Gay Marriage Upheld by USSC in Close Ruling

[Malthus]

The irony here is that my brother *did* marry a woman who inherited piles of money, truly wealthy - and they use none of it. They live as poor academics - they are both profs at the university of Iowa.   

I imagine you can live a decent upper middle class lifestyle on the salary of two professors.

They are professors but on contract - not tenure track.

Yup, they can and do. But it is a lot less in terms of lifestyle compared with what they could live as, should they use the inherited wealth.

[Malthus]

He could have mean that, despite having great wealth, they live very frugal lives.

Don't try to be reasonable with this crowd. Doesn't work. 

[Admiral Yi]

Don't try to be reasonable with this crowd. Doesn't work. 

[Malthus]

Don't try to be reasonable with this crowd. Doesn't work. 

Yeah, because given a choice between the reasonable thing I actually meant, and bullshit that supports a popular Languish meme, you lot will choose bullshit every time.  So predictable.

[Valmy]

I knew what you meant Malthus

[Syt]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/news/article/russian-orthodox-church-spokesman-lashes-out-over-us-gay-marriage-ruling/524544.html

Russian Orthodox Church Spokesman Lashes Out Over U.S. Gay Marriage Ruling

A spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church has called on all those who idolize the American democratic model to take a hard look at themselves after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to legalize same-sex marriage, Interfax reported Sunday.

The United States' highest court ruled Saturday that same-sex marriage should be legalized across the entire country, meaning that the 14 states with bans on gay marriage will no longer be able to enforce them.

But Vsevolod Chaplin, a Russian Orthodox Church spokesman, decried the decision to legalize such a "godless and sinful thing" and warned his compatriots to be wary of the values that the current U.S. leadership is trying to impose on other countries, Interfax reported.

"In reality they want to take away your right to live by faith ... to take away the possibility of building the life of your society and your state based on the eternal and unchanging moral laws dictated by God," the priest was quoted as saying.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Russia, but a law passed in June 2013 bans the promotion of "nontraditional" sexual relations to minors. A survey by independent pollster Levada Center last month found 37 percent of Russians think homosexuality is a disease that needs to be cured.

In light of the Supreme Court's decision, Facebook created an application that allows users to cover their profile pictures with a transparent filter in the colors of the LGBT rainbow flag. Rishat Shigapov, a Facebook user who heads a digital marketing agency, responded to the rainbow-flag app by creating a separate program allowing users to cover their profile photos with the colors of the Russian flag. Revealing his new tricolor profile photo, Shigapov wrote on his Facebook page: "I'm Russian and I'm proud."

The Facebook app likewise provoked the wrath of conservative politician Vitaly Milonov, a deputy in St. Petersburg's legislative assembly.

Milonov, an architect of Russia's "gay propaganda" law, told the Russian News Service on Saturday that he had asked the country's media watchdog to block Facebook because the application was in "flagrant violation" of the country's law given that the social media site has no age limit.

The reaction to the Supreme Court's decision has not been entirely negative in Russia. Senator Konstantin Dobrynin, deputy head of the Federation Council's constitutional law committee, used the ruling to urge his country to adopt a more balanced approach in its own dealings with the LGBT community.

"It is important not to turn away from the present-day realities and not to lapse into the same old battle against homosexuals, but to try to find a legal way of ensuring a public balance between the conservative section of society and everyone else on this subject," Dobrynin was quoted as saying.

The senator has spoken out on the topic of LGBT rights before, telling newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets in September 2013 that he was tired of Russia's preoccupation with anti-gay lawmaking — though he did not vote against a draft law banning gay propaganda to minors. The bill was passed by 137 votes, with one abstention.

Dobrynin also suggested to Interfax on Sunday that the introduction of a law based upon the principles of "don't ask, don't tell" could help the country move toward a greater acceptance of the LGBT community by giving gay Russians greater privacy in their personal lives.

The Kremlin has yet to publicly comment on the decision of the United States to legalize gay marriage.

[Valmy]

I knew the Russians would be delighted at this development. It plays perfectly into their propaganda.

[Admiral Yi]

Yeah, because given a choice between the reasonable thing I actually meant, and bullshit that supports a popular Languish meme, you lot will choose bullshit every time.  So predictable.

If you meant to say that although they have a huge trust fund they are choosing to live on two adjunct professor salaries, you did a poor job of expressing it.  That you meant two full professors salaries renders a couple poor was a reasonable interpretation, not "choosing bullshit."

Which still leaves the question of whether or not two adjunct professor salaries renders a couple poor.  I do know adjuncts at the local community college get absolutely nothing, but I would expect the university to pay more.  My guess is they're making around 60-70 combined. 

Then on top of that you decided to pull in as support for your position Tonitrus' interpretation that you merely meant that they were living frugally.  However, if this were the case then their occupation would have been irrelevant.  One can live frugally on an investment banker's salary, or a professional athlete's salary.

[crazy canuck]

Is this accurate?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/06/obamacare-and-gay-marriage

...What's interesting, and so far under-appreciated about Mr Roberts' decision in the Obamacare case, is that the court explicitly denies that the executive branch had the authority to resolve the ambiguities in the text of the Affordable Care Act. Many commentators predicted that the case would be decided on a principle known as "Chevron deference", first articulated in Chevron USA v Natural Resources Defence Council, which states that the court should defer to the executive branch's interpretation of ambiguous statutory language, so long as it is reasonable. But some on the court, Mr Roberts included, don't much care for the Chevron principle. It weakens the power of judicial review, the court's authority "to say what the law is", as first set forth in Marbury v Madison, which Mr Roberts duly mentions in his ruling. Now, in cases of large "economic and political significance", the Chevron principle does not apply. The court had not fully embraced this limit on the executive branch's authority to interpret the meaning of legislation until now, in the Obamacare decision. Although the court happens to agree with the IRS's interpretation of the statute, Mr Roberts' ruling goes to some pains to say that, because the IRS had not been specifically empowered by the legislature to make this sort of economically and politically significant determination, it did not have the authority to do so. The court need not defer to the use of authority the executive branch doesn't have.

This is a very important development. The court has ruled that when the interpretation of ambiguous legislation has potentially profound consequences, and congress didn't delegate interpretative authority to a specific administrative agency, it is the court's job, not the executive's, to decide what the law says. "It is...the Court's task", Mr Roberts wrote, "to determine the correct reading" of an unclear law. Which is a nice way of telling the executive branch to take Chevron deference and stuff it.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, calls Mr Roberts opinion "a masterwork of indirection". Mr Sunstein, who had a hand in the executive branch's interpretation of the Obamacare as the former head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, says that although the decision may vindicate the president's pet programme, "it is also a strong assertion of the court's, and not the executive branch's, ultimate power to say what the law is".

R.J. Lehmann, a senior fellow at R Street, a free-market think tank, sees a big smaller-government upside to Mr Roberts' Obamacare ruling. "Roberts has just opened a huge new avenue for challenges to administrative rulemaking", Mr Lehmann writes. "From labour laws to environmental standards—not to mentions reams and reams of tax rulings—there's no shortage of federal rules" now open to challenge. Indeed, conservatives and libertarians may soon happily come to rely on the Obamacare ruling in their quest to rein in an unruly executive bureaucracy. If they do so, they'll be conceding, at least implicitly, the model of the division of powers Mr Roberts has so cagily persuaded the court's liberals to sign on to. But this model is manifestly one of the legislature's rule-making supremacy, and the court's secondary, interpretive authority. Congress legislates. The executive gets to decide what ambiguous legislation means only if the decision doesn't have important economic or political consequences, or if congress has granted that authority. Otherwise, it is up the court to settle what the law says.

...

It sounds like there is a bit missing here.  It is not at all unusual for a Court to determine when deference should be given to a decision made by government.  There are a wide range of factors including whether the decision was a question of law in which case no deference is normally given.  It sounds like the question was whether to give deference on a determination of whether the decision making body had jurisdiction.  That is normally a question of law and so deference is normally not given.

Unless I am missing something this isn't particularly newsworthy.

[Malthus]

Yeah, because given a choice between the reasonable thing I actually meant, and bullshit that supports a popular Languish meme, you lot will choose bullshit every time.  So predictable.

If you meant to say that although they have a huge trust fund they are choosing to live on two adjunct professor salaries, you did a poor job of expressing it.  That you meant two full professors salaries renders a couple poor was a reasonable interpretation, not "choosing bullshit."

Which still leaves the question of whether or not two adjunct professor salaries renders a couple poor.  I do know adjuncts at the local community college get absolutely nothing, but I would expect the university to pay more.  My guess is they're making around 60-70 combined. 

Then on top of that you decided to pull in as support for your position Tonitrus' interpretation that you merely meant that they were living frugally.  However, if this were the case then their occupation would have been irrelevant.  One can live frugally on an investment banker's salary, or a professional athlete's salary.

Well, you *could* have noted that when I mentioned that they were living as "poor academics", I meant they weren't "full professors". One *would* think that the one sorta implies the other, no?

But no, it makes more sense - to you - to assume I meant "full, tenured professors" so that you could have a laff at how clueless I am.

I don't hold it against you - it is just very predictable.

Now, admittedly the life of a contract academic isn't exactly poverty-stricken - it is merely "poor" compared with a life of inherited wealth and priviledge - but once again, trust you to fail to allow for the use of the term comparatively in context. Because, of course, being reasonable would never do.   

[Admiral Yi]

Well, you *could* have noted that when I mentioned that they were living as "poor academics", I meant they weren't "full professors". One *would* think that the one sorta implies the other, no?

No.  I just said that.

[Malthus]

Well, you *could* have noted that when I mentioned that they were living as "poor academics", I meant they weren't "full professors". One *would* think that the one sorta implies the other, no?

No.  I just said that.

That you meant two full professors salaries renders a couple poor was a reasonable interpretation, ...

?

[DGuller]

Poor is poor, it's not a comparative concept.  No matter how rich you are, there is always someone a whole order of magnitude richer, unless you're listed by Forbes.

[Admiral Yi]

??

The quoted passage is pretty much the opposite of what you said.

You: The reasonable interpretation is I didn't mean full professors.

Me: A reasonable interpretation is you meant full professors.

[Malthus]

??

The quoted passage is pretty much the opposite of what you said.

You: The reasonable interpretation is I didn't mean full professors.

Me: A reasonable interpretation is you meant full professors.

My mistake: I thought you meant you just said what I said.

How is it reasonable to assume I meant something absurd where there exists an explaination that isn't absurd?