A dilemma for conservatives


The US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on some same-sex marriage cases in late March with its rulings expected to come towards the end of its term in the summer. The constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that defines marriage as between a man and a woman is one of the cases pending before them.

The Daily Show highlights the fact that this particular case presents a dilemma for conservatives who will have to choose between two things that they love.

(This clip was aired on December 13, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)

Comments

  1. brucegee1962 says

    I thought this was going to be about conservatives having to choose between opposing gay marriage and supporting states right --and even bigger backflip for them.

  2. dano says

    How long do you figure until I can legally marry a 2nd wife…my first wife really needs some help!

  3. dukeofomnium says

    #1: Conservatives only care about states’ rights when the state in question is Alabama or Texas. They have no scruple about the states’ rights of California (or even worse, Massachusetts). It’s one of those canards like “activist judges.” Everyone wants activist judges; they just want the judges to be activist on their side.

  4. Psychopomp Gecko says

    Who does Lindsey Graham think he’s fooling anyway?

    Besides, the whole beastiality or pedophilia “slippery slope” crap is just as I described it: crap. To enter into a legal contract, like marriage, one must be able to give consent. Kids and animals can’t. No matter how you feel about it morally, they are not held to be that legally accountable for their actions and they can not enter a marrage contract, so there is no slippery slope.

    Reminds me of when people talk about “What if someone drives around while high?” when it comes to the pot legalization debate. We already have laws against driving under the influence, so nothing changes. It’s just as illegal as it would be to drive drunk.

    As for polygamy, I would actually be for it so long as it was done for love and not for tax write offs or a sense of religious obligation. If you Mormons want to have sex with another woman, you darn well better cheat on the wife you’ve got just like everybody else has to. That’s equality.

  5. Irreverend Bastard says

    Hey, there’s nothing wrong with polygamy. According to the bible, marriage is between one man and as many wives and concubines as he wants.

    Polygamy used to be perfectly normal, until the church redefined marriage to be between one man and one woman only. Maybe we should just go back to the original definition?

    http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/says_about/polygamy.html

  6. DonDueed says

    Dilemma? What dilemma? If we prevent the homos from destroying our marriages, they have to keep paying inheritance taxes. Win-win! /wingnut

  7. Francisco Bacopa says

    I should point here that Scalia’s “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, how can we have moral feelings against anything?” is not a reductio at all. As best as I can tell, it’s an enthymematic modus tollens variant expressed in a rhetorical question. Here it is in expanded form:

    1. If we can’t have moral feelings against homosexuality, we can’t have moral feelings about anything.

    2. We can have moral feelings against some things.

    3. Therefore, we can have moral feelings against homosexuality.

    This argument is obviously valid, though its first premise is quite questionable. About the only way I can see for “1” to be true is if you are operating from a divine command theory of morals, rather than from a consent/harm model.

    We should not have Supreme Court Justices who incorrectly name the logical structures of their arguments.

  8. Timothy says

    Agreed. Further, the notion of ‘moral feelings’ is a non sequitur. Morality is a cognitive process (although feelings/emotions are certainly involved). People have moral thoughts.

    We should have Supreme Court Justices who can correctly differentiate between thoughts and feelings.

  9. naturalcynic says

    Maybe it would help more if she got a divorce, then she would not be burdened by one excess child.

  10. Alverant says

    You can have moral feelings. It’s when you pass laws solely based on those moral feelings without considering the rights of others that’s the problem.

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