It seems the Supremes have ruled 5-4 that it is no longer legal for individual States to make same-sex marriage illegal. The contention was between legal consistency across the Federation and the right of States to set their own laws. There were only thirteen hold-outs, which made the consistency argument easy. Had there been only three which allowed gay marriage, the consistency argument would have gone the other way.
Everyone pretended the argument was about “human rights” or “equal rights” for people wanting to marry someone of the same sex. That it was about Good Liberals vs Bad Religious Fundamentalists. Some, of course, see it as a sign of the continuing moral and political degeneracy of the USA. Others that the USA is gradually becoming a Better Place. This is all self-obsessed twaddle by the special interest groups.
The acutest comment about same-sex marriage was made several years ago. It was to the effect that, since the last remaining tax concession for marriage is in inheritance, and the changes in Family Law had turned marriage into a minefield of responsibilities-without-rights for men, and rights-without-responsibilities for women, marriage has no special status, is valueless or worse, and extending it to all comers was not sending any moral or social signal of approval. In other words: the minorities could have it, because it wasn’t worth having anymore. (I’m going to pass over Justice Anthony N Kennedy's tacky pro-marriage sentiments. That passage is tactical PR of the highest order, a sugar-coating to help the pill go down.)
The religious people were upset because they saw this as a sign that their State had abandoned them. Well, duh! We’re running an economy here: we have taxes to collect, workforces to populate, and the appearance of hunky-doriness to maintain. The Rainbow People got marriage because the economy doesn’t care who anyone sleeps with, or what ceremonies and legal relationships they want to enter into, or even how many there are in the bed, as long as they show up to work on time and spend their salary, pay their taxes and don’t interrupt the flow of goods and services throughout the economy. I tend to agree. Personally, I don’t care who you have sex with, or where and when you go to shul, as long as you behave in public with decorum, consideration, take your share of the tax burden and don’t want Government hand-outs for your activities. You can be as diverse as you like, as long as you stop making noise when I need to go to sleep. (A requirement that has everything to do with my participation in the economy, and nothing to do with my participation in society.)
The transition from a mono-cultural society to a multi-cultural economy is difficult. People are still struggling with it, because they don’t understand nature of the transition. Governments started to run economies rather than societies back in the 1980’s, but since the economies were in largely mono-cultural societies, nobody really noticed. Then those governments started to import large numbers of immigrants to service the economy. “Diversity” was the social disguise for the economic reasons.
Only after a while does it become clear that Diversity encourages the formation of mono-cultural societies within the multi-cultural economy. As long as there is no discrimination in the economy (because it’s participation in the economy that now matters), there can be all the discrimination and segregation within the society that we want. It cannot be imposed by the State, because the State is now in charge of the economy, but it can be imposed by the various ethnic and cultural groups. It’s not easy to cross the borders between the groups, and it’s almost impossible to make it into the political, economic and artistic elites unless you had the right background or the right luck. So a multi-cultural economy is not a society with shared values and culture. It’s just a bunch of different people who happen to live next to each other.
This is exactly why the SJW’s on the left and right are hopping up and down and screaming. They see that the Government has withdrawn from legislating and running society. SJW’s and tradcons want to legislate society: they want to tell you to do this and don’t do that. Western Governments are not in that job anymore.
The Supremes didn’t vote 5-4 for same-sex marriage. They voted 5-4 for the economy over society.
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