by Jason Stotts
In case you somehow missed it, a federal judge has ruled California’s “Prop 8” that (re)denied same-sex marriage unconstitutional and, consequently, void.
A federal judge declared California’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional Wednesday, saying that no legitimate state interest justified treating gay and lesbian couples differently from others and that “moral disapproval” was not enough to save the voter-passed Proposition 8.
California “has no interest in differentiating between same-sex and opposite-sex unions,” U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker said in his 136-page ruling.
The ruling was the first in the country to strike down a marriage ban on federal constitutional grounds. Previous cases have cited state constitutions. (LA Times)
While this ruling will certainly be appealed, it is great news for advocates of reason and homosexuals everywhere.
A full version of the ruling can be found here.
Comments
2 responses to “California’s Prop 8 Unconstitutional”
Jason,
I came across this argument against homosexuality. It is an interesting one because it presents an entire philosophy of sex. It is definitely from the Platonic/Christian tradition, but I have never seen one like it before. I was wondering if you could comment on it as it is very related to the subject matter of your blog.
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001421.html
Here are some excerpts:
…sex is intrinsically and intensely expressive. It places values, establishes relationships, communicates and impels. Since the human world is ordered (or disordered) by personal and cultural expression, expression affects and can injure others. On this line of thought, the question as to the goodness of homosexual acts then becomes the question of the goodness of what they express — to their meaning as human acts.
From the foregoing, it seems that sex can have stable positive meaning only in the form of acts that express marital union. In other settings it can not successfully express a love that transcends pleasure and personal interest, because its meaning is too much a matter of interpretation. One cannot bootstrap into the transcendent through interpretation. Sex does aspire to transcendence, however, and in a setting that denies that aspiration it takes on an element of meretriciousness or willful fantasy — it can’t mean what it wants to mean and pretends to mean. It therefore becomes crippled, perverse or abusive. Hence the tendency, not just in the gay world but in modern sexual life generally, toward role-playing, instability, betrayal, disillusion, and the abusive side of sexuality. Participation in activities that point toward such things may be a temptation, but not a good.
This is very philosophical for a conservative. How would you proceed to argue against such a view?
Thanks
It’s hard to know what to say about it. I wouldn’t call this philosophy, but rather sophistry.
For example: “The single most important question in the current debate over homosexuality is whether it’s good for those sexually attracted to persons of the same sex to act on their inclinations.” Really? I thought it was whether homosexuality was natural, a prerequisite to his purported first question.
The whole thing is just the pro-creative standard warmed over: “homosexual acts… do not form an objective functional unity [cannot reproduce] that points by its nature beyond the act itself [create a child] and beyond the personal interests of the participants [the will of god].”
Don’t be fooled by the fancy words, it’s nothing but bible-thumping christianity posing as rational discourse.