Monday 29 June 2015

Rainbow weekend

The US Supreme Court gave the whole world quite a weekend. Cato reports:

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled [5 votes to 4] that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to both recognise and license same sex marriage. Cato scholar Ilya Shapiro comments, “Just because today’s opinion was expected by all doesn’t make it any less momentous. It was in 2003 that the Court had to invalidate the criminalization of gay sex and a mere 12 years later it commands state officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. …Good for the Court – and I echo Justice Kennedy’s hope that both sides now respect each other’s liberties and the rule of law.”

Did the dissenting justices have a case?

Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, both [dissenting justices] Roberts and Scalia are completely wrong…. in any decision arising before the Supreme Court, the ultimate issue to consider is: Are individual rights being upheld, or undermined? …
   
The onus is on Scalia and Roberts to prove that the right of consenting, adult same-sex couples to legally marry is not an individual right. I have not yet heard an argument to prove or even support their claim that no such right exists.
    What I have heard, over and over, is an assertion that, “marriage is between a man and a woman.” This is certainly what a lot of people believe, and it’s entirely their political right to believe it, and to act on that belief. For example, they should not be required, under the law, to provide wedding cakes or other products or services to gay persons, or to anybody else, of whom they do not approve. At the same time, this does not give them a right to prevent gay people from engaging in a legally binding contract.
    The morality, or lack thereof, in the concept of gay marital unions should not be an issue for the law.

And, well, is there anything we can do to help make this happen:

No One’s Having A Worse Day Than The Pastor Who Promised
To Light Himself On Fire If Same-Sex Marriage Is Legalised

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not so fast bucko. It must be a confusing week for US libertarians.

Firstly a deranged man goes troppo and shoots dead 9 black people in a church. The leaders of society then decree the Confederate flag is to blame and must not be displayed. So the Stars and Bars [the jack of the Second Army of Tennesee - a banner for States rights] comes down.
Then 5/9ths of the Supreme Court join the chorus line of a sod's opera and decree the States have no right to govern according their own democratically derived laws and run up the Rainbow Rag

A great proportion of the citizens of the US are more than pissed off at the level of dictatorial Federal control. Now they're angry that depravity has been foisted on them in the name of liberty. Don't think that this annoys only the South.

They've had one hot civil war. There's no natural law that says the current cold civil war has to stay at that temperature.

Mick

Peter Cresswell said...

States "rights" my arse. Only individuals have rights; states do not.

The only "right" for which those states were fighting was their alleged right to enslave other human beings. I'am against that. I'm against rags representing that.

If that confuses you, bucko, if you want to start a civil war for slavery and against gay marriage, then you may be many things, but you're not a libertarian.

Anonymous said...

Peter, you've brought into the colouring-in book of history. Two questions, What year did the war start? and What year did the Emancipation Act come into law? A third; When and how many southern states elected to free their slaves?

The electors of the seceding states had had enough of autocratic dictats from a distant central government - A concept behind the Declaration of Independence.

Don't paint my comment as being a spokesman for slavery, I'm not. I'll return the gesture by not colouring yours as a voice for perverted confusion. I'm pointing out the fact that a significant portion of the US has had a gutsfull of being told how and what to think by a noisome minority. If thats ironic to a libertarian, so what.

Mick

Peter Cresswell said...

"Don't paint my comment as being a spokesman for slavery." You're doing fine on your own, "bucko."

Barry said...

Of course the south has a history of slavery but that doesn't make the confederate flag objectively 'the slavery flag'; it has different meanings to different people.

Did the Dukes of Hazzard drive around in the 'slavery mobile'? of course not. Surely the libertarian response to the confederate flag is: if it hurts your feelings, too bad.