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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3244 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 22, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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If you like that, then you will love Wickard v. Filburn, where the supreme court ruled that the federal government had a right to prevent a farmer from growing wheat in his own land for his own use because, if a bunch of farmers did that, it would substantially lower the price of wheat in the national market, thus affecting interstate commerce.

And of course, we have all heard about Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges, so it's not a problem specific to the commerce clause; a court that can find the right to abortion and gay "marriage" in the fourteenth amendment is a court that can find anything in anything.

Obergefell is correct. The right to marriage does not distinguish between same-sex and opposite-sex couples just as it doesn’t distinguish between same- or mixed-race ones.

Is the right to marriage written into the constitution?

As I understand it, Virginia v. Loving says yes.

I will admit that I’m not an expert. But I don’t think the dissents rejected the idea that marriage was a right protected by the 14th. They were more concerned with 1) whether the historical use of the term included the opposite-sex qualifier and 2) whether the due process clause protected positive rights in addition to negative ones. Or maybe that was just Thomas?

As I understand it, Virginia v. Loving says yes

No, I don't care about rulings, I mean the actual text of the actual constitution.

I would say that marriage is firmly under “equal protection under the law.”

That never held water. All people, regardless of their sex or sexual orientation, can marry someone of the opposite sex of any sexual orientation. Gay men are just as free and equally allowed to marry a woman as any straight man. If the gay man doesn't want to marry a woman, that's his choice, but he's legally allowed to.

And pretty much all of the equality under the law anti-discrimination stuff has carveouts for compelling state interests. Like, say, bearing and raising children and ensuring the survival of the species.

Telling gay people that it's illegal to have sex with each other would be one thing: the state intervening in a place where it has little compelling interest or jurisdiction (an argument could be made about preventing the spread of STDs, but it's weak, and promiscuous straight people do that too). But marriage, at least from a legal perspective, is a privilege the state recognizes for people to incentivize the formation of healthy and stable families, which gay people do not do. Arguing it's "equal protection under the law" is like arguing that childless people should get the same tax deductions and/or welfare aid as people with seven children because otherwise you're discriminating against the childless.

This was the same argument that Virginia made in Loving and the court rejected it then. Black people are free to marry other black people and white people are free to marry other white people so what's the problem?

But marriage, at least from a legal perspective, is a privilege the state recognizes for people to incentivize the formation of healthy and stable families, which gay people do not do.

Well, at least that's the conservative fantasy. If you look at the way the laws surrounding marriage actually operate, and have historically operated, it's pretty clear that the legal purpose is to regulate property transfers among family members. The only historical precedent which has to do with natural children is the legal presumption that a woman's husband is the father of her children, absent other evidence. While this may be a useful feature these days, it's no longer a necessary one, as states have been keeping records of these things for over a century, and technology has allowed paternity disputes to be resolve fairly easily. Beyond that, historical laws relating to marriage were based on the presumption that women couldn't own property in their own name, that wealth was basically synonymous with real property, and that widows were likely to be an undue burden on society. Today, of course, we live in a property where women are more economically equal than men, where the family farm isn't the primary source of income (or, realisitically, doesn't exist), cash is more important than real property, birth control exists, Social Security exists, etc. As a consequence, the laws surrounding marriage have changed since the turn of the last century to keep up with the times.

An along the way, we've created a whole host of new rights relating to marriage, notably ones concerning medical matters like the right to make certain decisions and the right of visitation. In other words, as the circumstances surrounding marriage have changed historically, the laws have changed along with it, and if you want to figure out the legal purpose of marriage, you have to look at those laws. If you want to believe in an idealized version where the laws that matter are the ones that have "stable families" or whatever as their obvious goal, you're going to be left with very little.

The only historical precedent which has to do with natural children is the legal presumption that a woman's husband is the father of her children, absent other evidence.

What do you make of prohibitions on marriage between sufficiently close relatives? ...what do you make of exceptions to those prohibitions when one of the two individuals could demonstrate that they were sterile?

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