Roberts Court to take on Gay Marriage Issue

I think that there must be a bunch of under the radar factors interacting to produce such a rapid reversal in norms.

For example, I think the all-volunteer (and "coeducational") military has been in existence long enough that the percentage of households influenced by life in barracks has dwindled, and the nature of the influence has changed where it still exists.

And it has been about 40 years since the Stonewall riots, which I think have never been accorded the importance they deserve in the collective straight consciousness. "Freedom is taken not given." Everybody who screwed up their courage and had that conversation with parents or siblings or friends made a down payment on the changes we are seeing.

And then there was AIDS; it is not a "gay disease" so it could not be ignored. But it is a disease which affected the gay community first and worst; and so there has been a long committment of research, treatment and care to people who turned out to be as real as anyone else, and as often worthy of affection, esteem, and admiration. A very sizable and educated portion of our society was put into a postion to testify in private, and over the long term that changes public opinion as well as anything.

 

soccernutter, I think you do yourself a disservice by thinking I consider myself unintelligent even though I lump myself in with the crazies, AND by thinking volunteering was anything more than political volunteering or donating. By "crazy" I mean politically active. Calm down.

 

That bell curve is called the normal distribution curve. It's not just for intelligence. It's used for partisanship, ideology, and any other distribution where the dispersion around the mean is symmetric and most observations are centered on/around the mean. Sure, intelligence would work as a normally-distributed variable. But so would any of these other things. I picked that curve from Google Images because it looked the cleanest, not because it represented anything in particular.


While not clean, this shows that the two parties in the Senate have been roughly normally distributed around their respective partisan means.

Whereas here, voters are distributed much more equally than the Senate (or Berkeley undergrads, for reasons quite clear to everyone):



Again, these are ugly versions of the curve I posted in the first post.

 

I didn't mean represent your constituency's political views, which are likely to be varied. You can try to represent the will of the majority within your constituency, or you can be true to the principles you campaigned on & which got you elected. I'm talking about representing your constituency demographically. It's an elected leader's job to protect the rights of all the people he/she represents -- ALL of them. No leader should have to be personally affected by prejudice, discrimination, exploitation, poverty, disability, illness, etc., in order to recognize that those problems matter. Every elected representative has some constituents who are affected by those problems, and if he can't even realize that those problems exist or matter, then he's failing massively in his responsibilities.

 

What a Religious person picking and choosing when and what principles to follow. I am shocked sir.

 

I'm not going to disagree with you. And I also will say, that's me writing on the Internet and not me interacting with real people in the real world -- but that does not lessen the the impact of words going out in the ether. That, too, has a real effect and I appreciate that, as I fully appreciate the unhelpful nature of my snark.

But.

I hold a special place of contempt for those who are in power, who have a chance to make a real impact on people's lives for better or worse, such as legislators, and who adopt un-examined political stands that create real hardship and inequality and injustice based on principles that crumble under the first true test.

I think this is equally true in the abortion debate.
We all know that there is no wealthy person in the nation who will ever have great difficulty in securing an abortion for themselves or someone in their family. And I have met die-hard abortion foes who have had abortions within their family -- because when it comes to Me or Mine, again, those principles crumble.

It is the same with budgets that immediately target things like Head Start programs, or arguing against improving the national healthcare system, or blindly supporting three-strikes laws to appear tough on crime, etc., etc., etc. -- these high-concept principled stances that legislators take that can crush families because they don't impact families like theirs.

So apologies, but not really.
Or maybe an amendment to 'up until very, very recently assholes.'

 

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/poll-tracks-dramatic-rise-in-support-for-gay-marriage/

 

I did see an article, may have been yahoo news, that even among blacks, there has been a nice raise in support of gay marriage, some one said/was quoted that the president speaking in support of it was a big push.

If I remember correctly when Prop 8 in California passed blacks voted in favor of prop 8 in a greater % than Latinos and whites.

 

In a perfect world, politicians wouldn't suffer the same failings as the rest of us humans, but they do.

 

sorry have to x-post here and also in music...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/mar/19/michelle-shocked-anti-gay-rant

 

Oh no shit. Thanks for enlightening me. From now on whenever a politician does anything unethical, immoral, or illegal, I'll try to remember that. They have failings just like the rest of us! Why even waste time thinking about holding them to any standards?

 

One would think the imminent prospect of Jesus' return would make a Christian happy.

 

You'd think.
Isn't that the one and only reason any of them care anything about Israel? Because ... Rapture

 

Shiksas are for practice.

 

Blondie was a gay icon, so we're on topic.

 

I'm sure Debbie encouraged some people to consider the alternatives -- if only for a moment.

 

Thanks for that thoughtful post.

I am really, really, really, sorry you are some offended that there are still some people in this country -- politicians included -- who haven't gone all in for gay marriage. For some people, it takes having a gay some or daughter to come around on the issue. I think the fact that they do is great. But not everyone in this country is ready to cast off whatever moral or religious positions they have on the subject. As a someone who lives in California, you should know this based on Prop 8.

It's like watching idiots on MSNBC wonder when the Catholic church will elect a Pope who supports gay marriage -- uh, NEVER (well, at least not in my lifetime).

 

I am willing to respectfully disagree with people about many issues. But not on this one.

 

This is more or less how I feel. Of course I know that lots of people aren't "ready" to change their minds on this. But plenty of people weren't "ready" for civil rights in the 60s, or for women's equality in the 70s. Plenty of people still aren't "ready" for those things. I don't see how remembering that their bigotry is based on moral or religious positions changes the situation. Opponents of equal rights have always claimed moral and/or religious justification.

It's unacceptable, in my mind, for an elected leader to harbor prejudice against his/her own constituents. Of course I realize that many, if not most leaders do have prejudices. That doesn't make it okay. A United States Senator shouldn't have to have a black person in his family in order to recognize that black people are fully human and deserving of rights. If an elected official "isn't ready" to get past his/her prejudices, that's a serious problem.

I know that regular citizens take time to get their heads around the idea that all people are human and all Americans are fully American, and so it's a slow process adding new groups of people to that list. My father, for example, is against gay marriage. My dad is generally very libertarian/progressive on social issues. He's an atheist, so he doesn't have any religious hangups. He's just a ********ing bigot. I love him dearly and I admire him in almost every other way, but the man is a goddamn bigot who can't accept that gay Americans are entitled to equal rights of citizenship. He gets no pass on this.

And, I hope this isn't news, but more often than not, having a son or daughter who's gay doesn't actually bring people around on this issue. Most people who can't respect the humanity and citizenship of gay people don't magically change their minds when it affects their families. Instead, they treat their own children like shit. Because they're ********ing bigots.

I see absolutely nothing productive in waiting patiently for bigots to see the light. I do not see a way forward in making excuses for people's ignorance and small-mindedness. Yes, having someone close to you who is gay (or a person of color, or an immigrant, or disabled, or transgender, or poor, etc. etc. etc.) can change a person's feelings about that group. But it shouldn't have to. We do not grudgingly accept racism because some people haven't come around yet, on account of not having a person of color in their families, or on account of their religious upbringing. We expect that all people, regardless of personal experience and upbringing, can grasp the simple concept of universal humanity. Well that applies to gay people's humanity as well.

 

The Prop 8 case was argued this a.m. before the SCOTUS.

I'm not smart enough to parse the early reports (or the later reports; or the much later reports; maybe the made-for-TV movie) - but it seems there was trepidation from swing master Kennedy regarding any sweeping ruling on same sex marriage via this case.
Early indications lean toward the Court allowing the lower court ruling -- which disallowed Prop 8 -- to stand. (I think) But even among same sex marriage supporters on the Court, there may be disagreements on the mechanics.

Live updates via NYT here:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/20...s-on-supreme-court-same-sex-marriage-hearing/

Very informative SCOTUS blog
http://www.scotusblog.com/

SCOTUS blog Twitter Feed:
https://twitter.com/SCOTUSblog

 

“I just wonder if this case was properly granted,”

“There’s some 40,000 children in California that live with same-sex parents. They want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important.”

“We have five years of information to pose against 2,000 years of history or more”
-- Justice Anthony M. Kennedy

“Why is taking a case now the answer?”
-- Justice Sonia Sotomayor

“You want us to step in and assess the effects of this institution, which is newer than cellphones and/or the Internet?”
-- Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

“There are lots of people who get married who can’t have children,”
-- Justice Stephen Breyer