Way to go, SCOTUS!!

The SCOTUS has just made gay marriage legal in all 50 states.

Good for them!

 

Amazing news! And more to come. How it is not over.

 

Thank God! My heart aches for the fact that it took this long, but I'm so grateful our government has FINALLY gotten this right :heart:

 

Seems like in some areas, we aren't making progress or it's very slow, so it's great to hear this kind of news. A big "fuck you" to these man/woman marriage purists.

 

They are creating a boogeyman out of this. They are still able to get married and their marriage isn't affected by it. They'll keep spinning and dodging the questions up front because they have no case against it.

 

Zealots have no one to blame but themselves. If they had not mixed church/state historically by having the government issue "marriage" licenses, rather than just ratifying contractual relationships, a la civil 'marriage', then SCOTUS would not even have the question of marriage before them. The fact that marriage confers secular, state-related benefits is what creates an equality question. Any consenting adults should have the right to structure whatever sort of property and executive rights they choose.

 

Such brilliant news!

Now for Australia to take a page out of America's book

 

You mean the US is actually ahead of Oz on something?

 

The Liberal Party of Australia (equivalent to the TEA Party and right-wing vagabonds) has reigns over Parliament with that bunyip looking motherfucker as PM. Though, to be frank, Julia Gilliard was against same-sex marriage for really weird ass reasons, despite the Labour Party being on board with legalizing it. Australia is slowly turning their waters and estuaries into a cesspool.

 

Lol but only this one thing. We're ahead on every other thing.

 

I guess even so-called "progressive" nations have rightwing tendencies, especially those with the frontier settler history.

 

Don't get me wrong, Australia has been a bit more progressive compared to the US up until recently...when the elections were held a few years back. Because of this administration, they are doing some things in and around Oceania to make it more "business-friendly". By that, I mean allowing them to fuck up the country.

Still, I would recommend traveling there when you have time. Nice atmosphere and warm people overall.

 

It's a damned shame when the public agenda has to conform to the demands of business over those of citizens.

 

I'm still pondering about the minimum wage over there...since...it could be lowered.

 

As part of this "business-friendly" agenda? Who's their chief economist, Milton Friedman's ghost?

 

Thomas's Dissent



Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday wrote a fiery dissent in response to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision that gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

In it, he took issue with the concepts of "liberty" and "dignity." He argued that the petitioners in this case were not deprived of their liberty, as they have been allowed to travel and settle freely without government intervention.

This is why, Thomas wrote, the majority led by Justice Anthony Kennedy focused its opinion on the petitioners' "dignity."

But Thomas wrote that there is no "dignity" clause in the US Constitution — and that, even if there was, the government could not bestow it upon a person or take it away.

To make his point, he invoked the examples of slavery and internment camps. From his dissent:

The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.

Thomas went on to write that one's liberty and dignity should be shielded from the government — not provided by it.

"Today’s decision casts that truth aside. In its haste to reach a desired result, the majority misapplies a clause focused on 'due process' to afford substantive rights, disregards the most plausible understanding of the 'liberty' protected by that clause, and distorts the principles on which this Nation was founded. Its decision will have inestimable consequences for our Constitution and our society," Thomas wrote in conclusion.

http://www.businessinsider.com/clarence-thomas-dissent-gay-marriage-case-2015-6

 

A waste of diatribe and bile.

 

This had me lmao and shaking my head at the same time...

'Justice Kennedy colorfully explains:
“Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there,” Kennedy writes.

He's effing joking, right?

 

He actually has a point. As a species, he's implying that people do seek and yearn for companionship, though in varying degrees. Marriage have always been a government-based institution, mainly out of property rights (where women had no real influence, power or say in a marriage), but there's also the component of companionship, in which this conceptualized idea bears some merit or comfort.

Regardless, the decision that came out is a strong case that Kennedy reinforced. Rather than dehumanizing a group of people, much in the same vein as interracial marriages were deemed "unnatural," it's time we actually act like adults for once.

 

While I disagree with everything he says, I really need to read his dissent.