Responsible? No need for you to be married, then. (Page 2)

1. It's easier for me to read.

I don't like it when there are posts that scroll to the end of an area in a site, any site, and have no visual break in them to help with reading. Plus with many sites the width varies by screen size, browser, user settings. So this is a way to control the look of the type. I write my emails this way too. It also helps me keep my thoughts gathered into groups, much like using paragraphs. So I think of it as maybe a new type of paragraph for online text.  It helps me to write more clearly. Do you not like it?

2. Your ETA may in fact be correct.  
The OP was the first I heard of this.
I can't argue it here, but I know in the past we've discussed
the issue of protected class, or perhaps non protected class,
under the 14th Amendment as the way in which 
something like DOMA could be upheld under the constitution.

Paul Clement is a brilliant guy.
If anyone wants to underestimate him, go ahead. 

He may be, but his argument is laughable. Same sex couples also use pregnancy methods that produce multiple offspring... is that planed for to have twins?

All the arguments of offspring always come back to the same point... infertile and post-menopausal couples are not "married" and deserve no protection or benefits because they can't have planned or unplanned pregnancies.

There is absolutely not one single logical or legal argument to keep same sex couples from being married... not with adoption, artificial fertility procedures, common law marriages when people shack up long enough, drive through marriage windows in Vegas, and divorce rates and unwed pregnancies being what they are today.

Now if there was a law to do away with all that stuff, or you just don't like gay marriage, or you are opposed to it from some religious reasons... fine. But don't tell me "traditional" marriage is some how threatened and then try to dream up some legal argument to protect it like the one posted here... laughable.

I'm not going to. I've done that plenty times in the past.

My contribution to this thread is merely to point out
that Paul Clement may have as his objective
an argument before the SCOTUS that marriage
between one man and one woman may legitimately be held
to be a separate class.

If you think Clement's argument is laughable, that's fine.

We'll see what happens if and when he gets to argue it before the SCOTUS.

I'm sure the headline for this story will make great fodder for the likes
of Bill Maher and Jon Stewart. 
I like to think that here at CoJ, we conduct ourselves at a higher level.

This argument has been building for years; there is a procreative aspect
that makes up the total matrix of what makes marriage marriage it its normative state.

That we've gotten so far from that common sense understanding of marriage
is what's laughable in my opinion. Or maybe just plain sad. 

Hopefully, what will happen before the SCOTUS is the same thing that happened in the two most recent high-profile cases Clement argued before the Court, defending Arizona's immigration law and trying to get the Affordable Care Act overturned... he loses. Sure, he's a great lawyer, but that means precious little when the argument is unsound.

You're correct, if indeed the argument is unsound.
We may see. It needs to be argued first.

Regarding the ACA, what no one saw coming was
John Robert's ruling that the individual mandate was constitutional if it was a tax.
Sounds like even Justice Roberts didn't see that coming until the last minute. 

That's fair... and me calling someone of his legal standing laughable, is well... laughable. It may well be a argument with legal standing... but the sniff test alone does not pass. And most legal cases are not decided by the most far fetched defense one can come up with. Most bemoan the "insanity" plea... but is is rarely successful if ever... and when it is... well the offender is actually insane. Just because a lawyer argues it, does not make it so.

The fact of the matter is that "marriage" is not some thing sitting in a law book. Marriage is what ever it "is" by those that practice it. I understand there are those that want to think of it in some never changing traditional definition, but I would argue that a large part of "practitioners" are way out of bounds to those "traditional" definitions... the vast majority of which entered into the institution by living in sin first.

By traditional definitions, what percentage of those that have been married today, were virgins until marriage, and never divorced since, raising a nuclear family with traditionally defined roles for mother and father?

No many.

The attack and take down of the institution of marriage
has been going on for the last 50 years at least. 

We're witnessing the bitter fruits of that with all that is going on these days in so many areas.

And that is surely a discussion for another thread. 

Obviously not everyone will agree all the "changes" are for the better. I do not think this should be a race to see who can reach the "bottom" first and still be called married.... but I would argue that many of the changes that would not fit traditional definitions are also loving, caring, respectful, relationships that most certainly abide by those spiritual principles we hold dear. The degree to which it is "changed" and one still considers "healthy" is open for debate.

All I know is that I can't control what others do, and I have yet to meet a God that could either. My best hope is to live my life how I deem appropriate, how my heart guides me, and give others the respect to do the same.

I thought the 14th Amendment had an equal protection clause, i.e. "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Doesn't that mean they can't create laws for separate classes, even if they prove Male-Female marriage is a separate class from male-male and female-female marriages?

Moonrocket - 2013-01-28 9:22 PM When we went to get our marriage license the woman at the counter called over others to look at it and they debated the last time they had seen an application like it.  The weird feature- both of our parents were still married and lived in the towns we were born in.  They were debating if they had seen one in past year or not.  That said DH and I had the same address at the time of application 

20 years ago when we went for ours, the Co. Reg of Deeds had a helluva hard time with me!

"Last name; Bernstein, Father's name; Bertin, Mother's name; Naftali...  When did you change your name and why?"
"I didn't.  My father changed his name."
"Why would he do that?"
"When he walked out on the family, he was trying to avoid a whole lot of debt and create a new identity.  So he took his wife's name."
"He took his WIFE's name?!  What?!  Then who's Naftali?"
"My mom remarried" (Bigfuzzydad).
"Then why didn't your name change?"
"Because Bigfuzzydad didn't me to disrespect my family name even though I wanted his name and...  Never mind.  It's complicated."

They had this look like they had never seen such a strange, gazpacho, family before. 

Oh feel free to!  I stole it myself.  Can't even remember where I first saw it, but I've held on to it for some time now.  Funny stuff!