No, because the question we are debating is whether 'this' is Caesar's or God's...!

Jan

My vote!

Jan

Good argument - and it goes the other way too. Some civil unions have allowed an offspring-caretaker of a parent to name his parent as inheritor 'upstream'. The offspring had a very good job and was concerned about his parent's welfare if he should die - which he did but the parent was able to inherit 'upstream'. (I believe this happened in Europe.)

Jan

Correct! I'll see you in Atlantis!

Well... First we should get rich....

the most fun which we had with wood, in building
here, besides the 18 foot long 2 by sixes for the rear
basement wall (tall basement ceiling!) was the mantel --
we found an ancient piece of walnut, off
in a dusty old warehouse out in the country.
eight feet by 16 inches by 4 inches. . bought a
belt sander to work it. . has a crack in one end
which we tried to close with screws and glue ...
no such luck. . too old and set in its ways. . looks
too rustic for my wife, but I sure love it! -- j

p.s. the old warehouse was a ww2 army clothing
factory, fascinating in itself!

I feels for ya, man! Here in our part of NW Raleigh, pretty much all we have is clay. And tall pine trees. After we moved in, we took down about five really tall pines that looked like a good hurricane could knock over onto our house, chickens that we were (and coming from Si. Valley earthquake country, at that!.)

Haven't had any tree-fall damage yet, but a few gully-washers last spring undercut one of the cement-block retaining walls that define the three 'levels' of our back yard. Previous owner apparently moved megatons of clay/soil to establish the terracing but skimped a bit on the construction. It's fixed now, and holding up pretty well under our current wet spells. But I do wish there were more hardwoods in the back yard.... :)

we built here in '05 and needed sheep's-foot-compacted
clay under the rear third of the house, because it is
a gulch here into which nature had deposited topsoil
to the depth of 14 feet at one point which we
measured. . we found clay on part of the land and
moved it, relocating the topsoil and creating a
haul road. . this cut the up-hill water source for a
tree older than the one to which I was just referring.
it was close enough to the house that we hired
pros to drop it. . turns out that we left it standing
dead too long to get lumber from it. . sad day at
black rock. . whatta tree! . 3 foot diameter white oak. -- j

yes, it's East Anglia in the marriage wars -- generate
the data to support your agenda! . we should get
clever and establish a fictitious Gulch to which all
sorts of wonderful things would be attributed, making
the world envious of its glory and wonder and
grandeur. . then, explaining that its foundation is
capitalism, and everyone is wealthy, even the
street-sweeper, we could win the world over.
with the internet, this scheme might actually be
possible. . an invisible interwoven society of Gulch
where everyone is rich. . when do we start? -- j

and their disparate impact trail leads to wealth
redistribution (not just income redistribution) and
other such sh!t-logic. . how is PC evil? . let us
count the ways....... -- j

puzzlelady, your note is also great!

neither I nor my wife has had kids. . for me, it is one
thing which I could have done which I didn't, and a
"bucket list" thing which I miss. -- j

that was fun, Jan! . had to look up monandrous and
hominins . . . found one and not the other! . hominids? -- j

blarman, might there be a 3rd option? . go ahead
and get the governments out of the marriage business?
would this require a constitutional amendment?
given the extensive involvement of various governments
in the marriage business, it might. . too bad. -- j

then, in my atlantis, we would change that, and
"family law" would revert to either contract law or
parent law, for the sake of offspring. . just because
it's done in all States doesn't make it right. -- j

well, the value which I was imagining conserving
is that of a devoted relationship between life-giving
humans, which may be the origin of the thing which
we call marriage. . so, Scalia must just have been
musing rather than justifying. . fine with me, too! -- j

aren't licenses usually about 2 things,
control and taxes? -- j

p.s. protection of the public good appears to be
a secondary consideration.

I'm a hobby woodturner.
If she 'loses a limb' maybe we could work out some kind of 'organ donation' in the event of such an 'accident'?
:)

Circuit guy your theory hold merit but then one could come along and state that those having homosexual traits is part of our social problems today. There is no ground breaking scientific proof either way. I would not like to be a supreme court judge on this matter it's a no win situation.

Jan unless I've missed something primates have not evolved to our state. Multiple partners are another subject. No matter how many partners one has it is still one man and one woman that can conceive a child unlike the canine species where a single female can conceive from multiple male partners. Thus for survival of our species it takes one man and one woman. Thank for your response it has given my even more things to ponder. I hope my thread has given you the same.

we water, fertilize and (she's over 100 feet tall) have
ambitions to prune . . . when I grow up!!! -- j

Interesting point. We do not hear of a 'sacred' contract between - for example - companies. The removal of that word from the legal definition of marriage may be an aid for people who do believe in a 'sacred' component to marriage as performed by their church. Let's keep the civil marriage as a non-sacred contract and if people want the blessing of their deity on it, then their church can provide that.

Jan

I certainly believe that. Doesn't it all start with applying for your "marriage license", which I'm sure is very standard and varies from State to state? Hence, the need for couples who feel they need to, to get a "ore-nuptial" agreement (contract) to supplement the boilerplate license.

And yes, I've personally experienced, and know many others in many different locations, the "family law" courts...yet another nightmare in our current "justice" system...

Nope. All states have a whole statutory scheme of family law separate from civil contract law. No state has ever ignored that scheme and simply applied contract law.

Good history and good points. Going back to Locke, I think you again named the issue: the government exists to protect property, certain well defined rights (protection against force or fraud) and certain other limited things, like defense of the country. The government is not the source of rights, nature is, and therefore it has no business "allowing" as in "having a say in" or "defining" anything outside of its very limited purview.

As applied to either The Feds or The States in the issue under discussion here, neither has a right to allow, condone or define marriage. It should neither be a Federal or State issue.

A marriage, whether this is the traditional way of looking at it or not, should be recognized and enforced as a voluntary contract between parties, subject to the exact same rules that courts use to first determine the validity or invalidity of the contract itself, at it would ANY other contract.Time to stop treating marriage as something unique or"sacred". As far as the latter, religions should be allowed to view marriage in their traditional terms and have their ceremonies. But that is irrelevant to the legal contract itself.

I think that's part of what the Supremes are arguing about. I agree with you, but I'm not sure under what circumstances the States can say "your contract is no good here", but I'm sure there are maybe some valid one,

Clearly, a conservative State right not to recognize a liberal States gay marriage is at issue here.

Once again, my feeling is let anyone marry anyone else under contract, but as other have said, not just to get government "goodies". The should be no government involvement (which is often done with arcane tax laws) in either encouraging or discouraging any particular type of voluntary, honest behaviors. I believe the term for this is "social engineering" and that's not what America in the Founders sense is about.