5 ms·

> 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). Therefor

by 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.
- meatysnapper 11y ago
  I'm free with people having "Timmeh" children as long as I as a taxpayer don't need to pay for their choosing to have compromised children.
  - __z 11y ago
    Having a child is always a genetic lottery. At what point does some somewhat advanced probability of some disease become "choosing to have compromised children"?
adventured 11y ago
Gay people do not have to be born gay, even if the radical majority tend to be. There is nothing that prevents a person from deciding they want to experiment sexually, or completely alter their sexual identity, at any given time. It would be a form of bigotry to proclaim that straight people can't choose to be gay of their own free will, and vice versa. It would imply we're not in control of our own sexuality, and that we lack free will. And this is not a support of the bigots that proclaim that being gay is always a choice and that gay people should just stop pretending and change their minds --- those people were always in the wrong, their argument was always vile. Sticking to the: gay people are all born gay, premise, is a defeatist response to that bigotry, it's a very very poor defense when a defense is not needed at all. The proper position is: if I want to be straight or gay, it is my choice, period. If I'm born gay, that's fine; if I'm born gay and want to be straight, that's fine; if I'm born gay and only want to be gay, that's fine. And so on.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  That's arguable - folks are notoriously incapable of controlling their sexuality, to the point its reasonable to postulate free will has nothing to do with it.
  - fizzbatter 11y ago
    It may be a moot point though, i've always felt that it's a gray area - not black or white. Eg, i could feel/claim to be entirely straight. But if i have a drunken experience in college, perhaps i realize that i enjoyed it a bit. Did i change? Or was i never "100% straight" to begin with? Who's to say that you can't even be wrong about your own sexuality? We're wrong about things all the time, even within our own minds. Is sexuality any different? I doubt it. The idea that you're born straight or gay appears to be created by a desire to separate humanity. You're in one camp, they're in another, and with that separation you can judge them differently. Interesting how it all comes about though. We're complex creatures in everything we do, it seems.
- AlexandrB 11y ago
  > The proper position is: if I want to be straight or gay, it is my choice, period. If I'm born gay, that's fine; if I'm born gay and want to be straight, that's fine; if I'm born gay and only want to be gay, that's fine. And so on. I agree completely. I always thought that the biological argument was a red herring meant mostly to sway those that couldn't be swayed anyways (those that thought gay impulses were aberrant). The moral argument remains the same whether someone is born gay or choses to become gay.
wtbob 11y ago
> Marriage is a legal contract. 12 year olds can't enter into legal contracts (alone). Therefore, 12 year olds can't get married. Marriage is a formal relationship between two people of the opposite sex. Two men or two women are of the same sex. Therefore two men or two woman cannot marry. You can do anything, if you redefine the meaning of everything.
- pluma 11y ago
  Strawman. There's nothing about marriage that necessitates restricting it to members of opposite sexes. It is however a contract, which requires restricting it to persons that are capable of consent. Exclusion conflicts the basic premise of equal rights so the exclusion has to have valid reasons other than "because that's how we defined it". A more interesting question would be why it's restricted to natural persons and why it is restricted to two persons.
  - wtbob 11y ago
    > There's nothing about marriage that necessitates restricting it to members of opposite sexes. There's nothing about contracts that necessitate restricting them to persons capable of consent, if you decide to define contracts not to require consent anymore. If you feel free to redefine the nature of marriage, surely you can also feel free to redefine the nature of contracts.
    - glesica 11y ago
      Contracts, by their nature, require consent. If there isn't consent, then there literally isn't a contract. Do you and I have a contract saying that you'll give me all your money? Without consent, we might. I'll be expecting a check from you within a week. Marriage, by its nature, as seen by the government (that is an important qualification), requires nothing more than two consenting individuals. In the eyes of the government, marriage is nothing but a contract between two people. If your religion wants to define it some other way, that's fine with me. But from the standpoint of our government, the way your religion defines it makes no difference, nor should it. I would actually be perfectly fine with renaming the legal institution of "marriage". It would actually be better if no one could get "legally" "married". Just call it a civil union. If you want to have a religious ceremony, great, but all the government would recognize is a civil union contract. However, most people don't agree with me, so we're stuck calling it marriage even though it has nothing to do with religious traditions.

by glesica 11y ago

__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.

meatysnapper 11y ago
I'm free with people having "Timmeh" children as long as I as a taxpayer don't need to pay for their choosing to have compromised children.
- __z 11y ago
  Having a child is always a genetic lottery. At what point does some somewhat advanced probability of some disease become "choosing to have compromised children"?

adventured 11y ago

Gay people do not have to be born gay, even if the radical majority tend to be. There is nothing that prevents a person from deciding they want to experiment sexually, or completely alter their sexual identity, at any given time. It would be a form of bigotry to proclaim that straight people can't choose to be gay of their own free will, and vice versa. It would imply we're not in control of our own sexuality, and that we lack free will. And this is not a support of the bigots that proclaim that being gay is always a choice and that gay people should just stop pretending and change their minds --- those people were always in the wrong, their argument was always vile. Sticking to the: gay people are all born gay, premise, is a defeatist response to that bigotry, it's a very very poor defense when a defense is not needed at all. The proper position is: if I want to be straight or gay, it is my choice, period. If I'm born gay, that's fine; if I'm born gay and want to be straight, that's fine; if I'm born gay and only want to be gay, that's fine. And so on.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
That's arguable - folks are notoriously incapable of controlling their sexuality, to the point its reasonable to postulate free will has nothing to do with it.
- fizzbatter 11y ago
  It may be a moot point though, i've always felt that it's a gray area - not black or white. Eg, i could feel/claim to be entirely straight. But if i have a drunken experience in college, perhaps i realize that i enjoyed it a bit. Did i change? Or was i never "100% straight" to begin with? Who's to say that you can't even be wrong about your own sexuality? We're wrong about things all the time, even within our own minds. Is sexuality any different? I doubt it. The idea that you're born straight or gay appears to be created by a desire to separate humanity. You're in one camp, they're in another, and with that separation you can judge them differently. Interesting how it all comes about though. We're complex creatures in everything we do, it seems.
AlexandrB 11y ago
> The proper position is: if I want to be straight or gay, it is my choice, period. If I'm born gay, that's fine; if I'm born gay and want to be straight, that's fine; if I'm born gay and only want to be gay, that's fine. And so on. I agree completely. I always thought that the biological argument was a red herring meant mostly to sway those that couldn't be swayed anyways (those that thought gay impulses were aberrant). The moral argument remains the same whether someone is born gay or choses to become gay.

wtbob 11y ago

> Marriage is a legal contract. 12 year olds can't enter into legal contracts (alone). Therefore, 12 year olds can't get married. Marriage is a formal relationship between two people of the opposite sex. Two men or two women are of the same sex. Therefore two men or two woman cannot marry. You can do anything, if you redefine the meaning of everything.

pluma 11y ago
Strawman. There's nothing about marriage that necessitates restricting it to members of opposite sexes. It is however a contract, which requires restricting it to persons that are capable of consent. Exclusion conflicts the basic premise of equal rights so the exclusion has to have valid reasons other than "because that's how we defined it". A more interesting question would be why it's restricted to natural persons and why it is restricted to two persons.
- wtbob 11y ago
  > There's nothing about marriage that necessitates restricting it to members of opposite sexes. There's nothing about contracts that necessitate restricting them to persons capable of consent, if you decide to define contracts not to require consent anymore. If you feel free to redefine the nature of marriage, surely you can also feel free to redefine the nature of contracts.
  - glesica 11y ago
    Contracts, by their nature, require consent. If there isn't consent, then there literally isn't a contract. Do you and I have a contract saying that you'll give me all your money? Without consent, we might. I'll be expecting a check from you within a week. Marriage, by its nature, as seen by the government (that is an important qualification), requires nothing more than two consenting individuals. In the eyes of the government, marriage is nothing but a contract between two people. If your religion wants to define it some other way, that's fine with me. But from the standpoint of our government, the way your religion defines it makes no difference, nor should it. I would actually be perfectly fine with renaming the legal institution of "marriage". It would actually be better if no one could get "legally" "married". Just call it a civil union. If you want to have a religious ceremony, great, but all the government would recognize is a civil union contract. However, most people don't agree with me, so we're stuck calling it marriage even though it has nothing to do with religious traditions.