The courts ruled that Domestic Partnership laws neither conformed to the respective state constitutions equal protection clauses nor conformed to the states’ anti-discrimination laws.

Poor, Dave. How it burns his butt that neither court would apply one set of constitutional principles to laws effecting homosexuals and another to all others.

Just what about “good-bye” did you not understand?

I go against my earlier judgment by dealing with you again at all; this will be the very last time.

You are a perfect example of the sort of ideologue that cannot be reasoned with. You cannot stand that anyone would disagree with you in the slightest.

Anyone who thinks the gay left is any less dogmatic, intolerant, angry, and authortarian than the Christian right needs only to look at this site to be proved wrong.

My position is simple: Courts should not take positions on matters unless the law does so.

There are many possible positions on the legal recongnition of same-sex couples. As long as a state’s constitution remains neutral amongst these various positions, its judiciary must remain neutral also.

You can blather about the oppression of minorities by majorities all you want; the actual protections we enjoy in this country from government oppression — like freedom of speech and religion — were democratically enacted.

The consideration of the individual’s sex is decidedly neither arbitrary nor capricious when what you are attempting to define and regulate is a sexual relationship.

What is being defined is a form of familial relationship, not the sexual relationship.

The sexual relationship is NOT being regulated. That would be the issue of Lawrence vs. Texas or instances such as Pace v. Alabama.

Additionally, there is no mandate in family or marrital law that you even have to have sexual relations with your married partner or that you have to be married to have a sexual relationship.

Although granted, in some jurisdictions the withholding of sexual affections has been used as grounds for divorce.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that at least in California (I’m unsure of Connecticut) the SC opinions were not formulated simply by review of constitutional law, but also bearing in mind both the state constitution and existing laws, for instance, in California, other state laws informing the decision were sexual-orientation antii-discrimination laws.

The consideration of the individual’s sex is decidedly neither arbitrary nor capricious when what you are attempting to define and regulate is a sexual relationship.

The sexual relationship is NOT being regulated. That would be the issue of Lawrence vs. Texas or instances such as Pace v. Alabama.

Loving v. Virginia already also negated that argument as an additional part of what Loving was arrested for in that case was for interracial sex in conjunction with inter-racial marriage.

Again, in the Connecticut and California rulings, the only compelling state interest for taking the nature of the sexual relationship regarding into marriage into consideration would be to impose fertility means testing, and/or the imposition of biblical meaning upon marriage being only for procreational purposes.

Mainly because every argument Dave has made is in support of allowing a majority to tyrannize a minority.

He seems to discount in his focus on same-sex marriage, that his arguments must also apply to every other legal decision and that he is arguing for the abolition of one of the central foundations of our form of democracy which has been developed (or at least evolved into) attempts to specifically prohbit the ability of populist majorities to tyrannize a minority.

We don’t have a democratic form of government wherein we go by strict majority rule.

Evidently Dave wishes we did.

Not a single individual afforded the rights to marriage in this case has had their rights or responsibilities affected.

And, please, don’t try to go down the “Freedom of Religion” road, because this ruling did not speak to any rights of the church with regard to internal relgious dogmas or theology or dictate in any other way what a religious sect of any denomination must do (or not do for that matter).