Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyFebruary 18th, 2013
Mexico’s legal system is complicated, especially when it comes to matters of civil rights. Earlier this month, we reported that the Supreme Court of Mexico had declared that same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights to marriage as heterosexual couples. Today they clarified the basis of their thinking.
Oddly enough, it was the US Supreme Court: (Buzzfeed)
The historical disadvantages that homosexuals have suffered have been well recognized and documented: public harassment, verbal abuse, discrimination in their employment and in access to certain services, in addition to their exclusion to some aspects of public life. In this sense … when they are denied access to marriage it creates an analogy with the discrimination that interracial couples suffered in another era. In the celebrated case Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court argued that “restricting marriage rights as belonging to one race or another is incompatible with the equal protection clause” under the US constitution. In connection with this analogy, it can be said that the normative power of marriage is worth little if it does grant the possibility to marry the person one chooses.
As they address the Windsor and Perry cases this spring, let’s hope that the Supreme Court rules as wisely in the US as the Mexico Court has found its rulings to be in Mexico.
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occono
February 18th, 2013
Was going to correct you but I realize what the title means now.
So, there needs to be three more cases before it’s law throughout the land? I mean, as in you can get a license anywhere in Mexico, instead of just Mexico City and so on.
Ben in Oakland
February 18th, 2013
But….but….but…
I thought we all had the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex, no matter how meaningless to us personally, no matter how demeaning to marriage it might be for someone to get married who actually have no interest in this sacred bond.
Statements like this are enough to make you Maggie and Bobbie’s arguments aren’t worth the reliquary they arrived in.
MattNYC
February 18th, 2013
I’m sure Maggie would be quite pissed if her time machine placed her in 1966 and she was told that she was perfectly free to marry the Caucasian of her choice and no right to marry her (Indian) hubby.
Hunter
February 19th, 2013
Ben in Oakland: that argument, more than any other I can think of, shows what a sham the “defense of marriage” pose really is. Anyone who advances that argument is displaying contempt for the institution.
StraightGrandmother
February 19th, 2013
But isn’t SCOTUS, The Supreme Court Of The UNITED STATES? Mexico ruled not the USA. Maybe I just didn’t get a subtly here.
Timothy Kincaid
February 19th, 2013
SG,
That’s the irony. Mexico’s court based their ruling on the logic in Loving v Virginia and Lawrence v Texas. Looking at those cases (and seeing the inherent universality of their wisdom) it was clear to Mexico that marriage could not be denied to gay people. (They also looked at a case in Chile).
But our courts have not yet done as Mexico has done and heeded its own wisdom.
Ben in Oakland
February 19th, 2013
My point exactly, hunter. It makes a sham of the meaning of marriage.
Richard Rush
February 19th, 2013
Ben said, “I thought we all had the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex . . .”
That’s my very favorite argument from our opponents. While all arguments against same-sex marriage are dumb*, some are dumber* than others, and I view this as the dumbest* one of all.
I’ve always wanted to ask someone citing this argument how they would feel about their son/daughter marrying an opposite-sex homosexual person. And then, after they stumble over an answer, I’d ask them: Wouldn’t the institution of marriage benefit by the full acceptance/equality of gay people in society so that substantial numbers of them no longer felt they had to deceive an opposite-sex person into marrying them as a means of surviving in a hostile world? Wouldn’t society benefit if they married each other instead of your straight son or daughter? These are not trick-questions; it is the story of what I’ve seen repeatedly during my lifetime.
*or possibly smart/smarter/smartest from the standpoint of the argument’s perpetrators realizing that it will be persuasive among their gullible followers.
Timothy Kincaid
February 19th, 2013
I agree that it’s among the dumbest – mostly because not only is it not true in realistic terms, it’s not true in technical terms.
The question I want to ask our opponents who make this claim is this:
“If I were to marry a foreign national woman just so she could get a green card, would that be fraud?”
And the follow up:
“In what way would marrying a foreign national woman differ from the marriage you say that I can have?”
Steve Kindle
February 19th, 2013
There is a misquote that materially affects the argument in your report. Your statement left out the NOT. Here is how it should read.
“In connection with this analogy, it can be said that the normative power of marriage is worth little if it does not grant the possibility to marry the person one chooses.”
It’s amazing how many online sources repeated the quote without the “not.”
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