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Opening Arguments

All you need is love

Oh, I don't think so:

At multiple events in New York City on Monday, March 19, First Lady Michelle Obama -- in campaigning for her husband's re-election -- made reference to the effect that Supreme Court appointees will have on "whether we can ... love whomever we choose."

Although she did not explicitly mention marriage equality, the possibility of a case raising that issue reaching the Supreme Court has been a regular topic of discussion -- particularly in light of the challenge to California's marriage amendment, Proposition 8, that is currently being considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The effect Supreme Court appointees can really have on us is to affirm or deny our right to live as free people governed by rational laws tied to constitutional principles. Reducing the whole gay-marriage question, with all its historical baggage and  complex social and legal implications, to a warning about not being to "love whomever we choose" is silly beyond endurance.

And by the way, Michelle, is your husband still against gay marriage, or has he changed his mind?

Comments

Harl Delos
Tue, 03/20/2012 - 11:14am

The constitutional pinciples upon which rational laws are based would seem to be the first and ninth amendments.  Our laws about marriage once were based on protecting children - but given the fact that a majority of kids born to under-30 women have single moms, we've changed the laws to protect them with or without marriage, and we no longer have any reasonable justification for lending legal weight to the religious sacrament of marriage.

And marriage is no longer defined as it once was.  The Loving decision eliminated the provision that both parties be of the same race, the age of consent has risen substantially in the past five decades, the restrictions against consanguinity have changed, and despite our best efforts to prohibit polygamy/polyandry, that survives as well.  Marriage used to be for life, and today, it lasts seven years.

It's not like homosexuality is new, either.  We elected Jimbo Buchanon president, and he shacked up with vice-president Rufus King for fifteen years.

It seems awfully petty that we recognize the marriages of straights but not those of gays, whether or not we approve of gay marriage.  I disapprove of smoking, and I disapprove of abortion, but I don't  but I don't want to ban either cigarettes, nor elective early abortion; maybe Obama feels the same  about gay marriage.

 

 

littlejohn
Tue, 03/20/2012 - 12:19pm

Why are you so angry? Ms. Obama isn't even a politician. I presume that by "love" she meant marry. I also assume that President Obama favors gay marriage but is too politically timid to say so (I suspect the same thing about Mitt Romney, by the way). And she's right. The Supreme Court currently has eight utterly predictable votes, split precisely along party lines. I wish that weren't the case, but as long as it is Obama should appoint liberals. I have never seen this country, including the court, so bitterly partisan.

Rebecca Mallory
Tue, 03/20/2012 - 1:04pm

Alan Keyes promotes heterosexual-only marriage by arguing the the PRINCIPLE OF MARRIAGE is to provide a framework for (a) procreation of children, and (b) rearing children.

If you accept the PRINCIPLE OF MARRIAGE argument, then homosexual marriage is impossible since procreation is impossible. Adoption of children by homosexual couples does not provide an exception to the rule in Dr. Keyes' view since MARRIAGE IN PRINCIPLE is defined - in part- by procreation.

The PRINCIPLE OF MARRIAGE (and reason for marriage) is violated if both criteria are not met.

Dr. Keyes offered this argument in a debate with Barack Obama when they were running for the U.S. Senate seat in Illlinois. The argument was apparently too sophisticated for the average Illinois voter.

 

Leo Morris
Tue, 03/20/2012 - 2:03pm


Rebecca, how do you account for heterosexual couples who don't want children or can't have them in making the " marriage principle" argument?

Rebecca Mallory
Tue, 03/20/2012 - 6:06pm

Mr. Morris, Dr. Keyes was asked that question during the debate and answered by saying that the principle of marriage isnt changed by exceptions that you mentioned.  He stated that if an apple has a worm in it, it is still,-in principle- an apple. If there is no procreation in a heterosexual marriage,  it is still in principle , a marriage.

Christopher Swing
Tue, 03/20/2012 - 7:06pm

The question I need to ask is why do we care what Alan Keyes thinks?


Although he is a source of great comedy:

"In the act of procreation, people are joyfully, ecstatically, with great joy in every fiber of their being, saying "yes" to the coming of that new life. And then in abortion, they kill it. So what, in fact, my political career is, is the paradigm and pattern of that which I am trying to stop for the child. I kind of represent, in political terms, the abortion. You're invited in, then they kill you. You're invited in, then they kill you."

Reason mag: "I would quibble with one part of this: Sex is far more satisfying than inviting Alan Keyes to a party."

http://reason.com/blog/2008/04/25/the-friday-political-thread-no

Jim Neill
Wed, 03/21/2012 - 11:15am

Well golly. Since Alan Keyes has now decided that we can define things based on our own narrow view of the world, I'll just define an apple as a fruit that has never been contaminated by a foreign organism. Therefore, an apple with a worm in it can never, in principle, be an apple because it doesn't meet one of my two requirements to be an apple. Thus applying the apple anology to Keyes procreative marriage definition, a childless marriage can never, in principle, be a true marriage because there is no procreation.

Problem solved! 

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