Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Conduct, Not Status

“Mr. Olson, the bottom line that you're being asked -- and -- and it is one that I'm interested in the answer: If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what state restrictions could ever exist?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked.
“Meaning, what state restrictions with respect to the number of people, with respect to – that could get married -- the incest laws, the mother and child, assuming that they are the age -- I can -- I can accept that the state has probably an overbearing interest on -- on protecting a child until they're of age to marry, but what's left?” she asked.
“Well, you've said -- you've said in the cases decided by this court that the polygamy issue, multiple marriages raises questions about exploitation, abuse, patriarchy, issues with respect to taxes, inheritance, child custody, it is an entirely different thing,” Olson said. “And if you -- if a state prohibits polygamy, it's prohibiting conduct.
“If it prohibits gay and lesbian citizens from getting married, it is prohibiting their exercise of a right based upon their status,” Olson said.
 Right.  Homosexuality is a status, not a conduct; polygamy, incest, are conduct, not status.  What's the difference?  The claim that homosexuality is immutable -- unlike other sexual preferences.  At the ACLU has admitted that polygamy is their next goal after gay marriage.

UPDATE: Saw the picture somewhere, but it seems to have disappeared (perhaps too honest for American media to cover), but the Japan Times reports on it:
Thousands more who supported gay marriage held signs that read “Marriage is a constitutional right.” One man in devil horns danced in pink heels and a rainbow tutu, holding a sign that said “I bet hell is fabulous."
 No, I don't think it will be.

Here's the picture:


4 comments:

  1. Homosexual orientation in many people appears to be an immutable status.

    How that status translates into a right to a government license for a behavior is something obvious to many, but certainly not to me.

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  2. I suspect that for some (maybe even many) it may be immutable. But since "I was born this way" became liberal dogma, many that might have the option of straightening out have been told that this isn't even possible, much less desirable.

    Addiction, or at least the tendency towards it, may also be immutable. So is anger, and lust. But we don't sit around and argue that because people have these tendencies that the whole society needs to pretend that these are good things.

    Someone I know describes herself as "a fat person trying to get out." She controls her desire to eat so that she doesn't get fat. I know others for whom sexual lust is a powerful force that could well lead to disaster -- if they did not learn to control it.

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  3. We're told that homosexuality is a healthy psychological orientation, and that it immutable. But all the healthy orientations we know about are changeable - so why should we believe that claim?

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  4. Over on Black and Right, and/or MRC TV, they have a video of Dan Joseph trying to interview "Queen" while a clueless Christian protestor attempts... I don't know what, with some empty religious rhetoric, and is ignored by the attention-seeking "Queer". Both sides have failed to cover themselves in glory lately.

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