What right granted in the constitution does not allowing homosexuals to marry violate?
well i can take a stab at this one ...
the constitution does not GRANT rights, it protects them.
The founders believed (as do i) that GOD grants ALL rights to man. You are born free, and with the god given right to do WHAT EVER you want PERIOD. The ONLY thing NOT considered a right is an action which directly infringes on the rights &\or well being of another.
The only reason 10 rights were specifically enumerated in the constitution was because SOME of our founders were worried that our country would devolve to the point where dumb people would no longer understand their intrinsic god given rights. SOME other of our founders were actually worried that enumerating certain rights would lead idiots in the future to ascertain that these were the ONLY rights and that if the constitution did not specifically pen out protection, then you had not the right.
As illustrated clearly here, we find the concerns of the later to have been at least as well founded as the former.
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
What right granted in the constitution does not allowing homosexuals to marry violate?
well i can take a stab at this one ...
the constitution does not GRANT rights, it protects them.
The founders believed (as do i) that GOD grants ALL rights to man. You are born free, and with the god given right to do WHAT EVER you want PERIOD. The ONLY thing NOT considered a right is an action which directly infringes on the rights &\or well being of another.
The only reason 10 rights were specifically enumerated in the constitution was because SOME of our founders were worried that our country would devolve to the point where dumb people would no longer understand their intrinsic god given rights. SOME other of our founders were actually worried that enumerating certain rights would lead idiots in the future to ascertain that these were the ONLY rights and that if the constitution did not specifically pen out protection, then you had not the right.
As illustrated clearly here, we find the concerns of the later to have been at least as well founded as the former.
You certainly might have a God given right to do as you please, but you don't have an American given right to do as you please. And I'm not saying that to be facetious, America doesn't recognize what you and I might consider God given rights.
And so I guess my big complaint about this ruling, is the court seems to be legislating from the bench. Exactly what should the judge take into account for the ruling? Whether or not it is a good idea? No. Whether or not it will help the country? Nope. A judge's role is to interpret the law and I see nothing that would lead me to believe this is unconstitutional. In fact, I think it is absolutely constitutional given the 10th amendment.
All the legality aside, I find it silly that homosexuals can't marry. As it has been pointed out, there is no sanctity anymore in the heterosexual marriage. But, that doesn't change the fact that I think this court was wrong.
the constitution does not GRANT rights, it protects them.
The founders believed (as do i) that GOD grants ALL rights to man. You are born free, and with the god given right to do WHAT EVER you want PERIOD. The ONLY thing NOT considered a right is an action which directly infringes on the rights &\or well being of another.
So far most judges have agreed that voting on the rights of a minority is unconstitutional.
And wrong.
And does nothing other than demote a group of people to second class citizens.
Which is unconstitutional.
And sadly, people's hate and fear got the best of them and their mistake had to be corrected by judges. That's not legislating from the bench (which is done very often, by the way) its just upholding the constitution and protecting it from being used as a weapon.
You certainly might have a God given right to do as you please, but you don't have an American given right to do as you please. And I'm not saying that to be facetious, America doesn't recognize what you and I might consider God given rights.
I'm not exactly sure what you are using as your basis for this set of statements, but I guess it's possible we have radically different interpretations of the following:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Certainly the US Government has, at this point, been guilty of "a long train of abuses and usurpations" as mentioned farther down in the text, but that is NOT to say that our Founding Fathers did not make a deliberate attempt to emphasize the nature and extent of our rights.
Just because later down the line the US Government signed an international treatise that made it "illegal" to use certain drugs (by way of lacking a "tax stamp" for possession thereof, i may add) ... or because they deceitfully ratified the 16th amendment making income tax "legal" when the supreme court had already ruled rather explicitly on the issue ... just because these ABUSES have been instituted does not mean we are not meant to still have these rights.
In fact, the Declaration goes on to state:
Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government
So not only did they believe you had UNALIENABLE rights (belonging to a thing by its very nature, incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another) ... they believe you then had not just the right, but the DUTY, to FIGHT for those rights, should they become so seriously abused as to infer that the government abusing said rights aimed "to reduce them under absolute Despotism".
Post edited by DriftingByTheStorm on
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Further illustration of the concept that the Constitution was NEVER expected to explicitly enumerate ALL rights, but only generally to protect them, here Jefferson writes Madison regarding the inclusion of an amended Bill of Rights:
Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can.
This is an explicit statement from a founding father recognizing that ALL rights are NOT encapsulated by the Bill of Rights, but that it was at least better to have SOME on paper, than NONE, but that ALL were RESERVED TO THE PEOPLE unless explicitly specified otherwise in the constitution.
HERE again, we see in the language of Madison, how he would have chose to have this point specifically enumerated WITHIN the constitution:
The exceptions here or elsewhere in the constitution, made in favor of particular rights, shall not be so construed as to diminish the just importance of other rights retained by the people; or as to enlarge the powers delegated by the constitution; but either as actual limitations of such powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution.
And then, there is Hamilton ... one of those who believed that the enumeration of any rights would only serve to WEAKEN the protections already afforded by the original Articles of the Constitution.
I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?
Reasoning behind NOT wanting a bill of rights:
Some said a bill of rights would not guarantee but restrict freedoms—that a list of specific rights would imply that they were granted by the government rather than inherent in nature. They also remembered a maxim of common law, expressio unius est exclusio alterius—the mention of one thing amounts to the exclusion of others. Guarantees of freedom of speech, press, religion, and so on might imply that these were the only freedoms to which citizens were entitled. Others said that the federal government could never be in a position to interfere with personal rights—those protections belonged in state constitutions—and that the Constitution should say nothing about them. “Why,” asked Alexander Hamilton in “Federalist 84,” “declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?” After all, the Constitution does not guarantee the right to food or drink, but no one feels the need to protect them from federal interference.
The basis for my statement is the Declaration of Independence, while a great work, has no legal authority. What the founding fathers said has no legal authority. These are the same founding fathers that had slaves and treated women like property, I see no reason to look to them for moral guidance. My problem with including the unalienable rights, is that any judge can determine what he or she believes to be an unalienable right. That is my concern, the legislating from the bench.
There are quotes from founding fathers, early writings and ideas that would all support the idea of homosexual marriage, but it isn't the one place that it actually matters... the Constitution. Now, I did stumble across something today that said prop 8 actually violated the California constitution, but I haven't done much research on that. I don't think that will hold too much water seeing as prop 8 was a California constitutional amendment, so it would certainly supersede any previous constitutional amendments.
Just on a side note at the time, I was living in California at the time and voted against the proposition. In my opinion, this thing would have been shot down easily if there wasn't a field trip for 1st graders to see their teacher take part in a homosexual marriage. I was baffled at how someone could give the opposition so much ammunition just weeks before the voting took place.
The basis for my statement is the Declaration of Independence, while a great work, has no legal authority. What the founding fathers said has no legal authority.
This is a highly semantic claim. Based on your assertions, we are still under British Sovereignty?
The Declaration may not be a "traditional" "legal document" (this is only to say it had no precedent) but it certainly was "implemented" (it started a war) with de facto legal authority. Further, the entire population of the country seems to have considered it as having "legal authority", because it was the grounds for the separation from Britain and start of a War of Independence. The document is actually somewhat of a last-ditch-effort Petition, and the Petition was WIDELY ACCEPTED as a "legal" document in that it was EXPECTED for a Sovereign (King) to ANSWER them (this going back to the Magna Carta, even) ... so, you can not just treat it like just some fanciful words on a paper. It is a statement of previously filed (and ignored) Petitions, and then an assertion that the failure to address such Petitions of Grievance constitutes a Breach of Contract (between Sovereign and Subject) with ultimate recourse to Revolution. It wasn't a PUBLIC statement released for sentiment, it was SENT TO THE KING, and was essentially a legal filing for the termination of business relationship based on Breach. This is a legal process. The thoughts expressed therein are legal sentiments, and it gets sort of silly to assert it has no "legal authority" ... it is actually the rejection of the King's legal authority based on a commonly held understanding of Contract Law and the assertion that the KING violated the contract, and made in null and void.
There are quotes from founding fathers, early writings and ideas that would all support the idea of homosexual marriage, but it isn't the one place that it actually matters... the Constitution.
It troubles me that after specific attempt to get across the point that a right NEED NOT BE ENUMERATED (and such point was universally understood by our Founders) you still insinuate that it must.
[edit]LOOK. SEE HERE:
From the Bill of Rights, one ENTIRE amendment devoted to the subject of Non-Enumerated Rights:
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
If you want to get in to an argument about the "legality" of gay marriage, a better course of reasoning would be to consider if the State should ever have begun issuing "licenses" for marriage in the first place, and if so, did it ever have the authority to restrict such issuance to only those it deemed fit?
Remember that a Marriage "contract" was originally a PRIVATE contract between TWO FAMILIES. The issue only became muddied because this private contractual relationship had baring on taxes owed to a legal authority, and thus the extant legal authority did have desire to ascertain the truth behind such a claim of marriage.
Marriage License ... there is actually plenty of food for thought in the wikipedia page on the subject.
Check it, yeck it.
Post edited by DriftingByTheStorm on
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
I'd just like to make one more quick distinction in commentary on previous & generally understood legal history of rights legislation in the United States.
In the constant mention of Slave Ownership in this thread, I think it would behoove people to consider the LEGAL GROUNDS used for support of Slave Ownership and CONTRAST that with ANY argument being used AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE, because I fear that eventually someone is going to come along in this thread and make some unwarranted\misinformed comment regarding States Rights so I want to make this distinction clear:
When the States fought over the legality of the Ownership of Slaves, and when this topic was a Subject of Great Debate in our nation ... while the "issue" may have been "States Rights", THE UNDERLYING LEGAL ASSUMPTION which predicated THE ENTIRETY of the "States Rights" argument was the notion that BLACKS ARE NOT PEOPLE, BUT PROPERTY.
It was on THIS (morally antiquated) ground that "States Rights" supporters held their argument.
However NO SUCH CLAIM is made regarding Homosexuals and their recourse to marriage.
OBVIOUSLY, gays are accepted (by even their harshest critics) AS HUMANS.
I just wanted to point that out because even the historical support for States Rights REQUIRED THAT SUCH RIGHTS OF THE STATE BE BOUNDED BY THE ***CIVIL RIGHTS*** OF THE PEOPLE. (in the case of Black history it was unfortunately "understood" by too many that Blacks were not "people" and had no "civil rights")
IF YOU STILL FIND THAT YOU NEED TO ARGUE THE CONSTITUTION PROVIDES NO CONTEXTUAL ARGUMENT TO SUPPORT THIS NOTION, IT *IS* IN THE 14TH AMENDMENT (as originally mentioned):
Comments
Can't you do anything just becuae it's the right thing to do?
Does my community have to embark on a 5-year battle to the supreme court every time?
Can't we just... Accept that there are different kinds of families and leave it at that?
well i can take a stab at this one ...
the constitution does not GRANT rights, it protects them.
The founders believed (as do i) that GOD grants ALL rights to man. You are born free, and with the god given right to do WHAT EVER you want PERIOD. The ONLY thing NOT considered a right is an action which directly infringes on the rights &\or well being of another.
The only reason 10 rights were specifically enumerated in the constitution was because SOME of our founders were worried that our country would devolve to the point where dumb people would no longer understand their intrinsic god given rights. SOME other of our founders were actually worried that enumerating certain rights would lead idiots in the future to ascertain that these were the ONLY rights and that if the constitution did not specifically pen out protection, then you had not the right.
As illustrated clearly here, we find the concerns of the later to have been at least as well founded as the former.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
You certainly might have a God given right to do as you please, but you don't have an American given right to do as you please. And I'm not saying that to be facetious, America doesn't recognize what you and I might consider God given rights.
And so I guess my big complaint about this ruling, is the court seems to be legislating from the bench. Exactly what should the judge take into account for the ruling? Whether or not it is a good idea? No. Whether or not it will help the country? Nope. A judge's role is to interpret the law and I see nothing that would lead me to believe this is unconstitutional. In fact, I think it is absolutely constitutional given the 10th amendment.
All the legality aside, I find it silly that homosexuals can't marry. As it has been pointed out, there is no sanctity anymore in the heterosexual marriage. But, that doesn't change the fact that I think this court was wrong.
Well said.
And wrong.
And does nothing other than demote a group of people to second class citizens.
Which is unconstitutional.
And sadly, people's hate and fear got the best of them and their mistake had to be corrected by judges. That's not legislating from the bench (which is done very often, by the way) its just upholding the constitution and protecting it from being used as a weapon.
I'm not exactly sure what you are using as your basis for this set of statements, but I guess it's possible we have radically different interpretations of the following:
Certainly the US Government has, at this point, been guilty of "a long train of abuses and usurpations" as mentioned farther down in the text, but that is NOT to say that our Founding Fathers did not make a deliberate attempt to emphasize the nature and extent of our rights.
Just because later down the line the US Government signed an international treatise that made it "illegal" to use certain drugs (by way of lacking a "tax stamp" for possession thereof, i may add) ... or because they deceitfully ratified the 16th amendment making income tax "legal" when the supreme court had already ruled rather explicitly on the issue ... just because these ABUSES have been instituted does not mean we are not meant to still have these rights.
In fact, the Declaration goes on to state:
So not only did they believe you had UNALIENABLE rights (belonging to a thing by its very nature, incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another) ... they believe you then had not just the right, but the DUTY, to FIGHT for those rights, should they become so seriously abused as to infer that the government abusing said rights aimed "to reduce them under absolute Despotism".
If I opened it now would you not understand?
This is an explicit statement from a founding father recognizing that ALL rights are NOT encapsulated by the Bill of Rights, but that it was at least better to have SOME on paper, than NONE, but that ALL were RESERVED TO THE PEOPLE unless explicitly specified otherwise in the constitution.
HERE again, we see in the language of Madison, how he would have chose to have this point specifically enumerated WITHIN the constitution:
And then, there is Hamilton ... one of those who believed that the enumeration of any rights would only serve to WEAKEN the protections already afforded by the original Articles of the Constitution.
Reasoning behind NOT wanting a bill of rights: -source
If I opened it now would you not understand?
and freedom of religion meant as long as you worshiped the judeo-christian god
i would think we are a more enlightened society now
should same-sex marriage be "allowed"?
abso-fucking-lutely
"what a long, strange trip it's been"
There are quotes from founding fathers, early writings and ideas that would all support the idea of homosexual marriage, but it isn't the one place that it actually matters... the Constitution. Now, I did stumble across something today that said prop 8 actually violated the California constitution, but I haven't done much research on that. I don't think that will hold too much water seeing as prop 8 was a California constitutional amendment, so it would certainly supersede any previous constitutional amendments.
Just on a side note at the time, I was living in California at the time and voted against the proposition. In my opinion, this thing would have been shot down easily if there wasn't a field trip for 1st graders to see their teacher take part in a homosexual marriage. I was baffled at how someone could give the opposition so much ammunition just weeks before the voting took place.
This is a highly semantic claim. Based on your assertions, we are still under British Sovereignty?
The Declaration may not be a "traditional" "legal document" (this is only to say it had no precedent) but it certainly was "implemented" (it started a war) with de facto legal authority. Further, the entire population of the country seems to have considered it as having "legal authority", because it was the grounds for the separation from Britain and start of a War of Independence. The document is actually somewhat of a last-ditch-effort Petition, and the Petition was WIDELY ACCEPTED as a "legal" document in that it was EXPECTED for a Sovereign (King) to ANSWER them (this going back to the Magna Carta, even) ... so, you can not just treat it like just some fanciful words on a paper. It is a statement of previously filed (and ignored) Petitions, and then an assertion that the failure to address such Petitions of Grievance constitutes a Breach of Contract (between Sovereign and Subject) with ultimate recourse to Revolution. It wasn't a PUBLIC statement released for sentiment, it was SENT TO THE KING, and was essentially a legal filing for the termination of business relationship based on Breach. This is a legal process. The thoughts expressed therein are legal sentiments, and it gets sort of silly to assert it has no "legal authority" ... it is actually the rejection of the King's legal authority based on a commonly held understanding of Contract Law and the assertion that the KING violated the contract, and made in null and void.
It troubles me that after specific attempt to get across the point that a right NEED NOT BE ENUMERATED (and such point was universally understood by our Founders) you still insinuate that it must.
[edit]LOOK. SEE HERE:
From the Bill of Rights, one ENTIRE amendment devoted to the subject of Non-Enumerated Rights:
If you want to get in to an argument about the "legality" of gay marriage, a better course of reasoning would be to consider if the State should ever have begun issuing "licenses" for marriage in the first place, and if so, did it ever have the authority to restrict such issuance to only those it deemed fit?
Remember that a Marriage "contract" was originally a PRIVATE contract between TWO FAMILIES. The issue only became muddied because this private contractual relationship had baring on taxes owed to a legal authority, and thus the extant legal authority did have desire to ascertain the truth behind such a claim of marriage.
Marriage License ... there is actually plenty of food for thought in the wikipedia page on the subject.
Check it, yeck it.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
In the constant mention of Slave Ownership in this thread, I think it would behoove people to consider the LEGAL GROUNDS used for support of Slave Ownership and CONTRAST that with ANY argument being used AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE, because I fear that eventually someone is going to come along in this thread and make some unwarranted\misinformed comment regarding States Rights so I want to make this distinction clear:
When the States fought over the legality of the Ownership of Slaves, and when this topic was a Subject of Great Debate in our nation ... while the "issue" may have been "States Rights", THE UNDERLYING LEGAL ASSUMPTION which predicated THE ENTIRETY of the "States Rights" argument was the notion that BLACKS ARE NOT PEOPLE, BUT PROPERTY.
It was on THIS (morally antiquated) ground that "States Rights" supporters held their argument.
However NO SUCH CLAIM is made regarding Homosexuals and their recourse to marriage.
OBVIOUSLY, gays are accepted (by even their harshest critics) AS HUMANS.
I just wanted to point that out because even the historical support for States Rights REQUIRED THAT SUCH RIGHTS OF THE STATE BE BOUNDED BY THE ***CIVIL RIGHTS*** OF THE PEOPLE. (in the case of Black history it was unfortunately "understood" by too many that Blacks were not "people" and had no "civil rights")
IF YOU STILL FIND THAT YOU NEED TO ARGUE THE CONSTITUTION PROVIDES NO CONTEXTUAL ARGUMENT TO SUPPORT THIS NOTION, IT *IS* IN THE 14TH AMENDMENT (as originally mentioned):
and just below that, again, SPECIFICALLY:
If I opened it now would you not understand?