Oral Arguments at SCOTUS Over State Resistance to Marriage Neutering

Today is the day.

It wasn't all that long ago that the Supreme Court of the United States handled a marriage neutering case and indicated that the federal government, despite having the Defense of Marriage Act, had to defer to what states called marriage licenses. Thus, if a state had issued a "marriage" license to a groomless couple, the federal government had to recognize them as married for tax purposes.

Will the Court now turn around  and say, "Never mind! States must listen to the federal government on this matter since the federal government (federal courts) are requiring states to neuter their licenses."?



In the prior case, the Court did not find that there was a right to get a state marriage license without a bride or without a groom, only that if a state issued licenses in those cases, the federal government had to recognize them.



It would seem to me that if the 14th Amendment or any other part of our Constitution required states to neuter their licenses, SCOTUS should have said so back then. Ah, but maybe these dances in the courts aren't about ensuring that people have their rights, but rather social engineering at a calculated pace?

There are many larger issues involved here beyond the laws of one state or another, including the nature of rights and what makes something a right, the role of the federal judiciary, the role of states in licensing marriage, and public policy as it relates to family.



Even the MSM, or Marriage Neutering Media, is admitting that the Notorious RBG has more or less announced her decision to support neutering marriage ahead of hearing oral arguments. The shrieking and whining and general hysteria would be unbearable if Scalia had indicated his intention to rebuff the marriage neutering activists. RBG and perhaps another pro-neutering member of the Court should recuse themselves, but of course everything has to be sacrificed on the altar of esteeming homosexual behavior, whether it is sound precedent, obvious differences between men and women, protocol, and anything else that keeps the activists from being able to force everyone to celebrate their orgasms.

The best ruling SCOTUS could issue is to indicate that when they said the federal government needs to defer to states, they meant it, and thereby overturn most of the federal court decisions.


The people who say that neutering marriage, especially through federal judicial activism, will have no result other than simply allowing two men or two women to get a marriage license are either lying or severely naive. The naive people fail to grasp how marriage is part of a systematic way things are organized, both legally and socially.

However, there are ways SCOTUS could rule that could have devastating results beyond the specific issue of marriage neutering, including, but certainly not limited to:

• They could explicitly establish that men and women are interchangeable. Federal law does not currently indicate this. The "Equal Rights Amendment" was never ratified and women are not required, as men are, to register for the draft.
• They could explicitly establish that people who identify as homosexual are a class in the same what that people born black are a class, needing the same kind of civil rights protections.
• Establishing a disconnect in law between marriage and parenting, indicating that marriage has nothing to do with raising children.
• New rights can be created.
• Opening the door wide to removing other requirements in state marriage licensing, such as those restricting the licenses to two unmarried people and restricting the licenses to people who do not have a close degree of consanguinity or previous affinity.

It is possible they could allow the federal rulings imposing marriage neutering stand without explicitly doing these things as a settled matter, but would they handle it that way? And in the long run, won't any ruling they make advancing the neutering of marriage empower the activists to do those things?

Maybe you're somebody who thinks all of those things would be great. And if you honestly admit that, I can respect where you are coming from even though I strongly disagree. But if you've been lying about it, well, you'd better hope that the tactics and precedents you have been using don't come back to bite you when they are used for something you don't like. And if you have just kind of gone along with what you think would make your friends and family and fictional television characters happy, you're in for a rude awakening if the homofascists gain more power. Hopefully, your awakening will not come too late.

Click on the tags to this post for previous postings about this topics.

No Means No

Are we obligated to enshrine something into law simply because a minority has asked us to?

The answer, of course, is no.  Even if that group thinks it is their right, that does not obligate us to do anything and should not obligate a court to rule in their favor. Any group can get organized and ask for something, and then claim that their group is being treated unfairly if they don't get what they want. Any group can claim that something is a right, but it doesn't make it so.

When someone asks for a change in how a state issues licenses, such as marriage licenses, they are asking us (the people of the state) for something. We have the freedom to say "no".

People have a right to form voluntary associations - or not - and to offer their consent - or not.  So, if two women want to share a life together, they are free to do so, and if they can convince someone else to perform a ceremony for them, they can have one or they can even do one themselves. However, just as one woman can't force another woman to live with her, no group can force someone else - such as the people of a state - to consent to change marriage licensing.

Judges are representatives of the people. However, if the people, through their direct vote, have made their nonconsent clear, judges should not counter that.

There simply is no right to a state-issued license, and equal access to that license is already provided.

No means no. No court should force your belief – the belief that you should get a marriage license from us even though you are without a groom or without a bride - on the rest of us.

It's Reasonable to Defend Marriage

Bumping this up from May 2013:

Amy Hall at Stand to Reason blogged around the SCOTUS hearing on the marriage cases. She pointed out that "It's Not About Equality":

The term “marriage equality,” if it means “the right to marry whomever you want,” is simply not an accurate term for what same-sex marriage supporters are advocating—not if they favor any restrictions whatsoever (age, number of people, incest, etc.). The truth is that nearly everyone does favor a definition of marriage that has boundaries and thereby denies “marriage equality” to some category of couple (or group).

As you’re likely to hear this term often this week while the Supreme Court is reviewing Prop 8, below is a reposting of “We’re Arguing Definitions, Not Rights” that can help you move your conversations past the charge that you want to deny people equal rights to the real question: What is marriage?

And for a collection of links to more posts and resources discussing this issue, see “Three-Judge Panel Strikes Down Prop 8.”

From "We're Arguing Definitions, Not Rights:

1. Nearly everyone who thinks the government ought to issue marriage licenses favors defining marriage in some way. That is, they favor excluding some combinations of people (polygamy, incest, etc.), not individuals, from the definition. Even judges. Even you!

All laws discriminate between behavior and/or limit the definition of something.

2. You can't consistently argue that by excluding certain combinations of people, traditional marriage violates equal rights—unless you also argue to remove every single boundary from the definition of marriage and say anyone can marry anyone, in whatever combination of numbers they like.

If the argument is consenting adults have the right to get "marriage" licenses with anyone they want to, then yes, all restrictions on adult relationships would have to be dropped to include everyone.

3. If you're not willing to argue this, then you're for having a definition with boundaries, which puts you on equal footing with the traditional marriage supporters.

4. So the question is, which definition should we use? It's fine for you to argue that your definition of "two people who love each other" is better than my definition of "one man, one woman," or someone else's definition of "one man, multiple women," but we need to start off by understanding that we're arguing definitions, not rights.

Precisely. Everyone has the same rights now. Everyone would have the same rights if licensing is neutered.

It's not unconstitutional to adopt either my or your definition, as long as it's applied equally to every individual. Remember that the Constitution doesn't recognize rights for combinations of people; rights only belong to individuals.

That's a very important point.

So one can't say that a man and five women have a right to get married; one can only say that each individual man or woman has the right to enter into marriage (no individual is excluded). This right is then acted upon according to the boundaries set by the state's definition of what marriage is—boundaries which are equally applied to every individual. You would like to equally apply the boundary of "two people who love each other" (excluding some other combinations), and I would like to apply the boundary of "one man, one woman" to each individual equally.

Later, she wrote Now We Wait for the Ruling

Over at First Things, Glenn Stanton comments on some good questions the Justices asked. I tracked down one of the quotes he cited from Justice Sotomayor to get more of the context:

SOTOMAYOR: Mr. Olson, the bottom line that you're being asked—and it is one that I'm interested in the answer: If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what state restrictions could ever exist? Meaning, what state restrictions with respect to the number of people…the incest laws, the mother and child…I can accept that the state has probably an overbearing interest on protecting a child until they're of age to marry, but what's left?

OLSON: Well, you've said in the cases decided by this court that the polygamy issue, multiple marriages, raises questions about exploitation, abuse, patriarchy, issues with respect to taxes, inheritance, child custody, it is an entirely different thing. And if you—if a state prohibits polygamy, it's prohibiting conduct. If it prohibits gay and lesbian citizens from getting married, it is prohibiting their exercise of a right based upon their status.

The first mistake Olson makes here is that he thinks people are being denied marriage because of their sexual orientation (i.e., “their status”). This has never happened. There is no test whatsoever for sexual orientation when a person applies for a marriage license. There is no class of people being told they’re not eligible for marriage. In fact, the exclusion of same-sex couples (that’s same-sex couples, not homosexual citizens) from marriage isn’t about prohibiting something on the basis of bad conduct or the status of a group, it’s about the definition of marriage.

Marriage was not something developed to make homosexual people sad.

If marriage is a particular thing, then everyone has a right to take part in that institution as it stands, regardless of their personal characteristics. But to be part of the institution, they must be part of the institution. They don’t have a right to change that institution into something different simply because they don’t want to be part of it the way it is.

Imagine a public park builds a tennis court so that people can come to play tennis. Nobody should be denied the right to play tennis games there. Period. It’s a public park, open to all. One day, a group of basketball players comes to the park, wanting to play a game, but they find they can’t play basketball on a tennis court. They immediately go to City Hall to complain: “Everyone has the right to competitive exercise with a ball on that court! We’re being denied our rights based on our status as basketball players!” Can you see the problem? The fact that they don’t want to play tennis doesn’t give them the right to demand that the government build a different court at the park. Their right isn’t to “competitive exercise with a ball” (tennis shares that in common with basketball, but it can’t be reduced to that), their right is to play tennis on that court, just like everybody else.

Or, as I like to say, a chess club has no right to demand status as an NFL team, requiring that the NFL sanction chess-playing. Football is not chess.

It’s Not a Ban on Gay Marriage

Marriage amendments, such as the California Marriage Amendment, voted in as Proposition 8, and "defense of marriage" laws are often referred to in news articles, commentaries, and other media as "bans on gay marriage."

I frequently point out that this phraseology is inaccurate and misleading – and I don't like it when it is used by "marriage defenders" or the marriage neutering crowd.

I maintain that "same-sex marriage" is an oxymoron akin to "dry liquid".

Even granting that a man could marry a man, or a woman could marry a woman, the use of the phrase "ban on gay marriage" is still sloppy.

First, notice that there is a difference between "gay" and "same-sex". I don't know of anyone who is asking that the sexual orientation of the individuals obtaining a marriage license together be noted anywhere in the paperwork. It has never been part of the process. Consequently, a man of any sexual orientation and a woman of any sexual orientation have always been able to obtain a marriage license together, provided neither one was currently married to someone else, and provided they were not close relatives and were of age. A gay man could marry a lesbian or a straight woman. Likewise, a straight man could marry a lesbian. All of these combinations have happened more than once.

When and where neutered marriage licensing occurs, there is nothing preventing two straight men from obtaining such a license together, nor two straight women – provided they meet all of the requirements (marital status, age, non-relation). Thus the phrase "same sex" is more accurate than "gay".

The word "ban" is also wrong. Our marriage laws are no more a "ban" on same-sex marriage than they are a "ban" on polygamy.

Same-sex (and presumably homosexual) couples were having "marriage" ceremonies for years before any state our country neutered their marriage laws. They have exchanged rings, have had a minister officiate, have lived together, have referred to each other with spousal designations, have changed names, have held receptions and gone on "honeymoon" vacations, so on and so forth. Employers and other organizations could recognize them as married if they so chose. Neither California's Marriage Amendment, nor any other similar law prohibits any of this. Thus, it is not a ban.

Incestuous marriages have been recognized in the past, though now they are actually banned as people are prosecuted in most places for sexual activity among consenting adults who are closely related. People go to jail for this activity – forget about being a denied a state-issued marriage license.

Some – not all - states in the USA had actual bans on "interracial" marriage in the past that were struck down by a SCOTUS decision. Marriage neutering activists frequently compare this to the situation with neutered marriage licensing, but the comparison is flimsy.

With the adoption of the California Marriage Amendment or any other such law in other states, no couples were forced to split up or forced to stop living together. Not a single legal entitlement was lost, as the federal government has never recognized a same-sex coupling as marriage, and California still treats domestic partners as spouses. Contrary to a shameful television ad, no Mormon missionaries forced their way into the homes of sex-same couples to destroy or take their property.

Affirming traditional marriage licensing is not a "gay marriage ban". Such language is used by media outlets who abandon objectivity and engage in advocacy and manipulation.