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I guess you misunderstand. I find no fault with that process of drawing distinctions. I can not offer a better approach. Various rights are inevitably going to wind up in conflict at times. The Courts are there to make the tradeoffs. My point is that there is more to the story than just that.
Certainly a 5-4 vote is less legitmate. You probably don't remember, but it used to be a tradition in the Court to find a way to rule unanimously on important cases. Civil Rights cases and the various Nixon impeachment rulings come to mind.
Brown v. Board of Education was held up for one year and reargued on some pretense in order to find an opportunity to get a 9-0 vote rather than an 8-1 vote.
If the Court has sufficient reason to change the plain intentions of the authors of the Constitution after 200 years, go against the preferences of a large majority of the public and the legislatures they select, and change major policy decisions on major issues, it ought to have sufficiently persuasive reasons to muster better than a 5-4 vote. My concept is one of showing deference to the voters and the other branches of government. The courts used to be pretty good at that, but those days are over.
A 51-49 vote in Senate is a completely different matter. Majority rules. If the voters don't like, it won't take much in the next election to redress the grievance. No such check exists on the Judiciary.
not if she married husband d. she might not have legal rights with mr. a.
Err . . . Let me state the obvious, and point out that such a situation isn't polygamy at all, but entirely separate monogamous marriages.
and what about the rest of the country?
Don't know what you mean by this.
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
you referenced the rights of gays in california. my question is, what about the rest of the country?
sorry, she wouldn't be in a polygamous relationship. she'd be in a polyamorous one.
f/k/a mclamb6
you referenced the rights of gays in california. my question is, what about the rest of the country?
Ah, OK. But you're evading the point of my question. If gays can enjoy the same legal rights as married couples without being married, do you think it's somehow still important to allow gay marriage?
sorry, she wouldn't be in a polygamous relationship. she'd be in a polyamorous one.
Semantic abuse.
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
"semantic abuse"
you started splitting hairs first. you know what i meant earlier.
sure there is symbolic value that applies to the act/marriage license and i am sure there are polys who would make that argument. i do believe that the bulk of the issue, especially in states without more progressive/amoral(depending on your view) laws, revolves around not having legal rights that are afforded to married heteros.
f/k/a mclamb6
you started splitting hairs first. Did not!!
you know what i meant earlier. I really didn't. That's why I asked what you meant. Really.
sure there is symbolic value that applies to the act/marriage license and i am sure there are polys who would make that argument. Is it just me, or are you starting to talk in non sequitors? Polys would make the argument that the symbolism of a marriage ceremony is important? No, they'd make the argument that their legal rights are being violated, in that they cannot enjoy any legal rights within the realtionship they've chosen. (And in neither case- gay or polygamist- is it a case of simply wanting the ceremony of a marriage for symbolic reasons. Anybody can have a purely symbolic ceremony with anyone they want right now. Gays already do it all the time. It's a question of whether that ceremony is followed by the legal rights of marriage, and ALSO a question of whether the state officially sanctions that ceremony as a real marriage.)
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
i stated that poorly. what i meant was that polys would want their second marriage codified/recognized by the state for the symbolic reason that it would mean acceptance of their lifestyle. as i had mentioned before, anti-bigamy/polygamy laws don't stop people from practicing "spiritual wifery", but it lacks the validation of state sanction. so i didn't mean symbolism in the sense of merely having a ceremony committing themselves to each other in the clan, but rather the ceremony/state sanction as symbolic approval of polygamy. is that clearer?
by the way, how would you address a terri schiavo type of situation in the case of polygamy where the husbands couldn't agree on the best course of treatment? who gets to be the surrogate decision maker?
f/k/a mclamb6
what i meant was that polys would want their second marriage codified/recognized by the state for the symbolic reason that it would mean acceptance of their lifestyle.
Which is exactly why gays are fighting for gay marriage. (Not to mention that it would also carry the legal benefits of marriage, which polygamists don't have now, and have no prospects of getting through some sort of "civil union" arrangement.)
how would you address a terri schiavo type of situation in the case of polygamy where the husbands couldn't agree on the best course of treatment? who gets to be the surrogate decision maker?
That's an interesting question. Let me ask you this- in the case of a single surviving parent with two kids who can't agree on the question, what happens?
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
i honestly don't know what the law says on that issue(children of a sole surviving parent) or even if kids are next in line as a surrogate decision maker(they likely are). maybe the court has a hearing to appoint a guardian ad litem, i don't know.
f/k/a mclamb6
maybe the court has a hearing to appoint a guardian ad litem, i don't know.
I don't know either, but once again, I think it's clear that polygamy wouldn't present any new challenges to the legal system. There must be cases like this all the time.
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."