I do love far-left nuts like Cass Sunstein lecturing us on what is and is not conservative.

200 years of theory and practice? Nah, it's actually a fairly tepid response to about 50 years of theory and practice that have radically departed from founding principles.

Isn't it amazing how this "scholar" managed to overlook the 16th admendment, that gave the power of laying taxes on incomes, without regard to apportionment by the census. It certainly would seem congress in that instance was trying to correct previous court rulings that had prohibited the same.

The two most hilarious arguments made by gay marriage opponents: (1) The one gay couple I know poses more threat to my conception of marriage than the scores of straight divorcees in my circle of aquaintances; (2) If it weren't for those pesky gays, our key social institutions would be totally fine.

Charles:

Got a cite to either argument?

Charlie-

You are making a caricature out of the opposition. It amazes me how easy it is for supporters of same sex "marriage" to reamin oblivious to the damage that may be done to generations of children and the insitutions of civilization which have developed over the millenia, all in the name of some weird view of the value of "equality".

To quote Burke: "A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish tempor and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors".

Sunstein is not a far left nut. He is much more dangerous: a smart, articulate member of the center-left. Nonetheless, this argument is over-clever. It would be easy to make a structural amendment to cover this issue: "A democratic republican form of government being fundamental to proper government, no state shall afford to any citizen of that state or of the United States any right or privilege broader than those protected by this Constitution unless such right or privilege has been ratified by the vote of an absolute majority of the citizens of that state registered to vote. If such a vote is had, but the said right or privilege is not ratified, no such vote may be held on the same or a substantially similar matter for ten years. Jurisdiction over all questions relating to or arising under this Amendment shall be vested exclusively in the Supreme Court of the United States." Drawing the PMA relatively narrowly is a conservative act.

No one said that gay marriage is MORE damaging to the concept of marriage than other problems, but it is in fact damaging in that it waters down, and changes, what marriage is about. The argument is similar -- although this is a far flung example -- to the often-heard argument that silly talk about the holocaust of spotted owls, or whales, is damaging to our understanding of the Holocaust, with a capital H. (As I said, the analogy is far-flung, but on-base, and I think other examples can be found.)

No one believes that our insitutions would be fine without gays.

Sunstein argues that valid amendments to the Constitution should either expand individual rights or correct structural defects.

Is Sunstein dense or willfully blind? There is a huge structural problem and the amendment attempts to fix it. One branch of the government (the judiciary) has or is threatening to usurp powers that should rest in the hands of the others (the legislative and executive); namely the power to define our social institutions. The solution is to amend the Constitution to fix that structural problem.

That Mr. Sunstein is viewed as center-left only demonstrates just how far law schools have drifted -- especially in the last 50 years or so.

I'll refrain from another rant on the Progressives who helped move them that way, though.

"Sunstein argues that valid amendments to the Constitution should either expand individual rights or correct structural defects."

I knew that there was a problem with the 18th.

Tom C.:

How is it, again, that "generations" of children might be harmed by allowing gays to marry ?

Peter Burnet likes to argue that divorcing gays will clog family courts, and thus strain resources that would be better used to help children, but that's a one-generation problem, at worst.

How is allowing two or more people to commit to each other more damaging to children than MTV's hootchie shows and gangsta rap ?
Or, for that matter, "ordinary" people on reality shows. 'Paradise Hotel' and 'The Real World' paint a pretty depressing picture regarding the state of American society.

One of February 24th's posts was about how inner-city teen girls are largely semi-pro prostitutes, trading sex for clothing or CDs, and even hooking up with older men who can afford to show them a "good time". That's before gay marriage.

Frankly, if married gays can get circus-freak gays to tone it down in public, gay marriage will only STRENGTHEN society.

Michael:

Is your argument really that the society is so ill that a further symptom of the disease doesn't matter?

oj:

No, my argument is that gay marriage isn't a symptom of social rot, but a (small) antidote AGAINST such rot.
What we're talking about are people who want to publicly declare their commitment for each other. How is that bad ?
The President, after all, wants to spend tens of millions to convince the poverty-stricken to do just that.

Assuming that America's youth are well familiar with what makes a person gay, how will allowing them to marry further degrade public discourse ?

Mike:

I haven't seen any coherent answers to your questions. Whether or not gays marry will have no impact on conventional marriage in general, or the strength of any marriage in particular.

Peter and David's noting that an increase in the married population will inevitably lead to an increase in divorce court actions is undoubtedly true. But to use that as an argument against gay marriage also implies it is an argument against promoting marriage in general.

Jeff:

No, it's an argument against divorce.

Michael:

Because what they are committed to is evil.

oj:

Sez you.

OK, then, how about only allowing LESBIAN same-sex marriage ?
After all, it's the pinnacle of sexual activity, more pure even then hetero-sex, by your reckoning.
They can even make babies, thus validating their married state.

Children need a father and a mother. But lesbian relationships are unobjectionable.

I've been thinking about this as a stocking problem and have concluded that, ironically, the first gay marriages are likely to be more enduring than straight marriage.

Every year, X number of gay relationships form and Y number of gay relationships end. Over time, average Y can be no larger than average X and, as there are some multi-year gay relationships, most years Y will be less than X, leaving, most years, some positive number Z equal to X-Y. If the average "relationship eligible" life span is C years, then there is currently a stock of CZ gay relationships that have endured at least one year. There is no similar such stock of unmarried enduring straight relationships likely to convert to marriages, because in all but the newest relationships, if the straights had wanted to get married, they would have.

Now we make an assumption: all things being equal, relationships, whether straight or gay, that have already endured more than one year have a longer expected length than the average expected length of all relationships. If true, then current relationships between unmarried gays can be expected to last longer than current relationships between unmarried straights (because straights have been able to get married, where gays haven't).

These stockpiled enduring gay relationships that take advantage of new rights to gay marriage can, therefore, be expected to last longer (have lower annual divorce rates) than straight marriages.

On the other hand, it is likely true that gay relationships are more fragile than straight relationships and thus over the long term gay marriages will have higher divorce rates.

David:

Both of your conclusions seem valid. Especially the latter.

Although of course unscientific, I have had, for various reasons, a LOT of superficial interaction with homosexuals, mostly lesbians. These people have varied in location, age, profession, race, etc., a true sampling of what the nation's gay population has to offer.

My overall impression is that homosexuals, on average, are a lot more high-strung and emotionally screwed up than the average person. Also, far more likely to use drugs.

No doubt there are stable, rational gay people out there - I just haven't met very many. The out gay people I've talked to about it haven't met many, either.
Maybe they tend to stay in the closet.

Michael-

Adoption.Artificial insemination. Social/sexual desensitization. I don't KNOW that generations of children will be warped by this new age sexual b.s., but you don't know that they won't. I'm not the guy willing to conduct the experiment. You are and I suggest some circumspection would be more appropriate.

Tom C.:

The adoption issue may be valid. The rest are currently practiced without gay marriage, just gay coupling.

It's not that society isn't exposed to gays and gay culture without gay marriage - Rather the opposite. We eat it up.
If gays start getting married, it should tone down the "wild-side" image of gay culture that's prevalent among America's youth.

That's why I believe that gay marriage has benefits, as well as costs.

So an institution as old as marriage should be re-defined based on your cost/benefit analysis? You appear to think very highly of yourself and your insights. No way to go through life. Kindly exempt the rest of us from your experiments.