[Sheriff Gonna Getcha]

Saden:

You are absolutely right that the standard of review will usually dictate the outcome of a case involving an alleged violation of the Equal Protection Clause. In a nutshell, there are three standards of review: (1) strict scrutiny is applied to laws which discriminate on the basis of race or religion; (2) intermediate scrutiny is applied to laws which discriminate on the basis of gender; and (3) rational basis review is applied to most every other law which discriminates on some other basis. FYI - the above description isn't very comprehensive and people use different terms for the three levels of review.

By most accounts, laws prohibiting same sex marriage are subject to rational basis review, which is the least exacting standard of review. In order to find that legislation does not pass rational basis review, the court must find that the law cannot be supported by ANY conceivable justification. So, if it is at all conceivable that gay marriage could adversely affect society in ANY way, bans on gay marriage will survive rational basis review. Some courts have started to give rational basis review some teeth, but by and large rational basis review sets an exceedingly low bar.

In fairness to BleedBurgundy, he never said homosexuals to who try to get married should be tossed in jail and, as he pointed out, laws barring gay marriage do not criminalize attempts by homosexuals to get married. Instead, they deny same sex couples the right to have their unions recognized by the state and to have access to the rights associated with such recognition. BleedBurgundy is also entitled to his opinion that homosexuality is immoral. I personally think that point of view is rooted is fear and intolerance and is antiquated and Talibanesque, but to each his own.

BB:

Polls show that same sex marriage bans are going to go the way of T-Rex within the next few years. Whereas people over 40 tend to oppose gay marriage in overwhelming numbers, the opposite is true for people under 40. So, citing support for gay marriage bans is a bit of a double-edged sword.

I would also like to ask you why you think same sex couples should be barred from adopting kids. Keep in mind that thousands upon thousands of kids are waiting to be adopted and many of them will never have families to call their own. That you would prefer a kid to never having any family whatsoever in his/her entire life to having a same sex couple as parents is breathtaking in its heartlessness.

Finally, aside from saying that homosexuality is unnatural, you haven't advanced a single argument as to how same sex marriage is bad for society. People do a lot of things that are unnatural. We take medicines to alleviate sicknesses, we drive cars to avoid long walks and we fly in airplanes to travel across continents, but that doesn't make Advil, Ford and Northwest Airlines harbingers of the collapse of society. You can say it just "feels" wrong, but that doesn't really cut it. I can articulate many reasons why murder, robbery, rape, etc. are wrong. I can't really articulate why I like the color green. To me, the reasons you've expressed for thinking homosexuality is wrong sound a lot like my attempts to explain why I like the color green.