tinsldr,
i admire your acknowledging the need for consistency when you declare that the government should allow adult fathers and daughters to marry. still, you do acknowledge that the government can and should discriminate in handling out marriage licenses, if only on the basis of age in the fact that children at some age are too young to be married.
still, it seems to me that you have allowed the camel of government discrimination in handing out marriage licenses to get his nose under the tent.
that means the extent of government discrimination is a legitimate point of discussion.
i am copying this and moving it to the top so i do not have to keep searching for it.
Is it too much to ask that the focus of this Sunday be on football and not on “gay rights”? Will I be branded as a homophobic bigot for daring to make such a request? (I can answer that already: Yes!)
Last week, Fox News ran the headline, “Baltimore Raven linebacker [Brendon Ayanbadejo] uses Super Bowl spotlight to promote gay marriage,” reporting that, “Hours after Ayanbadejo’s team beat the New England Patriots on Sunday, paving their way to football’s biggest game, the three-time Pro Bowl special teams player wrote an email to gay marriage proponents asking how he could use...
The liberal Cass Sunstein wrote a book called Nudge:
"President Obama's regulatory czar says that incentives, not top-down regulation, can make us do the right thing"
he and Obama think it is the role of Gov to guide you in the choices you make.
I would think in most areas you would disagree. It is not the role of Gov to nudge you.
Yet here you want the gov to use its tax power, its immigration power, its control of Soc Security, Its control of military housing etc to encourage people to make choices.
I believe I am more Consistent then that.
It is not the role of Gov to encourage and Nudge us.
i think it is an accepted principle of civilization that all laws are designed to encourage or discourage human behaviors. it seems to me that to think otherwise is to advocate for anarchy.
equal protection can only be rationally applied to members of the same class. same-sex couples are uniquely different from male female couples and consequently cannot rationally be considered members of the same class as male female couples. we have already discussed why they are uniquely different.
we have also agreed that the government has the discretion to discriminate when deciding who and who cannot receive civil marriage licenses.
sadly, much as i enjoined our exchanges. duty calls and i will be unavailable online until mon.
yes you are correct, i do want the government to use its power to encourage citizens to provide the best possible environment for the children they procreate.
i also want the government to be frugal when spending my tax dollars.
also, i want the government to make laws only when it has a vested interest in the behaviors it is encouraging or discouraging.
gotta go. good night.
i do not want anarchy
I want laws that protect me from my fellow from force or fraud. not that protect my fellow man from himself
We generally acknowledge under the law that Children are not competent to enter into legal transactions.
In many states we allow children to get married as young as 16 (and I think 14 or at least in the past WV did it at 14). I am against that.
Kids cant join the Army, Vote, Buy alcohol or tobacco etc. At 17 my son went to college but i had to sign some stuff he could do at 18.
Kids generally can not give legal consent .
Now we can hold that some 15 year olds might be more mature and smarter then some 50 year olds. But the law generally says otherwise.
you misunderstand. i agree with you that the state should discriminate based on the youthful age of the parties. i disagree with your position that age is the only legitimate reason the state should discriminate wehn handing out marriage licenses.
there are others, a few (but not all) of which i mentioned above.
Discriminating against young children, or mentally handicapped is one thing. They are not competent to give consenting legal opinions.
Discriminating against consenting adults for arbitrary reasons is wrong.
It is the same rationale given by the anti-gun crowd.
A person does not need and AR-15 AND they dont like an AR-15 so a consenting adult that wants an AR-15 should not have one.
Now granted gun ownership is an enumerated right and marriage although held to be fundamental is not enumerated it is still a right.
Just because you dont want to get married to someone of the same sex does not mean others shouldnt.
one of them is to encourage humans to establish the best possible environment for procreating and raising children.
another one is that the government has no vested interest in regulating private relationships between two members of the same sex.
a third is that the government has no reason to provide benefits and perks to the private relationships between two members of the same sex.
remember when replying that equal protection is not a valid reason because of factors discussed earlier.
we are now talking about when and why the government should discriminate in handing...