Honestly, now that Obama is the nominee........

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

As I posted earlier, the Republican administration in charge of Texas prosecuted the case of Lawrence v. Texas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas ) - which asked the USSC to up hold the state law in Texas that made it a crime for gay people to have sex, though married and unmarried heterosexual people apparently could fellate and sodomize all they wanted (this remains unclear though). The Lawrence case overturned the Bowers case, which though immediately applicable to the prosecution (yes, they were prosecuted as two other guys were in Lawrence) of two gay guys for having sex, the GA statute applied to all sodomy (defined as all anal and oral sex regardles of sexuality or marital status).

So, there's more than one. In fact, there's a few. Capice?

I am not making this up though you may not want to believe it

The Lawrence V. Texas case is QUITE a stretch. The original law was British common law, unless you want to blame Republicans for the laws of the British. Also, any administration's justice department, whether Republican or Democrat is REQUIRED to defend the existing law whether they want to or not. It would not be the prosecution in a Supreme Court case anyway, it would be Petitioner V. Respondant, except in the originating criminal complaint. There would be no "prosecution" but a representative from the local justice department obligated to argue on the side of existing law. Otherwise, you'd have prosecutors that refuse to prosecute individuals with whom they agree or find pity. What the Lawrence case shows is not bigotry, but that our democracy works. Even Thomas in his dissent stated that the law was "uncommonly silly", but his problem had more to do with their advocating of rights that are not specifically stated in the constitution and that the majority opinion was formed with application of law that would be inconsistent with other rulings. This is frankly how bad laws get overturned. What you are advocating, it sounds like to me, is that our law & order system should decide on a case by case asis whether or not to apply stare decisis, instead of applying the existing laws equally and letting the parties fight it out up the food chain. Frankly, the law worked in Lawrence the way it was supposed to, a bad law got overturned. I don't see in this case here that any "republican" was discriminating against gay people. The republican objection was based on a strict constructionist interpretation that there were other reasons to strike down the law besides the law applied and that they believed that states had the right to govern their own morality.

Also, as far as property rights and inheritance rights go, you can own anything as "tenants in common" or any other form of title you choose where the other party gets the property upon your death. Also, writing a good will would take care of most of the issues you mention. Inheritance is another thing the government should stay the hell out of too. What right does the government have to say who I can give my stuff to when I die? If I want to create my own dynasty, why shouldn't I be allowed to?

Maryland's law concerning interacial marriage also has nothing to do with Republicans. You forget that it was a republican congress that passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the help of a Democratic President. While the Republicans in Congress were working on this act, Bobby Kennedy was busy wiretapping Martin Luther King because he thought he was a threat to national security!

To answer your last question, I don't think the government should have any say in marriage, except for age of consent laws, but that's a criminal matter anyway.

The actual issuance of the license is hardly the point considering legal prohibitions to certain marriages have been around far longer regardless of whether a state issued license was issued. As early as 1665, the Maryland colonial assembly made interracial marriage a crime. In addition, there are more benefits then the tax system. Try property rights and inheritance rights for starters. In any event and no matter how long rights are being given based solely on religion, the issuance of rights based on religion is wrong and unconstitutional.

But and again, I agree with you because I think you said you would be for the word "marriage" to appear in no law book. If two consting adults want to marry, they should find a church to marry them and then contract for their property rights. To me, that is the fairest way. Sadly, the R party finds that idea incomprehensible and abhorrent. So we have to work with what we have, which is pathetic if you ask me. Interestingly, many far right religious leaders find the idea of the state's requirement for a license abhorrent.

For the record, do you think the state should have any business telling any teo consenting adults anything about marrying? Or, do you believe the state has the right to prohibit consenting adults from marrying based solely on religion?

The Lawrence V. Texas case is QUITE a stretch. The original law was British common law, unless you want to blame Republicans for the laws of the British. Also, any administration's justice department, whether Republican or Democrat is REQUIRED to defend the existing law whether they want to or not. It would not be the prosecution in a Supreme Court case anyway, it would be Petitioner V. Respondant, except in the originating criminal complaint. There would be no "prosecution" but a representative from the local justice department obligated to argue on the side of existing law. Otherwise, you'd have prosecutors that refuse to prosecute individuals with whom they agree or find pity. What the Lawrence case shows is not bigotry, but that our democracy works. Even Thomas in his dissent stated that the law was "uncommonly silly", but his problem had more to do with their advocating of rights that are not specifically stated in the constitution and that the majority opinion was formed with application of law that would be inconsistent with other rulings. This is frankly how bad laws get overturned. What you are advocating, it sounds like to me, is that our law & order system should decide on a case by case asis whether or not to apply stare decisis, instead of applying the existing laws equally and letting the parties fight it out up the food chain. Frankly, the law worked in Lawrence the way it was supposed to, a bad law got overturned. I don't see in this case here that any "republican" was discriminating against gay people. The republican objection was based on a strict constructionist interpretation that there were other reasons to strike down the law besides the law applied and that they believed that states had the right to govern their own morality.

Also, as far as property rights and inheritance rights go, you can own anything as "tenants in common" or any other form of title you choose where the other party gets the property upon your death. Also, writing a good will would take care of most of the issues you mention. Inheritance is another thing the government should stay the hell out of too. What right does the government have to say who I can give my stuff to when I die? If I want to create my own dynasty, why shouldn't I be allowed to?

Maryland's law concerning interacial marriage also has nothing to do with Republicans. You forget that it was a republican congress that passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the help of a Democratic President. While the Republicans in Congress were working on this act, Bobby Kennedy was busy wiretapping Martin Luther King because he thought he was a threat to national security!

To answer your last question, I don't think the government should have any say in marriage, except for age of consent laws, but that's a criminal matter anyway.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

. . . Also, as far as property rights and inheritance rights go, you can own anything as "tenants in common" or any other form of title you choose where the other party gets the property upon your death. Also, writing a good will would take care of most of the issues you mention. Inheritance is another thing the government should stay the hell out of too. What right does the government have to say who I can give my stuff to when I die? If I want to create my own dynasty, why shouldn't I be allowed to?

Well, the govt. says it all the time. On the order of 1,400 legal rights are conferred upon married couples in the U.S. Typically these are composed of about 400 state benefits and over 1,000 federal benefits. Among them are the rights to:

joint parenting;

joint adoption;

joint foster care, custody, and visitation (including non-biological parents); status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions where one partner is too ill to be competent;

joint insurance policies for home, auto and health;

dissolution and divorce protections such as community property and child support;

immigration and residency for partners from other countries;

inheritance automatically in the absence of a will;

joint leases with automatic renewal rights in the event one partner dies or leaves the house or apartment;

inheritance of jointly-owned real and personal property through the right of survivorship (which avoids the time and expense and taxes in probate); benefits such as annuities, pension plans, Social Security, and Medicare; spousal exemptions to property tax increases upon the death of one partner who is a co-owner of the home;

veterans' discounts on medical care, education, and home loans; joint filing of tax returns;

joint filing of customs claims when traveling;

wrongful death benefits for a surviving partner and children;

bereavement or sick leave to care for a partner or child;

decision-making power with respect to whether a deceased partner will be cremated or not and where to bury him or her;

crime victims' recovery benefits;

loss of consortium tort benefits;

domestic violence protection orders;

judicial protections and evidentiary immunity;

Federal and state benefits like Social Security survivir benefits

and more

Most of these legal and economic benefits cannot be privately arranged or contracted for. For example, absent a legal (or civil) marriage, there is no guaranteed joint responsibility to the partner and to third parties (including children) in such areas as child support, debts to creditors, taxes, etc. In addition, private employers and institutions often give other economic privileges and other benefits (special rates or memberships) only to married couples. And, of course, when people cannot marry, they are denied all the emotional and social benefits and responsibilities of marriage as well.

Moreover, here is an interesting article:

Why This Is A Serious Civil Rights Issue

When gay people say that this is a civil rights issue, we are referring to matters of civil justice, which often can be quite serious - and can have life-damaging, even life-threatening consequences.

One of these is the fact that in most states, we cannot make medical decisions for our partners in an emergency. Instead, the hospitals are usually forced by state laws to go to the families who may have been estranged from us for decades, who are often hostile to us, and can and frequently do, totally ignore our wishes regarding the treatment of our partners. If a hostile family wishes to exclude us from the hospital room, they may legally do so in most states. It is even not uncommon for hostile families to make decisions based on their hostility -- with results consciously intended to be as inimical to the interests of the patient as possible! Is this fair?

Upon death, in many cases, even very carefully drawn wills and durable powers of attorney have proven to not be enough if a family wishes to challenge a will, overturn a custody decision, or exclude us from a funeral or deny us the right to visit a partner's hospital bed or grave. As survivors, estranged families can, in nearly all states, even sieze a real estate property that a gay couple may have been buying together for many years, quickly sell it at the largest possible loss, and stick the surviving partner with all the remaining mortgage obligations on a property that partner no longer owns, leaving him out on the street, penniless. There are hundreds of examples of this, even in many cases where the gay couple had been extremely careful to do everything right under current law, in a determined effort to protect their rights. Is this fair?

If our partners are arrested, we can be compelled to testify against them or provide evidence against them, which legally married couples are not forced to do. In court cases, a partner's testimony can be simply ruled irrelevant as heresay by a hostile judge, having no more weight in law than the testimony of a complete stranger. If a partner is jailed or imprisoned, visitation rights by the partner can, in most cases, can be denied on the whim of a hostile family and the cooperation of a homophobic judge, unrestrained by any law or precedent. Conjugal visits, a well-established right of heterosexual married couples in some settings, are simply not available to gay couples. Is this fair?

These are far from being just theoretical issues; they happen with surprising frequency. Almost any older gay couple can tell you numerous horror stories of friends and acquaintences who have been victimized in such ways. One couple I know uses the following line in the "sig" lines on their email: "...partners and lovers for 40 years, yet still strangers before the law." Why, as a supposedly advanced society, should we continue to tolerate this kind of injustice?

These are all civil rights issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with the ecclesiastical origins of marriage; they are matters that have become enshrined in state laws by legislation or court precedent over the years in many ways that exclude us from the rights that legally married couples enjoy and even consider their constitutional right. This is why we say it is very much a serious civil rights issue; it has nothing to do with who performs the ceremony, whether it is performed in a church or courthouse or the local country club, or whether an announcement about it is accepted for publication in the local newspaper.

____________________________________________

So, to say (general speaker not really you though you implied it) that all rights can be done by contract is untrue. Moreover, why should gay and unmarried straight people have to pay thousands of dollars to obtain some, but not all, of what married people get for free based solely on a religious argument?

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

Maryland's law concerning interacial marriage also has nothing to do with Republicans. You forget that it was a republican congress that passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the help of a Democratic President. While the Republicans in Congress were working on this act, Bobby Kennedy was busy wiretapping Martin Luther King because he thought he was a threat to national security!

To answer your last question, I don't think the government should have any say in marriage, except for age of consent laws, but that's a criminal matter anyway.

My point had nothing to do the R's. I was refuting (successfully) your statement about marriage liscenses and the prohibition of marriages in general.

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Well, the govt. says it all the time. On the order of 1,400 legal rights are conferred upon married couples in the U.S. Typically these are composed of about 400 state benefits and over 1,000 federal benefits. Among them are the rights to:

joint parenting;

joint adoption;

joint foster care, custody, and visitation (including non-biological parents); status as next-of-kin for hospital visits and medical decisions where one partner is too ill to be competent;

joint insurance policies for home, auto and health;

dissolution and divorce protections such as community property and child support;

immigration and residency for partners from other countries;

inheritance automatically in the absence of a will;

joint leases with automatic renewal rights in the event one partner dies or leaves the house or apartment;

inheritance of jointly-owned real and personal property through the right of survivorship (which avoids the time and expense and taxes in probate); benefits such as annuities, pension plans, Social Security, and Medicare; spousal exemptions to property tax increases upon the death of one partner who is a co-owner of the home;

veterans' discounts on medical care, education, and home loans; joint filing of tax returns;

joint filing of customs claims when traveling;

wrongful death benefits for a surviving partner and children;

bereavement or sick leave to care for a partner or child;

decision-making power with respect to whether a deceased partner will be cremated or not and where to bury him or her;

crime victims' recovery benefits;

loss of consortium tort benefits;

domestic violence protection orders;

judicial protections and evidentiary immunity;

Federal and state benefits like Social Security survivir benefits

and more

Most of these legal and economic benefits cannot be privately arranged or contracted for. For example, absent a legal (or civil) marriage, there is no guaranteed joint responsibility to the partner and to third parties (including children) in such areas as child support, debts to creditors, taxes, etc. In addition, private employers and institutions often give other economic privileges and other benefits (special rates or memberships) only to married couples. And, of course, when people cannot marry, they are denied all the emotional and social benefits and responsibilities of marriage as well.

Moreover, here is an interesting article:

Why This Is A Serious Civil Rights Issue

When gay people say that this is a civil rights issue, we are referring to matters of civil justice, which often can be quite serious - and can have life-damaging, even life-threatening consequences.

One of these is the fact that in most states, we cannot make medical decisions for our partners in an emergency. Instead, the hospitals are usually forced by state laws to go to the families who may have been estranged from us for decades, who are often hostile to us, and can and frequently do, totally ignore our wishes regarding the treatment of our partners. If a hostile family wishes to exclude us from the hospital room, they may legally do so in most states. It is even not uncommon for hostile families to make decisions based on their hostility -- with results consciously intended to be as inimical to the interests of the patient as possible! Is this fair?

Upon death, in many cases, even very carefully drawn wills and durable powers of attorney have proven to not be enough if a family wishes to challenge a will, overturn a custody decision, or exclude us from a funeral or deny us the right to visit a partner's hospital bed or grave. As survivors, estranged families can, in nearly all states, even sieze a real estate property that a gay couple may have been buying together for many years, quickly sell it at the largest possible loss, and stick the surviving partner with all the remaining mortgage obligations on a property that partner no longer owns, leaving him out on the street, penniless. There are hundreds of examples of this, even in many cases where the gay couple had been extremely careful to do everything right under current law, in a determined effort to protect their rights. Is this fair?

If our partners are arrested, we can be compelled to testify against them or provide evidence against them, which legally married couples are not forced to do. In court cases, a partner's testimony can be simply ruled irrelevant as heresay by a hostile judge, having no more weight in law than the testimony of a complete stranger. If a partner is jailed or imprisoned, visitation rights by the partner can, in most cases, can be denied on the whim of a hostile family and the cooperation of a homophobic judge, unrestrained by any law or precedent. Conjugal visits, a well-established right of heterosexual married couples in some settings, are simply not available to gay couples. Is this fair?

These are far from being just theoretical issues; they happen with surprising frequency. Almost any older gay couple can tell you numerous horror stories of friends and acquaintences who have been victimized in such ways. One couple I know uses the following line in the "sig" lines on their email: "...partners and lovers for 40 years, yet still strangers before the law." Why, as a supposedly advanced society, should we continue to tolerate this kind of injustice?

These are all civil rights issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with the ecclesiastical origins of marriage; they are matters that have become enshrined in state laws by legislation or court precedent over the years in many ways that exclude us from the rights that legally married couples enjoy and even consider their constitutional right. This is why we say it is very much a serious civil rights issue; it has nothing to do with who performs the ceremony, whether it is performed in a church or courthouse or the local country club, or whether an announcement about it is accepted for publication in the local newspaper.

____________________________________________

So, to say (general speaker not really you though you implied it) that all rights can be done by contract is untrue. Moreover, why should gay and unmarried straight people have to pay thousands of dollars to obtain some, but not all, of what married people get for free based solely on a religious argument?




My point had nothing to do the R's. I was refuting (successfully) your statement about marriage liscenses and the prohibition of marriages in general.

A lot of states, including my own, DO confer a lot of these rights on gays. We have most of these on the books. A lot of what you said is just plain wrong. Gay partners CAN get protection orders, CAN sue for wrongful death, can get Health Insurance, CAN adopt, etc. If you think that getting married is free, you never had to pay for a wedding! LOL! Anyway, I think we agree more than not. Like I said before, I would like to remove marriage from the legal lexicon. All of these rights should be transferable through contracts, in my prefect world that is.

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by ajmccarrell

A lot of states, including my own, DO confer a lot of these rights on gays. We have most of these on the books. A lot of what you said is just plain wrong. Gay partners CAN get protection orders, CAN sue for wrongful death, can get Health Insurance, CAN adopt, etc. If you think that getting married is free, you never had to pay for a wedding! LOL! Anyway, I think we agree more than not. Like I said before, I would like to remove marriage from the legal lexicon. All of these rights should be transferable through contracts, in my prefect world that is.

Just because some rights are conferred by some states (which the R, not D, party overwhelmingly opposes in every way possible mind you) - that does not make it any better in the long run. That is like asking the cop that is beating you to slow down instead of asking him to stop In the end, without Federal protection, gays will continue to be discrimminated against because the current R party uses them as scapegoats. Look at McCain's "gays should never adopt" BS. There is no empirical evidence to support this law no matter how many times McCain says it. So, we see more religious BS.

[ajmccarrell]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Just because some rights are conferred by some states (which the R, not D, party overwhelmingly opposes in every way possible mind you) - that does not make it any better in the long run. That is like asking the cop that is beating you to slow down instead of asking him to stop In the end, without Federal protection, gays will continue to be discrimminated against because the current R party uses them as scapegoats. Look at McCain's "gays should never adopt" BS. There is no empirical evidence to support this law no matter how many times McCain says it. So, we see more religious BS.

Gays tend to be economically better off, generall smarter than their counterparts, more successful, etc. If that is discrimination, sign me up! Again, I disagree with McCain here, but it isn't as big an issue as the economic climate with which to raise my own family. Well, marriage by definition is a religious institution. Why are you complaining about it, when in reality you are the one trying to get the Federal government to redefine a religious institution. Why not take marriage out of the hands of government and put in back in churches where it belongs. There is something I can get behind. Even a major Conservative like Fred Thompson agrees with that idea.