They all lack rationality...

Long before this ruling I recognized that adherence to libertarianism and Objectvist principles requires me to support plural marriage, and I do, wholeheartedly.

Equally as long before this ruling I was of the opinion that churches should NOT be tax exempt. Some commenters have predicted that this ruling would lead to lawsuits challenging churches' tax-exempt status. I don't think it should have any bearing on the matter, but the courts are so screwed up that they might accept it as an argument.

My reasoning for disallowing tax-exemption for chuches is this: the separation of church and state. I can hear the howls already, "the Constitution never mentions any separation of church and state." Fair enough, but just as we do when defending the 2nd amendment, we go back to the source material, letters and other writings of the founding fathers who wrote it and wrote the first ten amendments. Thomas Jefferson himself, a major contributor to the Constitution and a primary architect of our republic, used the phrase "as like a wall of separation between church and state" in his writings. So we can easily see the true intent.

The federal government should, in all things, ignore the existence of religion and churches. That is the only way to guarantee that our government remains perfectly neutral with regard to all religious matters and the only way to guarantee complete religious freedom.

Consider some of the benefits:

- gov't can't threaten a church's tax status on the grounds that it's using the pulpit for political influence. The left and the right have been up in arms about political proselytizing from the pulpit and would love to control what is said there through the threat of losing tax-exempt status.

- no more people being offended over tax-exempt status for "fringe" churches (and how can gov't decide what is and isn't a church, anyway, without coming dangerously close to establishing a religion?) Raise your hand if you think the "Church" of Scientology doesn't resemble a church in any way except for the fact that the entire basis for its existence lacks rationality, that it's beliefs cannot be supported by a single piece of credible scientific evidence? How many other "churches" enjoy tax-exempt status that virtually nobody would recognize as a church?

Sincere thanks for providing that quote by Rand. I had read it before and it was my position long before I ever read her. That statement is 100% compatible with libertarian principles (I've been one for nearly 20 years) which shouldn't surprise anyone because almost every libertarian position could have been taken from Objectivism (and was? Rand wasn't the first to promote many of the principles of Objectivism but she was the one who developed it into a complete philosophy and provided consistent, logical reasoning for every aspect. Probably the most important philosopher in history.)

You already know the answer to the question you posed in your last paragraph. "When a natural right ... comes into conflict with a civil right" is the problem; it's like saying "when 2 + 3 = 6". True rights cannot be in conflict with each other. If a conflict does exist then one of them isn't a right. I think the term "civil rights" is unnecessary and it's improperly used to describe both real rights and imaginary ones. It's not needed to describe real rights because we already have a word for that - RIGHTS. And using it to describe imaginary rights is just fraud.

[And by the very same principle, the government has no right to discriminate for some citizens at the expense of others. It has no right to violate the right of private property by forbidding discrimination in privately owned establishments.] So the "rights" created by the civil rights act aren't rights.

[“No man, neither Negro nor white, has any claim to the property of another man. A man’s rights are not violated by a private individual’s refusal to deal with him. Racism is an evil, irrational and morally contemptible doctrine – but doctrines cannot be forbidden or prescribed by law. Just as we have to protect a communist’s freedom of speech, even though his doctrines are evil, so we have to protect a racist’s right to use and disposal of his own property. Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue – and can be fought only by private means, such as economic boycott or social ostracism.”]

This is exactly what I've written several times in this thread, but naturally Ayn Rand said it better. That description of private property rights and how the gov't has destroyed them (with the court's blessing and with society's blessing) is the real cause of the fear and loathing underlying this pro-same sex ruling by SCOTUS. The court recognized a right that already existed, as far as I'm concerned. The fallout is that this real right will become the basis for claims of anti-private property (and thus anti-individual rights) imaginary rights.

Just like in the past, the gov't will use this real right and their legal monopoly on force to "discriminate for some citizens at the expense of others." Statutes will be passed where gov't will discriminate for some citizens at the expense of others - immoral statutes. Lawsuits will be filed and some of them will be won - based on incorrect law.

But the incorrect law here is not the ruling that finally recognized all couples already had the right to marry. The incorrect law is the perversion (I love it!) that bases imaginary rights on real rights.

You're right, you didn't mention the bible, but it's silly to deny that the moral basis for the concept of perversion is religion.

Then you wrote, "homosexual lifestyles ARE a perversion. This is a simple fact of nature." You can't further the argument that homosexuality is perversion simply by restating the claim with capitalized emphasis, nor by claiming that it's a simple fact of nature. You need to back up that claim with evidence, which is hard because perversion carries a connotation of morality which 1) is based on the authority of a higher power and 2) changes radically between cultures. (In Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries it's immoral for a woman to be alone with an unrelated male, but is was NOT immoral for Mohammad to marry Alia at 6 and have sex with her at 9).

Merriam-Webster's web site says this about perversion...
: sexual behavior that people think is not normal or natural
: something that improperly changes something good
: the process of improperly changing something that is good

The actual, formal definition appears below that text but it's a very unhelpful, self-referential definition. I encourage people to view it and decide if my claim is accurate (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionar...).

Back to Merriam-Webster's informal definition - it's a completely secular definition in that it doesn't mention morality or rules imposed upon us by a supernatural power.

"sexual behavior that people think is not normal or natural" is completely subjective, as proven by the phrase "that people think". "Norm" can be calculated (mean and median being the most useful) but the connotation of "normal" implies subjective judgement. You can't deny that homosexuality is natural because you recognized that it happens in the animal world. I deny your description that it occurs "accidentally" (a critter doesn't trip and accidentally have sex with another critter) and there are documented cases of same-sex animal pairs.

I certainly won't deny that same sex couples can't procreate through intercourse. That would deny reality. But the ruling by SCOTUS had nothing to do with breeding so I'll call this point irrelevant to the discussion as it's been held so far.

Merriam-Webster's second bullet point is "something that improperly changes something good." That applies to a billion things other than sex, but also to sex. I'll never accept that sex isn't good, so the only debatable point is whether or not homosexuality improperly changes it. Once again we have a purely subjective value judgement, which is the opposite of a "simple fact."

There's my logical defense to the statements you made. Whether or not you were regaled is out of my control.

I agree with you that businesses should have the right of conscience on who they choose to provide services or sell their products to. Such is that individual's choice of values and values are a 24/7 thing - not an 8 to 5 thing.

Are some such values based on bias or discretion? They are bound to be. We can not be called agents and individuals unless we are permitted to and capable of our own observations, conclusions, and actions. I further agree with you if you are saying that we should be permitted to live according to our biases as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others.

"Those laws correctly apply to gov't, not the private sector. "

That's a dual-edged sword, however, because it says that working for the government is different than working for a private institution. I'm not so sure I would go there because you would be condemning those who work for government to live by a different set of laws and you would be instituting a religious persuasion among the purveyors of government services contrary to the explicit text of the First Amendment. We already have a lot of problems with government treating itself differently than the common person, I don't think we want to encourage any more of that.

Sure it is. All traditions were formed based on some thought processes: observations leading to conclusions. Just because you don't like them doesn't make them either irrational or insensible. Is there the possibility that some traditions were formed based on conclusions from imperfect or incomplete information? Absolutely. Science always dictates that nothing is ever sure and is always subject to re-evaluation.

In the realm of social science, however, there is far less surety to any result set because of the nature of those in the study - independent agents with their own (frequently changing) value sets. This makes any sociological observations - especially those conducted on their own, i.e. humans observing humans - to incorporate a significant amount of not only bias, but inherent ignorance as well. The only way to avoid these is to be a completely objective third party with extensive experience in observing the human race yet not being one of them.

Your claim is your own and based on your own internal biases, knowledge, experience, etc. My claim is similarly my own and subject to all the same constraints. But to say that only your argument is rational is to allow your biases to predispose you to a given conclusion, i.e. confirmation bias.

If you really want to get into the logic or rationale of the gay marriage argument, you'll have to PM me. I dislike hijacking someone else's thread for an extensive debate.

Yes! The indentation is getting hard to follow to know where the replies belong.

My reply that begins "You get credit for being blatantly honest, which I approve of. You get minus ten billion credits for being an a-hole" is in response to Radio_Randy, mister "perversion". It would seem that I wrote that after clicking Reply on your post - which was an error. I apologize profusely!

My reply that begins "(I +1'd you, but I have comments...) It's the very limiting of government that protects the rights of the people, so I think your semantic disagreement is misplaced." is in response to your entry.

Ayn Rand didn't like religion because she saw only two examples of religion and this jaded her. One was the socialist government. The other was the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. Both of these were to her tyrannies of one sort or the other. So she chose instead to just write off the concept of God altogether.

It is pretty easy to take the atheistic view of things and live for one's self if one believes that this life is all there is. It does take a leap of faith to believe that death is not the end and that this life is merely a gateway to something else. The question of the existence of God is not so much about God but about whether or not the choices we make here have effects after the grave. That is the true origin of all religion - and I include atheism under that heading. Those who believe in God believe that this life does not end consciousness and that there will be some kind of afterlife (or reincarnation) where the opportunities there are directly determined by our actions in the here and now. Most atheists are more accurately nihilists - those who advocate that consciousness is temporary.

At its heart, however, Objectivism purports to be seeking truth - an understanding of reality. And that choice to believe or not to believe in the termination of existence at death has a profound effect on every other tenet of philosophy - not excepting Objectivism. Why they chose the atheistic persuasion rather than an agnostic persuasion remains a mystery to me.

Your argument is "it's self-evident."

I am not saying they are equivalent or even identical. But that they are similar enough to warrant the same conceptual identity. No two objects or people are exactly identical. But our minds are wired to find similarities and group like things into concepts.
Should an old couple's marriage and a young couple's marriage be given different names because there are differences between old people and young people? What about a second marriage? Or a second marriage with a divorcee versus a widow? Should arranged marriages have a different term from a marriage for love? Or marriages where the couple produces children versus those who do not? Should it still be allowed to be called a marriage after a woman goes through menopause? What if the couple no longer has sex? Is a Vegas eloping a marriage? Is a marriage where the husband or wife is away deployed still a marriage?

Your arguments are akin to those resisting the trend of removing gender specific terminology from professions. Stewards and stewardesses are now both flight attendants. Actresses are now actors. Waiters and waitresses are now servers. This is just a continuation of the trend of society no longer caring about the differences in the sexes and abandoning traditional gender roles as the irrelevant and arbitrary artificial constructs they are. There is no actual reason to refuse to call a same-sex Union anything different from an opposite-sex Union unless you have a problem with the Union itself or if you have a reason for willfully separating the two.

My guess is that you simply do not believe two men or two women really can unite. Hence your conspicuous use of quotes.

"but ultimately religious freedom must trump"

I do not share your optimism. If there was any respect for religion by the LGTBXYZPDQ crowd, they would have left "marriage" alone and used the term "civil union". But it was never about respect at all. It is about forcing others to acknowledge and celebrate your own personal philosophy - nothing more and nothing less. All of the other arguments about love and equality are a whitewash. If tolerance was anywhere in play, you would not have gays suing cake makers, photographers, and wedding chapels - they would go find or build their own. That they are not satisfied to do so should indicate that this ruling is a gateway decision - not a final ruling. Next we will see lawsuits attempting to force anyone of religious temperament who feels homosexuality is wrong to discard their beliefs or face punishment from the State - either the loss of their business due to fines or more likely the loss of their status as a tax-exempt entity.

No. This is a long way from being over.

Regardless, tradition is not a rational argument.

They are not separated for gender, per se, but for the physical nature of the sport and the general impossibility of women to compete with men in the sport. It is not because boys and girls should be separated while playing sports for its own sake.

Part of the problem lies in the Constitutional responsibility of the various states to recognize contracts formed in other states. The real tragedy and problem arose when the individual states co-opted the control over the institution of marriage in the first place rather than leaving it to the people. Once the government was allowed to seize control and usurp authority over what was traditionally a private/religious matter, it began a cascading effect.

Uh, it was the Ku Klux Klan and the segregationists who were in favor of marriage licensing. It wasn't the religionists agitating to relinquish control over a traditionally religious matter to the State.

Here in America, you are free to choose your own philosophy - be it religious or otherwise. Or at least you used to be able to. This ruling isn't nearly as much about social approbation for homosexual marriage as it is establishing secularization and government as the new altar at which all must worship. If you want to go there, you advocate for government as origin of rights and of laws. Be careful what you wish for.

You believe the secularists then rather than history. Religion has always been at the heart of marriage and civilization. Secularism and atheism are very new and recent developments in society and to suggest that such predate religion is contradicted by all archeological evidence.

Have inroads made by the secularists affected traditions over the past 200 years? Indisputably. But it would be pure revisionist history to believe that secularism predates religion and the religious foundations of marriage.

It is neither a false dichotomy nor fallacious reasoning. If you want to somehow claim that a union between two same-sexed individuals is the same as a union between two opposite-sexed individuals, you deny the very fact of reality itself. You can not simply abstract male or female to "person". That is the whole point of this case. They are not synonymous in any reality.

You illustrate this beautifully with your own analogy to soccer. Why are mens' and womens' soccer treated as two different sports? Because they recognize the inherent differences of the sexes of those participating and the inherent capabilities. They play by the same rules, yes, but neither denies that they separated the two games for a very simple reason - gender.

If you want to deny that men and women are different - different in anatomy, different in temperament and inclination, different in DNA - then I truly can not help you. You refuse to admit the obvious reality of the matter. I do not have to prove that men and women are different. I do not have to prove that a union between a man and a woman is different than a "union" between two men or two women. It is as plain and obvious as it can be. I categorically deny your "suggestion" that A = B as having any basis in reality.

(Part 2)
Your concern over misunderstanding of law based on changing language is a valid concern, but a concern for which I feel we already have a workable answer. The court system. While legislatures and written law are rigid and inflexible to changing context and The realities we face due to an ever increasing rate in change in technology, the courts can adapt to this change fluidly and almost effortlessly. It is but one job of our court system to recognize and interpret how and when the letter of the law applies to specific examples and in context with society and reality. Some may feel that the courts were premature in their decision, and that not enough of society has come around to understand or except gay marriage, but this does not change that it was still the right thing to do.

Your question about drivers licenses versus marriage licenses is a good one, and a question that arises with all government licensing. When is a government's decision to restrict issuance of a license arbitrary, and when is it reasonable? What kind of checks and balances are there within a bureaucratic system for ensuring that such restrictions are more often reasonable than arbitrary? The answer is, unfortunately, very few. That is why, as an objectivist, I am in favor of private entities, such as guilds and trade associations, providing trademarked licenses over governments having the monopoly. The Association of Realtors is a good example of how this can work. As you have recognized and I have already argued, government getting involved in the issuance and regulation of marriage licenses caused a great deal of this mess, and would have largely been avoided if such an intrusion had never been attempted. Perhaps even the issue of language when it comes to marriage would have been avoided if absent the government monopoly on marriage licenses I've never existed, churches could have trademarked "marriage" and those who wished to be "married" would be required to fit their definition.

Anyway, I think that is all I have to say on the issue for now.

Even though they feel they can claim they originated the term "marriage" it is not violate any of their rights for others to use the term differently than they originally intended. If the Roman Catholic Church received a royalty every time someone used the term marriage, then perhaps we would be having a different conversation. However what we are discussing is the perceived rights of those with religious conviction, namely that they can dictate to others, through the government, what one is allowed to call one's union, in an official capacity anyway. No such right exists, and so should we really be concerned with the emotions of those who not only miss understand the concept of rights in general, but become irate when those perceived rights are rightfully denied them? You are very correct in that a fundamental right does not conflict with others, and that is why those with religious conviction do not have the right to define who can and cannot be married by law. Their perceived right is not a real right because it conflicts with the right to equal treatment under the law of others.
It is also wrong for them to believe that their marriages are somehow diminished by this ruling. There is no reason why the gay couple next-door been allowed to legally use the same term as you to refer to their union affects you or your marriage any more than the divorce of the couple across the street or the three-day marriage of Britney Spears affects yours. Perhaps the religious right feels they own the concept and institution of marriage, and therefore such things as a divorce right over 50% or same-sex couples being included in the mix is tarnishing their sacred institution. But this is also fallacious. Just as society does not exist as an entity, it is only a certain number of individuals, marriage as an institution does not exist but only a collection of individual marriages. Religious institutions and individuals cannot logically claim any ownership over the institution, anymore than they can claim ownership over society.

I fail to recognize how this ruling can force any association upon someone. One cannot be forced into a gay marriage anymore than one can be forced into a straight marriage. This ruling also does not force individuals to use the term marriage in common conversation when referring to same-sex unions. The only example I can foresee would be a company like hobby lobby wishing to only provide employer funded health insurance to the spouses of straight marriages and not to gay marriages. We have already seen, though, that this court allows for exceptions to certain laws for companies based on religious conviction. (My use of hobby lobby as an example was intentional)

Also remember that our Constitution is not a sacred religious text either. it was put together in order to make as free of a society as our founders could envision at the time. The 10th amendment, in my opinion, was designed to protect individual rights. It did so by removing from the federal government the majority of powers, and placing them in the hands of the states, Who are closer to the people and more likely to recognize and adapt to the will of the people. This does not mean that states rights are necessarily sacred or infallible, as we saw during the civil rights era, states are just as capable of making improper decisions regarding individual rights as is the federal government. Although it may appears to be a violation of the 10th amendment and letter, to have the federal courts overthrow state laws, it is not a violation of the intent when doing so results in the protection of individual rights.

There is much to be lamented in this decision, especially the dignity argument. It is not the place nor the job of the courts to divvy out dignity among the peasants. But that is an ancillary issue, when compared to the main issue. The issue is that some states were being necessarily discriminatory, and that is in violation of our federal Constitution. The only remedy available to the court was to rule that laws limiting the issuance of marriage licenses only two opposite sex couples were invalid. Arguing, for instance, that the court overstepped its bounds with regards to marriage license reciprocity among the states is a topic worth debating, but it is a secondary issue and not one that would invalidate the main issue. (Part 1)

Timelord, did you mean to pos this as a response to the other guy?

Perhaps the difference in opinion over the language concerns comes from a different beginning perception.
From what I've seen you write, I would venture to guess that you view referring to a same-sex Union as a marriage as an abasement because it is calling a separate entity by the wrong term. To support this position, you must view the two unions as so distinct and different as to be considered separate concepts. Such as the difference between a couch and a chair.
Those who have not been upset over the language issue (in this case) do not feel that the two unions are so different as to be separate concepts, and so they do not require different words to define them. We view the use of marriage in this context as simply a new use of an existing term as a result of a changing concept of what it means to be married.
We view it as an adaptation of the language to meet a changing reality, rather than as you seem to view it as a forceful and intentional misrepresentation of reality by referring to one concept by the same term as another.

Perhaps the impetus should be on those who wish to draw the distinction to provide compelling evidence as to why we should understand the two as separate concepts, rather than on those of us who state they are the same (or similar enough as to fall under the same umbrella concept).

That is a distinctly a non-selfish viewpoint. The only rational justification for the union, marriage, family, etc. would be your own rational selfishness, not a sacrifice for the good of your children.

You are being ludicrous. To suggest that I don't know the difference between men and women is somewhere between a straw man argument and a false dichotomy. Such fallacious reasoning, especially when done to intentionally and maliciously has no place in a rational forum. It is intentionally false and misleading. I will, however, answer your charge.

While there are very obvious differences between men and women both physically and psychologically, what I am failing to see is why you feel those differences necessarily mean that a union between those of the same sex and those of different sexes will be so different from each other that they require completely separate words to define them.

Is not a chair made of wood, steel, or plastic still called a chair? Until you can provide actual reasons for the distinction, other than the gender of those involved, then you have provided no real reason. For example, while men's and women's soccer are kept separate because of the inherent physical differences between the sexes, the sports are still called "soccer." A new term is only used when the sports are so different as to require important distinctions in order to understand the different rules. Baseball vs softball is a good example of this. Distinctions in the size of the ball, method of pitching, distance between the bases, etc. are all indicated by the change in name. However, even though baseball has traditionally been A mail sport and softball the female equivalent, women play baseball and men play softball. This does not change the name of the sport.

So again I repeat, unless you can call provide me with examples of why a same-sex union call and an opposite-sex union are so caustically different that call they are entirely different concepts, because as we all know words represent concepts, then your charge is baseless. I am suggesting that the two are similar enough to be able to be referred to by the same term.

RAH, in his classic book "Time Enough For Love", posited the only reason for family (of any description) was the care and nurture of children. So long as that moral obligation was met, families could change as the members thereof so decided, individually, to act. Also, in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", he posited what he termed a matrilineal "line marriage". Just a thought but he may have been far ahead of his time.