"Don't ask, don't tell"

I'm glad it's lifted. But unfortunately, getting to where we are now was never as simple as a lot of people think, which is why the policy was put in place by a democrat in the first place.

It's not going to be a popular move, but I give Obama credit for doing it anyway. Sometimes you have to step back and say, "Look, you might not like it, but this is the way it's going to be."

This is by far the best thing Obama has done since he's been in office.

 

I've never understood why anyone would be bothered by gays getting married.

I think it's a political ploy to get the elderly vote, since it seems to be the elderly who are the most against it.

 

Is it not, though? I haven't seen anything to indicate that it's unpopular. In fact, I believe I read some survey of young military people who by a vast majority didn't care at all.

 

I think the vast majority of the military is indifferent or for it. I don't think that's the case with the heads of the military though. I think that's where the opposition is, but they need to start dealing with it.

 

Yeah, to them I imagine it's something that might interfere with order. I doubt they for the most part really care about homosexuality as they care about a monkey wrench in running a tight ship.

 

True, it's easier to keep the status quo than to have to deal with any fallout.

 

And that's perfectly understandable. But when McCain et al. go back to their "it'll mess up the order" and "we shouldn't do this during war-time," it looks shallow when the guy who chairs the Joint Chiefs says he thinks it'll be OK.

Plus, I don't think we should be turning away any qualified soldiers when we're stuck in two wars.

 

This is misleading. First, I assume that you mean Strict Scrutiny. You make it sound like constitutional law still hasn't come all the way around on equal rights for women, when in reality, all that intermediate scrutiny means is that there can be some legitimate reasons for treating the sexes differently. If Gender had strict scrutiny, no municipal building would be allowed to have seperate bathrooms.

 

But Scalia doesn't see it quite that way, for one. He tried to use the distinction, if I recall, to keep VMI segregated by gender. That's something a little more discriminatory than separate bathrooms. Now, he was writing in dissent, but it still indicates that the idea that there is little practical difference between strict and intermediate scrutiny is not something that every legal scholar has accepted.

 

I didn't say there was little difference between them, only that Gender is a poor candidate for strict scrutiny, which would just about prohibit any separation at all between genders, as is the case with race (except when they fudge with AA and call diversity a "compelling" state interest, when just about nothing else is, but that's for another day). Once you're outside of SS, your next option is intermediate scrutiny, which like most things intermediate, is harder to define and implement, so you get differences of opinion about what is and is not OK.

 

Guy, I guess my point is that gay marriage bans are more likely to be overturned on due process grounds than equal protection, which the Court is still shaky about expanding beyond its racial discrimination roots.

 

I don't disagree, and I also don't think you said anything that was wrong, but it was misleading to people who don't speak the language, so I wanted to clarify.