Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?emc=edit_na_20150626&nlid=63565976&ref=headline&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Well, I know I'm probably a minority in saying this, but I'm disappointed - not because I don't think everyone should have access to the government rights attached to marriage, but because it seems our country doesn't actually want to fix problems at the root.

What is the root problem? People on both sides of the debate agree (if given the option) that the government probably never should have messed with marriage, at least not as the cultural/religious thing that it is.

In a nation where we care so much about the separation of church (broadly defined to include ideologies that may not be formal religions) and state, I don't understand why we're seeking to only expand that connection.

What _should_ happen is the government should stop defining marriage of any form (leave that to religion or personal tradition), and simply define all these rights under civil union (or a similar phrase with no significant religious/cultural attachment).

<comment><USER3> I'm gay and I agree with you.

But, it's not fair to ask gay people to wait around until marriage is removed from our entire legal system (taxes, immigration, property rights, family law, custody...). So in the mean time marriage equality is a much easier fix.

Maybe someday there will be a ruling based on the Equal Protections Clause that bans treating married people differently than unmarried people under the law. Wouldn't that be interesting?

<comment><USER4> I can't upvote this hard enough. OP is right in my mind, but....

I'm straight (and divorced), and we got married for many of the same reasons that LGBT folks want to--it makes sense. Visitation rights, inheritance, tax treatment, etc.

It's unlikely that marriage would be removed as something of concern to lawmakers--has that kind of thing ever happened anywhere, any time, any way?

I respect OP's opinion, but it's ivory tower and we're talking about real people right now.

possibly unnecessary edit: just want to reiterate that I think OP is _right_, it's just not practical, and I'll sacrifice rightness for a rather-large "quick and dirty win".

<comment><USER5> France has done so. When you get married there, it has to be performed by a government official (usually someone representing the mayor's office). You can have a big church wedding if you want, but the state doesn't recognize it.

Later, France created a very powerful form of non-marriage civil union (the PACS) and saw it become incredibly popular with straight couples.

<comment><USER6> What? That's exactly the opposite of what parent is suggesting (if I understood correctly): marriage should be a private or religious matter and not a legal institution. Also, non religious marriage has been going on for a long time in many countries (e.g. China) and I don't think France is a notable pioneer in that area.

<comment><USER7> Well the point is that the state has to do _something_ since some sort of legal status is required for many purposes in most countries.

The described scenario in France means that you can have a religious marriage if you so wish; an official contract-signing 'event' out of necessity.

Makes sense IMO - not a government's job to tell a church who is or isn't allowed to marry under their religion.

<comment><USER8>
        since some sort of legal status is required for many
        purposes in most countries

The idea here is that you get rid of those "many purposes" and treat a married couple like any other people who have decided to spend their lives together.

<comment><USER9> that is what "married" means. Two people who have entered into a legal contract to spend their lives together and bear certain responsibilities with respect to each other and those in their custody. The religious interpretation of what it means is irrelevant for legal purposes in the US

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn For me and a lot of friends and family, marriage equality. Yay.

"It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality . . . Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry." (page 22, from the coverage on SCOTUSBlog)

For others, the opinion also reasserted that people who are really mad about this can continue to be mad and vocal about it, as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

"Finally, it must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned. The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered. The same is true of those who oppose same-sex marriage for other reasons. In turn, those who believe allowing same-sex marriage is proper or indeed essential, whether as a matter of religious conviction or secular belief, may engage those who disagree with their view in an open and searching debate." (page ~32)

The full majority opinion [PDF]: [http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf](http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I'm glad that my LBG friends can now marry anywhere. But damn, Scalia's counter opinion (and Roberts' opinion) strike me as well-considered and well- argued in the 2nd half of [http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf](http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf) . In brief, their view was that resolving this issue in the courts erodes the democratic process.

Can anybody counter Scalia, and say why the issue of gay marriage couldn't wait to be resolved by the states? Why is this class of license inequity different than other classes, where the states' right to license something is not resolved by SCOTUS?

<comment><USER11> > Can anybody counter Scalia, and say why the issue of gay marriage couldn't > wait to be resolved by the states?

For the same reason that slavery couldn't be resolved by the states. For the same reason that racism can't be resolved by the states. Because these things haven't gotten resolved by states. The United States of America, sadly, has a significant minority of people who Just Don't Get It, and there are enough of them that if (when) they congregate they can form majorities in a number of states. And so the federal government needs to step in and dope-slap these people from time to time.

<comment><USER12> I think that gay marriage should be legal, but I disagree with this. Beware of the fallacy of analogy! There is no economic incentive for a state not to allow gay marriage, there was an economic incentive for states to keep slaves. Also, it wasn't the supreme court that ended up freeing the slaves...

<comment><USER11> There was no economic incentive to ban interracial marriage either. That didn't stop many states from doing it. And there are economic _disincentives_ to racial discrimination. That didn't stop it from being institutionalized for decades.

And I didn't say the supreme court needs to step in, I said the federal government needs to step in.

<comment><USER12> I could agree with the federal government stepping in, just not the court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While this is excellent news for my gay and lesbian friends, I see no progress on polygamy.

Which, unlike same-sex marriage, is an institution with deep roots both in America (the Mormons were forced to give up this sacrament as a condition of statehood) and in the majority of world cultures, where it ranges from condoned to celebrated.

Without getting unduly personal, let's say that I have a stake in that question being resolved. I know several triples living quietly among us; they face the same kind of problems (child custody, hospital visitation, inheritance rights) as same-sex couples faced prior to this decision.

What the polygamists of the nation lack is a powerful lobby. <shrug> One may hope that nonetheless, reason and freedom will prevail here as well.

EDIT: nation, not world. Worldwide the situation is different. America is suffering from its Christian legacy here. Most Christian countries are adamant about denying this right to their citizens.

<comment><USER14> One problem I have with Polygamy is that I have never seen a 1-woman, multi- husband community. Sure, I've seen a few relationships in which this was the case, but when you look at the historic aspects in the US, it seems a very rare thing. That makes me wonder if there is a severe power imbalance in the relationships and what is truly occurring.

It's well known that in some modern US polygamy situations, there is a great deal of abuse of power, both in terms of controlling the wives, as well as controlling and abusing the young men who will not be allowed to have a wife. This further increases the societal costs and leads to more abuse of power, which is not what we need.

edit: I should add: It's a numbers game. Given that on average, there tends to be just slightly more women born than men, what happens with all the extra unmarried men (or women, though this is rarer)?

<comment><USER15> That same concern already equally applies to traditional marriage, in which some % are abusive. If you have a problem with polygamy on that basis, then you've got a drastically larger problem with the already existing system of marriage, in which millions of instances of abuse occur annually.

The best solution is to bring polygamy out into the open, legalize it fully nationally.

The government has no business dictating who can get married, or what the structure of marriage looks like, so long as the people in question are of sound mind and adults.

If I want to form a ten person marriage, with five men and five women, whose business is it to control us and stop us? There are only bigoted 'answers' as to why that shouldn't be allowed.

<comment><USER11> Not that I necessarily disagree with legalizing polygamy, but I think there is one non-bigoted answer: logistics. Our financial system in general, and our tax system in particular, has N=1 or N=2 hard-coded into it. There are other practical considerations as well. Suppose, for example, you have an N=5 marriage and three of them want to break away and take the kids. Resolving situations like that would be much more complicated than what we have now, and what we have now is already plenty complicated.

<comment><USER16> While true, it's not a valid reason for preventing progress on the deconstruction of marriage.

'Our system is messy and complicated, so if we add more variables, it will be an even bigger mess!' \- so make the system less messy and enable more variables.

Can you imagine if someone came and said add this function/feature to the program and in response you said "the program is complicated and the code is long, no need to confound it any further with features."

<comment><USER11> I don't claim this argument is valid, only that it is non-bigoted (and defensible).

<comment><USER15> On what basis would you argue it's defensible, when child custody isn't premised on marriage (or the lack thereof) to begin with?

I don't see what would change such that it would introduce any new complexity on that side of things.

The exact same complexity already exists today: step-parents. It's mostly a non-issue and is well defined. Step parents acquire no custody rights over the child inherently. If my wife remarries, and we had a child together, the parental rights are retained in myself and her. The same would be the case in a three-way break away on that ten person marriage; there would be (in this scenario) a two person custody of the child, eg the biological parents.

<comment><USER11> If I'm married and my spouse has a child then I am presumptively that child's parent too. That is, of course, not the only way I can become a child's parent, but it's one way. Polygamy complicates that. If one member of a N-way relationship has a child, do all of the other members become the child's parents

Again, I'm not saying this argument is valid or should carry the day, only that it is defensible and non-bigoted.

<comment><USER15> It doesn't complicate it, because the answer is: no.

Nothing changes about the legal custody system of children due to N-way marriages.

If two people in the N-way marriage have a child, it's not the N-way marriage that acquires custody, it's the two biological parents.

Marriages do not define custody, period. That is not how it works in the US.

Keep in mind that presumptively is not definitively. If there is a paternity test that later says otherwise, eg if your wife or husband cheated on you, then that other person can typically acquire parental custody, because they are the biological parent. All things being equal (not involving abuse or danger to the child), biology is the first line of legal custody.

What about adoption? The most sane thing to do near-term, would be to keep it the same - adoptions are max two people legal scenarios. If the system is cleaned up, simplified, or otherwise adjusted for N-way marriages, then perhaps later there could be N-way adoptions as well (and scientifically, we may eventually see N-way biological custody too).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm glad we'll have full gay marriage now.

But the idea that "the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage" is pretty laughable.

Does anyone really believe this right was in the Constitution for 250 years, only to be discovered recently? In reality public opinion and culture changed, and 5 justices decided to change the law.

<comment><USER18> > _Does anyone really believe this right was in the Constitution for 250 > years, only to be discovered recently?_

That seems to be the case to me. I'm not completely familiar with US history, but don't you think the right of black people to be free and equal to the other people was already written in the constitution 250 years ago, for example? Or women's suffrage. It just took a while to actually recognize it.

Homosexuality was legalized in France in 1791 according to the same set of ideals, during the same movement that gave birth to the US constitution. Slavery was abolished as well, and women's suffrage was discussed, because it was well recognized that these were all questions of equality. It isn't a stretch to think that the US constitution would also fundamentally allow homosexuality and forbid discrimination according to sexual orientation (and therefore allow gay marriage as well).

<comment><USER19> I'm not disagreeing with your general premise that the fundamental right for equality is the basis of the constitution and therefore equal marriage is implied by it. But to your points:

"the right of black people to be free and equal to the other people" (specifically the abolishment of slavery) Is made explicit in the 13th amendment[0]

And "women's suffrage" is the 19th amendment[1]

So for both of your examples, these things are explicity added to the constitution.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution)

<comment><USER20> Making something explicit makes it clear for everyone, but you could easily argue the rights of black people and women were written into the Constitution from the start- just in less obvious ways.

That's one of the court's jobs, after all, to evaluate complex or difficult situations and laws where it is not immediately clear what the law says. It reminds me of especially tortured and opaque code. You can't see on the surface that foo=bar, but after a long and arduous process of evaluation you discover- lo and behold- foo=bar all along. Or even more difficult, you discover that foo=1 implies bar=2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In my lifetime, I think this is the social issue that has seen the most positive change.

As a kid, gay people were practically lepers.

Eleven Years ago, Dave Chappelle just outright said "gay sex is just gross, sorry it just is", and it was considered funny and acceptable. (Not harping on him specifically, just pointing out what it was like in 2004)

Seven years ago prop 8 passed, if barely with some caveats about lack of understanding.

And now? SCOTUS upholds gay marriage and it's socially reprehensible to mock homosexuality. It's a strange and very positive feeling watching a country's world view shift like this.

<comment><USER22> Dave Chappelle is a comedian, they say stuff like that all the time, it's part of their job. If you are going to quote somebody (specially on these issues), I'd recommend not to quote a comedian.

<comment><USER23> Quoting a comedian as a means of reflecting what's popular or at least socially acceptable is an appropriate and accurate way to say "at one point in recent history, it was socially acceptable to say demeaning things about gay people."

Michael Richards is a comedian, and made anti-Semitic remarks that resulted in a significant backlash. Again, looking back this is a good indication of someone saying something that was NOT popularly acceptable.

<comment><USER22> I think it all depends on the context. A comedy show is a comedy show. People are always looking for ways to feel offended.

<comment><USER24> In this case, the quote omitted the context of archetypes and specific people, namely George W. Bush, that Chapelle was very obviously satirizing. I say very obviously, because it wasn't a nuanced depiction: the skit was literally described as him being black Bush, and he was in a suit behind the POTUS podium, addressing the media.

Removing the context from that and hitting Chapelle for it is just a convenient target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great decision. It's amazing how quickly gay rights have advanced in the western world.

Unfortunately it's still legal in many states to discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation. Hopefully that's next to be fixed.

<comment><USER26> You eat an elephant one bite at a time.

EDIT: I did not mean to cause a trainwreck below this comment. It was the quickest way on mobile to communicate "all big problems are tackled one task at a time".

<comment><USER27> Are you calling me an elephant? Now I'll never fit in my wedding dress! /runsaway

(guys, it's a joke)

<comment><USER28> Please note that the HN community takes a rather strict approach when moderating comments that contribute noise to the conversation. "Nice article!" comments are routinely downvoted. As is sarcasm, witticisms, memes, references and other styles of comments that occur frequently but do not add information to the discussion. It's a knowingly doomed attempt to hold back the flood of noise that covers Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've never really given credence to the people that suggested a ruling would be a slippery slope. However, after reading the opinion for myself, I can see how the court's stance on marriage (opposite-sex and same-sex) can now be extended to polygamy and incest. I understand the need to define it as a fundamental right within the context of this ruling, but it seems that some of the wording opens the way for other marriage relationships that are not explicitly defined in the court's opinion.

<comment><USER30> Incest - maybe. There's a clear harm involved there (inbreeding depression) that's much more substantive than anything used to argue against gay marriage.

Polygamy - We probably _will_ revisit our stance on polygamy in decades to come. Historically it's been used in a way that's profoundly imbalanced towards women (i.e. almost exclusively polygyny), but it's not hard to imagine a future where that's not the case.

<comment> matt-attack > There's a clear harm involved there

You conflation of marriage with breeding should be rethought. I suppose infertile couples should be allowed to marry since they cannot bear children?

<comment><USER31> Also brothers, sisters, mom and daughter, nephew and uncle

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Rant time.

This talk about "church's definition of marriage", etc. is a red herring, and just a couched way of saying "we don't like homosexuality and homosexual behavior".

I got married in India. In a ceremony presided over by a local priest. There was no "church" involved. But guess what? No Christian here (in the US) has ever doubted the authenticity of my marriage.

And then I got divorced in the US. The courts here had no problem recognizing my marriage, even though it was performed in some other country, by some unknown religious authority. The officials had no hesitation in breaking up this marriage. Why don't we require the Church's blessing to break up a marriage (I am aware that Catholics have a certain process of appealing to the Pope, but not all churches do)?

If you don't support the idea of the government getting involved in marriage, you shouldn't support the idea of government-approved divorces either! Go to your church and get a divorce!

</comment><comment><USER33> One of the interesting thing is how severe disagreements are between the supreme court judges[1]. You might think these judges are debating with cold logical arguments and finally either understand other person's argument or be able to convince others of theirs. Instead what we are seeing is judges literally and personally attacking other judges in same panel and accusing them to derail the very constitution and democracy they are expected to protect. Can they make any ore serious accusations? It's also very interesting that judge votes were highly predictable based on their political leanings and which administration appointed them. This just boggled my mind. First, why we should allow any person strongly conforming to any political ideology as a supreme court judge? Why a political leader who almost always have represented as head of certain political ideology be able to even appoint a supreme court judge?

1\. [http://www.nationaljournal.com/domesticpolicy/marriage- same-...](http://www.nationaljournal.com/domesticpolicy/marriage-same-sex-gay- supreme-court-dissent-20150626)

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm a straight conservative (more fiscal than social, and sure as hell not Republican any more), and my reaction to this is: "meh". The writing has been on the wall for a while now, and anybody surprised by this hasn't been paying attention.

Any social conservatives on HN -- that is to say, both of you -- should keep in mind that if you're worried about how this affects the sanctity of marriage, that institution has long since been sullied by a) allowing government to get involved with it, b) easily-obtainable divorces and c) that whole Henry VIII business. Same-sex couples can't _possibly_ do any more damage than that.

Of the threats to American culture or even Western Civilization as a whole, the SSM boogeyman pales in comparison to a feckless electorate, unaccountable government with Big Brother aspirations, crushing debt and even Islamic extremists.

That's why my reaction is "meh": as a "problem", SSM isn't even on the radar.

<comment><USER35> I guess we found each other. The things that irritate me the most is that people believe that marriage is a right. It is not. It is a government granted legal status privilege. The privilege grants those recognized as married numerous benefits. Now, with that said, I can't see why allowing any two consenting adults who wish to extend the government recognized benefits to each other should be infringed. One question though is, what benefit does the state/government gain from [recognizing] marriage? I think the quickest and easiest answer is that a) two people sharing and taking care of each other is beneficial [to society] and b) should a divorce occur, the state can get involved ensuring that a[n ex-]spouse is treated fairly and taken care of.

ADD: Also, people keep mixing love and marriage. While the two often go hand in hand that isn't always the case.

<comment><USER35> Marriage is not about love. It is about property. The government/state doesn't give two flying ducks about whether two people get married because they love each other, are in love (infatuated) with each other, or just like each other. Love is not required to get married.

Marriage involves determining and transferring property rights (before, during, and after a marriage).

A marriage license and a state recognized marriage is a three party agreement. It's an agreement between the two spouses and the government. It gives consent to the government to arbitrate marital issues and in return the government gives benefits to the individuals getting married.

ADD: Due to a marriage being a three party agreement, state recognized polygamy gets really complicated really fast, especially when multiple states might be involved.

<comment><USER36> About polygamy: If I can share a company with two other founder, share its money and profits, share the building, etc. why can't I do the same thing with my private life if I want to? Instead of dividing by two, you divide by three, four... sixteen... why not?

<comment><USER35> My best response is, because currently one of the parties (the state) to the original agreement doesn't want to nor currently agree to allow that? So I suppose if the state changed their laws and allowed it then it would be possible. My assumption is that the first state that is party to the first marriage would, in its best interests, require that all subsequent additions to the marriage be under that state and only that state.

ADD: Adding a joint tenant to an agreement can get complicated. Some current joint tenants (the state?) might not wish to dilute their rights?

ADD: More thoughts. The ADD above is poor reasoning. You can currently setup an organization with many people as you describe above. With marriage, what's different about a marriage than a company or business? Perhaps the state doesn't care to get involved in trying to determine paternity for children when/if things dissolve. To prevent potential future complexities the state opts to avoid them.?

<comment><USER36> Makes sense when you remember that the first point of mariage was for children. Whose children is it if there are 4 people in the mariage? The biological parents? What if the biological parents split up and you end up with only the two remaining non-biological parents. Do they keep the child? If they were all equal as parents except... argh. I give up. My head hurts. I am happy not to be the one who makes laws.

This is a very interesting topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi Does this formally mean that gay marriage has been legal in the US since the 18th century, but no one noticed until recently? (half-serious question)

Congratulations to Americans and to gays worldwide for this great step forward.

<comment><USER38> Strictly speaking it means the laws against gay marriage were themselves illegal. (As with any law deemed unconstitutional.) It's a matter of word choice to say "gay marriage was always legal" versus "anti-gay marriage laws were always illegal". There's some semantic difference between the two, but I'm not sure what the difference is from a judicial standpoint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Yeah, I'm still slightly pissed they basically waited until the majority was clear before they'd rule on the matter. Its another clear sign our Judiciary is really just as political as the politicians are, even if no one says so openly.

> As late as October, the justices ducked the issue, refusing to hear appeals > from rulings allowing same-sex marriage in five states. That decision > delivered a tacit victory for gay rights, immediately expanding the number > of states with same-sex marriage to 24, along with the District of Columbia, > up from 19.

> Largely as a consequence of the Supreme Court's decision not to act, the > number of states allowing same-sex marriage has since grown to 36, and more > than 70 percent of Americans live in places where gay couples can marry.

<comment><USER40> > Yeah, I'm still slightly pissed they basically waited until the majority was > clear before they'd rule on the matter. Its another clear sign our Judiciary > is really just as political as the politicians are, even if no one says so > openly.

I'm a strong supporter of gay marriage, but I'm glad the Court waited until the consensus was clear. At bottom, this isn't a right flowing from the dictates of the Constitution. Nobody in 1789 would have said that gay marriage is a fundamental right. We acknowledge the right today for the same reason we acknowledge many other rights we did not acknowledge then--society as a whole has agreed to recognize the right and bind itself to enforcing it. It is important that the Court not act ahead of society.

I'm also a strong supporter of abortion rights, but I can't help but wonder if in the long run abortion rights wouldn't be in a stronger position today had the Court waited a bit longer for public consensus to catch up before dictating a result.

<comment><USER41> The SCOTUS shouldn't wait on consensus. They don't need that. They need to decide if it is legal or not. If it is not, send it back to Congress to fix. While I agree with the ruling, this court has been doing things clearly outside its purview.

<comment><USER42> > The SCOTUS shouldn't wait on consensus. They don't need that. They need to > decide if it is legal or not.

This is a really bad idea, you're basically describing an oligarchy. The Supreme Court is really a consensus-enforcing machine, for the most part.

<comment><USER43> The Supreme Court is a literal oligarchy - it's 9 people who are accountable to no-one. The Senate is a more democratic body, since they can be held to account by voters.

<comment><USER44> I don't know if this was meant to be a joke but it's rather preposterous. Justices do not make laws, they interpret and apply them, and must do so while being rationally bound and yes accountable to laws and precedent under the framework of common law. Judicial activism is a pejorative term for good reason: they're not there to create or destroy laws. If they did start abusing their power to interpret laws they would be impeached: they actually ARE accountable to congress same as the president.

Also, if the equal protection clause was misinterpreted by the judicial branch, the legislative bodies of the federal and state governments have the power to revise and make it clear that the law was never to be interpreted that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Great news. Glad this won't be an issue going into the next presidential election. There's been so much time wasted on this issue when, at the end of the day, any 2 consenting adults should have all of the same rights as any other 2 consenting adults (barring felony conviction, poor mental health eval, etc).

<comment><USER46> I agree, I'm tired of hearing about this topic and the time wasted on it.

Although, I'm waiting for the 3 consenting adults lawsuit, that will be interesting.

EDIT: since the world is full of reactionaries that love to take things out of context; my public disclaimer on this is that I have no issue with this ruling.

<comment><USER47> Though sometimes it can be entertaining. In the UK the debate included one lord embarrassing himself by "warning" that gay marriage might lead to a lesbian queen giving birth to a future monarch through artificial insemination, as well as musing about how it could allow said lord to marry his son to escape inheritance tax [1]

I'm already looking forward to reading some of the tripe that will be written about this SCOTUS decision...

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/21/tebbit-gay- ma...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/21/tebbit-gay-marriage- lesbian-queen)

<comment><USER46> I'm failing to understand how a lesbian queen and a queen giving birth through artificial insemination is even related. That's just weird. Was the guy suggesting if a queen married to a man, say with sperm issues, who chose to use artificial insemination would somehow produce a child that wouldn't be considered royalty? Even despite being born of the queen? What an idiotic comparison.

Although, I like the father/son marriage thing. That's an interesting thought exercise concerning modern laws. Kind of silly, but interesting nonetheless.

<comment><USER47> He was just trying to come up with the most offensive sounding (to his conservative constituency) examples to shock.

The father/son marriage thing of course could not happen for the same reason we don't have father/daughter marriages today: the laws have restrictions on close relatives marrying.

<comment><USER46> Kind of late on this, but as recent events have shown, such laws can be changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> If love is about ignoring race,class,gender,age shouldn't it be about ignoring numbers, too?

Polygamy is the next hurdle for society.

The judges should declare all consenting marriage legal !

<comment><USER49> >The judges should declare all consenting marriage legal !

If it is truly consenting, taking into account the modern defined limits on who can give consent, why not? A polygamous relationship is already legal in practice (adultery and extra-marital sex are not crimes). The paperwork and law changes aren't going to be simple, but besides for that I don't see a justification in continuing the ban.

<comment><USER26> Polygamous/polyamorous relationships can easily be supported from a property rights standpoint using corporate entities (LLCs). I see it as the ultimate social/political hack for a right.

<comment><USER50> Could you elaborate, or point to some material which expounds on this hack?

<comment><USER26> Any property to be shared by the relationship is owned by the LLC, with people in the relationship being owners of the LLC.

Here's a great article on the subject: [http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/up-for- pol...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/up-for-polyamory- creating-alternatives-to-marriage/283920/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> As a non american, does the US Government have an official definition of marriage that is going to change today?

I understand the social consequences. But what _legal_ rights have been granted now that did not exist previously ?

<comment><USER52> There are a ton of legal ramifications, including tax benefits (it's advantageous for a married couple to file income taxes jointly), immigration (spousal visas etc.), inheritance, and so on.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of_marriages_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER53> I believe immigration and federal taxes, which are handled solely by the federal government, are not affected as the US (on a national level) already recognized same-sex marriages after the DOMA overrule.

<comment><USER52> That's true, but couples were still required to either live in or travel to a state where same-sex marriages were able to be legally performed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Congratulations to everyone who worked on this. A truly epic win.

</comment><comment><USER55> Hopefully this whole "issue" will just go away soon...so many more important things that deserve the public's attention.

Edit: To clarify, I support marriage equality and believe this is great news that deserves celebrating.

<comment><USER56> Spoken like a straight person who has never been denied the ability to do something straight people take for granted.

<comment><USER57> I don't think he meant it like that. I echo the sentiment: it shouldn't have come to this. It should not have been a social, political, or legal issue. There's so much hate and bigotry in this country that needs to go away.

edit: at least I hope he didn't mean it like that :(

<comment><USER56> Whichever way he meant it, his comment shows a very dismissive attitude toward the massive work that was involved in accomplishing this.

It's true it shouldn't have been a fight, but it was.

And the idea that there are so many "more important" issues, is also incredibly dismissive to how important the right to marriage equality is.

<comment><USER46> Just because you see it as dismissive doesn't make it so. You don't get to decide the intent of the statement. You can state your opinion about it and ask for clarification, but you don't get to define it for your own purposes.

<comment><USER56> I don't think you understand how reality works. You get to say whatever you want, and intend it however you want. Then the rest of us get to interpret your meaning and decide what it means for ourselves. You don't get to tell everyone else what to think of what you said. You just get to say whatever you want. You don't get to restrict how other people interpret what you say.

<comment><USER55> While you're technically correct that intent and interpretation are entirely independent, if you throw away all context of the statement and frame it in your own pedantic and literal interpretation...why are you even engaging in communication? You obviously aren't putting forth any effort to understand the speaker's intent and that seems to be at the heart of conversation and debate alike.

<comment><USER56> My point is not to throw away the speaker's intent, my point is that the speaker's intent is only one factor in how people will interpret what is said.

For example if I say "She sure is smart for a girl." I may not be intending to be a misogynistic asshole, I may be intending it as a compliment. But most people are going to read it for what it is; a comment that shows my own bigotry and means nothing outside of that.

<comment><USER46> Not when your interpretation seeks to define the other person's statement to fit your viewpoint. You can respond with:

"You seem to be saying this, and I think that's wrong. Is that what you're saying?"

versus:

"You are saying this, and you are wrong."

It's called communication. It's a two-way street.

If the speaker intends a statement as a compliment but states it badly, why is your reaction that much more important because you take it as an insult? Why do you get to redefine the intent and totally dismiss the statement altogether, which means you are also dismissing the intended compliment?

That type of reaction actually increases the misunderstanding and makes the problem worse in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'm sad to see this happen, not because LGBTs can marry, in my personal opinion I think they should be able to. I just dislike systems in general that force any global mandate and prefer those in which entities can freely compete against one another to decide between one another what works and what doesn't. The two party, winner takes all system the USA has right now, is already too totalitarian IMHO, this just seems like another step in that direction.

I think in the long term all less efficient, less happiness producing systems will loose out anyway. All you need to do is ensure that your system protects the minority enough so that they can freely compete and coexists with all the rest.

But I'm a libertarian, so I think all laws regarding sexual relations between consenting adults should be repealed whether gay or straight...

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm really happy about this.

Not just because I'm a lesbian (I'm happily single, so no marriage for me regardless), but because it's a fundamental right that shouldn't be denied to anyone. It really warms my heart that everyone can finally marry the people they love.

</comment><comment><USER49> Is there a general summary of the arguments made by the dissenting 4?

<comment><USER54> Don't get the tl;dr summary of Scalia's dissent; actually read it. Scalia is obnoxious and mean-spirited (and in fine form this time), but he's a really good writer, the fun- to- read kind.

IIRC, he wrote a book on writing with Brian Garner, of usage dictionary fame.

<comment><USER60> I respect Scalia as a scholar and philosopher. But I couldn't find anything in his dissent that couldn't equally apply to desegregation.

<comment><USER61> Scalia is like reading The Spectator. Well-argued, cogent, urbane, but wrong.

<comment><USER60> I think he's often right. But unlike tptacek, I just can't muster any admiration for this dissent. It seemed so petulant, and more grounded in sophistry than law.

<comment><USER54> I don't like the logic, at all. Just the writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62>
      > Lawyers for the four states said their bans were justified by
      > tradition and the distinctive characteristics of opposite-sex
      > unions.

Reads like they dusted off the old arguments in favour of slavery and/or segregation and remixed the recipe for marriage.

Take a dollop of "tradition says it should be so," and sprinkle on "distinctive characteristics" to taste.

<comment><USER63> "distinctive characteristics" reminds me of "The peculiar institution of the South---that, on the maintenance of which the very existence of the slaveholding States depends"

[http://users.wfu.edu/zulick/340/calhoun2.html](http://users.wfu.edu/zulick/340/calhoun2.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I seem to find it funny when people talk of things killing "marriage". Divorce kills marriages, not more marriages! Let there be more happy marriages!

</comment><comment><USER65> The oral arguments are worth a listen, from back in April.

[http://www.oyez.org/cases/2010-2019/2014/2014_14_556](http://www.oyez.org/cases/2010-2019/2014/2014_14_556)

Mary Bonauto argued it perfectly, I thought.

</comment><comment><USER66> Pretty crazy to think how far America has come on this and related issues. America isn't so good at changing as soon as we should but we've made a lot of social progress in our short ~300 years.

The other day I was watching Eddie Murphy's "Delirious" special [0]. It's widely considered one of the best standup specials ever and it's Eddie in his prime. But he spends the first ~5 minutes just spewing anti-gay jokes. Not hateful stuff, but just saying over and over how he's scared of gay people, etc. And he was probably the biggest star in the country at the time and at the peak of his abilities as a comic. I don't think that would go too well now (even if it is comedy).

Anyway, congratulations to anyone who was previously unable to get married and can now do so. It's a real victory for the good guys.

0 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Murphy_Delirious](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Murphy_Delirious)

</comment><comment><USER67> Just my 2 cents.

The government should not enforce marriage contracts, they should enforce legal contracts. Marriage is a private matter, not a government matter.

They shouldn't officially recognize marriage at all, nor should they discriminate on marital status for tax purposes. All people should be equal in the eyes of the law.

People should be free to enter into legal contracts with whomever they want.

</comment><comment><USER68> Hopefully Australia's next!

<comment><USER69> Best of luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I have nothing to say other than good. This is how it should always have been. To all the people who disagree, you are entitled to your opinion, and to all those who can now celebrate their love with all the peace and respect of any other person, congratulations and I wish you all the best.

</comment><comment><USER71> Fantastic. Now the next step is to get government out of the marriage business completely (which was the case before the 1900s). Free people should not need to obtain a license from governments to enter a voluntary social contract.

</comment><comment><USER72> This is going to mean a lot of jobs for database programmers!

[http://qntm.org/gay](http://qntm.org/gay)

15 years ago we solved the Y2K problem. Now we've got to solve the SQL2Gays problem!

</comment><comment><USER73> as it is a technical nerds forum lets throw in a bit of technology aspect of it - today's ruling lays groundwork for protecting the interests of children which will be "born", or more specifically - created - using something like the DNA mix-up of the 2 same-sex parents (with, at least at the initial stages of the technology, may be throwing into the mix a biologically minimally necessary of bio-material from an opposite sex donor)

</comment><comment><USER74> Given this ruling, what do you now teach children? Do you tell your 5-year-old that "when you grow up you marry either a man or a woman"? Are both choices to be equally preferred? Or do you say, "by default" you marry someone of the opposite sex, but if you choose someone of your own sex that's OK? Is it OK to teach that being straight is "the default"?

<comment><USER75> Being straight has always been significantly more common, and will continue to be so.

You teach them that when they grow up, they can marry someone they love. Which, now, is now true no matter whether you're talking to a kid who happens to be gay or not.

<comment><USER74> >>> You teach them that when they grow up, they can marry someone they love.

That's avoiding the question. Do you, for example, show kids pictures of gay/lesbian couples and straight couples in equal proportion? Or do you show them mostly pictures of straight couples, and gay/lesbian couples only occasionally? Is it bigoted to teach kids that being straight is the "default"?

<comment><USER76> I think I would avoid describing any social distinction as, "the default," to children. Do you tell them people are poor or rich by default? Happy or sad by default? The whole dilemma is predicated on looking for a world view that fits into simple binaries.

I would tell children what marriage is, as an idea, and when they ask who can get married you can say, "adults, or children with their parent's permission." It seems like you're concerned with fostering bias or bigotry in children. You will, we all will - our children will generally inherit our prejudices and politics. Part of raising children is working to create an environment where they understand how you feel, but also that disagreement is ok and questioning is ok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> As ecstatic as I am about this, I'm disappointed that it had to come from the Supreme Court instead of the American voters. I do believe that gay marriage is an obvious extension of the non-discrimination clause, so it's perfectly appropriate for the Supremes to act on this. I guess I'm just more disappointed in the voters than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER78> My partner and I are discussing getting married, but the federal income tax "marriage penalty" is giving us serious pause.

<comment><USER79> Marriage penalty? My taxes went way down when I got married. Additionally, all of the income limits where benefits phase out go up when you're married, so for instance, you might qualify for a Roth IRA when you're married filing jointly, but not if you're single. In my experience, getting married is one of the best things you can do for your tax bill.

<comment><USER80> Not everyone marry someone who make much less than them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> On my birthday in April, my partner Andrew proposed to me in a Minion mascot costume, handing me a solid gold Ring of Power from Lord of the Rings, which was set into a Chicken McNugget, while a live vocalist sang "I Say a Little Prayer for You." When we get married I will feel so grateful to have fallen in love in the present.

<comment><USER82> That's beautiful :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Just wanted to point out that certain counties in Alabama have announced that they are getting out of the marriage license business. To avoid sanctioning sanctioning same-sex unions and avoid legal trouble, they won't issue licenses to any couples. That way they can't be accused of discrimination.

</comment><comment><USER84> I for one am glad that we got the opportunity to show, state by state, that we supported supported same sex marriage.

An earlier SCOTUS decision would have taken away our ability to show consensus on the issue.

I'm glad that I was able to personally vote "No" to an amendment in MN that would have banned marriage rights.

</comment><comment><USER85> "A recent Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans – an all-time high – support extending the same rights and privileges to same-sex marriages as traditional ones."

only 60% of US citizens support same-sex marraige? in my area it is more like 90-95%, this was surprising and sad for me to hear

<comment><USER86> When you say "in my area it is more like 90-95%" are you referring to your perceived thoughts on what the rate would be, or are you referring to an actual poll?

If the former, than your area is probably not 90-95%, your social community is 90-95%. People tend to surround themselves with people with similar views. So it seems like in your town everyone is for gay marriage, when in fact it's the people in your town that you interact with that are for gay marriage. You don't know the opinion of those in your town who you don't associate with.

For example, if you asked me what percentage of the population smoked cigarettes, I would say 5-10%. That's because very few people I hang out with smoke cigarettes. If I were to walk into a bar (well... outside the bar) in a different neighbourhood, I might be surprised to see that 90% of people there are smoking.

<comment><USER87> An additional factor is that opposition to gay marriage is heavily skewed toward the elderly. I doubt the OP has a large social circle among the medicare crowd, but that is where the pool of opposition remains the strongest. We are just going to have to wait for them to die off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Came to work today, opened the internal web page and saw this - #ProudToLove - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSiehK2asbI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSiehK2asbI)

</comment><comment><USER88> America continues its slow march forward. Congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER89> Why is the gov in the business of approving who is married anyway? There is no reason to need "licenses".

</comment><comment><USER90> this is great! congratulations US!

</comment><comment><USER91> Beyond YAY!'s, the state is saying it will 'let' you love someone of the same sex.

Can someone sense the creepiness in this? It tells you how/who/why you should love.

It still doesn't include certain groups and it could revoke such 'rights' in other circumstances.

<comment><USER92> It doesn't tell you how/who/why you should love. It simply states the kinds of unions that gain property sharing rights.

You're free to love who/how/why you want, but don't expect special property rights or tax credits unless the government has recognized them as such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I'm happy for this decision, way to go!

</comment><comment><USER94> Honest question: Do gay couples have to commit adultery to produce children? — OR — Rely on straight couples to produce children whom they can adopt?

<comment><USER95> Adultery isn't a problem if it's performed with the consent of the spouse. There are tons of open marriages out there.

<comment><USER94> So polygamy is illegal, and adultery is a misdemeanour, but "open marriages" are fine? So with gay marriages everything else becomes legal too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> So, shouldn't plural marriage, intra-family marriage and inter-species marriage be made legal as well?

<comment><USER97> Plural and intra-family, yes. Inter-species no, because animals can't sign a contract or give informed consent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Gay Marriage is a controversy that is constantly used to to distract people from much bigger problems.

The ruling that had vastly more wide-reaching effects this week is that they upheld the the terrible "Affordable" Care Act. This act is a capitalist abomination of much more well thought-out socialist single-payer plans. Now that health insurance companies have a state granted monopoly, there's no reason to bring prices down or change anything.

<comment><USER99> > This act is a capitalist abomination of much more well thought-out socialist > single-payer plans.

It was what was possible - it barely passed as-is, and only via some technical processes that let it slip through Congress - and I think history'll show it to be a first big step towards single-payer.

> Now that health insurance companies have a state granted monopoly, there's > no reason to bring prices down or change anything.

How so? Before the ACA, there were a number of insurance companies that had to compete between each other. After the ACA, there are a number of insurance companies that have to compete between each other. ACA just removed the "I won't buy any and use the ER when I get cancer" option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> Gay people finally earned the right to have their relationships meddled with by the government. Let's see if they remain "gay" (happy). Watch the parades dwindle!

</comment><comment><USER101> The title of the post is incorrect.

<comment><USER102> Yeah. Technically gay marriage bans were struck down. Whatever.

</comment></comment><comment> once-in-a-while What's next? I would like to marry myself!! When will I finally be able to do that?

Do I have to wait another century?

</comment><comment><USER103> This has nothing to do with technology.

<comment><USER104> Please read the HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). There is no need for stories here to be about technology.

</comment></comment><comment> anti-shill good...now maybe the so-called "leftists" can put this issue aside and concentrate on issues that matter to more than about 1% of the population...I refer to these really "silly" issues like wages, single-payer healthcare (obamacare is a mess), trade, flooding of the labor supply, the drug war, worker rights and benefits, more time off and vacation, monopolies, regulatory capture, NIMBYized zoning/regs (aka affordable housing)...you know, the issues that matter to all americans, the issues that used to occupy leftists before they got sidetracked with The Most Important Issue Of All Time.

<comment><USER105> Interesting how hard you got down voted.

I don't disagree with marriage equality at all, but I also believe that the whole "culture war" has been _horribly_ destructive to our ability to address more pressing issues. It's been a fantastic divide-and-conquer tactic to con lower income (and usually socially conservative) people into voting against their economic best interests, and to prevent the formation of any meaningful progressive coalition on these issues.

Hopefully we can reach some kind of consensus here and put some of this to bed so we can move on to things that are, I hate to say it, much more important -- like the things you list.

<comment> anti-shill the readers here are young and educated, which for practical purposes translates to being fascist.

Fascism is best defined by the degree to which the overclass controls the youth of a nation by propaganda. Because the youth of today have been pushed into college, that means they are highly propagandized.

And of course the overclass loves it when they can force the youth of the nation to focus on an issue such as gay rights. Not only is it a natural wedge issue, making it harder for the people to unite against the overclass, but by leading youth into social issues leftism and away from hardcore economic leftism, this is a win-win for the overclass.

Anyway, this dynamic in play here with gay marriage is a perfect window into american fascism.

<comment><USER106> What's ironic is how condescending and formulaic your writing is, considering your hatred of the 'overclass'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> I'll tell you it upsets me to see so many homophobes here on Hacker News attempting to argue that those in same-sex situations should be denied the right to marriage.

Hacker News you disappoint me.

</comment><comment><USER108> A sad day for our country, our highest court and much of our culture has succumbed to social insanity. For my part, I will never under any circumstances recognize by word or deed that any so-called marriage can be or has been established between two persons of the same sex. No government on earth has the power or authority to do that, anymore than a legislature could repeal the law of gravity or a judge could declare a human person to be a toaster oven. With kindness and charity, but with firm resolve, persons of good will should give civil disobedience to this court ruling and all that flows from it.

<comment><USER109> What "social insanity" is it to recognize and legalize a completely natural phenomenon? Or are you going to tell me that all those ducks and bonobos are sinners too?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals)

And, if you're a fan of beating people over the head with that book that tells you to primarily love others (e.g. turn the other cheek, see the beam in your own eye, etc.), here's a good money quote (Matthew 19:11-12)

"Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.""

<comment><USER110> Should we legalize and support through marriage all naturally occurring sexual desires and acts?

I think that questions almost answers itself, but you never know after a ruling like this.

<comment><USER109> That's a red herring, almost concern troll-esque, argument. This ruling isn't a slippery slope towards moral depravity and chaos, no matter how much religious authorities will attempt to paint it as such. We can definitely know that civilization as we know it will not collapse because two guys/girls are allowed to kiss, hold hands once in a while, and receive acknowledgment from civil authorities that they share tax returns.

An important distinction between gay marriage and other human taboos that I'm guessing you're referring to (pedophilia, cannibalism, etc.) is the presence of mutual consent and respect. The ability to consent derives from the uniquely (adult) human ability to reason about the future and one's self- existence to an unusually sophisticated level. Children lack the experience necessary to reason about such things, hence why pedophilia is such a long- standing and widespread taboo.

If two fully consenting adults want to do something that celebrates their shared bond between each other, who or what is anyone else to tell them they shouldn't do that?

<comment><USER110> You're right, it's not a slippery slope. It's a gate we've opened and said that whatever your sexual compulsion is, no one else has a right to tell you that it's wrong. That is a very dangerous gate to open and you don't get to close it after gay "marriage" is approved - others will want the freedom as well.

It's not a red herring because you already have people on HN, and I'm sure many many other places, asking when polygamy will get to share in the same "civil rights".

And to play devil's advocate (and that language is intentional) who are you to say that a child or an animal can't consent to a sexual relationship or marriage with another child or an adult? How closed-minded of you.

We are already giving children under 18 the right to access birth control (without their parent's consent) and the freedom to decide that they are not the gender that they were "assigned" \- so why can't they decide who to "love"? And who are you to say an animal doesn't have the same rights, feelings, and ability to give consent as a human? I think PETA and many others would actively disagree.

If you pay attention, I haven't mentioned religion. What I've mentioned is the reasoning and appeal you gave for allowing what is "natural". Who decides what is "natural" and acceptable for human beings? The animal kingdom? You personally? These are not troll questions, these are important questions and it matters gravely how we answer them.

<comment><USER106> > You're right, it's not a slippery slope. It's a gate we've opened and said > that whatever your [thoughts, feelings and behaviors about X are], no one > else has a right to tell you that it's wrong. That is a very dangerous gate > to open and you don't get to close it after [X] is approved - others will > want the freedom as well.

This isn't an insult, but you're a nitwit? The argument you're making is the prototypical "slippery slope" fallacy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope)

<comment><USER111> I'd advise you to actually read the article you are linking to.

 _> in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question._

His argument is not a fallacious one. The reasoning used to justify applies to other scenarios. Polygamy is the main one brought up on this thread: Why are we telling adults who and how many people they can marry?

If you legalize [x] because [y] and [y] also applies to [z] then [x] and [z] are equivalent for reasons [y]; therefore [z] should be legalized if [x] is legalized unless [x] and [z] are demonstrably _not_ equivalent for reasons [y].

I'd also like to note that the cutoff for being an adult should be 25, not 18. Therefore people shouldn't be able to be married until they are 25. The age of 18 is arbitrary and in many places that age is 16. In some places that age is 14. When exactly is the cutoff? Well it's based on an individuals mental maturity, which is not equivalent to their age. I've met 12 year olds who are more rational and mature than 30 year olds.

Furthermore:

Hebephilia and pedophilia are often merged concepts when people speak. For the people speaking on this subject, can you clarify which you're talking about? It's difficult to tell which people mean, but it usually gets clarified to the 13-16 year old ranges. At that age, I'd argue most children understand marriage, can be educated on the government-related issues to marriage, and understand sexual relations and pregnancy. The idea that they can consent to sexual relations of other minors, but not of adults, is some form of double- think. Note that in this context it doesn't seem _marriage_ is what is being brought into question: just sexuality.

Note that I'm not defending it: I think people shouldn't be able to have sex or get married until at least age 25 unless they can demonstrate the ability to proper care and provide for a child with a stable income.

<comment><USER106> Can you name one other kind of marriage that will necessarily get legalized because we legalized same-sex marriage?

Can you name one other kind of marriage that is demonstrably more likely to get legalized because we legalized same-sex marriage?

If there's any kind of slippery slope, it's the slippery slope from man-woman marriage to adult-adult marriage. Well, we've slid down it, and now we're at the bottom.

<comment><USER111> Polygamy & Incest

We haven't slid to "adult-adult marriage" yet until the above are legalized across the board. So please don't misrepresent man-man and woman-woman as being adult-adult (or adult - n adult)

Since marriage does not imply reproduction, an incestual couple can refrain from having kids, adopt, use a surrogate/donor, etc. so there is no "but imbreeding" argument. Which is an argument about genetics... Isn't choosing who can reproduce a form of eugenics? We don't stop people with known hereditary complications from choosing to have kids, why should we stop siblings? If they choose to accept the risks, why should society have any say in the matter?

<comment><USER106> Are there any other reasons why incest is considered bad?

<comment><USER111> It's a social taboo and imbreeding are the only given reasons of why it is "bad".

Some could argue a failed relationship can lead to issues in a family household but I don't think that has any real merit. Dating a family member's best friend and it going sour can have similar consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> I'm happy for the gay community. At least the Supreme Court is not fully corrupted.

</comment><comment><USER82> My goodness, the barely-concealed hate in this is shocking. It's a very, very sad thing these people do. And I can't help but find "black robes" a bit telling, although maybe that's just some sort of bias or psychological effect.

[http://www.afa.net/the-stand/government/rainbow-jihadists- of...](http://www.afa.net/the-stand/government/rainbow-jihadists-of-scotus/)

<comment><USER113> That website is so many levels of fucked up. Glad the SCOTUS is less insane than these sites make the US seem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> What a crappy ruling. Yes the answer they got was right, but they never bothered to rule that sexual orientation is a (partial) suspect class. Now we have to wait for another ruling to get that resolved. Stupid lazy evaluation of courts.

<comment><USER114> Great job. Don't read more than the first sentence before voting.</comment></comment>


Godaddy sent me an email notification but already billed my visa - <AUTHOR>

has anyone experienced this? they have auto-renewal on by default? is it even legal to have that option on by default? how do i get my 10.88USD back? it is not much but i am totally pissed off by this. i personally think that there are better ways of making money than doing this.<p>they sent me an email confirmation but they already deducted money from my account. i never got the chance to confirm anything. they just deducted it right away. <comment><USER2> If you are really angry and want a refund, you'd better move your domains out of godaddy(I recommend Moniker.com) quietly before you do a charge back. You know domain name is your most important property so don't put any risk on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry to hear about the hassle.

Are you sure you didn't receive a series of e-mails warning about the upcoming renewal? That's what I always get from GoDaddy for each of my domains, prior to the auto-renewal.

For example, I received one at the end of November notifying me that one of my domains will auto-renew at the end of February 2009.

I just checked and have another from a few days ago notifying me of an auto- renewal for a different domain in March 2009.

IIRC, several of these are sent.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's highly likely that you a) explicitly agreed to this default when you signed up and b) their terms of service (which you agreed to when you signed up) is written in such a way to prevent them from refunding you.

I'm not going to go look into the details but I'll wager $10.88 that this is the case. (seriously)</comment>


Producing a deepfake – a faceswap workflow on AWS - <AUTHOR> https://adamham.dev/posts/producing-a-deepfake-on-aws/ <comment><AUTHOR> Bell Towers - Another Lonely Night in Berlin (Music Video)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqc8EvnyyBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqc8EvnyyBM)

\---

A simple workflow for producing deepfakes using cloud computing provider AWS. And a conclusion on my thoughts of the limitations of the technology.</comment>


Would everyone wearing face masks help us slow the pandemic? - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/would-everyone-wearing-face-masks-help-us-slow-pandemic <comment><USER2> It's almost obscene to conflate "masks don't work" and "please don't use masks because there's a critical shortage".

If you want to be believed, you have to be honest.</comment>


Ask HN: How do the engineers working on open source editors get their funding? - <AUTHOR>

Who pays for development of editors like ace, brackets e.t.c ?
Also how much do developers of sublime approximately make selling their editor?
I really want to work in editor space but not sure if I can pay my bills with it. <comment><USER2> Brackets is sponsored by adobe. Ace is sponsored by mozilla and cloud 9. Atom is sponsored by github.

1\. Convince your boss that paying you to work on a text editor is a good idea.

2\. Get a job at one of the above companies.

3\. Sell consulting services -- support, training, and custom programming -- for one of the above editors.

4\. Some sort of kickstarter thing

5\. Do it in your spare time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking at the market for editors is the wrong place to start as their users aren't necessarily going to be your users.

The key questions you need to ask are:

1) What's going to be your competitive advantage ?

2) How much are people going to be willing to pay for it ? (i.e. go and ask them)

3) How many of them are there and how can you get to them.

</comment><comment><USER4> See if Jetbrains is hiring.</comment>


Ask HN: Best real day-to-day language data sets? - <AUTHOR> Hi there, I've used Cicero's work to run some NLP code against in the past so I could practice some latin. I am now looking for something more mundane, which reflects real day-to-day usage of languages.
I am particularly interested in data sets for german, but I think I can use Folha de Sao Paulo's texts for brazilian portuguese (it's one of the biggest newspaper and media portal in Brazil and has a respected language manual).
Any suggestions for other languages? Scraping data sets would be OK!
PS1: I don't consider NLTK-level data sets really useful here
PS2: for english I suppose the whole internet and NLP frameworks are enough already
PS3: data sets don't need to be tagged in fact, anything ressemblying a corpus will suffice as it would be used for X-as-second-language :-) <comment><USER2> Try the Europarl corpus ([http://www.statmt.org/europarl/](http://www.statmt.org/europarl/)) or the TED corpus ([https://github.com/ajinkyakulkarni14/TED-Multilingual- Parall...](https://github.com/ajinkyakulkarni14/TED-Multilingual-Parallel- Corpus)).</comment>


Google diversity figures show little change - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44496076 <comment><USER2> Interesting that the huge overrepresentation of asians can be completely ignored and not seen as bad at all while a smaller overrepresentation of men is a huge problem.

41% of 2017 hires were asians [1] while being only 5% of the population [2].

1: [https://diversity.google/annual-report/](https://diversity.google/annual- report/) 2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States)

</comment><comment><USER3> > In the US almost 90% were white or Asian, 2.5% were black and 3.6% Latin > American.

I've always found it curious how asians are treated as honorary whites when it comes to talking about diversity in American companies. This is the most egregious example.

If you go to Google's own diversity report the breakdown becomes 36.3% asian and 53.1% white. Considering white people maybe up like three quarters of the population in the US they're actually under represented at Google, ironically.

Report: [https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_our- workforce](https://diversity.google/annual-report/#!#_our-workforce)

<comment><USER4> Diversity proponents seem to generally want every conceivable minority (like -women-) represented 50%, completely ignoring how the math doesn't add up.

And if not everyone is at 50%, it's obviously the fault of all the racist and sexist white men everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sloppy reporting:

"Just over 25% of leaders were women in 2018, up nearly 5% since 2014."

Actually it's up 4.7 _percentage points_ , or about 25% (not 5%).

<comment><USER6> [https://xkcd.com/985/](https://xkcd.com/985/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> People often write about how outreach efforts such as Google's are illegal. They are not. There's a very specific law that encourages it. I learned about it because Karen Sandler told me about it when she explained to me why Outreachy went from outreaching to women to also outreach to specific US minorities. It's the only change that this US law allowed.

[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-2017-title29-vol4-part1608.xml)

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting to see for the first time attrition statistics.

It's higher across the board for men versus women (and the gap is wider for tech roles but no figures were given here). And for ethnicity in 2017, attrition was highest for Black Googlers followed by Latinx Googlers, and lowest for Asian Googlers.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why was this flagged? This is the second story I've noticed this week on diversity in tech that was an early top 10 link and then got flagged.

<comment><USER4> Because it tends to stir a discussion about the merits of current "diversity"-initiatives.

This often leads to polarized debate. And the San Fran pro-diversity crowd being stripped absolutely naked.

I'm guessing it's a little bit of both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just had a look at the BBC's equivalent report ("BBC Equality Information Report 2016/17").

Interestingly:

\- p38 says that 42.1% of 'Senior Leadership's staff are female

\- p39 shows the real number (35.7%). It seems like on page 38 they define senior leadership as around 3000 people, rather than the smaller (and less diverse) group that has the actual senior management job grades (SM1 and SM2).

\- The report has almost no historical information. The top level actuals are compared with targets, but the only numbers that are compared with, e.g. 2014, are things like # apprentices.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there evidence supporting Google denies diverse hires of the same skill levels at others in the position? Or is this just a byproduct of our countries failures and all the best computer scientist applying at Google are actually white males? Should Google attempt to diversity hire less skilled individuals for the sake of changing the status quo? Would that even change the status quo?

<comment><USER11> There's an assumption in your post that current hiring practices somehow select the best candidates from a pool of suitably qualified candidates.

Anyone who has been hired, or has hired other people, know that recruitment is terrible and includes huge amounts of randomness and you are - hopefully - avoiding terrible candidates from a pool of qualified candidate.

Given that, it makes sense to change the random factors of recruitment that select against women to be selecting for a few more women. So long as you're still mostly achieving the previous avoidance of terrible candidates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's almost as if the guy who wrote that their approach isn't working had a point. Nah, crazy talk!

</comment><comment><USER13> Recently the board voted against recommendations made by employees to increase diversity. It's pretty clear what priority the Google board gives to diversity, which is their right even if wrong.

<comment><USER4> How is it wrong? Who are you to know better what is good for Google than the Google executives?</comment></comment>


Steve Yegge's five essential phone-screen questions - <AUTHOR> http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone-screen-questions <comment><USER2> An old favorite ...

<http://searchyc.com/five+phone+screen>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=94990>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=941925>

My wife just watched me do this search and trawl through the results, and then she asked me why. Why spend all that time cross-referencing something when the search terms are so vague you need to go through pages to find the duplicates?

The answer is that sometimes I find other items of interest. I don't read HN fanatically, and sometimes items come and go without my seeing them. Occasionally, more than occasionally, one turns up in a search like this, so it's worth doing for the side effect.

</comment><comment><USER3> it's always difficult to comment on these kinds of posts because, obviously, they're pretty general, and the person doing the interview would need to use their own discretion, etc.

but having said that, one of the example questions seemed a bit odd to me. the idea was to find out whether a candidate knows how to use grep or similar. and the first case is fair enough - phone numbers with a given pattern. but a later example was reformatting code so that parentheses had spaces around them.

now anyone that tries reformatting code with a regular expression deserves everything they get. almost no programming languages have regular grammars, and even if they do, they are probably fiendishly complex (think of comments and strings). to make things worse, if you get something wrong you end up running the risks of introducing some kind of obscure bug in your code...

as i said, maybe i am being too picky. but that was the one example that jumped out as a red flag for the author's experience (which is odd, as i recognise the name, even though i don't really follow personalities on the web much).

edit: thinking some more, maybe i am being too picky. just last night i used sed to change some import statements in python code. but messing around with parens sounds like playing with fire to me. i vaguely remember, years ago, trying to enforce encoding standards with a regexp based rewriter for some obscure language that had no easily available parser. the memory is a blur, except for the pain...

<comment><USER4> It's a good sign if the interviewee thinks about an RE modifying the strings in a program, though. While programmers who think RE are all-powerful are likely outnumbered by those completely ignorant of them, they're out there. It's important to know REs' limitations - sometimes you need an actual parser. (My favorite example: RFC-822-compliant e-mail address validation - <http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel good about all of these questions except the OO design one. I would rather declare types and write functions that operate on those types; granted it's the same, semantically, but if I focus on nouns personally I start coding stupid stuff.

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing that in an actual interview Yegge would be sympathetic to your point of view:

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in- kingdom...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of- nouns.html)

That being said, here's a question: How many people who self-identify as functional programmers could write an OO program competently? Compare and contrast to the question of how many people who self-identify as OO programmers could write a functional progam competently?

Do the paradigms themselves have anything to do with the difference? Or is this strictly an issue of bias for other reasons?

<comment><USER7> I would guess that almost all functional programmers know OO programming, but very few OO programmers know functional programming.

I think this is just because of pedagogic issues. Every introductory book/class introduces OO, but most undergraduate CS courses barely discuss functional programming (besides a semester on ML or Scheme, if you're particularly lucky).

So, the people who go out off the beaten path to learn functional programming are a self selected subset that is particularly driven, curious, etc.

<comment><USER6> That would be my conjecture about academia. In business, a certain kind of person learns the languages and paradigms that appear to be well-represented in monster.com job postings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It should be noted that Steve has said elsewhere that he can't use these questions anymore because everyone knows them. Thus, I wouldn't follow this template _too_ closely. That said, it's a good way to get a general idea about how to ask these kinds of questions.

<comment><USER9> That's a problem for everyone. We (like many other organizations) use third party recruiters, and the latest ad one of them has put out very clearly indicates that they've been quizzing (unsuccessful) candidates about what we asked, and are now trying to coach candidates in them. Unfortunately said recruiter is non-technical and a) the ad now makes no sense (e.g. if I ask "what is a deadlock?" it doesn't translate into "must have 5 years of experience of deadlocks") and b) some of the canned answers they've been giving to our questions are wrong, so we get a stream of candidates all parroting the same wrong thing.

<comment><USER4> It'd make me laugh if somebody's resume listed "5 years experience with C++, deadlocks, linking errors", though. :)

<comment><USER9> No joke, one dude I interviewed claimed so-many years experience of C++, it turned out he meant experience of running programs written in C++ on his PC (!)

I really am utterly mystified why people do this. It was the first skill he listed. Did he not think an interviewer might ask him about it? And even on the offchance he blagged his way through the interviews, he's not going to be able to fake it _to the machine_ and he'll be found out on his first day. It really shakes my faith in human nature, interviewing :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The sample code for reversing a string in Java reminded me of why I can't bring myself to use Java-the-language anymore. Clojure FTW!

</comment><comment><USER11> Am I the only one who thinks that his "Example 2: Write function to compute Nth fibonacci number" is a terrible resource hog?

IMHO an iterative approach would be the way to go.

<comment><USER2> So, so many people miss the point(s) here.

Firstly, in my direct, personal experience, just writing a candidate to write a program that compiles and runs gets rid of up to 90% of applicants. People here on HN are exceptional, but around 90% of recent applicants for a position I advertised couldn't write a FizzBuzz program that compiled and ran.

Secondly, these are the starting points. From here you can ask what problems the program has. Yes, it's exponential in stack and runtime. You can write an iterative version that runs in constant stack and linear time. More subtle, and more probing, is how do you write a recursive version that also runs in small stack and time.

These are the starting points, the initial cull. Don't assume they're the be all and end all.

<comment><USER12> On paper? Or with a computer and compiler/interpreter?

<comment><USER2> Some couldn't produce either.

I look for someone to sketch a correct algorithm using any notation they choose. Independently I look for someone to produce working code with an editor and compiler. The former is usually for something like linked lists or quicksort, the second for something like FizzBuzz and then recursive and iterative Fibonnaci.

Working code is essential for something, anything, at some point, although really what I want is someone who can then talk sensibly through the issues. Even so, working code for trivial problems is still only seen in about 10% of cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Huh. Not impressed. One of my guys, who went on to be one of the ZFS guys, came from 3par. And they had the 3x3 test:

Gives a shit Positive learning curve. Not an asshole.

Make your candidates pass that and you're doing fine.</comment>


Snake sex is every bit as peculiar as you would expect (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170608-snake-sex-is-every-bit-as-peculiar-as-you-would-expect <comment><USER2> " He thinks that assumption stems from bias by early researchers, who were predominantly male."

I stopped reading here. We have no idea why they never actually witnessed sexual cannibalism in snakes. Why speculate that it was some form of sexism?</comment>


Bold personality makes domestic dogs in a shelter less vulnerable to disease - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0193794 <comment><USER2> I feel like the causality is likely backwards from the title - if you are less vulnerable to disease, you can better afford to boldly take risks and explore new situations and withstand the possible negative consequences.

<comment><USER3> That would presuppose that the dog knows that he has a fit immune system, which we couldn't really explain either. I think the causality relationship is less interesting than that there's a correlation between different aspects of interaction with the environment. Maybe the causality works both ways even?

<comment><USER4> >That would presuppose that the dog knows that he has a fit immune system, which we couldn't really explain either.

feeling well is a pretty good proxy for a well working immune system, and it doesn't require any knowledge about immune system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So this is the research area that I currently work in, albeit with a disease ecology perspective rather than a biochemistry one. I've had a quick read of it and and although it does seem to track other research that has been done ("Why are behavioral and immune traits linked?" by Lopes 2017 is a nice review) I'd love to see some power analyses - the sample size seems pretty small for something as complex as this question. The study I'm helping with now has a minimum sample size in the hundreds, for instance, for a broadly similar question. PCA-ing a few tests together is pretty common, but also comes with a lot of potential biases (see "Avoiding the misuse of BLUP in behavioural ecology" by Houslay and Wilson if anyone is interested!)

</comment><comment> no-brainer tl:dr; healthier dogs seem happier...</comment>


Trading Taxis for Uber, Drivers Riding a Boom - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/trading-taxis-for-uber-drivers-riding-a-boom-1438389363 <comment><USER2> > Uber says that its drivers on average have seen steadily increasing hourly > trips and earnings. The company said the average driver had net earnings of > $27.26 an hour as of June 1, up from $26.10 at the same point last year and > $21 on June 1, 2013.

Can this claim be verified somehow? I find it hard to believe. (They are probably only counting driving hours, and leave out the waiting periods).

<comment><USER3> It's hard to get the real data. I wish Uber would provide individual data, so naive, potential drivers would not go into debt (buying that Uber approved 4 door vechicle--some even buying new) thinking Uber is their answer to making money.

Isn't Uber a company that hired employees now? Their website still looks like Independent Contracor B.S.? "Buy a new black Prius--drive drunk rich kids around on Friday and Saturday nights--make big money--you're the boss! (Sorry, but I have seen this company do some nasty things. Why don't they have more competition--other than Lyfy? The app doesn't seem that innovative? (In the 80's we had rent a wreck. The cars were cheap, and got you where you wanted to go. Their are some of us who just want to get from point A to B. I a really suprised someone haven't pushed Uber to the curb, along with their fancy boy app? "Rate my driver? I'm not 15?".</comment></comment>