Quote:The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning. When new insight reveals discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed.

Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here. But when that sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied.

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

Quote:When decisions are reached through democratic means, some people will inevitably be disappointed with the results. But those whose views do not prevail at least know that they have had their say, and accordingly are—in the tradition of our political culture—reconciled to the result of a fair and honest debate. ... But today the Court puts a stop to all that. By deciding this question under the Constitution, the Court removes it from the realm of democratic decision. There will be consequences to shutting down the political process on an issue of such profound public significance. Closing debate tends to close minds. People denied a voice are less likely to accept the ruling of a court on an issue that does not seem to be the sort of thing courts usually decide.

If you are among the many Americans—of whatever sexual orientation—who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision. Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.

Quote:This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.

But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch.

If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: "The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity," I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.

Quote:By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas. Recalling the harsh treatment of gays and lesbians in the past, some may think that turn-about is fair play. But if that sentiment prevails, the Nation will experience bitter and lasting wounds.

(06-28-2015, 04:47 PM)Taem Wrote: That's funny, because neither is drug use specifically mentioned in the Constitution, yet look what we have? I feel the explosion of marketed designer drugs really took off once all drugs we're regulated by the FDA and made illegal, and this is why most drugs will never be legal, not to "protect" us, but because money is money folks... but marriage wasn't up against such stark adversity.

Quote:Roberts’s Obergefell dissent is, at its heart, an attack on the method Justice Anthony Kennedy used to reach the majority’s conclusion that the Constitution forbids states from denying equal marriage rights to same-sex couples. Kennedy held that marriage is a fundamental right, and that this right extends to same-sex couples. Roberts offers a harsh response:

Stripped of its shiny rhetorical gloss, the majority’s argument is that the Due Process Clause gives same-sex couples a fundamental right to marry because it will be good for them and for society. If I were a legislator, I would certainly consider that view as a matter of social policy. But as a judge, I find the majority’s position indefensible as a matter of constitutional law.

This is not a frivolous critique, as the Court’s fundamental rights jurisprudence has long been one of the most rudderless and unbounded areas of the law. As Roberts explains, the Obergefell plaintiffs’ “‘fundamental right’ claim falls into the most sensitive category of constitutional adjudication.” This claim does not rest upon a right that is specifically mentioned in the Constitution. Rather, the plaintiffs argued that marriage discrimination violates “a right implied by the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement that ‘liberty’ may not be deprived without ‘due process of law.’”

This method, of implying rights from the Fourteenth Amendment’s vague promise that liberty shall not be denied without due process — otherwise known as “substantive due process” — has a dark history. As I explain in my book, Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted, conservatives used this doctrine to hobble laws intended to benefit workers in the early twentieth century. The Supreme Court used it to strike down laws establishing a minimum wage, ensuring that laborers would not be overworked, and protecting workers’ right to organize.

(Substantive due process also formed the basis of a decision conservatives love to hate — Roe v. Wade — although, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has explained, a Supreme Court decision abolishing substantive due process would not necessarily mean the end of the right to choose.)

• The Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906 -- To protect people from the sale of "adulterated" or "misbranded" foods or drugs
  
• The Harrison Act (1914) -- originally was to track the sale of narcotics, like Opium. Trading and using was still an individual right. In 1915, it was amended to add a tax. By 1921, regulating narcotics was fully in federal law enforcement control.

Rufus King, Esq., chairman of the American Bar Associations committee on narcotics, 1953 Yale Law Journal Wrote:The true addict, by universally accepted definitions, is totally enslaved to his habit. He will do anything to fend off the illness, marked by physical and emotional agony, that results from abstinence. So long as society will not traffic with him on any terms, he must remain the abject servitor of his vicious nemesis, the peddler. The addict will commit crimes-mostly petty offenses like shoplifting and prostitution-to get the price the peddler asks. He will peddle dope and make new addicts if those are his master's terms. Drugs are a commodity of trifling intrinsic value. All the billions our society has spent enforcing criminal measures against the addict have had the sole practical result of protecting the peddler's market, artificially inflating his prices, and keeping his profits fantastically high. No other nation hounds its addicts as we do, and no other nation faces anything remotely resembling our problem.

(06-26-2015, 05:28 PM)Bolty Wrote: I found Justice Alito's dissent particularly amazing. That this decision would marginalize "Americans who have traditional ideas." If I believe something that is wholly unfair and wrong to a sizeable portion of the population, and a law is passed that runs against that belief, I'm not being marginalized. I was wrong, because it was my beliefs that were marginalizing other people. This seems entirely basic and elementary.

Justice Thomas Wrote:The corollary of that principle is that human dignity
cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not
lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity)
because the government allowed them to be enslaved.
Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity
because the government confined them. And those denied
governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity
because the government denies them those benefits. The
government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it
away.

FireIceTalon Wrote:On the other hand, I generally dislike the institution of marriage in general, hopefully the next stop will be the abolition of marriage as a whole (but that is another topic)? While certainly a victory, it is still a hollow one, because the problems run so much deeper and more fundamental than this.

Quote:I guess the capitalists have decided though, that it is more profitable to allow same-sex couples to get married.

Quote:Further, I fear that many right-wingers and KKK types may socially marginalize and even harass and assault gay/lesbian couples they see in public to express their outrage as a result of this decision. Lastly, I am not sure it does anything to help those in the transgender community, specifically.

(06-29-2015, 04:00 PM)LemmingofGlory Wrote: I'm reminded of the majority opinion in this case and this statement: "Respondents’ argument that allowing samesex
couples to wed will harm marriage as an institution rests on a
counterintuitive view of opposite-sex couples’ decisions about marriage
and parenthood." Because I feel, rather consistently, that you have a counterintuitive view of society and culture due to a blind spot where "theory of mind" ought be. To take an issue about personal security and spin it up into the machinations of The Invisible Hand, your tired old communist diatribe, is myopic in the extreme. Or maybe you just want attention. Gross.

Quote:As I said to you a few years back, your fears are largely based on a mechanical understanding of culture and not on what it's like to actually live in it

Quote:but that's kinda expected because of the neckbeard I imagine you have, perhaps in homage to your philosophical forebears.

(06-29-2015, 05:09 PM)FireIceTalon Wrote: Actually no offense, but I'm afraid it is YOU that has the counter-intuitive and myopic view of society, my friend: You want to separate a decision made through the bourgeois legal system from the totality of bourgeois historical rule, which is just laughable. This leads to a short-sighted view and analysis where you cannot see the forest through the trees, and thus why bourgeois idealism always fails and comes up short in its explanatory power, leading to a complete distorted or even vulgar view of the actual social conditions (whether it is of the "left" or "right" variety, it makes no difference).

Quote: My point was/is, is that this decision will NOT change the structural dynamic of homophobia under bourgeois rule - just as the Civil Rights Movement didn't (and couldn't) end racism (and as a matter of fact, it can be argued that America is even more racist now than it was back then, but that's another topic).

Quote: It is completely folly and idealistic to think that homosexuals can ever have the same social legitimacy as heterosexuals under capitalist social relations.

Quote:Yes, this decision is a victory, but again, it only ends the LEGAL basis for the justification of homophobia, not homophobia itself. Heterosexuality is STILL the default position on sexual relations in bourgeois society, and will be so long as capitalism exists - regardless of what idealist, bullshit hippie liberal views of "culture" you may have.

Quote:Sorry if I am not jumping up and down and screaming with joy like most liberal idiots are now who now naively think that gays and lesbians will have equal footing in society.

Quote:As capital develops more globally, the dominant ruling class ideologies become more cosmopolitan, socially liberal and inclusive. While being less likely to be religious, racist, and nationalist. Because they MUST, in order to justify their class rule. But this has nothing to do with capitalism becoming a nicer, more benevolent system - far from it. This process will become more apparent as older, more conservative generations die off and the capitalist class is replaced by younger and more libertarian rightist types.

Quote:Lastly, regarding Transgenders, the discrimination they face goes beyond sexual orientation, which this law does not (and cannot) address.

Quote:Cute. (presumptuous) stereotypes against people with large beards as people who presumably sit at a computer all day and never go outside, to summarize your rosy facebook liberal nonsense. Just like if all poor people work harder, they will better their unfortunate circumstances, right?

Quote: Actually, I shave pretty regularly. Especially during times of the year when it is reaching triple digits outside like now. So your little discriminatory stereotype (that doesn't even apply to me anyways) only serves to make you look like a dumbass. I would expect nothing less from a clueless, utopian liberal who just got backed into a corner, though.

Quote:HAHAHA! "No u"! Oh man, all this jargon is like if tumblr was communist instead of social justice butthurt. It still smacks of "I spend all day stewing in my own juices." I really don't know where all of your assumptions come from when what you've seen of my perspective is rather minute, but then I don't see the need to go on world-building diatribes in every thread.

Quote:This is a point that no one would argue. Why do you think it's profound? It is abundantly clear to everyone, most especially LGBT people, that marriage isn't the end-all.

Quote:This is the funniest line you've ever written. No, wait, this is funnier.

Quote:You're just a big red sandwich board, aren't ya?

Quote:This is what I said about your problems with theory of mind, man. Your perception of what people are thinking is biased toward your own view that everyone is a clueless moron.

Quote:I don't think you understand what the term "neckbeard" means. Also, your insults don't work together.

Quote:I bet you're fun at parties.

(06-29-2015, 08:39 PM)FireIceTalon Wrote: Indeed, you haven't provided much perspective to the whole situation, which is precisely my point . The little perspective you have provided, is faulty and misguided at best. If you don't like people calling you out on bullshit, then here's a word of advice: don't spew (or in this case type) bullshit.

Quote:Perhaps it is in your little bourgeois civil rights utopia where all the jargon and 'world-building' is taking place. Liberals love capitalism with rainbows and unicorns, afterall.

Quote:What? I don't see the oppression and treatment of a sector of society as second class citizens being funny in the least. Scoffing at the truth is going to get you nowhere, except make you look elitist (as liberals tend to do to themselves) and out of touch, which you clearly are.

Quote: Maybe. But it is more than can be said for what you have brought to the picnic thus far.

(06-30-2015, 06:30 AM)FireIceTalon Wrote: Then perhaps you should focus more on putting your "perspective" out there, than trying to personally discredit me or the framework which I operate within? Just a thought. And...

Quote:You calling anyone a crackpot is laughable at best, when you either refuse to (or cannot) come up with a reasoned argument to counter my points about queer couples under capitalist rule and how heteronormativity works as a sociological process within said system.

Quote:I suspect it comes from an inability you have to think critically about sociological issues, and you are too concerned with trying to discredit the Marxist method as a way of getting at me, instead of discussing the issues themselves.

Quote:But at this point, I am not really interested anymore in possibly having a intellectual discussion with you on queer relationships and class rule,

(06-30-2015, 03:33 PM)LemmingofGlory Wrote: Because not a single person on this forum feels the need to lay out their entire socioeconomicpolitical outlook in order to discuss individual topics. I provide plenty of meat for conversation. Yours is the same old gnawed bone, in every thread. That's what I'm saying.

FIT Wrote: ... "a reasoned argument to counter my points about queer couples under capitalist rule and how heteronormativity works as a sociological process within said system."

FIT Wrote: I suspect it comes from an inability you have to think critically about sociological issues, and you are too concerned with trying to discredit the Marxist method as a way of getting at me, instead of discussing the issues themselves.

FIT Wrote: But at this point, I am not really interested anymore in possibly having a intellectual discussion with you on queer relationships and class rule,

(07-01-2015, 03:51 PM)kandrathe Wrote: Um. How about the treatment of homosexuals under past and present communist governments? I see no rainbows there. Or, are we projecting to the fantasy-land Marxist utopia that has never, and will probably never exist?

Quote:I suspect you are incapable of seeing anything beyond those RED goggles with RED blinders. >90% of the average persons life involves interacting with the capitalist system, either earning or spending wages. I'm sure if you put your mind to it, the mere act of defecating might hold some insights into the glory of Marx, and the failure of Das Capital.

(07-01-2015, 04:42 PM)FireIceTalon Wrote: Interestingly enough, it was Lenin and the Bolsheviks who legalized homosexuality after centuries of repression against queers under capitalist, Tsarist leadership. Perhaps you should you should put the Ayn Rand novels down and read a little more about the history of socialism (and no, The Black Book of Communism doesn't count).

Quote:And my friend, the only thing utopian are people like you who hold the myopic and EXTREMELY mechanical, deterministic view that capitalism represents the end of history.

Quote:This system is already imploding across the globe, and I would say to think that this system can continue as it is, unabated, without any kind of radical social change taking place in the future - THAT is utopian thinking. It is not the Marxists who are utopian, it is the historians who view history in a deterministic linear, and non-dialectical fashion and think that society stays stagnant that are the utopian ones.

Quote:Perhaps because Marxism does a BETTER job at explaining and understanding the world as it actually is, than mainstream political theories do? I'm sure that didn't occur to ya.

Quote:If I found other methods to be better, I would adopt those, but very clearly they aren't. It is you, not I, that sticks to a particular framework for the sake of holding up your ideology in favor of actually understanding the material workings of the world.

Quote:You make 50 bucks an hour, it is probably not in your class interests to adhere to a framework that slaughters your sacred cows and challenges your PRIVILEGED position in society, no matter how truthful that framework may be. Given you are part of the so-called labor aristocracy, your dislike of Marxism comes as no surprise, really. Your credibility on Marxism's legitimacy as a paradigm, is at best, shoddy.