Tebow to appear in Focus on the Family commercial during SB XLIV

The problem, YF, is that many of the arguments against gay marriage are the same arguments that were made not so long ago against interracial marriage: "it's a crime against nature," etc.

 

Hundreds of years of human history also defined Jim Crow laws. Under your logic, then civil rights legislation should have never been passed, because it upset "stare decisis."

 

I wasn't around for it, obviously, but I'm pretty sure I'm right to recall that proponents of segregation often claimed they weren't in fact racist, that they had no actual problem with black people, but that blacks and whites just shouldn't mix.

Hell, some of them, I'm pretty sure, tried to claim it was for the blacks' own good.

 

Yep. The argument was that it would upset the racial harmony in the South that had developed since the Civil War, that everybody was better off the way it was. I think that was one of the key themes of the Southern Manifesto that the Southern Congressmen wrote in response to Brown v. Board of Education.

 

It's not my logic. But I don't expect everybody to just change their mind overnight.

Acceptance is coming and I don't think it's necessary to demonize everyone who hasn't come around yet.

 

I don't think just disagreeing with someone - and deciding you no longer want to be associated with them - is necessarily demonizing them. This older gentleman made a choice. That choice, apparently, had consequences. If anything, it's an object lesson for him in what it's like to be lumped in with a group and judged.

 

Anyone who thinks same-sex marriage won't be legal in all 50 states within the next decade or so is kidding themselves. Hell, it may go to the Supreme Court in the next couple years, given the current goings-on in court in California.

And while I have no doubt it will be a major case, I cannot see a way in which barring same-sex couples from marrying would not be a violation of Constitutional rights.

Marriage stopped being a religious thing as soon as the government incorporated it into the tax codes and began issuing marriage licenses. It's a legal thing, plain and simple, and denying two people the right to marry based on gender is a violation of Equal Protections.

End of the debate.

 

The Boston case, as I understand it, needs to get to the Court first. It has a good chance of winning, and would somehow get the federal government recognizing same-sex marriages in that state via the IRS (I know I am vastly oversimplifying that). Anyway, after that, it would almost be absurd for the federal government to allow it there and not everywhere.

I don't think at this point they could win on equal protection, because that doctrinally is only applied to racial minorities. Even gender discrimination only falls under "intermediate scrutiny." They aren't going to leapfrog gays over women in one fell swoop, doctrinally.

If - well, when - gays win marriage from the Court, it will be under 14th amendment substantive due process, the same basis of Roe v. Wade. That's a pretty controversial maneuver with a sordid history before the New Deal, and it would probably be on the same shaky ground as Roe for a while until it just became accepted (the way, in fact, judicial review has been - the actual reasoning establishing it was creative, to say the least).

I guess what I'm getting at is it may seem obvious to us that this should be constitutionally protected, but the justices have to work within a certain constitutional framework for the sake of preserving their own institutional legitimacy.

 

The idea that marriage is a religious things doesn't make sense anyway. There are plenty of non-religious ceremonies taking place. It's not as if atheists can't get married. It's just another way to discriminate.

And if Tebow wants to speak out against abortion, because I'm sure as a 22-year-old virgin, I'm sure he knows everything there is to know about why women would make that choice, that's OK with me, but he really should think twice about aligning himself with the hateful crazies at Focus on the Family.

http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/tim_tebow_anti-gay
This blog is pretty interesting on the way his association with the group may be interpreted by some.

 

I'm not sure how relevant that is. If you believe an unborn fetus is alive with fundamental rights, then the reasons a women would make the choice are moot. I've never agreed with framing the pro-life position as anti-woman, though I suppose it's useful politically to do so.

 

I understand that people are pro-choice or ant-abortion for different reasons. And I understand that Tebow's religion likely makes him side the way he does (along with that all-too-perfect story about his mom being told to have one, yeah right). But he really should pick a better cast of characters to align his morality with than Focus on the Family.

 

Oh, without question. I was strictly speaking about his anti-abortion views. I'm down with them. Not down at all with associating with James Dobson's crew.