Do you support equal marriage rights and legal benefits? Call it something other than marriage? Against it entirely?
Discuss. Explain your position.
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Edited by OaklandPaintbalr: 1/12/2013 12:17:09 AMPrior to the civil rights movement, the South had enacted "Separate but Equal" laws that kept whites and blacks segregated into separate facilities. We all know that these facilities were, in fact, very unequal. In Brown V Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that these laws violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment. [quote]No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; [b]nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.[/b][/quote] In addition, even if these facilities had been 100% equal, the Supreme Court ruled that separation in itself was unequal. The nature of separation is harmful and unequal because it implied blacks were somehow inferior to whites and therefore had to be separated. This was the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court. This applies to gay marriage. Separating it into "Traditional Marriage" and "Civil Unions" implies that gay marriage is somehow undesirable and unequal to traditional marriage. It serves no practical purpose other than to segregate. Therefore, separating gay marriage from traditional marriage violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment and is unconstitutional. I don't care what your holy book says. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land.