Ah, the slippery slope

[khaosworks]

Sprechen Sie Englisch, Herr Gropenführer? By Mr. Terence Chua, Pissed Off And Loving It.

(thanks to mactavish for bringing it to my attention)

In an AP article, "San Francisco Honors Same-Sex Newlyweds", the Supreme Commandant of Stalag Kalifornia, Der Gropenführer Arnold Schwarzenegger is quoted as saying:

"In San Francisco, it is license for marriage of same sex. Maybe the next thing is another city that hands out licenses for assault weapons and someone else hands out licenses for selling drugs, I mean you can't do that," Schwarzenegger said Sunday on NBC.

I normally don't make fun of the way other people speak English, but I will in this case because I am a very, very small and petty man when it comes to numb-nuts like Schwarzenegger.

"In San Francisco, it is license for marriage of same sex." Well, fuck me.

As an encore, Arnold, why don't you for Great Justice, take off every Zig? You've been in the US how many years? There are New York cabbies just fresh off the last refugee plane from Baghdad just a step up from saying, "my hovercraft is full of eels," that speak better than you do. Repeat after me - a, an, the. A, an, the. Articles are your friends.

And of course, gay marriage is the same as a semi-automatic weapon spraying HORRIBLE FIERY DEATH and a drug fiend doped up on some primo horse. Fuckin' A, man - didn't you notice all those arms and drugs dealers standing on the steps of City Hall handing out ammo and vials of crack after the first couples got married the other day? All over the country, cities are just chomping at the bit to issue those drug dealing licenses. Mayors are just screaming to each other, "San Francisco did it, boys! The door's wide open!"

It. Simply. Boggles. The. Mind.

Can we recall this guy too?

Comments

I agree with Jost.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I feel that Schwarzenegger is the only Republican not making a slippery slope argument. He is, however, using hyperbole. He is comparing the not-quite-legal marriage licenses in San Francisco to the hypothetical not-quite-legal assault weapon licenses. And he's right that it's a similar thing. What he forgets, though, is that there are precisely three ways to change a law.

1. You force the legislature to change it for you.
2. You take it to court and force them to change it for you.
3. You ignore it completely and the legislature or courts changes the law for you.

Numer three is the most politically inconvenient, but it is sometimes the only one that works.

I also disagree with any argument that states the law should be one way because the majority wishes it so. The law does not exist to protect the majority, it exists to protect the minority. It does not exist to protect the strong, it exists to protect the weak. It does not exist to protect the wise, it exists to protect the foolish. I could go on, but I'm sure you get what I'm saying. Even if every single person in California was heterosexual and no gay people were ever born or moved there, discrimination based on sex is still wrong.

[Edit.]

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I'd like to strike that last paragraph from the record. I couldn't read Jost's post when I was replying and notice now that he was commenting on the existence, not the rightness of the marriage discrimination.

Re: [Edit.]

[jost.livejournal.com]

I could never argue that discrimination is right, but I sure as heck can argue about the duty of civil servants to uphold their oath of office. }:-)

I would be the first person to vote for the state (in my case Alabama, not California) to remove any boundaries on gender in marriage certificates, but that's got to be done in a legal manner. When our elected official just pick and choose which laws to follow erodes the very foundation of our society; that we abide by the laws that govern us. You've noted further down that the upholding of law by civil servants is their duty and I agree with that. I also agree that until such time as the law is changed that anybody who deliberately violates the law for whatever reason is guilty of breaking said law; regardless of the just or unjust nature of that law. Perhaps I'm just a person who feels the need to work within the system to affect real change in the system itself.

Re: breaking the law.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

The second tenet of Civil Disobedience is to take the punishment for disobeying the law.

Re: I agree with Jost.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

A slippery slope argument is, "If A happens now, then inevitably B, the next worse thing will happen next." This is exactly what he's saying.

"If we issue gay marriage licenses in violation of the law now, then inevitably we will issue licenses for assault weapons and drug dealing in violation of the law next." As if one had anything to do with the other.

That is disingenous, to say the least. It's also as offensive as saying, "If we let blacks into the neighborhood now, we'll be letting convicted child molesters into the neighborhood next." As if one had anything to do with the other.

Re: I agree with Jost.

[elf]

agree, agree.

Blacks didn't get the right to sit at the front of the bus by petitioning the legislature to change an unjust law. They got it by *breaking* the law, and by convincing enough people, in court, that the law was unfair.

This is civil disobediance on a scale we've never seen before. Mayors have just as much right as everyone else to decide a law is unconstitutional, and they're going to ignore it.

And I firmly believe that if he didn't have the support of thousands of civil servants in SF, his decision to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples would've fallen flat.

(Note: not "gay marriage licences." Sexual orientation is not part of our marriage licencing system. This may be an important piece of semantics at some point.... like when some 87-year-old invalid decides to marry her 32-year-old female nurse, in order to assure her inheritance rights, and because they both love & care for each other, without any sexual attraction.)

I also disagree with any argument that states the law should be one way because the majority wishes it so.

Yeah, the majority has always been so good about assuring the civil rights of minorities... notice how they jumped to integrate schools without any help from the courts. ;/

Re: Civil Disobedience

[etherial.livejournal.com]

This is civil disobediance on a scale we've never seen before. Mayors have just as much right as everyone else to decide a law is unconstitutional, and they're going to ignore it.

Private Citizens have a duty to disobey unjust laws. Civil servants, as has been argued repeatedly on this thread, have a duty to uphold them. I'm not sure where to draw the line in the case of mayors, but I feel this is merely an attempt by San Francisco to steal our thunder.

like when some 87-year-old invalid decides to marry her 32-year-old female nurse, in order to assure her inheritance rights, and because they both love & care for each other.

This I feel is an abuse of marriage laws. There are situations where it is simply a hell of a lot easier to get married than to hire lawyers, but Marriage is more than inheritance + love + care.

Re: Civil Disobedience

[elf]

I think that SF's gay marriages are indeed a direct response to the Mass. ruling... that the activists here said, "no way are the first gay marriages in the US gonna be in Boston" and went from there. :/

That said, I'm not unhappy about it (and I like to think that's not just 'cos I live across the bay from SF.) I think it might need to happen this way: one place goes through the hassles of getting it legitimized in court, and someone else tackles the actually handing out the first licenses part--I hope this will distract the anti-gay crowd so they can't do a full assault on the legal system in Massachusetts.

I know several legislators in Mass are extremely unhappy with the ruling, and will do everything they can to avoid actually handing out the licenses. They've got until early May to re-write the appropriate laws... but what happens if they just drag their feet? Do they go to jail (become "martyrs" to the cause of marriage), or get thrown out of office... or do the same-sex couples just wait a bit long while the courts issue proclamations that the legislators refuse to uphold?

This way, there's a new problem: laws being ignored without judicial sanction, and legislators split on the issue of what to do about it.

It's creating a tangled mess. I *like* tangled messes. I think it's got a much stronger hold by showing up in several areas with different legal statuses.

(I dunno what exactly I think about civil servants doing civil disobedience. But AFAIK the mayor doesn't issue the licenses, the courthouse does, and that's much farther down on the chain--I think it'd be pointless to say that county clerks can't disobey laws that pertain to their jobs.)

Marriage is more than inheritance + love + care.

I sort-of agree... but legally, I don't think we have a definition of "marriage." We don't have a way of claiming "this relationship is eligible for marriage" and "that one is not" (except for the current gender/age/consanguinity standards). The only time I've ever seen a marriage challenged from the outside is in the case of immigration (although I know I could be missing something).

Sidetrack: so what *is* a marriage? What's required for it, and what shouldn't be allowed in one?

Re: What Marriage Is

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I don't know precisely what it is. No one really does. That's why the law usually requires 2 witnesses. You don't have to convince your parents or some representative of the state, or even a bunch of people. Just 2 people to stand and watch. It is an act of faith on the part of the state that your civil marriage is a spiritual one, and it is an abuse of that faith to enter into civil marriage without the spiritual backing.

I don't know what it is, but I know what it isn't. True Spiritual Marriage is not something that any mortal man or woman has any say over. It is not something you create just to make it easier to pass on your worldy posessions.

Re: What Marriage Is

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

No, two witnesses are required because it's a serious contract, and serious contracts generally require witnesses. In this case, one reason for the witnesses is to avoid fraud - such as, say, a man giving a fake name to get a woman into the sack, as used to be not terribly uncommon.

There is no "spiritual" requirement for civil marriage; any such requirement would be blatantly unconstitutional.

Keep your religion at home folks, or in your church. It doesn't belong in our courthouse.

Re: serious contract

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Like I said, Just 2 people to stand and watch.

Re: What Marriage Is

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

"True spiritual marriage." What does that mean?

Historically speaking, marriage has been about cementing diplomatic relationships, ensuring continuity and certainty of succession, and generally the passing of property.

Ideas of love and romance have been generally peripheral and have come and gone, and as recently as the last couple of hundred years, in America, marriage was seen as a business/economic partnership with some affection involved.

There is no spiritual backing to a civil marriage - that's why it's called a civil marriage. It's a convenient way for the state to keep track of unions so that they can settle disputes as to property and/or benefits. That's why you register at City Hall. That's why you need 2 witnesse - it's a legal requirement. The state doesn't assume spirtuality. How can it if the parties aren't spiritual to begin with?

Both secular and religious marriages have the same purpose - it is a commitment before a higher authority: secular or otherwise. In the days when the Church was the State, and religion not just a choice but a culture, it was the same thing. Now, it's somewhat different, because not everyone shares the same set of religious beliefs or even religion to begin with. It's a practical distinction to recognize both a secular and a multicultural society.

The underlying reasons behind marriage have always been legal. Everything else, really, is just gravy. It makes it feel ood, but it's not really necessary.

Re: What Marriage Is

[elf]

>>It is an act of faith on the part of the state that your civil marriage is a spiritual one, and it is an abuse of that faith to enter into civil marriage without the spiritual backing.>>

Interesting theory. Which faith would that be?

There is no required spiritual component to marriage, not even an implied one. If there were, some types of atheists wouldn't be allowed to marry.

It would be an abuse of a religion to convince a pastor or priest to officiate at a wedding where the participants don't believe in that church's definition of marriage--but a that's got nothing to do with the legal contract involved.
Also, "caring & inheritance" has been a valid reason for marriage for thousands of years. In fact, "caring" is pretty optional; marriages have been done for the sole purpose of securing an inheritance (with full agreement by both parties; I'm not talking about scams) for a very long time.

>>I don't know what it is, but I know what it isn't.<<

Ah, something like porn then? "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." This will not stand up in court; we're soon going to need either an actual definition of the requirements to enter a "marriage," or an open-door, anything-two-people-want-to-say-is-marriage policy.

The problem with defining it is that any definition will nullify plenty of straight, ordinary marriages.

>>True Spiritual Marriage is not something that any mortal man or woman has any say over<<

Then it would be pointless to have laws about it. Are you advocating an end to all laws pertaining to marriage, and moving it into the same legal void as "baptism?"--a ritual done by a religious institution in accordance with their beliefs, which has no legal status.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Even in the case of immigration, all that is required is that one prove that the suspect couple is living together as a couple.

Motives don't enter into it. How could they? Would you want to give our government the power to decide whether your motives were good enough or appropriate enough?

Re: Civil Disobedience

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's an abuse of marriage laws.
It's also not at all uncommon, and is considered legally acceptable and socially ... well, not totally beyond the pale ... so long as the parties involved are of opposite genders.

Why should the right to abuse marriage laws be reserved to opposing-sex couples?

That's blatant discrimination.