You correctly champion that people have choices but so do other people. They should not have to deal with something they feel is completely immoral. They have the right to use their property as they want and discriminate against them by this belief. Should you forced to deal with something you find immoral?

As far as the Nazi thing is concerned, I find it is often a tool brought in by those who do not have the ability to make a coherent and convincing argument. They say things like Hitler and Nazis in an effort to artificially strengthen their argument. They create a straw man, then relate him to a scary group most people fear and hate, and they think they made a valid point. What’s worse is that they can really stretch to make these connections and completely ruin the discussion by going way off topic. In fact, I’m not too happy that you’ve caused me to go off topic because of this. Example: “Did you know that Bob breathes air? Guess who else breathed air….HITLER!!! Bob must be a Nazi!!!” All right so that example was a bit of a stretch itself, but it was so to make a point. When you bring up unrelated or very, very, very loosely related things in an effort to tie them to something people loathe and fear, I will take you about as seriously as anyone who would voice the above example. I think it is more plausible to believe that people use talk of Nazi’s in an effort to control people’s minds and manipulate their actions more so than the definitions of a legal contract like marriage. If you are going to discuss something with me, I need you to comment directly and specifically on what I am saying. If you believe I am one of these people "who assume government can act beyond the law to do whatever it needs," then prove it based on what I say.

@PhilosopherKing – Look there were sources for that term at the bottom of that page if you really doubt the existence of that test. I’m not here to mislead you. It wouldn’t be worth my time or yours to do so. But if you still doubt that the test exists, you can read this http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?….
You will clearly see that the justices involved considered rational basis.

The people are not the sole deciders of the constitution (well, you could argue that indirectly, and in some cases very indirectly, they are). Judges do not just freely overturn the decisions of the people. These rules and precedents have been built up so that judges do not abuse their power. It is definitely constitutional for judges to use these precedents. Would you rather them ignore the past and decide on how they feel at the time? That could easily lead them to abuse their power. At least now they have to make a darn good argument for anything they do.

You mention the people a lot. And while they are important and certainly the founding fathers thought so, they are not always right. If you read about the founding fathers, you will find that while they believed in democracy, the feared the tyranny of the majority. This is the reason they put limits on our democracy. They were genius for doing so, because the people can be easily led astray by things like mob mentality and demagogues. You mentioned in an earlier post that this whole thought control thing is “incredibly insidious because only a person of above average IQ can spot it and only if that person only has the time to think about it. Its scary when you think about how powerful word manipulation can be as a tool for mass manipulation.” If you can say something like this, surely you know and can understand how a raw, unlimited democracy can lead to terrible atrocities committed by the people. Democracy is great, but the limitations placed upon it by our founding fathers were necessary. I’ll leave you with this quote by James Madison from the Federalist Papers, “The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Even the “many” can be a tyranny. The people should not be “squarely in charge of the entire process.”

I felt the need to bring in NAZIs because their seems to be a lot of people who assume government can act beyond the law to do whatever it needs. Government who acts on its own authority versus just being confined to the enforcing the law is a dictatorship since the law in itself defines where the government can act. Assuming the govt. can act whenever it wants to end discrimination that is legal under the constitution would be a dictatorship since it would be govt officials personal authority and not their legal authority that they are acting on. They are two different things.

@ Philosopherking – I have a lot more respect for you. As far as the rational basis test is concerned, it is sometimes referred to as “rational basis review,” or simply “rational basis.” Here is a link defining it http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Rat…
Now, while using this test to actually overturn a law is rare, it is not impossible. I do agree with you that people can interpret things very differently. But, I do not believe we can just ask whoever wrote the amendments how they felt about what they did at the time for very obvious reasons. Most of them are dead. So, interpretation on some level is a necessary evil. I would rather have a judge doing it than some random person. As far as that being undemocratic, well the very amendments (and maybe even judicial review on some levels) themselves were created to limit majority power. Are the amendments in their very existence undemocratic? Whether they are or not, I believe that they need to be there to protect us from the occasional hiccup of the majority.