The Federal Prop. 8 Trial / Gay Marriage Catch-All

The courts are establishing ironclad precedent.

Here's the quote on Regnerus:

Judge Friedman wrote:

The Court finds Regnerus's testimony entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration. The evidence adduced at trial demonstrated that his 2012 'study' was hastily concocted at the behest of a third-party funder, which found it 'essential that the necessary data be gathered to settle the question in the forum of public debate about what kinds of family arrangement are best for society' and which 'was confident that the traditional understanding of marriage will be vindicated by this study.' ... While Regnerus maintained that the funding source did not affect his impartiality as a researcher, the Court finds this testimony unbelievable. The funder clearly wanted a certain result, and Regnerus obliged.

I have a good friend of 21 years who posted on Facebook a few minutes ago that she's getting married tomorrow. Having your rights denied... I can't even imagine what that's like. Finding out at a moment's notice that "I'm getting married tomorrow" has to be surreal and kind of magical. So happy for her and others.

The kicker is that Schuette will almost assuredly be re elected.

Snyder will probably be, too, although that's not as definite as Schuette.

So, this may sound silly, and I promise I'm not trying to troll.

While reading another thread on this topic on Reddit I was wondering.

Due to the precedent set by the break down of the anti-marriage discrimination laws. Is there any reason why I couldn't marry my immediate family member (brother, sister, mother, father, son, daughter)? Wouldn't any legal challenge of those laws come to a similar result as the ones around gay marriage?

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

So, this may sound silly, and I promise I'm not trying to troll.

While reading another thread on this topic on Reddit I was wondering.

Due to the precedent set by the break down of the anti-marriage discrimination laws. Is there any reason why I couldn't marry my immediate family member (brother, sister, mother, father, son, daughter)? Wouldn't any legal challenge of those laws come to a similar result as the ones around gay marriage?

Barring flipper babies and coercion, there's no real reason why you couldn't. Proving no coercion would be impossible, and no court's going to say "OK, just as long as you aren't planning to have kids."

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:
Kamakazi010654 wrote:

So, this may sound silly, and I promise I'm not trying to troll.

While reading another thread on this topic on Reddit I was wondering.

Due to the precedent set by the break down of the anti-marriage discrimination laws. Is there any reason why I couldn't marry my immediate family member (brother, sister, mother, father, son, daughter)? Wouldn't any legal challenge of those laws come to a similar result as the ones around gay marriage?

Barring flipper babies and coercion, there's no real reason why you couldn't. Proving no coercion would be impossible, and no court's going to say "OK, just as long as you aren't planning to have kids."

I would imagine that the flipper babies would be used to show that there was actual, tangible, scientifically-proven evidence that having parent marry their children or siblings marry each other poses a real societal risk versus the hooey the anti-gay marriage crowd has been spewing about how having gay parents hurts children.

That and the social taboo on incest is pretty much hardwired.

OG_slinger wrote:

That and the social taboo on incest is pretty much hardwired.

Unless it's a step-child-parent-thing then it gets a little murkier. Especially if you're a famous artist. And here in Alabama I've heard several arguments for dating cousins depending on how far removed they are from you genetically.

Would something about the possible problems for a person that doesn't exist yet hold up in court though? I mean we aren't the type of society to sterilize people based on genetic defects even though those will pass to their children.

It is certainly highly taboo, but so was gay marriage for most of the history of the United States.

There's also a bit of a built-in taboo (the Westermarck Effect), but clearly, that doesn't affect everyone.

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

I mean we aren't the type of society to sterilize people based on [perceived] defects

Well, not recently, at least.

Demosthenes wrote:

Well, we know we legally married you, but... nope!

(╬ Ò ‸ Ó)

I have been posting in my Michigan friends' facebook posts about how great the news was, and then this.

Is it okay that I don't have something more eloquent to say then:

Pricks.

I didn't even have words, I had to go with an "I'm angry" emoticon.

In Michigan's defense, I think this is the same as it's been in most of the other states. We just made the hasty decision of granting licenses on a Saturday before the stay could be applied.

Doesn't excuse Schuette's douchetasticness or Snyder's cowardice on the matter.

edit -- this will (hopefully) be brutal for the Michigan GOP. one of the marriages they're ignoring is that of a GOP strategist.

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

So, this may sound silly, and I promise I'm not trying to troll.

While reading another thread on this topic on Reddit I was wondering.

Due to the precedent set by the break down of the anti-marriage discrimination laws. Is there any reason why I couldn't marry my immediate family member (brother, sister, mother, father, son, daughter)? Wouldn't any legal challenge of those laws come to a similar result as the ones around gay marriage?

I doubt it. Being hot for your sister isn't a sexual orientation, so I don't think you can draw a line between the that and gay marriage, legally speaking.

It's basically the same argument as "if we let the gays get married, then people will start marrying horses."

Regarding marrying family members, some info from Wikipedia about anti-incest laws in USA. As a point of order, I assume since a marriage can be cancelled without consummation that all these laws would also technically apply to marriage.

Wikipedia[/url]]United States[edit]
See also: Prohibited degree of kinship#United States
In the United States the District of Columbia and every state except Rhode Island[39] have some form of codified incest prohibition. However, individual statutes vary widely. Ohio only targets parental figures,[40] and New Jersey does not apply any penalties when both parties are 18 years of age or older.[40] A conviction for incest attracts the following penalties by state:
5 years imprisonment in Hawaii, Florida
10 years imprisonment in North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota
14 years imprisonment in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Idaho
15 years imprisonment in Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and West Virginia
20 years imprisonment in Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, and Vermont
25 years imprisonment in Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky
Life imprisonment in Georgia,[41] Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Three convictions or more of incest also require the offenders to register as "Sex Offenders"
In all states, close blood-relatives that fall under the incest statutes include:
Father
Mother
Grandfather
Grandmother
Brother
Sister
Aunt
Uncle
Niece
Nephew
In some states, sex between first cousins is prohibited. The cousin marriage law in the United States by state article has a table which shows that cousin sex as well as cousin marriage is outlawed in some states.
Rhode Island allows uncles to marry their nieces if they are part of a community, such as orthodox Jews, for whom such marriages are permitted. Many states also apply incest laws to non-blood relations, including stepparents, step-siblings, and in-laws.[42]

I'm noticing a distinct lack of Michigan on that list. This disturbs me.

CptDomano wrote:

I'm noticing a distinct lack of Michigan on that list. This excites me.

FTFY.

Jonman wrote:
Kamakazi010654 wrote:

So, this may sound silly, and I promise I'm not trying to troll.

While reading another thread on this topic on Reddit I was wondering.

Due to the precedent set by the break down of the anti-marriage discrimination laws. Is there any reason why I couldn't marry my immediate family member (brother, sister, mother, father, son, daughter)? Wouldn't any legal challenge of those laws come to a similar result as the ones around gay marriage?

I doubt it. Being hot for your sister isn't a sexual orientation, so I don't think you can draw a line between the that and gay marriage, legally speaking.

It's basically the same argument as "if we let the gays get married, then people will start marrying horses."

Well, I think the key point of not being able to marry and bang horses is due to the problem of consent, which wouldn't be a problem for incestual coupling.

when I look at it, if you are going to say that two *insert sexual orientation here* consenting adults can get married because it is discrimination to not allow them to wouldn't it also be discrimination against certain people to not be able to say "two consenting adults*period*

Respectfully; let's take the incest and bestiality comments somewhere else. This is a thread about same-sex marriage rights not the fore mentioned topics. I am finding the discussion to be disrespectful toward my relationship with my partner. I get enough of that outside this forum community.

The comments have crossed the troll line. Also, I find a rule of thumb to be if you have to prefix your statement that you are trying not to be something the text that follows is just that.

Blondish83 wrote:

Respectfully; let's take the incest and bestiality comments somewhere else. This is a thread about same-sex marriage rights not the fore mentioned topics. I am finding the discussion to be disrespectful toward my relationship with my partner. I get enough of that outside this forum community.

The comments have crossed the troll line. Also, I find a rule of thumb to be if you have to prefix your statement that you are trying not to be something the text that follows is just that.

Okay, I'm sorry to have caused any issues, it really was not my intent.

I'm so happy for this. I know people who are affected...YEH!

I don't even know where to start with this piece of work:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Students and parents at Charlotte Catholic High School are speaking out after they say a campus lecturer forcefully condemned homosexuality with outdated statistics, prejudiced stereotypes and other extremist claims.

As of Friday morning, more than 2,100 people had signed onto a Change.org petition asking the school and its chaplain, Father Matthew Kauth, to apologize for the lecture led last Friday by Sister Jane Dominic Laurel, a professor at Nashville’s Aquinas College, whose other lectures and presentations posted online also contain wildly inaccurate accusations about gay people and sexuality.

In a separate action, 64 students and 86 alumni signed onto a letter with similar requests and sent directly to school officials.

Here are some of the highlights of this alleged educated nun:

1. Masturbation can make you gay.
2. Not having a father around can make you gay.
3. Watching pornography makes you gay.
4. Gay men have 500-1000 sexual partners. (I should have been so lucky.)
5. Gay parents systematically abuse their children.

And my personal favorite...
6. Oral sex is not natural and straight people imported the practice from gay people.

Let's speak plainly about #6. If you are married and insisting you do not engage in oral sex, you are either a liar or stupid.

As for the rest, this woman needs to find a new line of work that doesn't involve academics because she certainly has no concept of doing research. There are ZERO peer-reviewed and reputable studies that indicate that masturbation, absent fathers or watching pornography makes you gay. For the good Sis to make such a claim is dishonesty at best.

Even worse is that this "lecture" was mandatory for the students.

Because, of course, who better to lecture students about abnormal sexual practices than someone who freely chose celibacy?

Phoenix Rev wrote:

I don't even know where to start with this piece of work:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Students and parents at Charlotte Catholic High School are speaking out after they say a campus lecturer forcefully condemned homosexuality with outdated statistics, prejudiced stereotypes and other extremist claims.

As of Friday morning, more than 2,100 people had signed onto a Change.org petition asking the school and its chaplain, Father Matthew Kauth, to apologize for the lecture led last Friday by Sister Jane Dominic Laurel, a professor at Nashville’s Aquinas College, whose other lectures and presentations posted online also contain wildly inaccurate accusations about gay people and sexuality.

In a separate action, 64 students and 86 alumni signed onto a letter with similar requests and sent directly to school officials.

Here are some of the highlights of this alleged educated nun:

1. Masturbation can make you gay.
2. Not having a father around can make you gay.
3. Watching pornography makes you gay.
4. Gay men have 500-1000 sexual partners. (I should have been so lucky.)
5. Gay parents systematically abuse their children.

And my personal favorite...
6. Oral sex is not natural and straight people imported the practice from gay people.

Let's speak plainly about #6. If you are married and insisting you do not engage in oral sex, you are either a liar or stupid.

As for the rest, this woman needs to find a new line of work that doesn't involve academics because she certainly has no concept of doing research. There are ZERO peer-reviewed and reputable studies that indicate that masturbation, absent fathers or watching pornography makes you gay. For the good Sis to make such a claim is dishonesty at best.

Even worse is that this "lecture" was mandatory for the students.

Because, of course, who better to lecture students about abnormal sexual practices than someone who freely chose celibacy?

I read this as well. The only good news seems to be that students at this Catholic school thought this was the offensive crap that it is.

On a related note of bizarre belief, out of the blue one of my high school students today, when we were discussing an article about gender roles, stated something along the lines of, "because like being gay, this is not something natural."

It was so out of the blue, unexpected, it took me a second to respond. I didn't have time to have a real discussion, so all I said was, "Well, since I know about...40 times as many gay people as you do, I think you will have to trust me that their stories reflect that we are born this way. You could also look at the study that shows that for each male birth after the first, the chance of a male baby being born gay goes up significantly." And I just couldn't off the top of my head think of a way to phrase, "And since there's nothing wrong with being gay or preferring the same sex, who gives a flying f*** if people are born that way "naturally" or not?"

The study I was referring to also points out, "The researchers said the environment the male was brought up in makes no difference at all. The only link is that the older brother(s) shared the same womb."

But I should have been able to come up with a better response to "being gay is not natural" than what popped into my head, "No, YOU'RE unnatural." And what I said above just...wasn't even close to the depth of what I wanted to say to this 16 year old girl...

harumph. kids these days. in Greece.

Phoenix Rev wrote:

6. Oral sex is not natural and straight people imported the practice from gay people.

I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the gay community for the things they have given the straight community. High five, guys!

That article has a link to one of her YouTube videos, but I saw this story from another news source originally which had a different video...

It's clear that she loves to teach and speak. But, in the grand Catholic tradition, it's always someone who has sworn celibacy and chastity who feels the need to speak on how intimate relationships should work. And these aren't even new lies. They're the same old typical crap that the Catholics have been peddling since I was in school. Research isn't needed nor heeded when you think you have an infallible being and Church behind you. The truth can't be gleaned from data, especially if the data contradicts your infallible backers.

And so what if you're lying a little bit? You're protecting the kids from themselves and the other, BIGGER liars out there with your smaller lies, right? You're keeping them out of sin. Go confess and you're right with God, and doing his work in the process.

I'm speculating on her thought processes, of course, but I've heard these kinds of justifications from practicing Catholics charged with teaching before. I wouldn't be at all surprised if her thought process was similar.

If it makes anyone feel better she's no longer speaking in May at the convention in Asheville.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/04/01/4810338/controversial-nun-cancels-may.html