Massive, crushing defeat for Marriage Equality in New York

[Serafine666]

Wait, what? Slavery isn't a punishment- slaves were born slaves. It would hardly be considered unusual with millions being held in bondage in the US and millions more in the rest of the world and throughout history. As for cruel... given that blacks were viewed as inferior and slavery was civilizing that would require an entirely different view than the court actually had. You might as well get an environmentalist to agree to geoengineering to deal with global warming.

The 9th simply says that the listed rights don't mean people don't have other rights. Like the right to own slaves.

Both points are quite true, Samuel, but I'm not suggesting that either one leads directly and logically to the uses I proposed for them. I'm just saying that both had the potential to be used in that creative fashion much like the 8th has been used to halt capital punishment (despite the fact that it has never been understood to be cruel or even the slightest bit unusual to execute someone for certain crimes) and a letter from one of the people who witnessed the writing of the 1st but was not actually involved in the drafting (Thomas Jefferson who was actually in France at the time) was used to define its limits. If you can stretch either one of those amendments in that manner, it's not completely off-the-wall to stretch the 8th and 9th to ban slavery and extend various rights.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, to be honest, I hadn't thought about it too much - obviously I think it would be better if participation in the government was limited to educated non-morons.

Everyone does, even the morons. That's a large chunk of the problem with the idea right there. If it were an easy thing to implement, someone would already have done it, and we'd have the example of a nation without foolishness in power. I've never heard of it being done, though that doesn't prove it hasn't.
______

And the problem that I was thinking would be more likely than people being squeezed out of getting a PhD was the value of a PhD getting lessened. There are other methods of testing a person's intelligence and education as well - it could just as easily be a test of some sort*.

Trouble is, any intelligence test we know of will produce results that are strongly correlated with education. Think about it, what would you test? Language ability? Math skills? Critical thinking? Educated people will nearly always do better on things like that than uneducated people, even if they're otherwise identical.

And that's not just because smart people do better in school; there's a synergistic effect. Using your brain a lot in school and in your formative years (thanks to parents who have the money and the inclination to stimulate your mind) makes you smarter, and those same traits make you more likely to pursue higher levels of education. Which leaves us right back where we started- access to education has a strong effect on ability to pass intelligence tests, and rich people tend to be better educated.
_______

Obviously any system where education was the means of getting into power should have universal government-funded higher education and support of university students. I came at that from an Australian perspective, and just kind of assumed that it was already in place. It was a bit silly of me to forget that I was talking in the context of America.

Does the correlation between wealth and education disappear in Australia? That would be interesting to see, and would greatly undermine my concern. The problem is that much of the damage or good is done well before the student reaches college, while they're attending government-funded schools even in America... or even before they reach school age.

It's not just a question of "poor people not caring about school;" there are very real logistics problems that can get in the way if you're heavily dependent on public transit, or if you can't take time off from work to take your children to museums and zoos, or if you can't afford to keep books around the house. And on top of that there are problems of family stability that have a lot to do with wealth (either because of a direct correlation or because both are correlated with something else). Being constantly after the children to improve their grades probably helps a lot, but it only goes so far in the absence of resources.

This is one of those problems I wish was easier to solve.
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Infrastructural problems can be relatively easily dealt with by giving our hypothetical society a constitutional mandate to ensure that all schools have adequate funding and facilities, and maybe a ban on private schools. A cultural problem - not so much. Though then we must ask ourselves the question "should people who devalue education, intelligence and knowledge be making policy decisions?" Really, a group being worse off than another group doesn't necessarily mean they're qualified to make decisions based on the good of the country.

But if you're going to ask that question, you also need to ask "should the children of people who devalue intelligence, education, and knowledge be making policy decisions? Should they be allowed to make decisions? Is it acceptable for them to be disproportionately blocked from control over their own government not because they are fools, but because their parents were?"
_______

And one thing (that you may or may not have considered) that differentiates sorting by intelligence/education and sorting by other factors is that when you sort by intelligence, you're more likely to get people who make beneficial decisions, because being intelligent and educated and making good decisions are directly linked...

Yes, but is the link strong enough to offset the kind of bad decisions that get made by any group which has no need to fear the reaction of the people who bear the consequences of its decisions? As an example, consider the history of "urban renewal" in the US. The urban planners who leveled large areas of the cities they were planning were probably much more intelligent, on average, than the people who lived in the neighborhoods. That didn't keep them from thinking it was a good idea to tear down poor neighborhoods and replace them with big gray blocks of high-rise public housing.

People with an IQ of 120 or 130 are not immune from all the normal human stupidities; they're just incrementally less likely to be guilty of them. And I don't think you can make a viable government with a franchise restricted purely to super-geniuses, either. At that point, the pool is so small I'd expect cultural inbreeding to set in.
_______

*Actually, this (a test) was the primary basis of entry into Chinese government positions for some 2000-odd years.

Yes, and the test left a bit to be desired, as I recall. That was one of the things I had in mind when I brought this up. It may have started as a very efficient test to see who was qualified for civil service, but:
Warning: Second or third-hand impression follows! Take with grain of salt or check against more authoritative sources!

The civil servants were responsible for designing what the civil service exam looked like. Being a civil servant was a much better job than almost anything else you could be doing in China at the time, and was very prestigious; Chinese civil servants naturally wanted their children to pass the exams, as did non-civil servant members of the elite.

However, the exams were intentionally very difficult, so most students did not pass. Peasant students who did not pass had to sit there and take it, and hopefully come back for another try later. But students who came from the elite class could go home and complain to their parents about how hard the exams were, or how they lost to some peasant who probably spent five years memorizing essays they could write to answer the exam questions. And what good is the exam if any peasant with a good memory can pass it?

Now, I'm not saying this directly led the elite in China to consciously fool around with the exam. But it's almost painfully obvious what you'd expect to happen in a case like this. The exams were administered well enough that in principle you couldn't just pass students from the elite preferentially, but what you could do was look for the kinds of answers members of the elite would produce. They were the ones who could hire the best tutors to teach them things like calligraphy and the etiquette of ceremonies, so you were looking for people who were good... but not too good, because that was a sign that you were just a peasant with good rote memory, a mere technician, not a real artist.

And yes, smart students from the middle of nowhere could still pass the exams, but they were fighting an uphill battle against people who were probably, by today's standards (to which things like calligraphy are mostly irrelevant), not as smart... but who were descended from the sort of people who'd had to pass the test back in their day.

Again, this is not an easy problem to fix, because every aristocracy tries to come up with its little bag of dirty tricks to keep the peasants out, even if they're not fully conscious that that's what they're doing. They come up with elaborate cultural rituals that no outsider would want to learn, then exclude you if you can't do their little dance. They attach a stigma to professions that aren't one of their traditional ones, with wild variation across societies: in Europe soldiers were more respected than merchants and clerks; in China the other way around. They expect people to provide 'proper' dress and decoration for themselves... which only people with rich parents can easily afford. And if you don't fit the pattern, you find yourself marginalized from the group unless you struggle very hard to fit in. Even then, you can still lose because now you're trying too hard.

Make the set of voters an aristocracy governed by a selection process, and I'm very worried about how you'd avoid having this happen.

[Lusankya]

And the problem that I was thinking would be more likely than people being squeezed out of getting a PhD was the value of a PhD getting lessened. There are other methods of testing a person's intelligence and education as well - it could just as easily be a test of some sort*.

Trouble is, any intelligence test we know of will produce results that are strongly correlated with education. Think about it, what would you test? Language ability? Math skills? Critical thinking? Educated people will nearly always do better on things like that than uneducated people, even if they're otherwise identical.

And that's not just because smart people do better in school; there's a synergistic effect. Using your brain a lot in school and in your formative years (thanks to parents who have the money and the inclination to stimulate your mind) makes you smarter, and those same traits make you more likely to pursue higher levels of education. Which leaves us right back where we started- access to education has a strong effect on ability to pass intelligence tests, and rich people tend to be better educated.

Wherever did I say that intelligence was not something that could be improved? Throughout my posts I have been saying that they should be both intelligent and educated.

And quite frankly, It doesn't matter if someone is stupid through genetics or stupid through a lack of education: they're still not fit to hold public office. It's a bit like the way it doesn't matter if someone's bad at basketball because they're short or because they never practice: they're still not going to get into the NBA.

Obviously any system where education was the means of getting into power should have universal government-funded higher education and support of university students. I came at that from an Australian perspective, and just kind of assumed that it was already in place. It was a bit silly of me to forget that I was talking in the context of America.

Does the correlation between wealth and education disappear in Australia? That would be interesting to see, and would greatly undermine my concern. The problem is that much of the damage or good is done well before the student reaches college, while they're attending government-funded schools even in America... or even before they reach school age.

Well, here's a report on the correlation between wealth and attitudes towards higher education in Australia: A PDF! There is a correlation, but I'll leave you to decide whether or not it is significant enough to result in a huge amount of class stratification. There are differences, but some are obviously related to the differences between higher and lower SEC cultures, while others are more obviously to do with actual barriers to entry. I don't know what it's like in America. The Australian system could certainly stand to be improved, and I believe the government is in the process of increasing Youth Allowance and allowing students who have to leave home for uni to get it immediately. I personally don't care too much about the cultural factors: if a culture is crap, then it can either be changed or they can deal with the consequences, which can vary from the current "community being destroyed because no doctors want to raise a family with people like that" to the hypothetical "can't vote unless they buck community trends". Personally, I find the first consequence (that is already being faced) much more pressing than the second.

It's not just a question of "poor people not caring about school;" there are very real logistics problems that can get in the way if you're heavily dependent on public transit, or if you can't take time off from work to take your children to museums and zoos, or if you can't afford to keep books around the house. And on top of that there are problems of family stability that have a lot to do with wealth (either because of a direct correlation or because both are correlated with something else). Being constantly after the children to improve their grades probably helps a lot, but it only goes so far in the absence of resources.

It's likely impossible to completely remove socioeconomic barriers to access to education. What matters is mitigating those factors. Unless you're completely out of touch with reality, though, you'll admit that socioeconomic factors will play a part in any system, democratic or otherwise.

But if you're going to ask that question, you also need to ask "should the children of people who devalue intelligence, education, and knowledge be making policy decisions? Should they be allowed to make decisions? Is it acceptable for them to be disproportionately blocked from control over their own government not because they are fools, but because their parents were?"

I'm really not quite sure what you're trying to say here. I don't really care how somebody came to hold certain values that are incompatible with a modern prosperous society - it still means that they're not qualified to make important decisions.

People with an IQ of 120 or 130 are not immune from all the normal human stupidities; they're just incrementally less likely to be guilty of them. And I don't think you can make a viable government with a franchise restricted purely to super-geniuses, either. At that point, the pool is so small I'd expect cultural inbreeding to set in.

I just threw the "peer-reviewed journals" bit out there - as I said, it could just as easily be a "are you an illiterate moron" test. Mainly I chose the idea of peer reviewed journals because it was something that should ideally prove that a person has a modicum of critical reasoning skills.

And I never claimed that intelligent people were perfect - just that they were better than non-intelligent people. I'm not going to distance myself from any political system just because it's not perfect. That would be daft. If it was a choice between "someone who only makes the right decision 1/2 of the time" and "someone who only makes the right decision 2/3 of the time", then of course I would choose the latter, and opt for a system that biases the results towards the latter. I don't see why anyone wouldn't, unless they insist that fanciful notions such as the idea of everyone's opinion is equal are more important than just and proper results.

*Actually, this (a test) was the primary basis of entry into Chinese government positions for some 2000-odd years.

*snip second or third impressions, because it is long*

Oh, I'm not trying to argue that it was perfect, but given that it was a time when universal education was not an option, it was still good for society, even with corruption in the system, it meant that officials were required to have some education and training, and some knowledge of the political system. And it wasn't unheard of for nobles to sponsor some "likely lads" and help them get the education required to get into the system. For most of history, China was the most advanced nation in the world, and it only really lost that claim during the Qing Dynasty, when the Qing adopted an isolationist policy. Your concern about fairness and corruption about is a reasonable one, but even if a system is unfair, if it produces (on average) better results than the other competing systems, then I would still call it a superior system.

In many ways, the system still survives: it's just that these days, you're more likely to need an engineering degree than a fine grasp of Confucius in order to get into power. Certainly, if we compare China and India, China's educated elite are making a far more concentrated effort to alleviate poverty in China than India's democratically elected government. And despite the rioting, China's minorities are treated a lot better than the unpopular minorities in India. Women's rights also improved markedly in the last century, and that was due to the government consisting of educated individuals, and was not something that could have progressed to anywhere near the extent that it has were it up to a popular vote.


It's not as though the current system is free of bias either: the taller candidate has won 80% of the US elections in the last century. The average height of Presidents is two inches higher than the average height of the US population. Basically, candidates are chosen based on charisma. You're arguing that the idea of sorting by education discriminates against blacks, but the current system's also discriminating against Asians and Latinos, by virtue of them being shorter, on average, than the white population, and displaying less obvious "alpha male" characteristics.

[RedImperator]

I can tell you right now from working in the American public school system, that there are systemic inequalities in it that ensure that putting an education requirement on full citizenship would result in the de facto disenfranchisement of millions of poor blacks and Latinos. There are cultural problems within certain minority communities, but those minorities are also largely going to school in buildings that are falling down around their ears. And the historical result of black disenfranchisement in this country hasn't been "enlightened educated whites look out for poor uneducated blacks". That's before we get to the disadvantage poor people would naturally be under without the government stipends Australia provides for higher education. Until you fix the education system, your system is completely unworkable in America. It's also politically impossible and would never survive a constitutional challenge, thanks to the fact that literacy tests have in the past actually been used to disenfranchise blacks, but there are so many serious structural problems with it, the problems of implementation will never even come up.

[ThomasP]

That does open up a whole can of worms in itself, without a doubt, and it would be very hard to justify any sort of discriminatory process in the US system.

What's more worrisome is that intelligence and education don't automatically rule out "acts of stupidity". There was a recent article in New Scientist (referencing this paper) suggesting that our measures of intelligence and higher education can still lead to dumbassery; they cited George W. Bush as a prime example of someone supposedly having a high IQ and a relatively good education, yet still being "un-analytical" (to be nice about it).

Given some of my experience with academics, I hate to say I have to agree to an extent - most of the PhD holders I know have been obsessive specialist types with little to no interest outside their fields, and even "stupid" in some ways RE: rational decision-making. That's my n=1 so take that as what it's worth, but the summary is that I'd want some better assessment of decision-making than measures that, at best, are only correlated.

And that is of course without getting into the institutionalized problems with access to education in the first place.

[Simon_Jester]

And the problem that I was thinking would be more likely than people being squeezed out of getting a PhD was the value of a PhD getting lessened. There are other methods of testing a person's intelligence and education as well - it could just as easily be a test of some sort*.

Trouble is, any intelligence test we know of will produce results that are strongly correlated with education. Think about it, what would you test? Language ability? Math skills? Critical thinking? Educated people will nearly always do better on things like that than uneducated people, even if they're otherwise identical.

And that's not just because smart people do better in school; there's a synergistic effect. Using your brain a lot in school and in your formative years (thanks to parents who have the money and the inclination to stimulate your mind) makes you smarter, and those same traits make you more likely to pursue higher levels of education. Which leaves us right back where we started- access to education has a strong effect on ability to pass intelligence tests, and rich people tend to be better educated.

Wherever did I say that intelligence was not something that could be improved? Throughout my posts I have been saying that they should be both intelligent and educated.

I think you misunderstood my point. If we could test for intelligence independently of education, then we'd eliminate much of the danger of class bias* from the system. But we can't, which still leaves us in the position of figuring out how to avoid the danger of the current class of intellectual elites becoming quasi-hereditary over time.

*The danger does not come purely from having classes, but from having a ruling class that abuses the ruled class because they have no reason to fear the consequences of doing so.

It's likely impossible to completely remove socioeconomic barriers to access to education. What matters is mitigating those factors. Unless you're completely out of touch with reality, though, you'll admit that socioeconomic factors will play a part in any system, democratic or otherwise.

Yes. But one of the notable features of a universal franchise (things it has that a restricted franchise doesn't have) is that one thing socioeconomic factors don't determine is whether or not a citizen has a legal right to a say in the government. This has drawbacks, because just as socioeconomic factors don't affect that, nothing else does, including things which probably should have an effect.

But I don't think the drawbacks are entirely one-sided; there's a nontrivial social engineering problem to solve if we don'twant to create a restricted franchise system in which large numbers of people in the "stupid" classes (many but by no means all of whom are in fact stupid) wind up suffering at the hands of the "smart" classes (many but by no means all of whom are in fact smart).
_______

But if you're going to ask that question, you also need to ask "should the children of people who devalue intelligence, education, and knowledge be making policy decisions? Should they be allowed to make decisions? Is it acceptable for them to be disproportionately blocked from control over their own government not because they are fools, but because their parents were?"

I'm really not quite sure what you're trying to say here. I don't really care how somebody came to hold certain values that are incompatible with a modern prosperous society - it still means that they're not qualified to make important decisions.

Think about it in the context of people who deny their children medical treatment for bullshit religious reasons. We generally accept that if you are philosophically opposed to taking antibiotics, you can kill yourself off for whatever idiot reason you want. But that doesn't give you the right to inflict that same decision on your children.

So what do we do about parents who, for whatever reason, fail to give their children the intellectual stimulation those children need to have a good chance of growing into smart, educated people that deserve the vote?

[Serafine666]

So what do we do about parents who, for whatever reason, fail to give their children the intellectual stimulation those children need to have a good chance of growing into smart, educated people that deserve the vote?

I'd propose... nothing. The main problem with the concept of punishing the parents for providing insufficient intellectual stimulation is that the standard is subjective. With very little direct intervention, some kids find that they enjoy reading, have a naturally high reading comprehension, and tend to naturally hanker after time in a library, becoming well-informed. Some kids seem literally unable to form their own conclusions no matter how often they're educated on objectivity and logic. Unlike with health care where there is a very hard-and-fast standard for determining whether a child is being medically neglected (i.e. malnutrition, overly long illnesses without a mitigating cause, death from simple or highly treatable illnesses, etc), you cannot determine if a child is being educationally neglected by testing them, examining the methods of the parents, or both.
There is also the problem of perceptive deficiency. Everyone, no matter how good and open-minded and objective, comes to the question of intelligence with certain biases especially if they are highly educated. There is an overwhelming tendency, especially among those who are well-regarded and well-qualified in a particular field of knowledge, to regard their views and the things they have learned as objectively and perpetually correct and, in contrast, to think little of someone who does not seem able to understand that they're right. To use a couple of political examples off the top of my head, conservatives tend to regard faith in governmental power, however well-founded, to be a form of stupidity inherent to liberals whereas liberals think little of the intelligence of someone who has great faith in corporate power as a solution for economic ills. In neither case is the viewpoint an example of stupidity or lack of intelligence but it is often viewed as proof of stupidity which has a very real tendency to color the perceptions of someone who is assessing the intellectual competency of a child. This creates the danger of "false negatives" and "false positives" when deciding whether a child's parents have sufficiently educated them.

[Slacker]

Not to entirely derail the discussion going on here, but I really think marriage equality was an unintended casualty in the old game of Republican v. Democrat.

For decades in New York, the Dems held the Assembly and the Republicans held the Senate. Both sides jerrymandered the living shit out of the map of New York to ensure that was the case. That changed in the Obama coattails landslide of 2008, and for the first time in a long time the Dems have both houses in the NY legislature. They want/need to hold that razor thin majority for the 2010 census and the redistricting battle so they can turn the Senate into another Democratic bastion. Once that happens, I really honestly expect things to move forward. The fact that Patterson's politically eviscerated doesn't help matters either-the reality is the poor guy has taken all of the blame for the economic meltdown in New York and was really only supposed to sit in back rooms and build the Democratic majority in the legislature until Spitz-er Swallows went and screwed everything up.

Cold comfort, but I think this was the victim of political maneuvering rather than old-fashioned bigotry. Doesn't make it right, and I'm not condoning it. Just putting it out there.

[Simon_Jester]

So what do we do about parents who, for whatever reason, fail to give their children the intellectual stimulation those children need to have a good chance of growing into smart, educated people that deserve the vote?

I'd propose... nothing.

Thing is, that opens up the risk of a major class bias in the system that determines who gets to vote again.

So far as I can tell, the only conceptually simple way to make the system fair in that respect is to give everyone the same education. If you can't do that, then implementing the system is going to be tricky.

The main problem with the concept of punishing the parents for providing insufficient intellectual stimulation is that the standard is subjective.

Yes, and that was sort of the obvious subtext in what I was getting at, I thought. I don't think there's a just way to punish parents for failing to provide opportunities for intellectual stimulation to their children; I'm not sure it's just to do it at all. But if you don't contrive some way to ensure children are intellectually stimulated, you get with children who grow up dumber and/or less educated than they have to. In a system where the vote is restricted to the intelligent/educated, systemic biases in who grows up smart can creep into the system over time.

And I contend that that's a significant defect in the system, one that should not simply be ignored in the quest for smarter voters.
______

There is also the problem of perceptive deficiency. Everyone, no matter how good and open-minded and objective, comes to the question of intelligence with certain biases especially if they are highly educated. There is an overwhelming tendency, especially among those who are well-regarded and well-qualified in a particular field of knowledge, to regard their views and the things they have learned as objectively and perpetually correct and, in contrast, to think little of someone who does not seem able to understand that they're right.

This is a separate issue if we propose to test voters for intelligence, and I choose not to comment on it.

[Serafine666]

Thing is, that opens up the risk of a major class bias in the system that determines who gets to vote again.

So far as I can tell, the only conceptually simple way to make the system fair in that respect is to give everyone the same education. If you can't do that, then implementing the system is going to be tricky.

Yet, if you give everyone the same education, it will not significantly alter the results. Some children are naturally quick to learn, have ample home or social support, and are naturally interested in things around them, wanting to understand them better. Some children may not be necessarily less intelligent but may be held back by other factors such as a lack of support, a mild or severe learning disorder, a form of intelligence that is less of a fit for formal literature-heavy education, or a hundred other things. People are not inherently equal so even when you provide them with an absolutely equal opportunity and access to resources, the results are never guaranteed. I don't think that, even with equal education, adequate safeguards exist to prevent systemic exclusion of certain people who may well be qualified to render judgement on an issue or the merits of a given office-holder but lack the correct educational attainments to prove it.

Yes, and that was sort of the obvious subtext in what I was getting at, I thought. I don't think there's a just way to punish parents for failing to provide opportunities for intellectual stimulation to their children; I'm not sure it's just to do it at all. But if you don't contrive some way to ensure children are intellectually stimulated, you get with children who grow up dumber and/or less educated than they have to. In a system where the vote is restricted to the intelligent/educated, systemic biases in who grows up smart can creep into the system over time.
And I contend that that's a significant defect in the system, one that should not simply be ignored in the quest for smarter voters.

Which is why I seriously doubt the merits of a system in which only the highly intelligent and the well-educated may vote. I love the idea in theory; voters who can't be wrapped around the finger of a clever politician with some mudslinging and inane promises would make for a better-governed republic. Voters who are not so easily played would likely make the aggravating practice of negative ads either disappear or become massively more sophisticated. But the idea only seems good in theory; in practice, as you and others have pointed out, it could become an informal oligarchy where the well-educated can ensure that they remain the ruling class by defining standards upwards to eliminate all but those they see as their equals or allies.

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, that opens up the risk of a major class bias in the system that determines who gets to vote again.

So far as I can tell, the only conceptually simple way to make the system fair in that respect is to give everyone the same education. If you can't do that, then implementing the system is going to be tricky.

... I don't think that, even with equal education, adequate safeguards exist to prevent systemic exclusion of certain people who may well be qualified to render judgement on an issue or the merits of a given office-holder but lack the correct educational attainments to prove it.

Here, I was using "same education" as an abstraction for all the things that help people learn. Which was intellectually lazy of me, I suppose.

Never mind. I think we're on more or less the same page here.

[Qwerty 42]

I wasn't sure if this warranted a new thread, but the gay marriage bill in New Jersey just cleared committee.

[Serafine666]

I wasn't sure if this warranted a new thread, but the gay marriage bill in New Jersey just cleared committee.

Well, then all is well. Either it will be debated and voted on by the elected representatives of the people of New Jersey or, in the most optimal circumstances, will be the subject of a referendum or initiative.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

I wasn't sure if this warranted a new thread, but the gay marriage bill in New Jersey just cleared committee.

Well, then all is well. Either it will be debated and voted on by the elected representatives of the people of New Jersey or, in the most optimal circumstances, will be the subject of a referendum or initiative.

It will be voted on by the Assembly and the Senate of the NJ legislature. There is no recourse for a citizen referendum on the bill once it passes the legislature (Thank god). And not is all well; garnering enough votes for passage in the Senate must still be done and it's uncertain whether they are all there. The good thing is the NJ legislature is said to be far less dysfunctional than the NY's and that it's generally more progressive. It's imperative for them to get this done now since if they fail this time, NJ will not see marriage equality in a long, long time.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I wasn't sure if this warranted a new thread, but the gay marriage bill in New Jersey just cleared committee.

Well, then all is well. Either it will be debated and voted on by the elected representatives of the people of New Jersey or, in the most optimal circumstances, will be the subject of a referendum or initiative.

Why, exactly should a matter of human rights and legal equality for all citizens be subjected to a voter referendum again? That claim has bee fairly well shredded in here.

[Serafine666]

Why, exactly should a matter of human rights and legal equality for all citizens be subjected to a voter referendum again? That claim has bee fairly well shredded in here.

My point was that it being brought to a vote (and thus is possible to pass) was a good thing; all the better that it is being gained by a vote instead of a fiat.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Why, exactly should a matter of human rights and legal equality for all citizens be subjected to a voter referendum again? That claim has bee fairly well shredded in here.

My point was that it being brought to a vote (and thus is possible to pass) was a good thing; all the better that it is being gained by a vote instead of a fiat.

How is that "better"? It's an insult. How would you feel if your right to marry was considered fair game for other people to vote away? Permission for same sex couples to marry shouldn't be up for popular vote any more than the right of black or left handed people to marry should be.

[Serafine666]

How is that "better"? It's an insult. How would you feel if your right to marry was considered fair game for other people to vote away? Permission for same sex couples to marry shouldn't be up for popular vote any more than the right of black or left handed people to marry should be.

I'd be fine with it because all I'd be losing is those 1400+ little tidbits. I might be miffed if the 1st Amendment was put up to a popular vote, tho.

[ray245]

How is that "better"? It's an insult. How would you feel if your right to marry was considered fair game for other people to vote away? Permission for same sex couples to marry shouldn't be up for popular vote any more than the right of black or left handed people to marry should be.

I'd be fine with it because all I'd be losing is those 1400+ little tidbits. I might be miffed if the 1st Amendment was put up to a popular vote, tho.

Why do we have to apply some sort of double standards then?

[Pint0 Xtreme]

How is that "better"? It's an insult. How would you feel if your right to marry was considered fair game for other people to vote away? Permission for same sex couples to marry shouldn't be up for popular vote any more than the right of black or left handed people to marry should be.

I'd be fine with it because all I'd be losing is those 1400+ little tidbits. I might be miffed if the 1st Amendment was put up to a popular vote, tho.

Until someone actually does lose their marriage rights, I never really take their word when they say they would only be "miffed" by it. After all, even I thought Prop 8 passing wouldn't psychologically hurt me that badly. Boy, was I wrong on that one.

[Alyrium Denryle]

How is that "better"? It's an insult. How would you feel if your right to marry was considered fair game for other people to vote away? Permission for same sex couples to marry shouldn't be up for popular vote any more than the right of black or left handed people to marry should be.

I'd be fine with it because all I'd be losing is those 1400+ little tidbits. I might be miffed if the 1st Amendment was put up to a popular vote, tho.

You take your civil rights for granted. It is a different matter when you dont have them you see your civil rights, effectively your social and legal personhood get voted on.

[Serafine666]

You take your civil rights for granted. It is a different matter when you dont have them you see your civil rights, effectively your social and legal personhood get voted on.

So long as no one proposes to take their right to speech, the press, religion, assembly, petition, keep and bear arms, be protected from being forced to quarter soldiers, be protected from search and seizure, deprived of right to trial by jury, protection against being subject to the same charges twice, protection against being a witness against themselves, protection against being deprived or life liberty or property without due process, protection against being deprived of their private property without just compensation, a speedy trial, to confront the witnesses against them, to be informed of the charges against them, a means to compel witnesses in their defense, the assistance of counsel, protection against excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment, protection against being forced into involuntary servitude, to vote if a woman or eighteen... and the other specifically enumerated rights, I very much doubt I'll ever have occasion to witness or participate in an instance where someone's social and legal personhood are being voted on. Which, by the way, gives me the greatest joy imaginable since that is not a vote I would want to be a participant in.

[ray245]

You take your civil rights for granted. It is a different matter when you dont have them you see your civil rights, effectively your social and legal personhood get voted on.

So long as no one proposes to take their right to speech, the press, religion, assembly, petition, keep and bear arms, be protected from being forced to quarter soldiers, be protected from search and seizure, deprived of right to trial by jury, protection against being subject to the same charges twice, protection against being a witness against themselves, protection against being deprived or life liberty or property without due process, protection against being deprived of their private property without just compensation, a speedy trial, to confront the witnesses against them, to be informed of the charges against them, a means to compel witnesses in their defense, the assistance of counsel, protection against excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment, protection against being forced into involuntary servitude, to vote if a woman or eighteen... and the other specifically enumerated rights, I very much doubt I'll ever have occasion to witness or participate in an instance where someone's social and legal personhood are being voted on. Which, by the way, gives me the greatest joy imaginable since that is not a vote I would want to be a participant in.

Well, you got to prove that the right to marriage is worth so much lesser than other other rights to a point where it can be voted on.

To knock it into your thick skull, how would you feel if homosexuals ( no offense to the homosexuals here) tries to restrict heterosexuals from marriage? Would you still claim that you are not losing your civil rights?

[Alyrium Denryle]

I very much doubt I'll ever have occasion to witness or participate in an instance where someone's social and legal personhood are being voted on. Which, by the way, gives me the greatest joy imaginable since that is not a vote I would want to be a participant in.

Listen to me you miserable cousin fucking whore spawn, one of those specifically enumerated rights is the the right to be equal under the law. Let me drill a hole in your thick skull and spell it out for you.

Amendment 14, section 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Emphasis mine, cuntsickle.

There are only two ways that marriage rights, and all of the legal protections that go with it (as well as a host of other legal protections like the employment and housing anti-discrimination laws that protect you that you take for granted because you are a myopic self-centered sack of shit) are not guaranteed to me under that text.

I am either not a person

Or there is a hidden clause in it written in small print or hidden ink that requires lemon juice and an oven to uncover that has the words "With the exception of queers, dykes and trannies"

Now, that little section is not there, so the obvious implication is that I am not considered a person. If any other group of people were being discriminated against in this fashion in the 21st century, say a state made a law banning Jews from getting married, you could be damn fucking sure that it would go before a court and get smacked down and you sorry ass would not be sitting around prattling about how it needs to be voted on.

Fuck you, fuck your mother, and just so you know... I fucked your dad last night.

[Darth Hoth]

You are being treated equally under the law right now. If you choose to marry a woman, your marriage will be recognised, just as it would be for a heterosexual. And if a heterosexual man chooses to marry another man, his marriage will be equally invalid as though he were a homosexual.

Now, that was, of course, a cheap shot; my point, however, is that homosexual marriage rights do not automatically follow from the fourteenth amendment. According to the interpretation favoured by you (and most other people here on this board), they do; but other people have other opinions, and it is nothing short of dishonest to claim that yours alone must be correct when the paragraph is phrased as it is. Interpreting the Constitution is exactly what the courts are there for, and their interpretation trumps yours unless the Constitution was rewriten since last I read it. You may disagree with Seraphine, but being an arsehole towards him for not valuing your interpretation over the presently legally valid one neither helps anything, nor does it make you look good.