"Paul Mitchum" <usenet@mile23.c0m> wrote in message
news:1gu5rjb.1g74cpsidb6lvN%usenet@mile23.c0m...

Susan Cohen <flavia13@verizon.net> wrote:

"Paul Mitchum" <usenet@mile23.c0m> wrote in message
news:1gu5l3a.1ycme5c11zdex0N%usenet@mile23.c0m...

Susan Cohen <flavia13@verizon.net> wrote:

"Paul Mitchum" <usenet@mile23.c0m> wrote in message

Everyone has the right to free association and have sex however they
want to in a legal manner. But there's no right to get a marriage
license.

Which is quite discriminatory.

Sure, and rightly so. Drivers' license tests discriminate against those
who shouldn't be allowed to drive. That's reasonable.

But it's hatrdly analagous because, as you, yourself, admit, the people
who can't drive "shouldn't drive".

That's exactly why it's analogous. I wasn't saying gays should or
shouldn't get marriage licenses, I was trying to explain my
hair-splitting to you. :-)

Similarly, states have age limits on marriage licensing, and other
reasonable restrictions.

Yes, *reasonable*. There is no reason gays shouldn't marry.

You're confusing the issue here:

No, I'm not.
I'm saying that gays should have the same rights as everyone else, & they
don't.

Pretending that a party is the same as the legal status of"husband & wife"
is disingenuous & seeks to cloud the issue.

Pretending that the US is somehow going to force religius insstitutions to
*perform* those marriages is also clouding the issue with factors that
just aren't present.

Insiting that the US has to use religion in formulating its laws because
we're ina pluralistic society is just plain *wrong*,

because if you go *that* route, someone will dig up a religion that
advocates gay marriages & you'll be up the creek.

There is NO REASON that gays should not be LEGALLY married like everyone
else.

On the one hand, there's the institution of marriage. Gays get 'married'
all the time, and declare themselves to be partners in ceremonies where
they invite their families and friends and everybody drinks champagne
and someone hires a photographer. That's the institution, and gays are
already participating in that. They just don't get a license from the
state. The arguments back and forth here aren't really unreasonable.
Some folks lay claim to marriage as a tradition about the relationship
between a man and a woman, and they're not exactly wrong in that regard,
even if they're not fully correct, either. In the context of many social
customs and religious doctrines, there *are* reasons gays shouldn't be
allowed to marry, and part of living in a pluralistic society is that
the government can't demand that, say, Southern Baptist churches perform
gay weddings.

Which brings us to the other hand... The issue of marriage *licenses.*
In most states, a marriage license, as it stands now, is an endorsement
of those social customs and doctrines, without the kind of reasonable
justification we were talking about. And while endorsing social customs
and doctrines isn't necessarily a bad thing in the general sense, in the
case of gay marriage, it very likely violates the equal protection
clause of the US constitution. DOMA laws in, I think it was New York
were recently ruled to violate equal protection, so there's precedent
for this line of thinking.

So it's two different arguments: The social institution argument and the
legal argument. So to restate what you just said (hopefully in a fair
way): There is no reason gays shouldn't be able to get marriage
*licenses.* Arguing that there's no reasons gays shouldn't get married
is irrelevant; they already do.

In the gay marriage issue, the question is: Is that kind of
discrimination reasonable when it prevents all gays, even those who
would otherwise qualify, from getting their license? More than a couple
state supreme courts have said it's not.

Of course it's not.