Is banning gay's rights to marry wrong?

[EYYBABA23]

Good point CatWoman! And I think you and Anonymouse are kinda in the same book, but on different chapters.

[winoman]

Good point CatWoman! And I think you and Anonymouse are kinda in the same book, but on different chapters.

If you are arguing that the institution of marriage is just paper - and not a fundemental cornerstone of the economic system in this country - then I would have to disagree - and suggest you research it a bit more (and perhapsread some of my earlier posts in this thread). Other then that I can't quite fathom your point?

[ArmenianKid]

Marriage is more than just some selfish walk in the park. It is an institution that is the atom of society, and the nuclear family. One can no more change the measurements of a yardstick and still use it as a reliable source of measuring than one can change the definition of marriage and still have it as a reliable source of measuring. The hive like moral conformity of the leftist intellectuals and their peon followers is among the wonders of the modern world. They are positively attracted to perverse ideas like same sex "marriage" Never mind that this never even occurred to the sodomites of antiquity, who understood perfectly well that the point of marriage was to care for children.

Furthermore, I am not even stating that homosexuals cannot marry. If you understood my argument, if marriage is privatized and left to local institutions such as the Church, it is entirely up to them who they choose to marry.

many people marry and never have the entent to produce offspring. i agree marrage should be left to the churches and mosqes ect. but it will never happen.


and thai that had nothing to do with the subject, gays and straights are humans. all humans should be treated equaly.

[loseyourname]

I'll tell you why its a big deal. It is the seed of all that which makes our social fabric. It is the functioning unit which makes our society possible.

You seem to be arguing for a nuclear family, not for marriage per se. There is no reason that a couple needs legal or church sanction to perform the functions that parents perform in a family and in a society.

[ArmenianKid]

You seem to be arguing for a nuclear family, not for marriage per se. There is no reason that a couple needs legal or church sanction to perform the functions that parents perform in a family and in a society.

well being married in a church is often thought of being joined as one under their god.that is the reason most married couples i know joined. not for tax benfits or becasue they had the sole entent to procreate.

[winoman]

My wife and I got married for the legal aspects...I mean we lived together and bought a house together (and alreadyloved each other...) - before we were married. And it could have been fine that way. But when you raise children you want recognition as a family (legal and within the framework of ones extend family) - and what our society accepts to codify this is something that we call the marriage certificate. We weren't married in a church BTW.

And one can have children without being married. We have friends that had the childrn first and only married after. And some never officially marry - but this is likely a mistake - mainly becuase of potential legal hassels down the road...

[winoman]

As I was saying....

San Francisco Superior Court judge declared California's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional Monday, saying it violates the "basic human right to marry a person of one's choice.''

More than a year after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom directed the county clerk to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples at City Hall, Judge Richard Kramer gave legal vindication to Newsom's rationale: that the state's 28-year-old law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman is arbitrary and unfair.

"No rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners,'' Kramer wrote in a decision that relied on rights guaranteed by the California Constitution. He cited as precedent another groundbreaking ruling, the state Supreme Court's 1948 decision striking down California's law against interracial marriage.

Kramer's decision will not take effect during appeals that are likely to wind up in the state Supreme Court sometime next year.

The ruling comes against a national backdrop of similar court decisions in a few other states -- Massachusetts, New York and Washington -- and a backlash that has fueled state constitutional bans on same-sex marriage in 11 states and a movement in Congress for a constitutional ban on the marriages nationwide. A federal amendment appears unlikely to pass, despite support from President Bush.

Kramer's ruling was celebrated by gay-rights advocates and San Francisco city officials, who joined a number of same-sex couples in challenging the marriage law.

The judge recognized that "no family in the state is second-class anymore, '' said John Lewis, who took part in the lawsuit after his City Hall marriage to longtime partner Stuart Gaffney was nullified by the state Supreme Court last year.

Opponents said the ruling was an example of judicial activism that may have to be reined in by the voters.

"The people of California will move forward, just as in other states, to amend their constitutions in order to take judges out of the marriage- management business,'' said Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based group that represented the Campaign for California Families in defending the state law.

Randy Thomasson, executive director of Campaign for California Families, denounced Kramer's decision as "a crazy ruling by an arrogant San Francisco judge who apparently hates marriage and hates the voters,'' but did not announce immediate plans for a ballot measure. His group was active in the 2000 campaign for Proposition 22, which reaffirmed the state's definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman but did not change the state Constitution. The measure passed with 62 percent of the vote.

Speaking at Stanford University, where he appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Matthews," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he had hoped the court would uphold Prop. 22, "the will of the people.''

"I believe in what we have right now, which is domestic partnership rights,'' the governor said. He said he would accept the state Supreme Court's ultimate decision, but added, "I don't believe in gay marriage.''

Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said he would continue to push for a bill in the Legislature that would legalize same-sex marriage by removing gender references from the state's marriage law.

Newsom, at a City Hall press conference, said he looked forward to the day when "we'll look back and say, 'What was the big deal, and why was this such a controversial thing?' "

The case landed in Kramer's court after the state's high court ruled last August that Newsom exceeded his authority by ordering city clerks to ignore the state ban and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. That ruling voided nearly 4,000 weddings performed at City Hall in the month that followed Newsom's Feb. 12 decree, and made it clear that the marriages would not be revived even if the law were later struck down.

The court declined to rule on the validity of the state law, preferring to let the issue move through lower courts. Lawsuits by the city, same-sex couples in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and groups opposed to same-sex marriage were joined and argued before Kramer, a 1996 appointee of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.

In Monday's 27-page ruling, Kramer said the marriage law violates fundamental rights, discriminates on the basis of gender and lacks any rational justification. He rejected Attorney General Bill Lockyer's argument that California was entitled to maintain the traditional definition of marriage while granting gay and lesbian couples most of the rights of spouses in a domestic-partner law that took effect this year.

A discriminatory law "cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional,'' Kramer said. He said the same argument was made and rejected in 1948, when the California Supreme Court became the first in the nation to strike down a state ban on interracial marriage.

Kramer dismissed the domestic-partner rationale as separate but equal, a legal concept long ago struck down by the courts, and said the new law merely strengthens his conclusion that "there is no rational state interest in denying (same-sex couples) the rites of marriage as well.''

A crucial point of the ruling was the judge's conclusion that the marriage law amounts to sex discrimination, a finding that is enough to overturn virtually any California law under the state's strict constitutional standard. The law makes "the gender of the intended spouse ... the sole determining factor'' of the legality of a marriage, Kramer said; he said claims by the law's defenders that the law treats men and women equally were no more valid than earlier claims that anti-interracial marriage laws treated whites and blacks equally.

The state Supreme Court's 1948 ruling established not merely that mixed- race couples could marry but that "one can choose who to marry'' and that the state cannot interfere without a legitimate reason, Kramer said. He said the state can impose health-related restrictions, like the ban on marrying close relatives, but cannot discriminate based on arbitrary classifications.

The judge also rejected the chief argument of conservative groups that entered the case to defend the law: that the purpose of marriage is procreation and child-rearing by a husband and a wife. That rationale is at odds with a law that allows opposite-sex couples to marry regardless of whether they can, or want to, have children, but disqualifies same-sex partners who are raising children, Kramer said.

"One does not have to be married in order to procreate,'' he said, "nor does one have to procreate in order to be married.''

[winoman]

Marriage - Right or Privledge....a right it would seem...

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/righttomarry.htm

some exerpts:

The first state marriage law to be invalidated was Virginia's miscegenation law in Loving v Virginia (1967). Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, had been found guilty of violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages and ordered to leave the state. The Court found Virginia's law to violate the Equal Protection Clause because it invidiously classified on the basis of race, but it also indicated the law would violate the Due Process Clause as an undue interference with 'the fundamental freedom" of marriage

and:

The First Proposed Constitutional Amendment on the Subject of Marriage (1912)
Congressional Record, 62nd Cong., 3rd sess., Dec. 11, 1912. Vol 49, p. 502

Mr. RODDENBERY. ( ... ) The resolution to which I make reference is one already introduced by me, providing for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, with the usual resolving clause, and the article is as follows:

That intermarriage between negroes or persons of color and Caucasians or any other character of persons within the United States or any territory under their jurisdiction, is forever prohibited; and the term "negro or person of color," as here employed, shall be held to mean any and all persons of African descent or having any trace of African or negro blood.

Nothing will contribute more to the popular development and wise administration of a republican government than for the people in their legislatures to have an opportunity, by the adoption of this resolution, to provide that forever hereafter it shall be contrary to the fundamental law of the Republic for a negro or a part negro or an African or a part African to intermarry with a white person, a Caucasian, or any person of like description. The object of this resolution is to submit to the States a constitutional amendment for this purpose....

[ArmenianKid]

San Francisco Superior Court judge declared California's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional Monday, saying it violates the "basic human right to marry a person of one's choice.''

More than a year after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom directed the county clerk to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples at City Hall, Judge Richard Kramer gave legal vindication to Newsom's rationale: that the state's 28-year-old law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman is arbitrary and unfair.

"No rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners,'' Kramer wrote in a decision that relied on rights guaranteed by the California Constitution. He cited as precedent another groundbreaking ruling, the state Supreme Court's 1948 decision striking down California's law against interracial marriage.

Kramer's decision will not take effect during appeals that are likely to wind up in the state Supreme Court sometime next year.

The ruling comes against a national backdrop of similar court decisions in a few other states -- Massachusetts, New York and Washington -- and a backlash that has fueled state constitutional bans on same-sex marriage in 11 states and a movement in Congress for a constitutional ban on the marriages nationwide. A federal amendment appears unlikely to pass, despite support from President Bush.

Kramer's ruling was celebrated by gay-rights advocates and San Francisco city officials, who joined a number of same-sex couples in challenging the marriage law.

The judge recognized that "no family in the state is second-class anymore, '' said John Lewis, who took part in the lawsuit after his City Hall marriage to longtime partner Stuart Gaffney was nullified by the state Supreme Court last year.

Opponents said the ruling was an example of judicial activism that may have to be reined in by the voters.

"The people of California will move forward, just as in other states, to amend their constitutions in order to take judges out of the marriage- management business,'' said Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based group that represented the Campaign for California Families in defending the state law.

Randy Thomasson, executive director of Campaign for California Families, denounced Kramer's decision as "a crazy ruling by an arrogant San Francisco judge who apparently hates marriage and hates the voters,'' but did not announce immediate plans for a ballot measure. His group was active in the 2000 campaign for Proposition 22, which reaffirmed the state's definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman but did not change the state Constitution. The measure passed with 62 percent of the vote.

Speaking at Stanford University, where he appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball With Chris Matthews," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he had hoped the court would uphold Prop. 22, "the will of the people.''

"I believe in what we have right now, which is domestic partnership rights,'' the governor said. He said he would accept the state Supreme Court's ultimate decision, but added, "I don't believe in gay marriage.''

Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said he would continue to push for a bill in the Legislature that would legalize same-sex marriage by removing gender references from the state's marriage law.

Newsom, at a City Hall press conference, said he looked forward to the day when "we'll look back and say, 'What was the big deal, and why was this such a controversial thing?' "

The case landed in Kramer's court after the state's high court ruled last August that Newsom exceeded his authority by ordering city clerks to ignore the state ban and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. That ruling voided nearly 4,000 weddings performed at City Hall in the month that followed Newsom's Feb. 12 decree, and made it clear that the marriages would not be revived even if the law were later struck down.

The court declined to rule on the validity of the state law, preferring to let the issue move through lower courts. Lawsuits by the city, same-sex couples in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and groups opposed to same-sex marriage were joined and argued before Kramer, a 1996 appointee of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.

In Monday's 27-page ruling, Kramer said the marriage law violates fundamental rights, discriminates on the basis of gender and lacks any rational justification. He rejected Attorney General Bill Lockyer's argument that California was entitled to maintain the traditional definition of marriage while granting gay and lesbian couples most of the rights of spouses in a domestic-partner law that took effect this year.

A discriminatory law "cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional,'' Kramer said. He said the same argument was made and rejected in 1948, when the California Supreme Court became the first in the nation to strike down a state ban on interracial marriage.

Kramer dismissed the domestic-partner rationale as separate but equal, a legal concept long ago struck down by the courts, and said the new law merely strengthens his conclusion that "there is no rational state interest in denying (same-sex couples) the rites of marriage as well.''

A crucial point of the ruling was the judge's conclusion that the marriage law amounts to sex discrimination, a finding that is enough to overturn virtually any California law under the state's strict constitutional standard. The law makes "the gender of the intended spouse ... the sole determining factor'' of the legality of a marriage, Kramer said; he said claims by the law's defenders that the law treats men and women equally were no more valid than earlier claims that anti-interracial marriage laws treated whites and blacks equally.

The state Supreme Court's 1948 ruling established not merely that mixed- race couples could marry but that "one can choose who to marry'' and that the state cannot interfere without a legitimate reason, Kramer said. He said the state can impose health-related restrictions, like the ban on marrying close relatives, but cannot discriminate based on arbitrary classifications.

The judge also rejected the chief argument of conservative groups that entered the case to defend the law: that the purpose of marriage is procreation and child-rearing by a husband and a wife. That rationale is at odds with a law that allows opposite-sex couples to marry regardless of whether they can, or want to, have children, but disqualifies same-sex partners who are raising children, Kramer said.

"One does not have to be married in order to procreate,'' he said, "nor does one have to procreate in order to be married.''

i totlay agree with that person. i would just like to add this is the first thread i made that grew this big. go me!

[Anonymouse]

Comparing homosexuals to someones race is faulty logic on behalf of those that do. It's like comparing a pimple and a mole, pimples come out and go back in, moles are always there.