Reply to the Reply

First, I want to address the assertion that the question is really about the definition of marriage, like it's a pop-quiz or something.  Sure, it's possible that the average person might say that a marriage is when a man and a woman put rings on each others' fingers and decide not to see other people.  That's one definition, but it's superficial and it shouldn't be the end of the discussion.  That would be like saying that poker is about having a better hand than everyone else.

You can put together another 4 paragraph semantic argument, and talk about something being "indirect", but we both know that prop 8 was aimed right at homosexuals.  The result of it passing wasn't something obscure, like a dog not being able to marry a cat- the result was that a man could no longer marry a man.  The assertion that it's just a proposition aimed at (re-re)defining marriage that might indirectly impact homosexuals, if that's the assertion you're making, is a lie.

Second, I want to talk about this idea that there's a bunch of social engineering (policy) behind not letting dudes marry dudes; that the government doesn't need to incentivize marriage for gays because there won't be any kids, or that the government shouldn't incentivize it because then everyone would be gay and the human race would die out.  On the surface, that seems to make sense, but I want you to tell me three things that gay people don't have access to through civil unions or something that is available to married people.  I'll bet you can't do it. If there aren't any conventional social engineering carrots to be gained by allowing "marriage" to apply to the gays, then (1) that argument doesn't hold water, and (2) it starts to really like prop 8 exists solely to strip status from homosexuals.

Thirdly, let's look at the problems with society and/or marriage that don't seem big enough to fire people up.  Some large percentage (again, too lazy to look this up) of marriages between men and women end up in divorce, even with young kids involved.... Men cheat on their wives all the time; the opposite is also true.  Last week, 1saleaday had a gold-plated ring on sale for $3 (+5 shipping).  I was only half-joking when I offered to buy them for a bunch of guys coming out for a bachelor party next weekend because it would help pick up chicks.  I could go on; I just find it ridiculous that marriage has just kind of existed for the last however many years- it's been made fun of by every single sitcom ever- even your post had the classic "be careful what you wish for" sentiment, men have been beating their wives and cheating on them, women have been doing the same, there are websites devoted to matching up married men w/ married women.  All of this happens and people shrug their shoulders.  But if gay people want to get married, that gets everyone out to the polls- suddenly, marriage is something sacred that must be protected.

Finally, I want to talk about the assertion that it's lazy to dismiss a person's vote because he's dumb, or has different motives.  My question is, simply, "why?"  A frequent rallying cry on fox news is this idea that a president can retain power by establishing a welfare state.  If you're harming a few and helping the masses, the theory goes, the masses will never vote against you, and the poor doctors and lawyers and small business owners simply won't be able to protect themselves. Compare that to this situation.  If it's a problem that someone's going to try to retain power by pandering to the unwashed masses through handouts, is that somehow worse/different than pandering to the bigots to get something bigoted to pass?  I can't see where you can draw a distinction that doesn't make the second example worse.  At least, theoretically, you might be helping the poor through some form of wealth transfer.

It's been a few days

I was planning on giving me cowriters a chance to chime in with something, but they've said nothing the past few days, so here I am again.  I'm going to try and keep this brief, but I did want to at least address Prop 8.  There are two points that I'd like to make:  First, I think it's ridiculous that it even existed in the first place.  There might be some legal merit to the pro-prop 8ers argument, but morally, I think that it just falls apart.  Second, I want to complain briefly about our legal system; about the fact that something as serious as this can be gamed, and that the pro-gay side seems to have a flawed gameplan.

Ok, first with prop 8 itself.  It seems like there are a few different kinds of people who were arguing for prop 8.  The easiest to dismiss were the flat out bigots.  People who don't like gays and would do anything to marginalize them.  I know that the constitution would frown upon this, but I think that those people should be marginalized; at the very least, we should take their right to vote away.  It frustrates me so much that you can have an intelligent person sit down, weigh the pros and cons of something, and cast a vote, and then Cletus Van Damme can come in right behind him and cancel him out.  I don't have a great solution for this, but it still pisses me off.  If you just threw the flat-out bigots out of the voting, prop 8 would have lost at first anyway.

There are a couple other subsets of people who seem to vote against it.  Rather than listing every group, though, I want to focus on the only one that I think makes sense: the people who are afraid that gay marriage will make gayness more acceptable- that it will somehow lead to more people being gay.  In a perfect world, I would require a person who was going to vote that way to confess to something along the lines of "if it weren't for peer pressure, I would be a homo myself".  If they say something like "that's ridiculous", then my response would be "you're a liar".  Either you're lying about your own repressed homosexuality, or you're lying about your reason for voting, and you belong in line w/ Cletus.

Also, the arguments that are made are just so offensive- The "slippery slope" argument, that allowing gay marriage is only one step away from promoting pedophilia or bestiality.  That's just flat-out ridiculous (and I know a thing or two about ridiculous arguments, I once wrote a paper advocating the removal of the soft-serve machines from my college cafeteria b/c the "freshman 15" were costing the young ladies attending school there thousands of dollars in future earnings.)  Anyway, the reason that I say these arguments are ridiculous is there's no relation between homosexuality and pedophilia or beastophilia.  If anything, there's a closer link between catholocism and pedophilia :p  I know that's a low-blow, but I can't help but put myself in the shoes of some gay person; it would enrage me to be compared to someone who likes to get boned by horses or bone little kids.

On to the legal system itself.  Like everything else, I don't have a solution, but it sucks that now this case is going to be escalated (eventually to the supreme court), and instead of there being seven independent legal scholars up there, we have seven people who were hand-picked by someone who, by definition, is wrapped up in the ridiculousness that is politics.  I know that some justices have changed their perspectives since getting to the court, but some certainly haven't (and I'm not just complaining about the conservative justices).  In this case, it appears as though there is plenty of law on either side of the debate for an intelligent person to make a sound legal argument.  That means that the supreme court isn't compelled to rule one way or another, so they're going to be going based on their own personal beliefs.  There will be a majority, and there will a dissenting opinion.  I just hope that Scalia and Thomas are joining or writing the dissent, not the decision.

Finally, to the game itself.  If you win, you obviously can't appeal a case (there are probably some exceptions, but I was absent the day they taught the law in law school).  So, until the gays attacked prop 8 (and won), there was no way for a higher court to make a ruling.  There's probably something compelling them to attack sooner, rather than later (something like the statute of limitations), but with a Democrat in the White House, I think they should have waited.  All of the judges are old dudes and ladies.  Any one of them could have a heart attack at any time, not to mention the fact that they could die in a car accident, plane wreck, home invasion, any way that the average person might die.  From an "advancing your own agenda" point of view, the fact that there's a Democrat president means that any judge dying isn't a bad thing.  If it's someone who leans left, his replacement will be the same.  If he leans right, his replacement will vote the other way.  It seems like, as of now, the court leans a little bit right.  If I were trying to maximize the chance that prop-8 remained dead, I would have waited until the last possible second to get things rolling.

Also- this seemed topical.  The book "The Nine" talks an awful lot about the extraordinarily political nature of the supreme court.  I read it a while back, but I've lost my copy.  If you're pressed for something to read, it's worth the $11 that amazon is charging.