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Sounds fine to me. The Leg voted it in. If you don't like it, you can vote them out. Democracy in action. I'm here in California where we have Domestic Partnership legislation. It doesn't require anyone to recognize or perform gay marriage. It simply allows gay couples to be secure in their legal status and go about their business.

Frankly, I'm overjoyed.  But then, I'm among the minority who:

1.  Very much support gay marriage; but,
   
2.  Believe that such a radical redefinition of the term "marriage" must be accomplished through the legislature, not the Courts.  

The Connecticut bill appears to use the right means to reach the right result.  Bravo.  If the bill passes (preferrably, without the proposed amendment), it will absolutely make my day.  

I'm happy to see a Republican Governor signing in a legislative bill that gives gay couples similar rights as married couples have.  No judicial activism.  Kudos to Gov. Rell, who by the way is more popular than the Beatles and closing in on Jesus.

In fact, as von said, this is the proper means of achieving a result that I think is appropriate.  The most significant thing is not that this was done by the state legislature, but that it wasn't done at judicial gunpoint.  There was no compulsion here, no court ruling saying that lawmakers had to draft a bill to their liking.

Everybody wins with this one, methinks.

Just wanted to join the chorus of those expressing approval. Frankly, I think the fight over gay marriage may wind up hastening the point where we become a little more like France, where there is civil marriage and religious marriage, and the twain do not meet. Priests and other ministers have no authority there to perform the civil marriage. So if you are religious, you get married in the morning at the town hall, then have your church wedding in the afternoon. Keeps the religious consequences and the secular consequences of marriage separate from each other. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing, though.

But I've long believed that if people are determined to do silly things to themselves, they should be allowed to do so.

I'll go along with most of the other commenters here: favor the result, and favor achieving it through the state legislature. Thomas is entitled to disagree with the outcome, but the mechanics of representative government create options for expressing that disagreement that would have been foreclosed by a judicial fiat.

This issue would never have become the hot-button issue it is today if certain zealots in Massachusetts had been prepared to let the people decide, instead of using the bench to force their values on the great unwashed.  But if watching three decades of fallout from Roe v. Wade hasn't taught them that lesson, I doubt they're ever going to get it.

Since everyone else is concurring that this is a perfectly fine result, let me at least be one to concur with you.

I got here from a discussion on the same bill over at DailyKOS (wait, wait!).  I'm a straight man and a red-stater, but I am a blue voter, and I am in favor of either civil unions or outright gay marriage.  Unlike some of you, I welcome judicial intervention when treatment of homosexuals is plainly unequal.

However...

I just wanted to say that the (handful of) comments I've read here so far are great.  Though some of us may disagree profoundly on certain issues, y'all are showing a lot of class by accepting the legislative act at face value.  I certainly wouldn't expect anything less of fellow Americans, but it's nice to see in action.

So, uh, thanks.  :)

To keep this place a classy joint.  It's very rare that we actually have to hit someone with a spiked pipe.  ;-)

Out of the spiked pipe line, huh?

I wish I could have come up with something better!  In fact, I'm working on a 3-D lofted CorelDraw sketch of the spiked pipe so that we can sell T-shirts to dress the Republican Wrecking Crüe.

Seriously, I just thought it was funnier than my "mouth like an acid firehose" line a while back.  I'm strange.  ;-)

I hope this is a reminder that many who oppose gay marriage are not hateful people.  And for a good chunk of Republicans (although probably not a majority), the main issue is that these issues be dealt with by elected legislatures instead of unelected judges who overall the will of the people.  I fall into that category and I'm quite proud of Gov. Rell for being the first Governor to sign in an unforced civil unions law.

I also note that it did not create a huge backlash or media outcry, mostly because it had majority support in the state.  I'm sure their was opposition, but the legislation worked its way through the old-fashioned process of gaining support and being passed.  Kudos to CT.

Technically not allowing gay marraige is not unequal treatment.  The current laws in most states prevent two people of the same sex from marrying each other.  The law applies to gay and straight people alike.  Meanwhile a gay man is not prevented from marrying a woman.

The idea of marrage is for raising a family.  And outside of Hollywood, which makes a mockery of marrage, that is what the vast majority of people get married for.  Since the family is the building block of society, I have no qualms in using the tax code to encourage marrage.

If you start saying that there is unequal treatment because a person should be able to marry anyone they want, then you start on the slippery slope.  People can say that they want to marry their sibling, their mom, their sheep.  And you know the orthodox Mormons will want to bring polygamy back.  Sure, the number of people that will want this is extrememly small, but they are out there.  

That being said, some of the other things that are denied unmarried people, such as being able to visit a loved one in the hospital, should be allowed.  I have no problems with civil unions, but they are not, and should not, be marrages.  Civil unions should have all of the benefits of a marrage except the marrage tax exemption.  Tax exemptions are there to encourage behavior, and society as a whole depends on encouraging the formation AND RETENTION of the family unit.

It is an interesting question.  Just how far can or should government go in enforcing a societal model? And how can we know that what we are trying to enforce is good, bad or neutral?

If the number of people wanting some (non-terroristic) behavior to be legal is extremely small, is that a problem for society?  A bigger or smaller problem than their doing it underground?

How does this work across state lines? For example, if a CT resident with a civil union ended up seeking treatment and being gravely ill/dying at Sloan-Kettering, would they have the legal rights of partner in NY? Dartmouth is our major medical center where we live in VT, and it is just now occuring to me that this could impact couples who have civil unions instead of marriages, as many people (including my husband and I, who don't have this problem, as we are married) cross state lines for medical care.

If the legal rights of civil unions are recognized across state lines, then I could be persueded that a civil union with a church ceremony if wanted (obviously only in a church that is willing to do so) is enough for now.

This is one of the reasons that making changes through the legislature is better.  If a judge rules that marriage must include any couple who so desire, then as Sen. Santorum pointed out, the legal reasoning has to be applied to siblings and probably polygamy.

However, if a legislature ever allows gay marriage, it can still forbid polygamy and other types of possible marriages.  That flexibility (or as some would call it, inconsistency) is afforded to the makers of the law.  Judges must rule from principles and thus one ruling often requires other ones later on.

From a tax point of view it is much better to file two returns using a filing status of single rather than file one return using married filing joint.

The marriage penalty hasn't gone away it has just been lessened a bt.  

I have to say, while I am still (and highly likely to remain) a fairly left liberal, and a feminist to boot, (although I do have a conservative streak on certain issues, especially as pertaining to children and families) RedState has been very eye opening for me.

While there are a few here who reinforce every liberal stereotype of conservatives (like DKos does for you) the thoughtful discussions and heartfelt beliefs have really made me feel a little better about the red/blue divide. In a discussion with a friend of my same political ilk the other day, I tried to clarify the pharmacists dispensing birth control argument as I understood it from here. I still don't agree with it, but found that I defended views I don't hold because the intent was being misconstrued.

I wish that as a nation we could have more of this kind of dialogue so that we understand, or at least stop vilifying, each other. In all honesty though, I am not sure that either side really wants to stop vilifying the other.

Not necessairly.  Probably depends on whether both of you work.  My wife stays at home with three young children, and it's MUCH better to file jointly.  Actually, in most cases it's better to file jointly unless both partners make a lot of money and have no children.  Of course when it comes to taxes in general, I feel that we should inplement the FaitTax, but that's just my opinion.

But if watching three decades of fallout from Roe v. Wade hasn't taught them that lesson, I doubt they're ever going to get it.

Yes.

Until the tax brackets for married filing jointly are exactly double that of single filers there will be an advantage to filing your return using one status or the other.

Currently single filers have the advantage.

The point I was making is that the government isn't rewarding married people through the tax law.  Married people actually fare worse than single people do in regard to income taxes.

At issue is whether the government has a legitiamte duty and right to determine if and how its workers, taxpayers and protectors are to be replaced. To date, it has relied upon and subsidized marriage and family as the producer and developer of such replacements. Only the People through their elected representatives have the power and right to decide such issues.

On choice of law principles.  With the caveats that I haven't given this much thought, that applicable law may differ, and that I haven't yet had a cup of coffee:  my first instinct is that medical visitation rights will likely be determined by the state of treatment.  Thus, in my barely-considered-and-somewhat-sleepy-opinion, a civil union in CT is unlikely to provide substantive rights w/r/t medical treatment at a hospital in VT or MA.  (If others have a different sense, please share.)  

This is not necessarily true for every eventuality, however.  For instance, in the event of a "divorce" under the civil union laws of CT, CT law may very well govern the distribution of property located out of state.  Who gets a jointly-owned summer home in ME, for instance.

I can see that, which is one reason I support the FairTax where the rebate for a married family of 4 is greater than the rebate for a single person in a family of 4.  

That just makes the argument for same-sex marraiges weaker since one of the reasons frequently given for same sex marraiges is the marraige exemption.

There are many benefits that married people have which single people do not, but tax savings isn't one of them.

I don't believe it makes the argument for same-sex marriage materially weaker, but it is one less benefit they would receive that is for sure.

I wholeheartedly agree that it is best to hear an argument from someone who believes it.  Personally, I think if you believe you are right on an issue then you will take your opponent's best argument and beat it (instead of taking their weakest argument).

FWIW, I also think this is why alternative news media is so important to conservatives.  There are almost no evangelicals on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, etc.  They make up 25+% of the country which is almost double the African-American population.  But when articles are written about "anti-abortionist" or other issues, they are rarely written by pro-lifers.  It would be like sending an old suit to describe a frat party; the perspective matters.

I'm glad RedState is helping fill that void somewhat.  It very much worries me to see the groupthink on a site as big as Kos.  It seems a diarist will create a caraciture of conservatives and then the community will bash that non-existent caraciture to death.  It detaches readers from reality and leads to a widely skewed view of the country, conservatives, and conservative policy.

So thank you for reading us and trying to understand our arguments and policies.  I still believe most liberals have good intentions (except those who hate religion), but I disagree with their policies on how to achieve those good intentions (i.e. poverty reduction, gay rights, educational opportunity, equality of opportunity, cultural tolerance, etc).

The U.S. Constitution requires each state to give "full faith and credit" to the "acts, records, and judicial proceedings" of other states (that's why your state has to recognize your quicky marriage in Las Vegas and your quicky divorce in Reno). During the Clinton Administration, when this issue first started to really percolate and judges were beginning to override the democratic process and impose their own values on the electorate, there was real concern that once a single state recognized gay marriage, then every other state would be required to recognize those marriages, as well.

The response was the Defense of Marriage Act, signed by President Clinton in 1996. The Constitution grants Congress the power to pass laws which determine the exact effects of the full faith and credit clause, and the Act is merely an exercise of that power. It simply provides that no state is required to give full faith and credit to any marriage in another state which is between 2 people of the same sex.

So Mississippi doesn't have to recognize the Connecticut gay civil union. The Act also provides that for all purposes of federal law (Social Security benefits, etc.), a marriage is between one man and one woman.

Re: The idea of marrage is for raising a family.  And outside of Hollywood, which makes a mockery of marrage, that is what the vast majority of people get married for.  

I would not agree with that. If you go out as ask married people why they married the vast majority will say "because we were in love with one another" (and some may add "and it was time to settle down".) Very few people treat their choice of mate as if they selecting a breeding stud or brood mare.

Re: At issue is whether the government has a legitiamte duty and right to determine if and how its workers, taxpayers and protectors are to be replaced.

Sure, of course. But if anyone is making the argument that gay people, denied any sort of marital benefits, will instead turn straight, marry someone of the opposite gender and have kids, I would suggest that that is a highly dubious line of thinking.

And there are limits to what the government may legitimately do in this area. For examples, Moromons tend to have large familes, but no one would think it appropriate for the state to therefore privelege Mormons over the rest of the population, let alone seek to compel people to join the LDS.

I am not bucking the consensus here: I approve of CT's action here, and disapprove of the notion of judicially imposed gay marriage. But I am also leery of arguments suggesting that "the Public Good" can be used to justify any random intrusion of the State into the most initimate affairs of its citizens.

For the purposes of this posting, I'd like to differentiate between state-created civil unions like those now available in Connecticut and other states and the more traditional marriage licensing that has gone on throughout our nation's history.  We do live in a democracy, but part of the wisdom of the founders (and those who drafted the Fourteenth Amendment) was to ensure that the power of a majority to legislate its preferences is significantly limited where such legislation would otherwise threaten the liberties of individuals composing a minority.  While I agree that the government has a legitimate role to play in encouraging, whether through tax incentives or other benefits, pro-social behaviors that a majority has deemed to be beneficial - such as lifelong commitment for the purposes of raising a family - I do think that the state oversteps the rightful bounds of its authority where it has presumed to enforce a definition of marriage that forbids relationships otherwise sanctioned by a church.  Marriage is, at its heart, a concept strongly defined by the religious beliefs and attitudes of the individuals entering that union.  The question of who may be married and to whom is properly left in the hands of the religious organizations presiding over these relationships.  If a church adheres to the principle that marriage should be restricted to one man and one woman, that church will not be compelled to endorse same-sex unions.  Where a church has determined that the commitments and responsibilities of marriage should be available to any two adults who consent to the arrangment, the state should not interfere.  Likewise, if a religion's tenets permit (or encourage) plural marriages among consenting adults, in the absence of compelling evidence of social harm, I don't think the government has any business whatsoever preventing such consentual arrangments - even if a majority of the rest of the population disapproves.  

Of less than five years. I'm fully behind the idea of DoMA, but I don't recall ever seeing a federal law passed that was so unconstitutional on its face. I don't understand in the slightest how it could possibly be construed any other way except to directly contravene the "full faith and credit" clause.

My $.02

MachoNachos

I didn't say people conciously select who they are going to marry based on breeding stock, although subconciously they are.  What I said was that the concept of marraige was for family unit cohesion.  And I stand by that.

It used to be that the vast majority of marraiges were arranged, mostly for economic reasons since it's hard to raise a family without any form of support.  And it's still done in poorer parts of the world.

Only relatively recently was love the primary reason for marraige.  When you ask people why they love their partner, some of the most common answers are:

Attractive - i.e. healthy

Intelligent

Witty (goes along with intelligence)

Rich

All of these things are traits that directly or indirectly affect children.  You wouldn't want to have children with an unhealthy, stupid, dull, poor partner.  People are attracted to traits that are beneficial for raising offspring.

Only relatively recently was love the primary reason for marraige.  When you ask people why they love their partner, some of the most common answers are:

Attractive - i.e. healthy

Intelligent

Witty (goes along with intelligence)

Rich

All of these things are traits that directly or indirectly affect children.  

Sure-- but they are also all traits that very directly affect the quality of married life.  

(Also, I think "attractive - i.e. healthy" is an oversimplification to say the least.)

You wouldn't want to have children with an unhealthy, stupid, dull, poor partner.  

Certainly not. But children aside, I would not want to live with an unhealthy, stupid and dull person for the rest of my life.  Would you?

Clearly fitness for raising offspring plays a big role in spousal selection.  But there's no need to be reductionist about it.

As in Isreal and Western Europe where the indigenous people have not been replacing themselves for decades, immigrants are now also replacing such people in the USA. This helps to explain some seeming contradictions in U.S. immigration law.

that must be systematically produced and developed like crops, timber and livestock. Government may or may not replace the rapidly vanishing married two-parent family. In its place, government may be required to finance child producing and developing facilities discriminating against adults who decline to produce and develop children. Their resulting charges of "discrimination" will be de ja vu all over again.

...Whoa...

SFAIK, DOMA does not necessarily apply to the choice of law issue I presented above.  (I haven't studied DOMA in detail.)  In other words, if Mississippi law's choice of law principles state that Connecticut's law applies, I believe that a Mississippi Court will be required to apply CT domestic partnership law -- or a legal judgment that results therefrom.   (Note, however, that because each state is a coequal soveriegn, there is at least an argument that Mississippi will be able to decline to enforce CT law despite its choice of law provisions.)

Who gets to decide what constitutes societal harm? If a majority of people believe that society will be harmed by polygamist marriages, that should be enough. The people get to make that decision. What constitutes harm, how direct or indirect, likely or unlikely that harm is to occur, is not some easily-answerable scientific inquiry. The answer to that question generally depends on the values you bring into it.

It is up to each state to decide whether or not to recognize the foreign gay marriage. The DOMA doesn't say they can't recognize it, just that they don't have to.

The states, of course, are free to pass whatever choice of law provisions they want. They are not immutable. Moreover, the state supreme courts generally must interpret the choice of law provisions in connection with all other statutes pertaining to the case. And most choice of law statutes have specific references directing the court to weigh the public policy concerns of each of the states involved. It would be very easy for the court to decide that the state's public policy against gay marriage is so strong (as evidenced, say, by its recent vote strongly in favor of a ban on gay marriages in the state) that choice of law provisions require them to not recognize the Connecticut civil union.

can be made about same sex marraiges.  After all, the majority of people don't agree with same sex marraiges.  After all, the same sex marraige bans passed with overwhelming support in those states that put them on the ballot.

ARKANSAS     75%

GEORGIA      77%

KENTUCKY     75%

MICHIGAN     59%

MISSISSIPPI  86%

MONTANA      66%

NORTH DAKOTA 73%

OHIO         62%

OKLAHOMA     76%

OREGON       57%

UTAH         66%

don't necessatily involve children. Maybe the idea of a childess family seems more natural to me since about a third of my relatives (even older relatives) were married without children. I see plenty of good reasons for marriage absent children. For one thing, it creates strong social bonds reaching across blood-lines so you don't have a society consisting of just small clumps of extended kin networks distrusting outsiders (the situation in the Arab world where most marriages are among cousins.)  Plus it corrals men into stable relationships; a large "bachelor herd" is also dangerous to social stabllity. Thirdly, it provides for a socially sanctioned outlet for sexuality which, if left wanton and promiscuous, destablizies a society quite aopart from issues of paternity and childcare.

As for love, in our world that is the main reason for marrying, and most people would look askance at people who marry explicitly for other reasons (e.g., "gold-digging")

have affirmed the constitutionality of states being able to set and follow their own marriage laws. "Full faith and credit" does not apply, at least not fully, in marriage law. And as a political reality, the Supreme Court in unlikely to become any more liberal than it is right now. (Anyone think George W Bush is going to appoint gay marraige advocates to the court?) I strongly doubt even today's Court would strike down the DOMA. The post-Bush court most certainly will not.

If we'd left slavery up to the whims of the populace, we'd probably still have it.  Certainly we'd still have segregated schools and no interracial marriage in many many states.

The problem with polygamy is three fold.  

One, the way in which it was practiced led to arranged marriages (unconstitutional I would imagine) and pedophilia.  Just the way it was done.

Two, we are split about 50/50 male to female.  Widespread "celestial" marriage would lead to a lot of frustrated men.  As we all know, sexually frustrated men do a great amount of damage.

Three, what is the relationship between the two or three wives?  Marriage is set up so each partner can speak for the other.  What happens when wife 1 and wife 2 disagree?  What do you do about divorce?  Who gets what?  Too legally complex.  Family law is bad enough as it is.  Imagine a custody battle with four moms.

The American / Western culture, certain areas of Utah accepted, has always embraced the concept of a marriage being between 2 people, a man and a woman. Other societies with other cultures do not share the same cultural belief in what a marriage is or should be. The Arab culture, for example finds nothing offensive or unworkable about marriages involving one man and several women.

Some seem to suggest that it is wrong for our laws to recognize and institutionalize these core issues of our culture. I don't believe it is. I think if the law did not do this, we soon would not have any cultural mores or values at all; there would be an "anything goes" ethos that would ultimately lead to societal fractures and chaos. I certainly don't want to impose a theocracy on anybody, but some things are so central to the way our society has chosen (over the centuries) to structure its relationships that they absolutely must be enshrined in the law.

Now, as society changes, as our culture changes, those changes should also be reflected in the law. Hence my earlier statement in favor of the democratic action taken by the Connecticut legislature to recognize gay civil unions.

"If a majority of people believe that society will be harmed by" subversive speech, an unfettered press, certain types of political assemblies, handguns, warrant requirements, legal representation for accused criminals, etcetera, we still cannot regulate these perceived harms out of existence.  The people who wrote the Bill of Rights recognized the potential for a tyrranical majority and consciously limited the power of government as a shield against the translation of their concerns into denials of liberty.  It is my position that if the state is to claim any legitimate authority for affirmatively deny someone the opportunity to pursue happiness by criminalizing their behavior or discriminating against them in the distribution of government benefits, the state must articulate a concrete, demonstrable reason for doing so.  Without such a demonstration of necessity, the denial of liberty becomes a prior restraint that is not consistent with our nation's highest ideals.

Never contemplated the sweet mystery of life.

That's a lovely thought, but taken to the extreme, it puts all policy making in the hands of a judiciary, who decides whether the lawmakers have "proved" a social harm that their law is trying to fix.

What our country has opted for, instead, is to protect certain essential liberties (the right to vote, the right to freedom of speech) in the Constitution, and leave it to the democratic process to work out the details in always shifting battle between where my rights stop and your rights begin.

If there was a universally-agreed definition of "harm", your solution might work. But there's not. The appropriate place for such battles is in the legislature.

I, too, seem to be in that minority that very much support gay marriage. As long as marriage is a government-run institution then all people deserve equal access to it. The only way around it is to cut marriage out of the government and make it a strictly religious institution.

I also believe this is best done through the Legislature, not the Courts.

However, I do not blame the Courts for taking up this issue. It is the role of the Courts to take action and make/change/overturn laws when the Legislature fails to act. In this case, legislatures have failed to act until recently, so the courts were justified in forcing the issue.

I don't know the gritty details, but I assume that like any other state supreme court issue, these "gay marriage" cases took at least a few months in the docket queue before they became big media news the past two years. That should have given the state legislatures fair warning that the Courts were taking up the issue.

So maybe I'm in an even smaller minority here :-)

The previous post stated:

"Who gets to decide what constitutes societal harm? If a majority of people believe that society will be harmed by polygamist marriages, that should be enough."

The point of my post was that the same logic would apply to same sex marraiges because the majority of people believe that they would cause harm.  I'm not saying that is what I believe, just that this is a valid extension of PatHMV's argument.

are the exception to the rule and are irrelevant to the society's health in the future as they will not be represented there.  In order for a society to prosper, there must be a social structure for the rearing of children once that family structure breaks down, the society suffers, and the effects are increased in each generation.  The breakdown of the nuclear family structure is the major cause of the increase in violence we see in poor urban areas.  The glue that holds the family together is marraige.  To weaken the glue by diluting the definition of marriage is to further increase the rate at which society degenerates.  Marraige has always been about raising children in a stable environment.  

Re: To weaken the glue by diluting the definition of marriage is to further increase the rate at which society degenerates.

I'm sorry but I find your second statement to be superstitious nonsense, on par with the notion that you can stick pins in a little doll and thereby cause harm to a person miles distant. Neither physical reality nor human nature work that way. All causation (and motivation) is local. People choose to marry (and chose to break marriages) based on wholly personal and imemdiate factors in their own lives. Those factors may well include matters of public policy that affect them directly (such as the loss of welfare payments if a single AFDC mother marries). But the fact that some other couple with whom they have no acquaintance or knowledge marries without children (and perhaps is a same-sex couple) cannot have any affect on those decisions. You need only ask yourself how often your own decsions have been determnined by events or persons in parts distant of whom you have no knowledge and no contact.

Is it too much to ask that we stick with scientific logic and simple common sense in public debate and eschew mystical, magical nonsense?

First of all, I perosnally am upset that another state has permitted the whole gay union idea.  Connecticut now joins Massachusetts and California as states to allow such action at some point in the past year.  Of course, all 3 states are bastions of the liberal left.  So, in some ways, I guess I should not be surprised.  As always, the lefties are promoting an unnatural idea because they want to be the so-called "champions of the underrepresented."  It seems to me that America is going downhill because we just love things like gay freedom, unlimited freedom of speech, and abortion on demand.  Our good buddy John Kerry and his friend the ACLU just want to whine and complain that American rights are being infringed.  Face it folks, gay marriage is unnatural and true marriage is between a man and a woman.  Freredom of speech is not so free.  As much as the ACLU would like it to be, it's not.  And abortion - don't make me laugh.  The oh so wonderful liberals in Washington who claim to help "the little people" are willing to kill "the little people" before they are even born.  It's hard to have any rights if you aren't around to enjoy them.  So I say that California, Connecticut, San Francisco, the New York Times, and all the other liberal hangouts can shut up and face the truth.

is unquestionably an inexact science.  But I'm not asking for the definition to be exact.  My understanding allows for the "shifting battle" about the boundary of individual liberties, but it provides an additional (and necessary) check against the tyranny of the majority.  I'll try to respond to both biologist1 and PatHMV in this post.

Pat expressed concern that the judicary would become the ultimate policy makers if we understand the Constitution as burdening the state with the responsibility of justifying restrictions on liberty by demonstrating the likelihood that a concrete, demonstrable harm would result in the law's absence.  On the contrary, under these circumstances the judiciary's role would be merely (but effectively) to define the limits of legislative authority.  The executive branch and the legislature would still establish policy and would control the judiciary via the appointment and confirmation powers, impeachment powers, and limitations on the jurisdictions of the court.  The checks and balances would actually begin to function again, as opposed to the nearly unfettered authority to restrict individual liberties that legislatures currently enjoy.

In response to Pat's implication, that only "certain essential liberties" are protected, I point to the Ninth Amendment.  While some jurists and scholars have disdainfully written this amendment off as no more than an "inkblot", it reads as clearly today as it did in the 18th Century: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."  I submit that the founders began with a basic presumption of liberty and limited government, and that we should honor that presumption by allowing the judiciary to enforce the bounds of governmental authority.

And yet you would use the 9th Amendment to gut whole swaths of laws passed by the Founders themselves both before and soon after they adopted the Constitution. Has the requirement (in every state in the union) that a marriage be between one man and one woman been unconstitutional for the past 216 years? If not, at what point did it suddenly become unconstitutional?

One, I extended your extension to less savory things that we would still probably have but for "activist judges" to bolster/clarify/echo your point in analogizing gay marriage and polygamy in re popular opinion.

Two, I pointed out three somewhat rational bases for banning polygamy (at least compared to "we don't like it").  Most people don't realize it, but popularity isn't enough to limit rights.  You need a rational basis.  Just because you hate the idea of homosexuality, doesn't mean you can regulate against it.  Show me the reason.  Make it rational.  Same for polygamy.  Same for most anything.

Sorry you were confused.  I was a bit unclear for sure.

One, the way in which it was practiced led to arranged marriages (unconstitutional I would imagine) and pedophilia.  Just the way it was done.

"One, the problem with gay sex/marriage is that it leads to an increased rate of AIDS transmission and subsequent healthcare burden. Just the way it is, epidemiologically."

Two, we are split about 50/50 male to female.  Widespread "celestial" marriage would lead to a lot of frustrated men.  As we all know, sexually frustrated men do a great amount of damage.

"Widespread gay marriage would lead to the collapse of society through a massive drop in fertility rates."

(n.b. "At the same time, even within societies which allow polygamy, the actual practice of polygamy often occurs only rarely." per Wikipedia)

Three, what is the relationship between the two or three wives?  Marriage is set up so each partner can speak for the other.  What happens when wife 1 and wife 2 disagree?  What do you do about divorce?  Who gets what?  Too legally complex.  Family law is bad enough as it is.  Imagine a custody battle with four moms.

Given that polygamy has been practiced for thousands of years in countries and cultures with well-developed legal systems, such as China, the fact that you can't conceive of a solution within the space of a comment box does not strike me as the final word on the subject.

Look, if someone here were to offer these sorts of arguments as a "rational" response to gay marriage, you'd be furious. But for the time being, the pro-gay-marriage movement needs to convince the public that while the gender part of marriage is arbitrary, the number part isn't, and I think because of this you're letting yourself be taken in by a very weak line of argument. Colby Cosh discusses the issue from a (libertarian, pro-all-of-the-above) perspective here and here.

as I did above, that the regulation of marriage has always been outside the proper sphere of governmental authority.

The fact that Congress passed laws in the few years after the ratification of the constitution in no way guarantees that those laws were constitutional.  I refer you to the Alien and Sedition Acts as a prime example.  To the extent that American governments began to regulate marriages soon following the ratification of the Constitution (and I have no idea about the correctness of your assertion concerning the timing and pervasiveness of the "one man, one woman" definition, but I consider the point to be moot), I'd point out that the Bill of Rights was not written by the state legislatures, nor did those legislatures originally consider themselves to be bound by it, which is the reason that the Fourteenth Amendment was passed following the Civil War.  Further, up until the Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia, many states prohibited interracial marriage.  Even people who disagreed with my basic premise about the government's proper sphere of authority would likely agree that the ban on miscigenation had been unconstitutional from its inception, even though it took courts a while to definitively say so.

Arranged marriages are by no means necessarily coerced.  I grew up with several Indian friends whose parents had arranged marriages for them.  They were free to opt out before the wedding if at any point they decided that they didn't want to go through with it, but as of the last time I spoke to them (in high school), three were still planning to proceed.  The only reason that arranged marriages would be unconstitutional is if the state itself was compelling unconsenting people to get hitched.

As for alleged problems that would result from gay marriage, my proposed "demonstrable harm" standard would likely be satisfied if credible evidence tended to demonstrate that the AIDS rate rose significantly where gay people were permitted to marry.  I suspect, however, that this would not really be the case for the same reason that the arguments fail about male sexual frustration in a polygamous society (as an aside, why the assumption that plural marriage would always involve one man and multiple women?) and the "massive drop in fertility rates" that would accompany officially-sanctioned gay marriages: Sex already happens (and will continue to happen) outside the context of marriage.  Heterosexual people will not suddenly decide to marry someone of the same sex, just because it's legal - they'll keep on doing the deed with people of the opposite sex, whether married or not.  It seems like the concern about fertility rates is a stronger justification for outlawing birth control than for outlawing gay marriage, although I doubt that many would support such a stunning intrusion into individual liberties.

I don't believe either the arguments against polygamy or the rough analogs against gay marriage I proposed above are terribly convincing. My feelings on the original (Connecticut) issue align with what seems to be the group consensus: legislative/popular approval, rather than judicial imposition, is the way to go.

I think the polygamy angle illustrates why this is so. If the public just wants civil unions for gays, and nothing more, then that's what they get. If these arise through a judicial ruling that restricting the gender of a couple is arbitrary and/or discriminatory, it becomes very difficult to mount a legal defense in principle against polygamy and (gay marriage being already legal) polyamory.

If that's what people want to happen, well, OK. But I think it should be acknowledged as a logical consequence of declaring the conventional definition of marriage to be "arbitrary" by those championing that position.

You need only ask yourself how often your own decsions have been determnined by events or persons in parts distant of whom you have no knowledge and no contact.

You missed the point of my argument.  I wasn't saying that the presence of a childless couple in Timbuktoo, gay or straight, impacts anyone else's decisions.  I said that they are the exceptions from the societal norm.  I also said that the societal norm helps to shape our decisions because the societal norm is part of formation of ideals.  This has a fundamental effect on decision making.

Society and social norms have a huge influence on behavior.  For example, hundreds of years ago, fair skin and overwieght were considered attractive.  Fair skin meant that you didn't work outside and overweight meant you had plenty of food, both signs of wealth.  Now, tanned skin and thin bodies is the ideal, meaning you have time to exercise and tan, again indicating wealth.  

The point of all of this is that marraige is part of the societal norm, which shapes all of our lives.  While it's fine to have exceptions, they should be viewed as exceptions and should not be forced to be recognized as part of the norm.

Is it too much to ask that we stick with scientific logic and simple common sense in public debate and eschew mystical, magical nonsense?

Let's see, I have a MS in biology studying evolution and 8 years towards a doctorate studying behavior and population dynamics.  Don't remember sticking pins in dolls, but then I didn't study at LSU, Tulane, or any of the other Universities in Southeastern Louisiana.  Is that scientific enough for you?

Why did you make such a gratuitous, slanderous attack on schools in Louisiana? Kind of bigoted of you, don't you think? I graduated from LSU, thank you very much, and I've never stuck pins in a voodoo doll.

Considering that the original Constitution decided that black slaves were only 3/5 persons, I don't see how you can claim that miscegenation laws were clearly unconstitutional until the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Horrible and wrong from the beginning, yes, but unconstitutional, no. Slavery was a horrible, despicable thing, but it was quite clearly constitutional. "Very, very bad" does not equal "unconstitutional".

The Constitution leaves the democratic process free to adopt even bad policies. Otherwise (and I'm just being a broken record here) you have oligarchy, government solely by the Supreme Court.

for offending your sensibilities.  I figured that if any schools taught voodoo, it would have to be a school in the New Orleans area.

There is a prevalent myth that we in Louisiana are ignorant and backwards. We're not, and we stopped finding it funny a long time ago.

In your own field of biology, you should be aware that LSU is a leading research institution in the field of livestock cloning. Two years ago, LSU performed the first cloning of a new calf from the cells of a dead bull.

In 1999, we also were responsible for Millie, the world's first transgenic goat. Millie was genetically manipulated so that her milk would produce a therapeutic protein used to treat patients undergoing coronray by-pass surgery.

So please, stop watching reruns of Live and Let Die, and read some current journal articles in your own field of biology to learn more about us before using us as a bad punch line.

It is definitely true that black slaves only counted as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of electoral representation in Congress, and that slaves were treated as property rather than citizens.  Not all black people, however, were slaves.  Some were free citizens, landowners, and (occasionally) even slaveowners.  Laws banning interracial marriage would have plainly infringed on the liberty of free citizens, violating their due process rights under the 5th Amendment as well as any rights they might have retained under the 9th Amendment or various state constitutions.  Hence, I stand by my original statement to this effect.

Since you have resorted to the broken record approach, I'll assume that we've largely reached the conclusion of our dialogue about the proper scope of governmental authority.  We'll just have to agree to disagree.  I'll close with my own broken record: The Constitution permits the adoption of bad policies up to the point that they would arbitrarily (i.e., without demonstration of a concrete, demonstrable harm that a given law would prevent) restrict the liberties of the people.  As much as one might disagree with any given policy adopted by a legislature, such as raising or lowering taxes, foreign policy moves, or the establishment of speed limits on highways, these will be judicially unassailable if the government demonstrates the factual basis for its decisionmaking process.  If it should ever prove to be the case that the judiciary begins to act as a superlegislature, the other two branches of government have the necessary tools to bring it back under control.  That, I maintain, is the system of checks and balances envisioned by the founders.

pioneer a sense of humor implant.  I am well aware of the quality of the research at LSU having considered going there and having a friend doing a post-doc there.  

As for being backward, I've lived in Tennessee and Mississippi, and I know that the New Orleans area is not backwards.  Now there ARE some areas of Louisiana that are, just like areas of my home state of New York.  

Finally, I'm sorry that you are offended by the fact that New Orleans is the headquarters of Voodoo practice in the US.  Not that there is a huge following of the cult.  But just in case, please don't cast any curses on me.

Just kidding.  Those of us from the Volunteer State can typically appreciate humor, even when directed at us.  Besides, if we ever thought someone was seriously insulting we'd toss down some moonshine, make sure our guns were in the gun rack, toss the cousins we'd married into our pickup trucks and come after y'all.

I'm driving down to N.O. right now to buy a doll from my favorite Voodoo shop with your name on it!

We do have a sense of humor and we're a fun place... but while there are backward and ignorant places in New York, it's not the butt of joke after joke. They do get old, as I think anybody who has spent time in Mississippi would understand. And your first post about LSU and Tulane just didn't seem like a joke. You might want to study up on humor yourself so you can tell funnier ones.

was directed to the previous poster who stated...

I'm sorry but I find your second statement to be superstitious nonsense, on par with the notion that you can stick pins in a little doll and thereby cause harm to a person miles distant.

I then explained my education and stated that we didn't use voodoo pins at the University of Memphis, Angelo State University, or West Texas A&M University, places where I went to school.  I then hypothesized that perhaps they might in the N.O. area since that is where voodoo originated, at least in the US.

Of course having to explain the smart-ass comment shows me that it must not have been funny.

I thought I stated it outright...

I lived in the Memphis area for 10 years until I moved to Chicago where there is a real job market.  Having grown up surrounded by dairy farms, alfalfa and cow corn fields, and in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains, I know what a redneck looks like.  I see one in the mirror every day.  And I saw a lot of them in west Tennessee and northern Mississippi.  I prefer rednecks to the liberal Democrats that have taken over and nearly destroyed Memphis.

You do not put a spike in a pipe.  You put a spike in a bat.

Cheers -

In my original post would take too long to explain.

Clubs work, too.

I'm a supporter of level playing fields and the concept of merit.  Everyone should play by the same rules.  Rewards and treatment by society should be based on how you livw: work hard, save money, be nice to old ladies and stray dogs and you should be rewarded for that not castigated because you also happen to be gay, or straight, or jewish, or whatever.

I'm very happy about this!

imagining himself as as Priest Vallon? ;)

You have my historical analogies mixed up.