Illinois: Gay marriage amendment will not be on the ballot

[Texas Lynn]

It's hardly a case of minority rights. It's reaffirming the definition of the right. Forbidding blacks to marry would be a violation of minority rights. Forbidding homosexuals to marry would be a violation of minority rights, but that is not what is happening here. Marriage is being defined as unity between a man and a woman and people can enter it irregardless of race or sexual preference, but they cannot marry someone of their own sex.

Which makes it useless, and these comments cruel. Shame.

 

[george78]

Of course, marriage used to be defined as unity between a man and a
woman of the same race. The bigots back then claimed that there was no
discrimination, since everyone had an equal right to marry someone of their own race.



Irony might just be the single most potent force in the Universe.

I must ask, Why do people insist on trying to link loving to the same-sex marriage debate when the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that it is not applicable????

The SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES HAS SUMMARILY AFFIRMED THAT:

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967), upon which petitioners additionally rely, does not militate against this conclusion. Virginia's antimiscegenation statute, prohibiting interracial marriages, was invalidated solely on the grounds of its patent racial discrimination. As Mr. Chief Justice Warren wrote for the court (388 U.S. 12, 87 S.Ct. 1824, 18 L.Ed.2d 1018):

"Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 86 L.Ed. 1655 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190, 8 S.Ct. 723, 31 L. Ed. 654 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations."
​

Loving does indicate that not all state restrictions upon the right to marry are beyond reach of the Fourteenth Amendment. But in commonsense and in a constitutional sense, there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex.

When SCOTUS distingishes a case, and rules it not applicable, guess what, It's not applicable. Case closed. You can't simply continue to rely on it, when it's been rejected.

Further, numerous Courts since SCOTUS have ruled:


WASHINGTON
-------------------------------------------------------
Loving is not analogous. In Loving the Court determined that the
purpose of the antimiscegenation statute was racial discrimination, "and
the fact of equal application does not immunize the statute from the very
heavy burden of justification which the Fourteenth Amendment has
traditionally required of state statutes drawn according to race." Loving,
388 U.S. at 9. The Court also said that the Lovings fundamental freedom of
choice to marry may "not be restricted by invidious racial
discriminations." Loving, 388 U.S. at 12. If plaintiffs' case were truly
analogous to Loving, we would first have to find that DOMA discriminates on
the basis of sex and then conclude that the right to marriage is violated
because of the restriction due to sex discrimination. However, as the
State urges, DOMA treats men and women the same.
Other courts have also rejected the argument that Loving is analogous.
E.g., Baker, 291 Minn. at 314 (Virginia's antimiscegenation statute was
invalidated on the grounds of patent racial discrimination); Hernandez,
2006 N.Y. slip op. 5239, at *17-18 (Loving addressed a racially
discriminatory statute; in contrast, with regard to the plaintiffs'
challenge to the law limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples:
"{p}laintiffs do not argue here that the legislation they challenge is
designed to subordinate either men to women or women to men as a class");
Baker, 170 Vt. at 215 n.13.In Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 1817, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010
(1967), an antimiscegenation law barring marriage between white and other
races was based upon racial discriminatory purposes bearing no relationship
to governmental interests in fostering stable marriages of one man and one
woman.24
We vigorously reject any attempt to link the discriminatory
antimiscegenation laws in Loving with this State's DOMA. The Washington
Court of Appeals in Singer correctly noted:
The Loving and Perez courts {Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal. 2d 711, 198 P.2d 17
(1948)} did not change the basic definition of marriage as the legal union
of one man and one woman; rather, they merely held that the race of the man
or woman desiring to enter that relationship could not be considered by the
state in granting a marriage license.

11 Wn. App. at 255 n.8. Numerous other courts have all rejected the claim
that the decision in Loving somehow challenged state laws reaffirming
marriage as the union of one man and one woman.25
Careful review of the historical context of Loving further undermines the
dissents' disturbing attempt to link constitutionally void, racist laws
with a historical definition of marriage as between a man and woman.
Antimiscegenation laws were anathema to the "color-blind" constitution
articulated in Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissent in Plessy v.
Ferguson.26 Antimiscegenation laws infringed upon the union of one man and
one woman by injecting racial status as a qualification. Such laws
contradicted the fact that a man and a woman of any race have the natural
right to marry and have children. This right is protected by the United
States and Washington State Constitutions.
Racially discriminatory antimiscegenation laws also violate the right to
marriage between a man and a woman. Here, in contrast, the State's DOMA
simply confirms the common law understanding of marriage as a union of a
man and woman. It is the dissent that would abrogate the common law
understanding through judicial fiat.

------------------------------------------

NEW YORK

---------------------------------------
the historical background of Loving is different from the history underlying this case. Racism has been recognized for centuries — at first by a few people, and later by many more — as a revolting moral evil. This country fought a civil war to eliminate racism's worst manifestation, slavery, and passed three constitutional amendments to eliminate that curse and its vestiges. Loving was part of the civil rights revolution of the 1950's and 1960's, the triumph of a cause for which many heroes and many ordinary people had struggled since our nation began. [*7]It is true that there has been serious injustice in the treatment of homosexuals also, a wrong that has been widely recognized only in the relatively recent past, and one our Legislature tried to address when it enacted the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act four years ago (L 2002, ch 2). But the traditional definition of marriage is not merely a by-product of historical injustice. Its history is of a different kind.
The idea that same-sex marriage is even possible is a relatively new one. Until a few decades ago, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex. A court should not lightly conclude that everyone who held this belief was irrational, ignorant or bigoted. We do not so conclude.



By limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples, New York is not engaging in sex discrimination. The limitation does not put men and women in different classes, and give one class a benefit not given to the other. Women and men are treated alike — they are permitted to marry people of the opposite sex, but not people of their own sex. This is not the kind of sham equality that the Supreme Court confronted in Loving; the statute there, prohibiting black and white people from marrying each other, was in substance anti-black legislation. Plaintiffs do not [*9]argue here that the legislation they challenge is designed to subordinate either men to women or women to men as a class.

Plaintiffs' reliance on Loving v Virginia (388 US 1 [1967]) for the proposition that the U.S. Supreme Court has established a fundamental "right to marry the spouse of one's choice" outside the male/female construct is misplaced. In Loving, an interracial couple argued that Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, which precluded "any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian" (id. at 5 n 4), violated the Federal Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. The statute made intermarriage in violation of its terms a felony carrying a potential jail sentence of one to five years. The Lovings — a white woman and a black man — had married in violation of the law and been convicted, prompting them to challenge the validity of the Virginia law.

The Supreme Court struck the statute on both equal protection and due process grounds, but the focus of the analysis was on the Equal Protection Clause. Noting that "[t]he clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States," the Court applied strict scrutiny review to the racial classification, finding "no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification" (id. at 10-11). It made clear "that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the [*14]Equal Protection Clause" (id. at 12). There is no question that the Court viewed this anti-miscegenation statute as an affront to the very purpose for the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment — to combat invidious racial discrimination.

In its brief due process analysis, the Supreme Court reiterated that marriage is a right "fundamental to our very existence and survival" (id., citing Skinner, 316 US 535, 541) — a clear reference to the link between marriage and procreation. It reasoned: "To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes . . . is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law" (id.). Although the Court characterized the right to marry as a "choice," it did not articulate the broad "right to marry the spouse of one's choice" suggested by plaintiffs here. Rather, the Court observed that "[t]he Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations" (id. [emphasis added])[FN2]. Needless to say, a statutory scheme that burdens a fundamental right by making conduct criminal based on the race of the individual who engages in it is inimical to the values embodied in the State and Federal Due Process Clauses. Far from recognizing a right to marry extending beyond the one woman and one man union,[FN3] it is evident from the Loving decision that the Supreme Court viewed marriage as fundamental precisely because of its relationship to human procreation.[FN4] [*15]

----------------------------------------------

 

[Yusuf Evans]

I must ask, Why do people insist on trying to link loving to the same-sex marriage debate when the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that it is not applicable????

Your guess is as good as mine.

 

[The_Horses_Boy]

Your guess is as good as mine.

ditto.


... hah, always reminds me of Living Color. "I never loved your mother, I married her because she had six job."

 

[Rae]

See? My state gets things right sometimes. Not my governator, but my state does.

 

[Texas Lynn]

I must ask, Why do people insist on trying to link loving to the same-sex marriage debate when the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that it is not applicable????

Just like scripture, everybody interprets the constitution differently. And the social context is exactly the same. Both are attempts to put the brakes on social change and as such having limited success.

I had to laugh at myself and everybody else when we went to a Bill Gaither Homecoming concert. Gaither is, for those of you who don't know him, an impresario of old time gospel music, with a talented stable of performers and crew who sell their own materials (CDs, etc.)in the lobbies during and after the show. As always I look for religious right content in this stuff, just for observation's sake, not to protest it or anything (Gaither's wife Gloria apparently cowrote some stuff with Shirley Dobson, wife of the PRR powerhouse Jim D.) but there was nada. I was sizing up the audience, most of which seemed to be salt of the earth type folks from small evangelical churches. Finally as we were leaving we saw one Bush-Cheney sticker on one car. That was it.

But I did note one thing: The audience was 99.9% white but there were at least three Black Man-White Woman couples-the sort of people Loving corrected the suppression of. I had to laugh at how innocuous they seemed, yet 50 years previous in a similar crowd they'd have been anathema.

I think in another 50 years same gender couples will be just as innocuous at such events.

 

[Adriac]

It's hardly a case of minority rights. It's reaffirming the definition of the right. Forbidding blacks to marry would be a violation of minority rights. Forbidding homosexuals to marry would be a violation of minority rights, but that is not what is happening here. Marriage is being defined as unity between a man and a woman and people can enter it irregardless of race or sexual preference, but they cannot marry someone of their own sex.

Which is discrimination on the basis of gender.

 

[shadowmage36]

Just like scripture, everybody interprets the constitution differently. And the social context is exactly the same. Both are attempts to put the brakes on social change and as such having limited success.

I had to laugh at myself and everybody else when we went to a Bill Gaither Homecoming concert. Gaither is, for those of you who don't know him, an impresario of old time gospel music, with a talented stable of performers and crew who sell their own materials (CDs, etc.)in the lobbies during and after the show. As always I look for religious right content in this stuff, just for observation's sake, not to protest it or anything (Gaither's wife Gloria apparently cowrote some stuff with Shirley Dobson, wife of the PRR powerhouse Jim D.) but there was nada. I was sizing up the audience, most of which seemed to be salt of the earth type folks from small evangelical churches. Finally as we were leaving we saw one Bush-Cheney sticker on one car. That was it.

But I did note one thing: The audience was 99.9% white but there were at least three Black Man-White Woman couples-the sort of people Loving corrected the suppression of. I had to laugh at how innocuous they seemed, yet 50 years previous in a similar crowd they'd have been anathema.

I think in another 50 years same gender couples will be just as innocuous at such events.

The problem is that it still going to take 50 years for this to happen. For many gay couples out there, that's 50 years too long.

 

[Kgreg]

Just like scripture, everybody interprets the constitution differently. And the social context is exactly the same. Both are attempts to put the brakes on social change and as such having limited success.

I had to laugh at myself and everybody else when we went to a Bill Gaither Homecoming concert. Gaither is, for those of you who don't know him, an impresario of old time gospel music, with a talented stable of performers and crew who sell their own materials (CDs, etc.)in the lobbies during and after the show. As always I look for religious right content in this stuff, just for observation's sake, not to protest it or anything (Gaither's wife Gloria apparently cowrote some stuff with Shirley Dobson, wife of the PRR powerhouse Jim D.) but there was nada. I was sizing up the audience, most of which seemed to be salt of the earth type folks from small evangelical churches. Finally as we were leaving we saw one Bush-Cheney sticker on one car. That was it.

But I did note one thing: The audience was 99.9% white but there were at least three Black Man-White Woman couples-the sort of people Loving corrected the suppression of. I had to laugh at how innocuous they seemed, yet 50 years previous in a similar crowd they'd have been anathema.

I think in another 50 years same gender couples will be just as innocuous at such events.

I think it will be much worse than that.

 

[Kgreg]

I must ask, Why do people insist on trying to link loving to the same-sex marriage debate when the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that it is not applicable????

Because it suits their agenda and they will stop at nothing, including misconstruance of the Gospels as well as the law, to achieve it.

 

[TheMissus]

Perhaps people are making the connection with interracial couples and same-sex couples because the same arguments against interracial marriages have been trotted out again against same-sex marriage. The whole "it'll destroy the fabric of marriage" crap.

 

[Arnold_Philips]

^True. It doesn't seem like I can post this enough.

http://www.buddybuddy.com/quiz-1.html

 

[Texas Lynn]

The problem is that it still going to take 50 years for this to happen. For many gay couples out there, that's 50 years too long.

Of course and thanks for noting that.

 

[Pinp]

Because it suits their agenda and they will stop at nothing, including misconstruance of the Gospels as well as the law, to achieve it.

Be careful when you point the finger at someone. Remember that there are three pointing back plankeye.