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Answering Peter Robinson on SCOTUS and Gay Marriage
Peter posed a question earlier today: If the Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage, how should we respond? I defer to Richard Epstein’s views on the comparison between Dred Scott, Lochner, and gay marriage. I think that Robert P. George rightly warns of the dangers of the use of the due process clause by judges to advance their personal policy preferences. There are surely similarities between the Court’s use of substantive due process in all three periods. I think that a decision imposing gay marriage on the nation incorrectly reads our constitutional structure, just as Dred Scott mistakenly interpreted the Constitution’s original understanding of federal and state control over slavery and freedom.
But there is an important difference here, one that shouldn’t affect their legal decision but will control the political response. A majority of Americans support gay marriage now, as opposed to 2008. There will be no groundswell of opposition to the Court on gay marriage in the way there was against Dred Scott.
The most there will be, I predict, will be opposition of the kind that arose in response to Roe v. Wade — gay marriage could become an important issue in debates about values and judicial appointments. But there won’t be widespread resistance and successful presidential candidates who promise to under-enforce the decision because the majority of Americans will agree with the outcome, even if they disagree with the way our society reached it.
Published in Law, Marriage
I can see where people get confused MJ.
Cato, I readily acknowledge a lot of confusion about what traditional Christian morals actually feature at the core regarding sexual behavior, even though I think it is pretty straightforward. I also acknowledge that a lot of Christians want to attach their own opinions onto the Bible, or in place of the Bible, and peddle that morality.
The reason I jumped in is that you said you couldn’t think of any examples of anti-SSM persons being held out as exemplars, which is a laughable statement. Think of Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A, and a couple of dozen Christian schools (primarily Catholic) and any number of folk who have been singled out by the lamestream media. All the Big Journalism energy, and most of the social media energy, is on your side. Christian niche media, and some (but not all) conservative niche media are on my side. So, when it comes to outrage, you have us beat by miles.
This conversation has gone on too long. You’ve forgotten what we were arguing about. Go back and look at comments 26, 28, 71 and 75. We were arguing about whether there were prominent pro-gay stories being used as exemplars to push a gay agenda, not whether prominent anti-gay people get called out for being anti-gay. Of course they do. I never denied that, and I wouldn’t change it either. I’m entirely and openly supportive of the public shaming of homophobia.
By the way, your “my peeps are confused about our doctrine and often attach a lot of their own hateful opinions to it” argument just doesn’t do much for me. Christianity, to the extent it matters at all to me, is about what self-identified Christians do in the vicinity of me and how they interact with me and attempt to impact my life. What some doctrinal treatise locked in a gold box in the Vatican says (or whatever your “true source” of real Christian doctrine is) doesn’t really matter much to me.
Bottom line, you held this hateful nasty woman up as an example of how the gays are abusing the Christians, and I’m saying, if she takes some crap for talking that way when she’s responsible for children, almost surely including gay children, that’s as it should be.
No problem. Again, I really didn’t set up the point very well and it was easy to misread.
As a political matter, sadly true.
That’s probably true of some of some leading-edge progressives, but — even then — I wouldn’t describe that as their overarching motivation.
Really? I saw some defenses of using pronouns transgender people prefer, but I didn’t see any defending an man using the women’s room simply because he “feels” like a woman.
If I missed something, I’ll be happy to concede the point.
My point was that Christianity is a large thing, and Christians do not all speak with one voice. I understand your hostility to traditionalist Christians; I just want to be fairly characterized here at Ricochet, and I think Ricochet has room for some nuance when speaking about Christian views and Christian morals.
And, Cato, you may not care for Mollie, but you start to lose some hard-won Ricochet good will when you recklessly insult her.
Oh, I think it is part of their core program. The Progressive Lefties have been all about destroying all the important institutions of Western Civilization except for their own Party.
Well, she’s insulted me here plenty of times. And I’m pretty sure that anyone here who has any goodwill for me has already factored in my thoughts about people who denigrate gay people and then justify it on religious grounds. I think you’d agree I haven’t been shy about voicing those thoughts.
And I understand that Christianity is a large thing and that not everyone who self identifies as Christian speaks for everybody else. Like everybody else in America, I know lots of practicing Christians of one flavor or another, and very few of them sound like your friend Patricia Jannuzzi anymore (30 years ago, they all did). But you’re the one who held Ms. Jannuzzi up as an example. I’d never heard of her until you started linking to stories about her. So I thought I was safe in inferring that you were defending her behavior.
By the way, it would sure be nice to just hear you say that her comments are reprehensible and embarrassing.
Tom. The post was about a woman who did not like a man using the women’s locker room. Did you read the first comment? It said the woman had to accept the self-reported sexual identity of everyone in the locker room, because she could not know anyone’s but her own for sure. In other words, what I said.
Here is the comment in question:
I could be reading Zafar incorrectly, but he seemed to be saying that — if we’re talking about genetic sex, as opposed to how one looks — then there’s no way of knowing. I don’t think that really addressed Jennifer’s question, but that thread was just rife with people arguing about different things.
I saw Ms. Jannuzzi’s original Tweet. It was an inarticulate expression of commonly-held views. As near as I can tell, she thinks gays are trying to have things both ways, in that they claim it is all genetic in order to win civil rights protections, but then they want confused young people to choose to be gay. She said that she sent the Tweet in response to a blog at theyoungconservatives that included a quote of a Tweet by Dan Savage. I have not pursued the matter so far as Dan Savage’s Tweet, which I am confident is not defensible, nor did I read what Ben Carson or the bloggers at theyoungconservatives had to say there.
I think her comments are embarrassing, in that her Tweet is inarticulate and looks like she Tweeted while drinking. I don’t think I will go so far as to say reprehensible, though I think she is treating gays as a monolith, which should not be done with gays any more than with Christians.
I just found it telling that a media feeding frenzy was triggered by a Tweet by a high school teacher at a Catholic school in New Jersey. My only reason for tossing it in to the discussion here is the over-the-top poor journalism by pro-Big Gay media taking up your side of the issues, and howling for the Catholic school to cease teaching traditional Catholic morality.
I did not even mention the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voting to tell Archbishop Cordileone that Catholic schools should quit upholding traditional Catholic moral teachings, and the favorable media coverage they got.
The fact that they are commonly held is precisely what’s so disgusting. This is, as you nearly acknowledge, a woman who bears ill will toward homosexuals as a class, and feels comfortable ranting about it publicly. I think I’ve essentially said this to you before, but there is just not going to be peace between gay people and people who act this way. If your side is going to set the terms of debate that way, my side is going to be justifiably deaf to your whining about persecution when the mainstream majority sees what’s going on and decides that you’re the ones who need some reining in.
FWIW, if I were on your side of this, after noticing we were losing the public debate badly, I might do a little introspection and ask whether something we’ve done might have contributed to losing the high ground. Your only answer seems to be to shout “bias” at people who don’t agree with you about who’s at fault for this war you started. Good luck with that.
And by the way, the “gays recruit children” canard is essentially a modern day blood libel, and you seem to be skating awfully close to sanctioning it.
It was bitterly humorous how upset the Ricochet SSM supporters were when Jennifer took the name “Parent A.”
Huh?, is there a secret super duper vip member section that I’m not aware of? As far as I know, I’m in most of these ssm threads, i don’t recall anyone caring about the name “Parent A”.
I would think full blown libertarianism carries some of that- certainly less legal distinction- but I haven’t seen it brought up on Ricochet.
Well, now that you mention it, what legal distinctions between the sexes do you support?
e.g., family court, rape laws, etc. — and I have no problem whatsoever with courts doing so in those cases. Seems dumb not to.
Could you give an example of where it would make sense in a particular law to distinguish male/female?
btw outside of the title the VAWA (violence against women act) was written in gender neutral language….
You each have many other qualities- weights, hair color, age, etc., which are irrelevant to the legal marriage. (As long as the age is legal.) Now gender is just like those.
Yes, and this has not changed Tom’s gender, nor his wife’s gender, so how has his marriage changed?
I think he meant what you think he meant. Since his was the first comment, and he even quoted a portion of her post, it’s just possible he meant it to relate to what Jennifer had said in her post. How about you assume that, Tom, and not that it was a random thought that just happened to land there. If it related to her post, it would mean that when an (apparent) man used the locker room she had to accept that his sincere self-reported identity is female, because she cannot know his genetic gender for sure.
In other words, what I said.
Is there some reason I am being particularly targeted by an editor, first for the statement that same sex marriage leads to legally genderless marriage and parenting, and then for having said that some people favor blurring distinctions between genders? These are two factual and I would have thought noncontroversial statements. But Tom, you keep arguing both of them, over and over, not with any particular insight but by arguing past me and ignoring what I actually said, or by being intentionally obtuse and not seeing my point.
The impression I get is that by editorial standards Ricochet is a libertarian party now and I am an unwelcome guest.
Jojo, I would be happy either to let to matter slide (if you feel I am treating you unfairly), or to keep debating. Your call.
No and no.
I promote lots of posts to the main feed that I disagree with, particularly posts from SoCons, and I’m very pleased to do so.
Ricochet is no more a libertarian site than it is a SoCon site, though both those viewpoints are well-represented on both the main and the member feed.
Well, you do not have to talk to people who seem to you to ignore what you’re really saying. But that does not make it targeting, whether it’s an editor or anyone else. It’s just a disagreement. It’s happened to me in this thread–I still think I was right, my interlocutors in the wrong. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m fairly sure–I was not being targeted.
I don’t think so, but why not start a conversation about that, & maybe we can find out where people stand, at least those who are interested in the conversation? I’m new around here, so it would certainly help me check out the scene. Or if you’d like to start a let’s make fun of comedy routine, I’d be glad to join.
I will leave you and Tom to work out your issues, but please, don’t ever believe that your “legally genderless marriage” assertion is uncontroversial. I, for one, think it’s not only nonsense, but gratuitously insulting.
LOL. You have no idea what you’re in for. But just hang around a while. It will happen. I promise you. :)
Gratuitously insulting? How come? As for the non-controversial part, do you mean that it’s not self-evident or that it’s not true? Do you think same-sex marriage is not moving popular opinion, not to say law & politics, in a direction where the sexes are harder to distinguish & to understand by their distinction? Surely, it removes the fundamental legal understanding of the complementarity of the sexes! Or do you think it does not? Or that there’s no such thing?
I would think nothing of it if Cato or Herbert decided to argue with me on those points; they may say anything they want. As an editor you should say something only when you have something worthwhile to say. I don’t believe you did.
Then I’ll just bow-out of this one.
I said, homosexual marriage removes the fundamental legal understanding of the complementarity of the sexes! This complementarity was last asserted in American law by DOMA at the federal level & at state level by about 30 cosntitutional amendments in 30 states passing in the elections of 2008. I think these are facts–please let me know if I am mistaken. This was later attacked by the Supreme Court, by other federal courts, & we’ll see whether there is anything left of these political opinions made into law in a few years…
But these laws asserted that the gov’t is interested in the complementarity of the sexes, the ultimate reason for which is reproduction. When once this complementarity is removed, surely, being male or female will matter less in the law–‘individual’ will suffice. One more step out of nature & into liberal law. Now, if you find something with which you disagree here, could you please state your reasons for disagreeing as well?
It is true that DOMA was a federal statute and that there were many state statutes, referenda, and constitutional amendments (I can’t speak to the exact number) which either prohibited, or denied legal recognition to, marriage between two people of the same sex. It is also true that many of those have been changed or overruled by a variety of referenda, state statutes, and state and federal court decisions. Those facts are, I believe, not in dispute. They shouldn’t be anyway. They’re easily demonstrable.
How you get from there to “removes the fundamental legal understanding of the complementarity of the sexes” though is beyond me. That phrase, like “genderless marriage” is kind of gobbledygook. It’s vague, over-inclusive, and under-inclusive all at the same time, in such a way that it’s hard to conclude it means much of anything. And the fact that you, or anybody else, isn’t satisfied with the simple “gay people are being allowed to get married” — which is a simple, clear, and unbiased statement of the facts — sort of like my statement above about how the law has been changing — and instead resort to such gobbledygook makes me wonder why? In this case, it’s rather transparent that you’re trying to add ideas (which I don’t think have anything to do with what’s actually going on) to the basic, undisputed facts, in order to bias your reader. Simply put, I ain’t fallin’ for it.