6 ms·

Yes, but why this minority? Why not allow 12 year olds to marry as a consititutional right? Why not allow brothers and sisters to marry? I'm not trying to make

Yes, but why this minority? Why not allow 12 year olds to marry as a consititutional right? Why not allow brothers and sisters to marry? I'm not trying to make a slippery slope argument. I'm really asking. States license things all the time, and the conditions of their licenses block certain people from doing certain things. Why are the courts blocking the right of states to license this activity (marriage) in this particular case? Again, I'm personally happy with the outcome. It feels as wrong to me to say the LGBT can't marry as it would to say an interracial couple can't marry. But Scalia asks what the legal reasoning is, not whether it's the right outcome. What's different about this minority or this situation?

hackuser 11y ago
12 year olds, and brothers and sisters, are not oppressed minorities facing a long history of brutal discrimination.
- MajorLOL 11y ago
  Pre-requisite for protections under law; "long and brutal history of discrimination" - hackuser Sorry white people, you can't be protected under law, you haven't been brutally oppressed for long enough, just a couple more years than we can protect you.
- chralieboy 11y ago
  The opinion very specifically did _not_ provided any protected status to gays and lesbians. Persecution had nothing to do with it.
- MBlume 11y ago
  >12 year olds [...] are not oppressed minorities facing a long history of brutal discrimination. No, they absolutely are -- not in a way that really bears on whether they should get married, but seriously, have you been 12? Ever spent five minutes inside a Jr. High?
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    Being 12 is not a permanent condition, while generally race and sexuality are. While being 12 is not a choice - it's forced on most people - they also generally stop being 12, usually within a year or so of the condition.
    - stevenspasbo 11y ago
      When started being 12 when I was 10, and it lasted until I was 14 :(
  - task_queue 11y ago
    A child labor analogy would have worked better IMO
- DanBC 11y ago
  http://rt.com/news/185256-us-unicef-children-homicide/ http://rt.com/news/185256-us-unicef-children-homicide/ > The US leads Western nations in child homicide rates, while millions of children around the world are threatened with physical, sexual and emotional abuse, including murder, rape and bullying, a new UNICEF report revealed I dunno, sounds pretty brutal to me.
chockablock 11y ago
> Why not allow 12 year olds to marry as a consititutional right? Children are not considered capable of consent. > Why not allow brothers and sisters to marry? Claimed societal interest in preventing harm to offspring born from inbreeding. > I'm not trying to make a slippery slope argument. I'm really asking. OK, well now you have a couple answers.
- worklogin 11y ago
  >OK, well now you have a couple answers. You're rude with your snark.
  - aaardvark 11y ago
    Don't start with the tone-policing, OP has addressed all the above questions in a reasonable manner.
    - worklogin 11y ago
      Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." --- They didn't have to include the postscript. It came off poorly. I'm not posting this to social media trying to get OP fired, but I will call out when people include contentless swipes at other peoples' legitimate posts.
      - chockablock 11y ago
        I agree that the (now-flagged) post calling me out on my snark was fair, I would not have used that tone in real life.
  - eropple 11y ago
    He was replying to someone attempting to equate pedophilia and incest with homosexuality. Outright rudeness, not mere snark, is deserved.
dec0dedab0de 11y ago
Well children are always an exception. Siblings/cousins creep most people out due to inbreeding, but honestly I don't really see a problem with it if they promise to not have kids. (I'm an only child though, so I don't have any perspective) Polygamy also seems like it should be legal to me, as long as everyone is a fully consenting adult. Basically I just think the government should just stay out of peoples lives as much as possible.
- themartorana 11y ago
  I think they should stay out of marriage since it's almost entirely a religious construct. Instead, they can be in the business of civil partnerships, which dictate those things required by law - HIPPA/healthcare rights, inheritances, child custody, death rights, and so on, and so forth. Then "marriage" can be defined by your religion. My wife and I were not married in a Catholic Church. Therefore, in the eyes of the church, we're not married. That's fine with me. In the same vein, I'm friends with a gay couple who's synagogue married them before their state legalized gay marriage. In their eyes, they were married, whether or not the state acknowledge inheritance/HIPPA rights. It seems relatively logical, but it's never come up in conversation. Let the state make rules around civil partnerships, and let religions deal with marriage - which, basically, says that if you say you're married, then cool - you're married.
  - __z 11y ago
    >Let the state make rules around civil partnerships, and let religions deal with marriage That's exactly how it works now. One is called civil marriage and one is called religious marriage. The church sets their own rules and the government sets theirs. You can be in one, the other, or both at the same time. Civil marriage is a legal contract, religious marriage is decided by the church and it is whatever the church says it is. The government lets clergy also officiate civil marriage but it doesn't have to. It does because it makes sense. You wouldn't have to need a civil official and a religious official at your wedding. You wouldn't have to go through two ceremonies, one at the church and one at city hall. Don't put too much thought in the fact that both contain the word "marriage" in them. Goodrich vs. Dept of Health (MASS.) (emphasis mine): "Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society.... The question before us is whether, consistent with the Massachusetts Constitution, the Commonwealth may deny the protections, benefits, and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry. We conclude that it may not. The Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens.... the arguments made... failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples."
chralieboy 11y ago
The opinion goes into strenuous detail on the history of marriage cases before the court. This decision was not tearing down "what is marriage?", but pivoted (for Justice Kennedy, who was the deciding vote and wrote the majority opinion) on providing equal dignity. In essence, they found that the core aspects of marriage were upheld in gay marriages and as such they were due equal protection. Your question — whose dignity falls under the scope of consideration — is the tricky one here. This is malleable and in the US Constitution is reinterpreted as views change. The majority's view is that, as we have seen states experiment with gay marriage and civil unions, we have found the arguments against them to be untenable. We've never defined marriage as being about procreation (e.g. if a man and a post-menopausal woman want to marry that's never been an issue) and we hold it as a form of social cohesion (which applies in LBGT unions, as seen in state who have allowed them.) Why not siblings? This has a genetic argument against it that was not addressed here. Why not 12 year olds? We don't see their union as a part of the social construct. Again, this decision isn't about tearing down the definition of marriage. It upholds the definition of marriage and says that it applies to same sex couples.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  > This is malleable and in the US Constitution is reinterpreted as views change. This is the rub. What is the point of writing down laws and constitutions if the words don't stay put? If their meanings are ephemeral and open to interpretation, we are governed by men (executives, bureaucrats, judges, prosecutors, police) and not by laws. There are states out there that make no pretension and are ruled by fiat. The U.S., in contrast, is supposed to be a nation of laws. The laws being checks against individuals and special interests. The legitimacy of the U.S. hinges on it sticking to the rules of governance that were set in place and upheld over the years.
  - XorNot 11y ago
    Guess you oppose all those constitutional amendments then too? The Bill of Rights even expressly notes that the rights enumerated do not cover all rights and cannot be expected to cover all rights, and that those rights not enumerated are not meant to somehow be lesser - "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
aNoob7000 11y ago
You asked, why this minority? Because two consenting adults want to get married, that's why. Not two children, but two adult Americans want to get married and have it recognized around the United States, not just a few states. States screwed up when they took the civil part of marriage and associated it with the ceremonial part in a church.
- rqebmm 11y ago
  >States screwed up when they took the civil part of marriage and associated it with the ceremonial part in a church. Couldn't agree more. To me the correct answer is that the government should grant civil unions, and not recognize marriages in any legal way. Marriage should be between people and their religious institution. Want to get married? Great! Go to your church and sign your civil union documentation when you're done with the ceremony to get all the governmental perks. If your church doesn't want to allow homosexual marriage? Fine! Homosexuals can find an accepting congregation and get married there. Or they're non-religious, and can just go get a civil union without the marriage. The real problem with the gay marriage debate hasn't been the inequality, or the bigotry, it's the fact that a religious institution got mixed up with a legal institution. So instead of teasing them apart, we've decided that the legal definition now partially defines the religious institution. That is why some people are going to continue to be somewhat justifiably angry about this. If we just gave them separate definitions, it would let people self-select private institutions whose definition they agreed with.
  - abhorrence 11y ago
    While I generally agree that it is annoying that religion and government got mixed up here, I've found that in a significant portion of cases, "marriage is religious, don't redefine it" is just a convenient cover for animus. Out of which things like North Carolina's 2012 state constitutional amendment came.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Why two? Civil marriage should be a normal contract between n entities that are allowed to engage in contracts. It seems extremely inelegant to have arbitrary restrictions on it.
glesica 11y ago
> Why not allow 12 year olds to marry as a consititutional right? Marriage is a legal contract. 12 year olds can't enter into legal contracts (alone). Therefore, 12 year olds can't get married. This also takes care of pedophiles marrying children. Gay people are born gay. So this is different from polygamy. Animals can't enter into legal contracts. So this is different from bestiality. As an aside, my girlfriend just pointed out to me that it is hard to justify laws against incest (two adult relatives). Maybe we shouldn't have such laws. The best way, in my opinion, to look at this issue is to see marriage not as some kind of weird lovey-dovey thing, but to see it as what it is, a legal contract that has special consideration in many areas of the law and society.
- __z 11y ago
  >As an aside, my girlfriend just pointed out to me that it is hard to justify laws against incest (two adult relatives). Maybe we shouldn't have such laws. I don't think we should have them. We only have them because its "eeeewwwww." Social taboo. Cousin marriage is legal in most of the east coast, including in my state and cousin marriage wasn't taboo historically. In non-cousin marriage states it would be hard to enforce such a ban anyways. Do you have to prove you aren't related when you get your license? Who is going to find out? Who is going to care? Is the IRS going to challenge you? Is your employer going to find out your spouse is actually your cousin, know that is illegal in the state you got married in, and then deny your spouse benefits because your marriage wasn't technically legal? Probably not. "Genetic problems" is compelling in some ways (but probably overblown) but you can have sex without marriage and marriage without sex and have sex without children (especially in the case of same-sex sex, post menopause sex, sex with someone who had their gonads removed, sex with inter-sexed persons... I can go on...) I would also say it is your choice to have children with genetic problems - I mean we don't actually outlaw it. If two people were carriers of a terrible disease we don't punish the parents for knowingly taking that risk. We don't punish parents who have children much later in life (children born to parents of advanced age have a higher chance of a few diseases such as Down's Syndrome.) The reason we have these laws is nobody has challenged them in court yet and is not likely to because not to many people want to marry their sister enough to file a federal lawsuit and I'm not aware of too many people who were arrested for incest (regardless if they were practicing it or not). Legislatures can pass any laws they want. It can only be challenged by judicial review after said law is passed.
__z 11y ago
Two 12 year old girls can get married in Massachusetts as long as their parents approve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_marriage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_marriage_in_the_United_...
greggman 11y ago
Just a random thought but you could argue age discrimination is still equal because except for death, everyone goes through the same ages. In other words, when you're 25 you'll be treated by the law the same as other 25yr olds. Brothers and sisters does seems to me like it's just people think of it as icky. Some cultures encourage marrying first cousins and the genetic risks are minimal. And even people that aren't related can and are tested for whether their genes combined will likely lead to genetic issues with their children. In other words the genetic risk is mostly not a valid excuse to ban siblings from marrying anymore than not being able to create children is for same sex couples.
- DanBC 11y ago
  The risks are not "minimal". There are increased risks in cultures where first cousins marry. Part of that is that married first cousins have an increased risk of having children with birth defects. And part of it is that people are more related than they think if everyone is marrying a first cousin. The link I posted earlier deals with this.
  - greggman 11y ago
    Thank you for pointing that out but I still maintain it's irrelevant. People that will pass on genetic issues to their children are not banned from getting married nor banned from having children. On top of which as science progresses it's likely all those issues can be fixed. In other words, it's not a valid reason to deny siblings getting married.
  - anthony_romeo 11y ago
    While I don't necessarily agree with, say, sibling marriage, the argument about birth defects is not very compelling. This ruling pointed out at one point that an ability to procreate is not a requirement for marriage in any state. Further, genetic testing to avoid birth defects is not a prerequisite for marriage, so why would sibling marriage be precluded to avoid birth defects. Should society therefore only allow siblings or cousins of the same sex to marry because they can't procreate?
yellowapple 11y ago
> Why not allow 12 year olds to marry as a consititutional right? 12 year olds can't provide informed consent. > Why not allow brothers and sisters to marry? I actually don't object to this, so long as they're not permitted to have biological children. The primary reason why incest is bad is because of the genetic damage caused by it; eliminate that problem (by preventing the possibility of said damage), and there's not really that much of a reason left to forbid it (other than a potential "ick" factor, but that's mostly subjective).
justinpaulson 11y ago
Because they brought the case to the supreme court. If 12 year olds and incestual couples want the right to marriage then they need to also bring that case to the supreme court. They didn't just decide to make this decision, they are judging a case that was brought to the court.
ubernostrum 11y ago
In the United States, the government -- at all levels, federal, state and local -- is allowed to discriminate against or in favor of particular groups of people. The government just has to show that the discrimination serves some permitted purpose, and depending on the groups involved may have to clear a high bar of proof that the alleged purpose is the real purpose (since some groups have historically been discriminated against for bad reasons, we have higher suspicion of new discrimination against those groups). For example, state governments can require a person to have a driver's license before driving a car. This discriminates against people who don't have a license, but the support for it is rooted in a good reason: safety. Requiring people to pass a brief examination to show their knowledge of traffic laws and possession of the basic skills of driving is quite reasonable, and so driver's licenses are a permitted form of discrimination. Similarly, people under a certain age typically cannot enter into contracts on their own. The support for this comes from the fact that younger people are less likely to be mature and knowledgeable and understand what they're getting into, so restricting it to a particular age (typically, the age at which one graduates from the public school system) and requiring the advice and consent of someone over that age for a minor to enter a contract is reasonable, and is permitted. Over the past few years we've seen multiple alleged justifications for banning same-sex marriage asserted in courts, and each time they've been knocked down as nonsensical or even as contradicting the other policies of the state which advanced those arguments. For example, we've seen an argument advanced that states have an interest in ensuring the production and safe rearing of future generations, that marriage is provided for the sole purpose of advancing that interest, and so a same-sex couple (who cannot procreate) should be excluded from marriage. Except this argument falls apart if you so much as breathe lightly on it: states which make this argument do not require any sort of commitment to have children from a heterosexual couple, and in fact will grant marriage licenses to couples known to be sterile, and many of them allow same-sex couples to adopt and raise children. The result of this process has been that there really is no alleged justification or purpose left, other than "we don't like same-sex couples, largely for religious reasons". And that's not something our country allows as a justification for a law ("we don't like that kind of people" stopped being allowed about a half-century ago).
sampo 11y ago
Sometimes the general opinion (let's say > 55% of the population) changes so quickly that it would take 10-20 years to wait for the parliament and senate to be sufficiently repopulated by representatives from the new generation, with more modern opinions. In these cases you can reach a situation where the democratically elected representatives will hold an opinion that is more conservative than that of the general population. In this case, whatever shortcut mechanism can be exploited to bring the legislation closer to the general opinion, it will be cheered by the general population. The decision was not made through the normal channels, but people are happy nevertheless.

hackuser 11y ago

12 year olds, and brothers and sisters, are not oppressed minorities facing a long history of brutal discrimination.

MajorLOL 11y ago
Pre-requisite for protections under law; "long and brutal history of discrimination" - hackuser Sorry white people, you can't be protected under law, you haven't been brutally oppressed for long enough, just a couple more years than we can protect you.
chralieboy 11y ago
The opinion very specifically did _not_ provided any protected status to gays and lesbians. Persecution had nothing to do with it.
MBlume 11y ago
>12 year olds [...] are not oppressed minorities facing a long history of brutal discrimination. No, they absolutely are -- not in a way that really bears on whether they should get married, but seriously, have you been 12? Ever spent five minutes inside a Jr. High?
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  Being 12 is not a permanent condition, while generally race and sexuality are. While being 12 is not a choice - it's forced on most people - they also generally stop being 12, usually within a year or so of the condition.
  - stevenspasbo 11y ago
    When started being 12 when I was 10, and it lasted until I was 14 :(
- task_queue 11y ago
  A child labor analogy would have worked better IMO
DanBC 11y ago
http://rt.com/news/185256-us-unicef-children-homicide/ http://rt.com/news/185256-us-unicef-children-homicide/ > The US leads Western nations in child homicide rates, while millions of children around the world are threatened with physical, sexual and emotional abuse, including murder, rape and bullying, a new UNICEF report revealed I dunno, sounds pretty brutal to me.

chockablock 11y ago

> Why not allow 12 year olds to marry as a consititutional right? Children are not considered capable of consent. > Why not allow brothers and sisters to marry? Claimed societal interest in preventing harm to offspring born from inbreeding. > I'm not trying to make a slippery slope argument. I'm really asking. OK, well now you have a couple answers.

worklogin 11y ago
>OK, well now you have a couple answers. You're rude with your snark.
- aaardvark 11y ago
  Don't start with the tone-policing, OP has addressed all the above questions in a reasonable manner.
  - worklogin 11y ago
    Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." --- They didn't have to include the postscript. It came off poorly. I'm not posting this to social media trying to get OP fired, but I will call out when people include contentless swipes at other peoples' legitimate posts.
    - chockablock 11y ago
      I agree that the (now-flagged) post calling me out on my snark was fair, I would not have used that tone in real life.
- eropple 11y ago
  He was replying to someone attempting to equate pedophilia and incest with homosexuality. Outright rudeness, not mere snark, is deserved.

dec0dedab0de 11y ago

Well children are always an exception. Siblings/cousins creep most people out due to inbreeding, but honestly I don't really see a problem with it if they promise to not have kids. (I'm an only child though, so I don't have any perspective) Polygamy also seems like it should be legal to me, as long as everyone is a fully consenting adult. Basically I just think the government should just stay out of peoples lives as much as possible.

themartorana 11y ago
I think they should stay out of marriage since it's almost entirely a religious construct. Instead, they can be in the business of civil partnerships, which dictate those things required by law - HIPPA/healthcare rights, inheritances, child custody, death rights, and so on, and so forth. Then "marriage" can be defined by your religion. My wife and I were not married in a Catholic Church. Therefore, in the eyes of the church, we're not married. That's fine with me. In the same vein, I'm friends with a gay couple who's synagogue married them before their state legalized gay marriage. In their eyes, they were married, whether or not the state acknowledge inheritance/HIPPA rights. It seems relatively logical, but it's never come up in conversation. Let the state make rules around civil partnerships, and let religions deal with marriage - which, basically, says that if you say you're married, then cool - you're married.
- __z 11y ago
  >Let the state make rules around civil partnerships, and let religions deal with marriage That's exactly how it works now. One is called civil marriage and one is called religious marriage. The church sets their own rules and the government sets theirs. You can be in one, the other, or both at the same time. Civil marriage is a legal contract, religious marriage is decided by the church and it is whatever the church says it is. The government lets clergy also officiate civil marriage but it doesn't have to. It does because it makes sense. You wouldn't have to need a civil official and a religious official at your wedding. You wouldn't have to go through two ceremonies, one at the church and one at city hall. Don't put too much thought in the fact that both contain the word "marriage" in them. Goodrich vs. Dept of Health (MASS.) (emphasis mine): "Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society.... The question before us is whether, consistent with the Massachusetts Constitution, the Commonwealth may deny the protections, benefits, and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry. We conclude that it may not. The Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens.... the arguments made... failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples."

chralieboy 11y ago

The opinion goes into strenuous detail on the history of marriage cases before the court. This decision was not tearing down "what is marriage?", but pivoted (for Justice Kennedy, who was the deciding vote and wrote the majority opinion) on providing equal dignity. In essence, they found that the core aspects of marriage were upheld in gay marriages and as such they were due equal protection. Your question — whose dignity falls under the scope of consideration — is the tricky one here. This is malleable and in the US Constitution is reinterpreted as views change. The majority's view is that, as we have seen states experiment with gay marriage and civil unions, we have found the arguments against them to be untenable. We've never defined marriage as being about procreation (e.g. if a man and a post-menopausal woman want to marry that's never been an issue) and we hold it as a form of social cohesion (which applies in LBGT unions, as seen in state who have allowed them.) Why not siblings? This has a genetic argument against it that was not addressed here. Why not 12 year olds? We don't see their union as a part of the social construct. Again, this decision isn't about tearing down the definition of marriage. It upholds the definition of marriage and says that it applies to same sex couples.

humanrebar 11y ago
> This is malleable and in the US Constitution is reinterpreted as views change. This is the rub. What is the point of writing down laws and constitutions if the words don't stay put? If their meanings are ephemeral and open to interpretation, we are governed by men (executives, bureaucrats, judges, prosecutors, police) and not by laws. There are states out there that make no pretension and are ruled by fiat. The U.S., in contrast, is supposed to be a nation of laws. The laws being checks against individuals and special interests. The legitimacy of the U.S. hinges on it sticking to the rules of governance that were set in place and upheld over the years.
- XorNot 11y ago
  Guess you oppose all those constitutional amendments then too? The Bill of Rights even expressly notes that the rights enumerated do not cover all rights and cannot be expected to cover all rights, and that those rights not enumerated are not meant to somehow be lesser - "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

aNoob7000 11y ago

You asked, why this minority? Because two consenting adults want to get married, that's why. Not two children, but two adult Americans want to get married and have it recognized around the United States, not just a few states. States screwed up when they took the civil part of marriage and associated it with the ceremonial part in a church.

rqebmm 11y ago
>States screwed up when they took the civil part of marriage and associated it with the ceremonial part in a church. Couldn't agree more. To me the correct answer is that the government should grant civil unions, and not recognize marriages in any legal way. Marriage should be between people and their religious institution. Want to get married? Great! Go to your church and sign your civil union documentation when you're done with the ceremony to get all the governmental perks. If your church doesn't want to allow homosexual marriage? Fine! Homosexuals can find an accepting congregation and get married there. Or they're non-religious, and can just go get a civil union without the marriage. The real problem with the gay marriage debate hasn't been the inequality, or the bigotry, it's the fact that a religious institution got mixed up with a legal institution. So instead of teasing them apart, we've decided that the legal definition now partially defines the religious institution. That is why some people are going to continue to be somewhat justifiably angry about this. If we just gave them separate definitions, it would let people self-select private institutions whose definition they agreed with.
- abhorrence 11y ago
  While I generally agree that it is annoying that religion and government got mixed up here, I've found that in a significant portion of cases, "marriage is religious, don't redefine it" is just a convenient cover for animus. Out of which things like North Carolina's 2012 state constitutional amendment came.
MichaelGG 11y ago
Why two? Civil marriage should be a normal contract between n entities that are allowed to engage in contracts. It seems extremely inelegant to have arbitrary restrictions on it.

glesica 11y ago

> Why not allow 12 year olds to marry as a consititutional right? Marriage is a legal contract. 12 year olds can't enter into legal contracts (alone). Therefore, 12 year olds can't get married. This also takes care of pedophiles marrying children. Gay people are born gay. So this is different from polygamy. Animals can't enter into legal contracts. So this is different from bestiality. As an aside, my girlfriend just pointed out to me that it is hard to justify laws against incest (two adult relatives). Maybe we shouldn't have such laws. The best way, in my opinion, to look at this issue is to see marriage not as some kind of weird lovey-dovey thing, but to see it as what it is, a legal contract that has special consideration in many areas of the law and society.

__z 11y ago
>As an aside, my girlfriend just pointed out to me that it is hard to justify laws against incest (two adult relatives). Maybe we shouldn't have such laws. I don't think we should have them. We only have them because its "eeeewwwww." Social taboo. Cousin marriage is legal in most of the east coast, including in my state and cousin marriage wasn't taboo historically. In non-cousin marriage states it would be hard to enforce such a ban anyways. Do you have to prove you aren't related when you get your license? Who is going to find out? Who is going to care? Is the IRS going to challenge you? Is your employer going to find out your spouse is actually your cousin, know that is illegal in the state you got married in, and then deny your spouse benefits because your marriage wasn't technically legal? Probably not. "Genetic problems" is compelling in some ways (but probably overblown) but you can have sex without marriage and marriage without sex and have sex without children (especially in the case of same-sex sex, post menopause sex, sex with someone who had their gonads removed, sex with inter-sexed persons... I can go on...) I would also say it is your choice to have children with genetic problems - I mean we don't actually outlaw it. If two people were carriers of a terrible disease we don't punish the parents for knowingly taking that risk. We don't punish parents who have children much later in life (children born to parents of advanced age have a higher chance of a few diseases such as Down's Syndrome.) The reason we have these laws is nobody has challenged them in court yet and is not likely to because not to many people want to marry their sister enough to file a federal lawsuit and I'm not aware of too many people who were arrested for incest (regardless if they were practicing it or not). Legislatures can pass any laws they want. It can only be challenged by judicial review after said law is passed.

__z 11y ago

Two 12 year old girls can get married in Massachusetts as long as their parents approve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_marriage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_marriage_in_the_United_...

greggman 11y ago

Just a random thought but you could argue age discrimination is still equal because except for death, everyone goes through the same ages. In other words, when you're 25 you'll be treated by the law the same as other 25yr olds. Brothers and sisters does seems to me like it's just people think of it as icky. Some cultures encourage marrying first cousins and the genetic risks are minimal. And even people that aren't related can and are tested for whether their genes combined will likely lead to genetic issues with their children. In other words the genetic risk is mostly not a valid excuse to ban siblings from marrying anymore than not being able to create children is for same sex couples.

DanBC 11y ago
The risks are not "minimal". There are increased risks in cultures where first cousins marry. Part of that is that married first cousins have an increased risk of having children with birth defects. And part of it is that people are more related than they think if everyone is marrying a first cousin. The link I posted earlier deals with this.
- greggman 11y ago
  Thank you for pointing that out but I still maintain it's irrelevant. People that will pass on genetic issues to their children are not banned from getting married nor banned from having children. On top of which as science progresses it's likely all those issues can be fixed. In other words, it's not a valid reason to deny siblings getting married.
- anthony_romeo 11y ago
  While I don't necessarily agree with, say, sibling marriage, the argument about birth defects is not very compelling. This ruling pointed out at one point that an ability to procreate is not a requirement for marriage in any state. Further, genetic testing to avoid birth defects is not a prerequisite for marriage, so why would sibling marriage be precluded to avoid birth defects. Should society therefore only allow siblings or cousins of the same sex to marry because they can't procreate?

yellowapple 11y ago

> Why not allow 12 year olds to marry as a consititutional right? 12 year olds can't provide informed consent. > Why not allow brothers and sisters to marry? I actually don't object to this, so long as they're not permitted to have biological children. The primary reason why incest is bad is because of the genetic damage caused by it; eliminate that problem (by preventing the possibility of said damage), and there's not really that much of a reason left to forbid it (other than a potential "ick" factor, but that's mostly subjective).

justinpaulson 11y ago

Because they brought the case to the supreme court. If 12 year olds and incestual couples want the right to marriage then they need to also bring that case to the supreme court. They didn't just decide to make this decision, they are judging a case that was brought to the court.

ubernostrum 11y ago

In the United States, the government -- at all levels, federal, state and local -- is allowed to discriminate against or in favor of particular groups of people. The government just has to show that the discrimination serves some permitted purpose, and depending on the groups involved may have to clear a high bar of proof that the alleged purpose is the real purpose (since some groups have historically been discriminated against for bad reasons, we have higher suspicion of new discrimination against those groups). For example, state governments can require a person to have a driver's license before driving a car. This discriminates against people who don't have a license, but the support for it is rooted in a good reason: safety. Requiring people to pass a brief examination to show their knowledge of traffic laws and possession of the basic skills of driving is quite reasonable, and so driver's licenses are a permitted form of discrimination. Similarly, people under a certain age typically cannot enter into contracts on their own. The support for this comes from the fact that younger people are less likely to be mature and knowledgeable and understand what they're getting into, so restricting it to a particular age (typically, the age at which one graduates from the public school system) and requiring the advice and consent of someone over that age for a minor to enter a contract is reasonable, and is permitted. Over the past few years we've seen multiple alleged justifications for banning same-sex marriage asserted in courts, and each time they've been knocked down as nonsensical or even as contradicting the other policies of the state which advanced those arguments. For example, we've seen an argument advanced that states have an interest in ensuring the production and safe rearing of future generations, that marriage is provided for the sole purpose of advancing that interest, and so a same-sex couple (who cannot procreate) should be excluded from marriage. Except this argument falls apart if you so much as breathe lightly on it: states which make this argument do not require any sort of commitment to have children from a heterosexual couple, and in fact will grant marriage licenses to couples known to be sterile, and many of them allow same-sex couples to adopt and raise children. The result of this process has been that there really is no alleged justification or purpose left, other than "we don't like same-sex couples, largely for religious reasons". And that's not something our country allows as a justification for a law ("we don't like that kind of people" stopped being allowed about a half-century ago).

sampo 11y ago

Sometimes the general opinion (let's say > 55% of the population) changes so quickly that it would take 10-20 years to wait for the parliament and senate to be sufficiently repopulated by representatives from the new generation, with more modern opinions. In these cases you can reach a situation where the democratically elected representatives will hold an opinion that is more conservative than that of the general population. In this case, whatever shortcut mechanism can be exploited to bring the legislation closer to the general opinion, it will be cheered by the general population. The decision was not made through the normal channels, but people are happy nevertheless.