannot use the legalization of a harmless behavior as justification for the legalization of a harmful behavior.
Since pedophilia and the myriad other attempted equivalencies to homosexuality are all harmful behaviors, they cannot be justified by gay marriage any more than they can be justified by a heterosexual marriage.
The underlying irrational foundation behind this argument is nothing more than an intense dislike of man-on-man sex, even though one is not even participating in that act!
2. Show me where the right to marry is in the Constitution. This is probably the second most common argument. It is actually a one-size-fits-all argument used in many debates, not just the gay marriage debate. Show me were (fill in the blank) is in the Constitution. Its users believe it is a debate ender, but it really only exposes their ignorance of the Constitution.
State and federal governments have created benefits and privileges specific to married couples in their laws. The benefits and privileges therefore have the protection of the law. If you file a married federal income tax return, for example, you are exercising one of those privileges.
The 14th amendment specifically states that one must provide equal protection of the laws. Therefore, if you extend the married tax return benefit to one married couple, you must extend it to all married couples. Be they a white/white marriage, or a black/white marriage, or an opposite gender marriage, or a same gender marriage.
So the show me where the right to marry Constitutional question is a logical fallacy known as a false premise, and not a very clever one at that.
3. The third argument has many variations, but perhaps the best illustration is the one that says people who favor gay marriage got their acceptance of gay marriage from the likes of the sex expert Kinsey. Then follows a long ad hominem attack on Kinsey, with the added element that Kinsey apparently was okay with pedophilia, and therefore people who like gay marriage are okay with pedophilia.
Something like that.
Once again, an amazing amount of energy is expended trying to associate homosexuality with all manner of heinous activities.
This argument is chock full of fallacies, but it is easily turned on its head by using an identical fallacy which goes like this: Hitler hated fags. Hitler killed six million Jews. Therefore, if people are allowed to hate fags, it is just a matter of time before they start tossing Jews into gas ovens.
4. AIDS. Homos are sick bastards who screw like rabbits and spread AIDS and boy wont it be great once they have wiped themselves out. Heteros are not as depraved as homos, because AIDS is killing more homos than straight people. QED.
There are two answers to this. First, on a worldwide level, heteros are greatly outpacing homos in the AIDS category, hands-down. But we ignore this because, hey, were talking about jungle bunnies in Africa, right? And you really dont want to go there, gay-lover!
Second, syphilis. It seems some people are ignorant of the fact that syphilis was the AIDS of its time, until very recently. And syphilis killed many, many millions of people. There is a long list of famous people taken down by syphilis. And syphilis is still with us today, and it has experienced a recent resurgence amongst heteros. Lucky for them there is a cure!
So this idea that AIDS is some kind of vindication of the purity of heteros compared to the depravity of homos is ridiculously out of whack.
These illogical arguments are used to support an anti-homosexual position is how we know that at the base of all their objections, opponents really just hate homos. Very few are honest enough to just admit it.
If the anti-gay lobby has a rational foundation for the discriminations currently in our state and federal laws, they better start articulating them real soon. Because sooner or later, this will be coming up in the Supreme Court.
So far, all opposition has been irrational.
I say this as a person who voted against gay marriage when it came up for a vote in my state a few years ago. If my state held a re-vote today, I would jump at the opportunity to support it.
As the saying goes, A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
I don't think you understand what equal protection of the laws means. If a law is written which extends a privilege or benefit to someone, then those privileges/benefits have, by definition, the protection of the law. For example, married people are allowed by law to file a joint income tax return. That privilege only exists because it was written into the tax code.
At this point, the 14th amendment kicks in. Once a law provides protection to a privilege or benefit, then everyone is equally protected by it.
Both state and federal laws extend protection to marriages. So your statement that "equal protection does not apply to marriage" is completely wrong. See Loving v. Virginia. The court plainly elucidates this fact. Everyone focuses on the other statement about marriage being a right, and completely overlook the larger part about equal protection of the law in the 14th amendment.
You cannot deny those protections to gays just for being gay. The 14th amendment requires you have a rational reason for discriminating against anyone and denying them the protections provided by law to their peers.
Simple.
Explain why it does not make sense.
If that were the case then anyone could file as a married couple and get all the other benefits of marriage, regardless of whethe they were married or not. To do otherwise would be to deny "equal protection."
Note the term is "equal protection", not "equal benefits".
Again, you are misunderstanding what equal protection means.
If you do not have a driver's license, you are not protected by the privileges extended to drivers. You cannot just get behind the wheel of a car and drive. You must acquire the license to drive and THEN you are protected by the law.
You cannot file a joint tax return unless you meet the marriage requirements.
You may be thinking at this juncture that putting a "you can't be male/male or female/female" requirement in the marriage law would solve your problem. But you would be incorrect, for the same reasons the "you can't be black/white or white/black" rule was struck down.
This brings us to the other significant meaning of the 14th Amendment. You cannot deny someone the equal protection of a law which provides privileges or benefits, nor can you deny them the ability to exercise the equal protection of the law without a rational reason. This means not only are you prevented from not letting a licensed black driver from using the same roads white people use, you also cannot deny a black person access to a driver's license in the first place just because he is black. But it does mean you can deny a six year old a driver's license, because there is a rational reason for that discrimination.
You cannot write an anti black/white marriage rule in the marriage requirements, either, without a rational reason for doing so. See Loving v. Virginia.
So it follows that you cannot write an anti-gay marriage rule, either. All you've done with the "you can't be male/male or female/female" rule is replace racial discrimination with gender discrimination.
You have to have a rational reason for excluding someone access to a legal protection proferred by the government.
Since many of the arguments against gay marriage are repeated over and over and over, I thought we should collect them all together and number them. Then, when you hear someone make a particular anti-gay argument, you can just point to this topic and say, "Number 3" and save everyone some time explaining why they are wrong.
Here are the arguments made against gay marriage, followed by an explanation of why they do not meet the rational foundation for the discriminations requirement which will eventually issue from the Supreme Court.
1. By far the most popular argument against gay marriage is that if we allow homosexual to marry, then we will have to allow brothers to marry sisters, humans to marry animals, and adults to marry children. I have never seen a topic involving homosexuality in which someone did not bring up either incest, or bestiality, or pedophilia, or two or more of these.
This is the slippery slope fallacy. And the reason it fails is because you cannot use the legalization of a harmless behavior as justification for the legalization of a harmful behavior.
Since pedophilia and the myriad other attempted equivalencies to homosexuality are all harmful behaviors, they cannot be justified by gay marriage any more than they can be justified by a heterosexual marriage.
The underlying irrational foundation behind this argument is nothing more than an intense dislike of man-on-man sex, even though one is not even participating in that act!
2. Show me where the right to marry is in the Constitution. This is probably the second most common argument. It is actually a one-size-fits-all argument used in many debates, not just the gay marriage debate. Show me were (fill in the blank) is in the Constitution. Its users believe it is a debate ender, but it really only exposes their ignorance of the Constitution.
State and federal governments have created benefits and privileges specific to married couples in their laws. The benefits and privileges therefore have the protection of the law. If you file a married federal income tax return, for example, you are exercising one of those privileges.
The 14th amendment specifically states that one must provide equal protection of the laws. Therefore, if you extend the married tax return benefit to one married couple, you must extend it to all married couples. Be they a white/white marriage, or a black/white marriage, or an opposite gender marriage, or a same gender marriage.
So the show me where the right to marry Constitutional question is a logical fallacy known as a false premise, and not a very clever one at that.
3. The third argument has many variations, but perhaps the best illustration is the one that says people who favor gay marriage got their acceptance of gay marriage from the likes of the sex expert Kinsey. Then follows a long ad hominem attack on Kinsey, with the added element that Kinsey apparently was okay with pedophilia, and therefore people who like gay marriage are okay with pedophilia.
Something like that.
Once again, an amazing amount of energy is expended trying to associate homosexuality with all manner of heinous activities.
This argument is chock full of fallacies, but it is easily turned on its head by using an identical fallacy which goes like this: Hitler hated fags. Hitler killed six million Jews. Therefore, if people are allowed to hate fags, it is just a matter of time before they start tossing Jews into gas ovens.
4. AIDS. Homos are sick bastards who screw like rabbits and spread AIDS and boy wont it be great once they have wiped themselves out. Heteros are not as depraved as homos, because AIDS is killing more homos than straight people. QED.
There are two answers to this. First, on a worldwide level, heteros are greatly outpacing homos in the AIDS category, hands-down. But we ignore this because, hey, were talking about jungle bunnies in Africa, right? And you really dont want to go there, gay-lover!
Second, syphilis. It seems some people are ignorant of the fact that syphilis was the AIDS of its time, until very recently. And syphilis killed many, many millions of people. There is a long list of famous people taken down by syphilis. And syphilis is still with us today, and it has experienced a recent resurgence amongst heteros. Lucky for them there is a cure!
So this idea that AIDS is some kind of vindication of the purity of heteros compared to the depravity of homos is ridiculously out of whack.
These illogical arguments are used to support an anti-homosexual position is how we know that at the base of all their objections, opponents really just hate homos. Very few are honest enough to just admit it.
If the anti-gay lobby has a rational foundation for the discriminations currently in our state and federal laws, they better start articulating them real soon. Because sooner or later, this will be coming up in the Supreme Court.
So far, all opposition has been irrational.
I say this as a person who voted against gay marriage when it came up for a vote in my state a few years ago. If my state held a re-vote today, I would jump at the opportunity to support it.
As the saying goes, A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Garbage. There is no right to marry in the constitution
A driver's license is a privilege, not a right. And miscegenation is not a parallel.If that were the case then anyone could file as a married couple and get all the other benefits of marriage, regardless of whethe they were married or not. To do otherwise would be to deny "equal protection."
Note the term is "equal protection", not "equal benefits".
Again, you are misunderstanding what equal protection means.
If you do not have a driver's license, you are not protected by the privileges extended to drivers. You cannot just get behind the wheel of a car and drive. You must acquire the license to drive and THEN you are protected by the law.
You cannot file a joint tax return unless you meet the marriage requirements.
You may be thinking at this juncture that putting a "you can't be male/male or female/female" requirement in the marriage law would solve your problem. But you would be incorrect, for the same reasons the "you can't be black/white or white/black" rule was struck down. This brings us to the other significant meaning of the 14th Amendment. You cannot deny someone the equal protection of a law which provides privileges or benefits, nor can you deny them the ability to exercise the equal protection of the law without a rational reason. This means not only are you prevented from not letting a licensed black driver from using the same roads white people use, you also cannot deny a black person access to a driver's license in the first place just because he is black. But it does mean you can deny a six year old a driver's license, because there is a rational reason for that discrimination.
You cannot write an anti black/white marriage rule in the marriage requirements, either, without a rational reason for doing so. See Loving v. Virginia.
So it follows that you cannot write an anti-gay marriage rule, either. All you've done with the "you can't be male/male or female/female" rule is replace racial discrimation with gender discrimination.
You have to have a rational reason for excluding someone access to a legal protection proferred by the government.
polygamists may get married by whatever church they may attend....why aren't they treated equally under the 14th.....?
If a rational explanation can be provided for why they should be discriminated against, then go right ahead. For example, if you can demonstrate that polygamy is a harmful practice, that would be a rational explanation.
I personally lean heavily towards the belief that polygamy is a harmful practice. Polygamy almost inevitably means one man married to multiple women. This leads, in the mean, to the exploitation and subordination of women. It is also a near mathematical inevitability that it leads to pedophilia, the forcing of minor girls to marry adult men.
polygamists may get married by whatever church they may attend....why aren't they treated equally under the 14th.....?
If a rational explanation can be provided for why they should be discriminated against, then go right ahead. For example, if you can demonstrate that polygamy is a harmful practice, that would be a rational explanation.
I personally lean heavily towards the belief that polygamy is a harmful practice. Polygamy almost inevitably means one man married to multiple women. This leads, in the mean, to the exploitation and subordination of women. It is also a near mathematical inevitability that it leads to pedophilia, the forcing of minor girls to marry adult men.
my point is....it happens....your 14th argument is full of hot air...
one rational explanation against gay marriage is that children need both a mother and a father....to enable "alternative" marriage sabotages the family unit.....a cornerstone of stable society....
But you could make the same argument for fag marriage: it is harmful,
it inculcates the idea that homosexuality is normal
, leading people to experiment with it and pick up dreadful diseases and ally themselves with a sick population.
A driver's license is a privilege, not a right.
Yes. So is filing a joint tax return.
The 14th amendment seems to be sailing over your head. It seems like some people think the Constitution stopped at the 10th.