Majivo wrote:
Gbaji, your reading comprehension is atrocious. You claim that in Perez v. Sharp they link marriage and procreation, and yet:
Perez v. Sharp wrote:
The right to marry is as fundamental as the right to send one's child to a particular school or the right to have offspring
Sigh... You can lead a horse to water...
Reading comprehension means being able to follow the flow of the words, not just pluck single sentences out. The Judge is equating one fundamental right to two others previously established. One of which is the right to send your child to a school of your choice. The other is the right to procreate. Now... Wait for it... Read further and see where that right to procreate comes from. It comes from Skinner, in which it *and* marriage are linked to that right. Perez quotes Skinner. How did you miss it? I even bolded it for you...
And if we're going to talk about comprehension, why did the judge choose to list off two rights in that section both having to do with children when making his case for marriage being a "fundamental right"? Think about it. Don't just read the words, understand what the person writing them is saying.
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Here, they're quite clearly making a distinction between the right to marriage and the right to procreate.
No. He's saying that they are similar. Not identical, but similar. He's saying that just as a person has a right to decide where to send their child to school, and just as a person has a right to choose to procreate, a person has a right to marry. He's saying that these things all fit into a similar category and exist as "fundamental rights" because they share common social import.
He's absolutely not making a distinction between them. And, more to the point, he then specifically quotes from Skinner in which that justice declared them together to be a fundamental right. Precedence comes from somewhere, and this concept of marriage as a fundamental right ultimately comes from that statement in Skinner. Ironically, I only included the first paragraph so that no one would claim that I was leaving out the bits about choosing schools for you children. I don't see how that removes the later and more relevant statements, but I didn't want someone insisting that I left them off because I did.
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Thus the right of procreation can be denied separately from the right to marriage, and vice versa.
Not according to Skinner. Skinner combines the two into one. In fact, even though the case had
nothing at all to do with marriage, marriage is mentioned only one time in the case in the sentence quoted later in Perez (and presumably in other court cases since). Why, if the case is purely about forced sterilization and the justice is making a point about the "right to procreation", does he say "marriage and procreation are fundamental..."?
Think about what the words mean and why they were written. That one use of the word marriage wasn't added to skinner just as flavor. It has a meaning. The two go hand in hand.
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The fact that this has not yet happened does mean they legally cannot be - and we are, after all, having a legal debate, despite the several pages in this thread you spent trying to discuss things which have nothing to do with the law. If marriage and procreation are so inextricably linked to the justices as you claim, then why list the right to send your child to a particular school?
Because they have similar justifications having something to do with the state stepping in and making decisions for reason of social/physical/mental health. You have to read more of Perez to see that he's debunking a state position that it's for the good of the people to not allow mixed races to marry, complete with some pretty weak arguments about diseases and whatnot. So cases relevant to the issue of the state taking a "public good" position for discrimination would be logical choices.
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Is this another right that's somehow linked to marriage? If you get a divorce, are you required to send your child to the nearest public school? Or are you simply picking and choosing the lines you want from the ruling just like you're accusing everyone else of doing?
I think you're reading too much into it. I included the whole section so no one could argue that I cherry picked the section. There happens to be an additional reference in there which isn't part of what I'm talking about. Don't read anything more into it than that.
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Why is it that procreation and marriage are linked so powerfully by this ruling and yet nothing else that he happened to mention are?
Because the quote from Skinner effectively says so. The logic is pretty simple really:
If a right to procreate exists, then by extension any law which places limits or burdens on the choice of who to procreate with must infringe that right.
Limits on marriage represent clear limits or burdens on the choice of who to procreate with.
Therefore, those limits on marriage violate a "fundamental right".
My argument is that since that establishment of marriage as a "fundamental right" rests on the effect of limiting marriage on the resulting limits on procreation choices, a law which places limits or restrictions on marriage only to couples who cannot procreate does *not* violate the fundamental right at question.
Get it?