If separate but equal is unconstitutional isn't banning gay marriage unconstitutional and/or calling it ?

I think that this issue is bigger than separate but equal. But of course, when viewed this way it can make a decent argument for the allowance of homosexual couples to wed. I think that this issue is a civil matter, just as interracial marriage is a civil issue. (It used to be illegal, one state example includes the state of Massachusetts.) Those who argued against it stated it was a moral issue as if the other race were less than human and immoral for just being alive. But it was a civil issue. Those men and women just wanted to get married to have the same legal rights as other married couples. Now, we sit and call "gay marriage" a moral issue, but all those who oppose it are doing is calling homosexuals less than human and that is wrong.

Civil rights issues should not be left to a vote, otherwise many things we value today as part of our American society would not exist. (or things we want to pretend never happened would still exist.)

Why would you think that (1) your premise is valid or (2) that it leads to the conclusion?

"Separate but equal" is not universally unconstitutional. Discrimination is necessary in some areas, tolerable in others, and intolerable in still others. Which categories a particular form of discrimination fall into must be subject to the law and popular mores.

Second, it's quite possible to support gay unions by the simple expedient of defining the standard marriage on biologic grounds, and then allowing an expansion into additional couples on the basis of criteria that still don't "open the gates" to allow all forms of interpersonal relationships to be defined as marriage.

Plessy vs. Ferguson was reversed in Brown vs. Board of Education mostly (if not entirely) based on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.

How exactly would this apply to marriage considering that no one is being denied the ability to marry? I mean, any man can marry any consenting woman he wishes. Any woman can marry any consenting man she wishes. This is 'equal protection' in that everyone is being treated equally by law.

The fact that the marriage laws laid down by the states require one man and one woman is incidental. There are many other rules and regulations regarding marriages set by the States. At what point does the SC step in and start dictating to the States the details of their marriage laws? What about polygamy? Should it be allowed also? Maybe, maybe not.

But this is something the states will decide and I grantee that the Supreme Court of the US will not intervene to rule that this somehow violates the equal protection clause.

Seperation of black people from white people turned out to be unconstitutional because of the fact that segretation wasn't truly equal, and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment was *intended* to address the subject of racial equality.

Is banning gay marriage discrimination? Even if civil unions or something similar are recognized? It is unequal treatment, for sure. It is unequal treatment for gay people to be banned from the military. It is unequal treatment to be fired from jobs as teachers and other kinds of government jobs. It is unequal treatment for "sodomy" to be banned between gay people but not between straight people. All of those examples of discrimination have been practiced before and some are still practiced.

But is it a violation of the Equal Protection Clause? In my educated opinion, no.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AvTic...

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The state gets to make the legal definition of marriage. If a state wants to make marriage between humans and insects legal, they can. Constitutionality has little to do with it. One could make as valid an argument that making marriage between gays legal is no different than making polygamy or incestual marriages legal. Why stop at gay marriage, why not legitimize bestial marriages or something else just as off the wall?

Education is a civil issue. Gay marriage is a moral one. There's a big difference.

Yes, but it will take a case getting to the Supreme Court to get it decided. It's possible that the California ban just may do that. Then it will be a matter of which judges wish to force their religious opinion on the nation or which judges don't.

In Canada gay marriage is allowed federally.

there is no written law that says there is a "right" to marry. whether they like it or not, gay marriage isn't a right.

I've had insulting emails and it appears the person only turned on the email function to send the nasty email. I try to reply and I can't. They are cowards!

You're right, why do we have men's rooms and ladie's rooms? We should combine them, that way they aren't separate. It's separate, I'm going to whine until I get my way.