Is There A Legal Reason...

[Fred75]

I am not against same sex marriages but from a legal standpoint, I think the qualification for a marriage license is the ability to establish a business and not to formally express love. In the US, a marriage license is a business contract between the State and the inferior parties (the couple), and a business must be capable of producing a profit (bearing children). Since the technology is not generally available to permit a same sex couple to bear children, such a union can never produce a profit and must be considered a hobby and not a business. However, with acceptance of same sex adoptive parents, assets (the children) may be acquired; thus, there should be no legal grounds for disqualifying same sex marriages.

So then... orphanages should be brought back?
Television companies can legitimately buy up kids and name them Truman?

Your questions have no focus.

Sure they do.
The former (heterosexuals) in Jin's argument can have children.
The latter do not.
Nor do the ones I mentioned.

Which is why all the latter are NOT the equals of the former!

[The Colonel]

I am not against same sex marriages but from a legal standpoint, I think the qualification for a marriage license is the ability to establish a business and not to formally express love. In the US, a marriage license is a business contract between the State and the inferior parties (the couple), and a business must be capable of producing a profit (bearing children). Since the technology is not generally available to permit a same sex couple to bear children, such a union can never produce a profit and must be considered a hobby and not a business. However, with acceptance of same sex adoptive parents, assets (the children) may be acquired; thus, there should be no legal grounds for disqualifying same sex marriages.

So then... orphanages should be brought back?
Television companies can legitimately buy up kids and name them Truman?

Your questions have no focus.

Sure they do.
The former (heterosexuals) in Jin's argument can have children.
The latter do not.
Nor do the ones I mentioned.

Which is why all the latter are NOT the equals of the former!

A typical dry response as usual.

[myron myron]

from a legal standpoint, I think the qualification for a marriage license is the ability to establish a business and not to formally express love. In the US, a marriage license is a business contract between the State and the inferior parties (the couple)

That is not even close to being true; it's fiction.

[jinjin]

Why is it fiction?

I met one afternoon with the head of the Maricopa County Superior Court, Marriage License Bureau, in downtown Phoenix.
...
He said, first of all, the marriage license is Secular Contract between the parties and the State. The State is the principal party in that Secular Contract. The husband and wife are secondary or inferior parties. The Secular Contract is a three-way contract between the State, as Principal, and the husband and wife as the other two legs of the Contract.
...
The husband and wife are merely contractually “joined” as business partners, not in any religious union.
...
In the civil law, the marriage is considered to be a business venture, that is, a for-profit business venture.
...
Moreover, as children come into the marriage household, the business venture is considered to have “borne fruit.”
...
In this regard, children born to the contract regarded as “the contract bearing fruit,” he said it is vitally important for parents to understand two doctrines that became established in the United States during the 1930s. The first is the Doctrine of Parens Patriae. The second is the Doctrine of In Loco Parentis. Parens Patriae means literally “the parent of the country” or, to state it more bluntly, the State is the undisclosed true parent.
...
Along this line, a 1930s Arizona Supreme Court case states that parents have no property right in their children, and have custody of their children during good behavior at the sufferance of the State. This means that parents may raise their children and maintain custody of their children as long as they don't offend the State, but if they in some manner displease the State, the State can step in at any time and exercise its superior status and take custody and control of its children -- the parents are only conditional caretakers. He also added a few more technical details. The marriage license is an ongoing contractual relationship with the State. Technically, the marriage license is a business license allowing the husband and wife, in the name of the marriage, to enter into contracts with third parties and contract mortgages and debts. They can get car loans, home mortgages, and installment debts in the name of the marriage because it is not only a secular enterprise, but it is looked upon by the State as a privileged business enterprise as well as a for-profit business enterprise. The marriage contract acquires property throughout its existence and over time, it is hoped, increases in value. Also, the marriage contract “bears fruit” by adding children.

[myron myron]

Why is it fiction?

I met one afternoon with the head of the Maricopa County Superior Court, Marriage License Bureau, in downtown Phoenix.
...
He said, first of all, the marriage license is Secular Contract between the parties and the State. The State is the principal party in that Secular Contract. The husband and wife are secondary or inferior parties. The Secular Contract is a three-way contract between the State, as Principal, and the husband and wife as the other two legs of the Contract.
...
The husband and wife are merely contractually “joined” as business partners, not in any religious union.
...
In the civil law, the marriage is considered to be a business venture, that is, a for-profit business venture.
...
Moreover, as children come into the marriage household, the business venture is considered to have “borne fruit.”
...
In this regard, children born to the contract regarded as “the contract bearing fruit,” he said it is vitally important for parents to understand two doctrines that became established in the United States during the 1930s. The first is the Doctrine of Parens Patriae. The second is the Doctrine of In Loco Parentis. Parens Patriae means literally “the parent of the country” or, to state it more bluntly, the State is the undisclosed true parent.
...
Along this line, a 1930s Arizona Supreme Court case states that parents have no property right in their children, and have custody of their children during good behavior at the sufferance of the State. This means that parents may raise their children and maintain custody of their children as long as they don't offend the State, but if they in some manner displease the State, the State can step in at any time and exercise its superior status and take custody and control of its children -- the parents are only conditional caretakers. He also added a few more technical details. The marriage license is an ongoing contractual relationship with the State. Technically, the marriage license is a business license allowing the husband and wife, in the name of the marriage, to enter into contracts with third parties and contract mortgages and debts. They can get car loans, home mortgages, and installment debts in the name of the marriage because it is not only a secular enterprise, but it is looked upon by the State as a privileged business enterprise as well as a for-profit business enterprise. The marriage contract acquires property throughout its existence and over time, it is hoped, increases in value. Also, the marriage contract “bears fruit” by adding children.

Who is Virgil Cooper?

Whoever he may be, Virgil Cooper's strained interpretation of "a 1930s Arizona Supreme Court case" does not reflect the law in the other 49 states and probably does not even reflect the law in Arizona today.

You stated as follows:

from a legal standpoint, I think the qualification for a marriage license is the ability to establish a business and not to formally express love. In the US, a marriage license is a business contract between the State and the inferior parties (the couple)

That statement is not even close to being true; it's fiction.

The "qualification for a marriage license" is not "the ability to establish a business."

And there are no "inferior parties" in a valid "business contract."

[jinjin]

If the business model is no longer valid then I change my opinion to: I see no reason to legally exclude same sex couples from marriage.

[myron myron]

If the business model is no longer valid then I change my opinion to: I see no reason to legally exclude same sex couples from marriage.

That's not true in 48 American states, which do have a legal reason in the form of democratically enacted laws defining marriage as between a man and a woman. It is arguably true only in Massachusetts and California.

And the "business model" was never "valid" throughout the United States.

[jinjin]

I hope not. It would be horrible thing if the court can no longer overturn a law deemed unconstitutional.

[myron myron]

I hope not. It would be horrible thing if the court can no longer overturn a law deemed unconstitutional.

New York's highest court has deemed the law constitutional, as have other states' high courts.

[jinjin]

On the other hand, both Massachusetts and California ruled that it is unconstitutional. Bring first and being last (in this case both) are strategically good positions. It can make others think twice about what they are doing.

[myron myron]

On the other hand, both Massachusetts and California ruled that it is unconstitutional. Bring first and being last (in this case both) are strategically good positions. It can make others think twice about what they are doing.

What do you mean by "Bring first and being last"?

Other states have already resolved the constitutional issue.

There is no "strategy" involved: in 48 of the 50 states, marriage is defined as between a man and a woman.

[Cambridge]

I am not against same sex marriages but from a legal standpoint, I think the qualification for a marriage license is the ability to establish a business and not to formally express love. In the US, a marriage license is a business contract between the State and the inferior parties (the couple), and a business must be capable of producing a profit (bearing children). Since the technology is not generally available to permit a same sex couple to bear children, such a union can never produce a profit and must be considered a hobby and not a business. However, with acceptance of same sex adoptive parents, assets (the children) may be acquired; thus, there should be no legal grounds for disqualifying same sex marriages.

Wow, that is a creative answer, exceeded only by how wrong it is. You say “legal standpoint.” Legally, the state has no interest in a business, least of all how successful it is. Go ask the IRS, if you need confirmation. No state in the history of the world legally takes an interest your ability to produce a child. During WWII Nazi Germany had some programs for special persons to procreate, but they never went so far as to say in was a legal contract. Perhaps you are just pulling Nazism forward to another realm, but I don’t know. Nice try, jin…but wrong, wrong, wrong.

The first is the Doctrine of Parens Patriae. The second is the Doctrine of In Loco Parentis. Parens Patriae means literally “the parent of the country” or, to state it more bluntly, the State is the undisclosed true parent.. The second is the Doctrine of In Loco Parentis. Parens Patriae means literally “the parent of the country” or, to state it more bluntly, the State is the undisclosed true parent.

Jin, with all due respect, I am a lawyer, licensed in Arizona, who taught law at the University of Arizona, and I have practiced in Maricopa County for over 21 years.

What you are saying about Arizona is pure fiction. The Doctrine of Parens Patriae means protector of all citizens or subjects not able to protect themselves. It is a definition, not a legal capacity. It is how the State brings an action on behalf of its people, but requires a Court order. In Loco Parentis means in the place of the parent, and has nothing to do with the state’s position except insofar as the state is a party. It requires a Court order, as we are seeing in Texas. Go to your local law library and look them up in Black’s Law Dictionary. The state is not a contractor in a marriage arrangement any more than is Lucifer.

New York's highest court has deemed the law constitutional, as have other states' high courts.

What is interesting is the strained nature of the New York Court of Appeal’s opinion in Hernandez v. Robles. In order to find that outlawing gay marriages is not unconstitutional under the state equal protection provision of its Constitution, it had to write out of existence all but equal protection for suspect classifications and fundamental rights. In other words, there is no equal protection right in New York for the ordinary citizen. Bet that makes a lot of New Yorkers happy.

I agree with jin that there is more to this than just two states that have supported gay marriages. Massachusetts, by virtue of its great institutions of higher learning, carries a lot of weight in legal opinions. And their decision in Goodrich v. Department of Health was so well reasoned that it forced New York into the box it now finds itself…i.e., without an equal protection clause.

California not only has the other great institutions of higher learning in the country, particularly Berkeley, which runs the Lawrence Livermore Lab and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico, and is literally the finest nuclear study institution in the world, and Stanford University, and Cal Tech, which runs the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, but California as a state has one in eight of all American citizens (and voters) in the US. It is the eighth largest economy in the world...no that is not a mistatement...in the world. It has two of the four greatest law schools in the country (the other two being in Massachusetts and Michigan). If the California Supreme Court is not listened to by other states, it is at the peril of those other states.

Massachusetts and California are very significant.

[Bushwalker]

This whole debate is a nonsense -

the legal definition of marriage is a union/bond/agreement between a heterosexual human couple - i.e. a man and a woman...

If an individual wants to marry a same-sex partner, a goat or his/her motorcycle they may be able to form a legal contractual union, but -

That would not - by definition - constitute a "marriage" !

[Fred75]

This whole debate is a nonsense -

the legal definition of marriage is a union/bond/agreement between a heterosexual human couple - i.e. a man and a woman...

If an individual wants to marry a same-sex partner, a goat or his/her motorcycle they may be able to form a legal contractual union, but -

That would not - by definition - constitute a "marriage" !

[Fred75]

I hope not. It would be horrible thing if the court can no longer overturn a law deemed unconstitutional.

So then you think the democratic process of the people should be dropped for the AUTOCRACY of a few judges?