Quod Erat Demonstupid? Wow.
You are literally too stupid to have a debate with.
Are you really trying to say that "whether you're straight or gay, both sides don't get to engage in gay marriage, therefore there's no Equal Protection problem?"
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA. *gulp* oh wait. You're serious. That doesn't work buddy. It's discriminating against someone's sexual preference to marry who they want to marry. It's just that simple.
Your attempt at "cute", common sense (I'm sure you think that's what it equates to, but you couldn't be more wrong if you tried)...fails. Hard.
If you'd really like to learn something about the legal precedent for homosexual marriage, here's something I compiled for someone equally as stupid once upon a time. You might want to read and weep.
Bowers v. Hardwick
June 30, 1986
Facts
Michael Hardwick was observed by a Georgia police officer while engaging in the act of consensual homosexual sodomy with another adult in the bedroom of his home. After being charged with violating a Georgia statute that criminalized sodomy, Hardwick challenged the statute's constitutionality in Federal District Court. [procedural crap omitted]
Question
Does the Constitution confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in consensual sodomy, thereby invalidating the laws of many states which make such conduct illegal?
Holding
No. The divided Court found that there was no constitutional protection for acts of sodomy, and that states could outlaw those practices. Justice Byron White argued that the Court has acted to protect rights not easily identifiable in the Constitution only when those rights are "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" (Palko v. Connecticut, 1937) or when they are "deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition" (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965). The Court held that the right to commit sodomy did not meet either of these standards. White feared that guaranteeing a right to sodomy would be the product of "judge-made constitutional law" and send the Court down the road of illegitimacy.
Romer v. Evans
May 20, 1996
Facts
Colorado voters adopted Amendment 2 to their State Constitution banning laws which protected gays from discrimination based on their gayness.
[procedural crap omitted]
Question
Does the Colorado Amendment, forbidding the extension of official protections to people suffering discrimination due to their sexual orientation, violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause?
Holding
Yes. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court held that Amendment 2 of the Colorado State Constitution violated the equal protection clause. Amendment 2 singled out homosexual and bisexual persons, imposing on them a broad disability by denying them the right to seek and receive specific legal protection from discrimination. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that oftentimes a law will be sustained under the equal protection clause, even if it seems to disadvantage a specific group, so long as it can be shown to "advance a legitimate government interest." Amendment 2, by depriving persons of equal protection under the law due to their sexual orientation failed to advance such a legitimate interest. Justice Kennedy concluded: "If the constitutional conception of 'equal protection of the laws' means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest."
Lawrence and Garner v. Texas
June 26, 2003
Facts
Responding to a completely bogus and trumped-up weapons charge in a private residence, Houston police entered John Lawrence's apartment and saw him and another adult man ******* each other. Lawrence and Garner were arrested and convicted of deviate sexual intercourse in violation of a Texas statute forbidding two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. In affirming, the State Court of Appeals held that the statute was not unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, with Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), controlling.
Question
Do the criminal convictions of Lawrence and his lover under the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law, which criminalizes sexual intimacy by same-sex couples, but not identical behavior by different-sex couples, violate the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of laws? Do their criminal convictions for adult consensual sexual intimacy in the home violate their vital interests in liberty and privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? Should Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), be overruled?
Holding
No, yes, and yes. In a 6-3 opinion delivered by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Court held that the Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct violates the Due Process Clause. After obliterating Bowers's idiotic premises, the Court reasoned that the case turned on whether gays were free as adults to engage in the private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause. "Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government," wrote Justice Kennedy. "The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual," continued Justice Kennedy. Accordingly, the Court overruled Bowers. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, with whom Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Thomas joined, filed dissents.
Compare with:
Loving v. Virginia
June 12, 1967
Facts
In 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The Lovings returned to Virginia shortly thereafter. The couple was then charged with violating the state's antimiscegenation statute, which banned inter-racial marriages. The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail (the trial judge agreed to suspend the sentence if the Lovings would leave Virginia and not return for 25 years).
Question
Did Virginia's antimiscegenation law violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?
Holding
Yes. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that distinctions drawn according to race were generally "odious to a free people" and were subject to "the most rigid scrutiny" under the Equal Protection Clause. The Virginia law, the Court found, had no legitimate purpose "independent of invidious racial discrimination." The Court rejected the state's argument that the statute was legitimate because it applied equally to both blacks and whites and found that racial classifications were not subject to a "rational purpose" test under the Fourteenth Amendment.
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So are bans on same-sex marriages distinguishable from the ban on interracial marriages struck down in Loving? Before Loving was decided, most Americans were opposed to interracial marriages, and anti-miscegenation laws still existed in 16 states.
If the courts decide that same sex marriage bans violate either state or the federal constitutions, may state legislatures create "civil unions" for same-sex couples while reserving "marriage" for opposite sex couples? Vermont, as a result of state constitutional litigation on equal protection grounds, already has such a law in place, and New Jersey, Connecticut and other states have followed suit.
See it becomes an issue of scrutiny - strict, rational basis, intermediate.... Segregating same-sex unions from opposite unions cannot possibly be held rationally (that's the level of scrutiny we're talking about here) to advance or "preserve" what was stated in the Goodridge case were the Commonwealth's legitimate interests in procreation, child rearing, and the conservation of resources.
There's two ways to go about trying to advocate gay marriage: Due Process or Equal Protection. Is sexual orientation predictive of conduct that should be protected from invasion under the Due Process Clause, or a status that should be protected against discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause?
The Bowers case above said there was no substantive due process violation, but the subsequent Lawrence case overruled it. That is to say, if the same case came today or if Bowers had never happened, it might go entirely the other way. Crazy ain't it?
So is homosexuality a mutable trait of powerless people? Can you choose to be homosexual? That's one of the pressing issues in this debate and may never be solved because of its unprovability. I'll tell you from my point of view I can't be homosexual by choice. So I doubt that gay people can choose either.
Protect them, I say.