Judge Overturns Texas' Gay Marriage Amendment

[hoosierdaddy1976]

^^^This. Btw, my "partner" and I are finally getting married at the end of March. We've been together almost 24 years and yet have to travel to another state to do so. Anyhoo, I digress.

congrats

 

[IndyGal65]

congrats

Thank you.

 

[AceDerringer]

MisterChester i have read it...read it many times... i was merely commenting on the apparent consistent errosion and intrusion on those "powers" by whatever regime is in charge... I just wish the justices would read it once in a while...along with the rest of the Constitution... they are about as useful as teats on a bull...

 

[Tombs]

There is a huge difference between making sure all people have equal opportunity regardless of race and changing the meaning of marriage to include a behavior it never has.

There is still such a thing as religious freedom in this country. If the law wants to let gay marry, it needs to equally respect the freedom of people who will never think of such unions as a marriage. Religious people are not bigots just because they believe that marriage is something sacred and to label them as such over this issue is just as bigoted as racial discrimination.

This issue will not go away just because an activist judge proclaims marriage to be redefined. You can pretend the sky is pink but that won't make it so. If a Christian doesn't want to be forced to put two men on a wedding cake, why should he. Lots of people on INGO like bacon, but don't go to a deli to buy it.

As 2A activists are not likely to stop fighting activist judges, neither are 1st Amendment activists ready to give up the fight.

Nothing good will come of this. As if our country is not divided enough already.

And there is why marriage in general should be removed as any kind of legal definition, as well as any respect for it coming from the state.

 

[ryknoll3]

So I happen to be one of those people that thinks marriage is not a religious institution.

However, I have a question for those that feel it is a religious institution. I'm not trying to stir things up, but a genuine question.

How do you view a marriage that takes place between one male atheist & one female atheist that wed at the courthouse? Should that also be illegal in your view? This is a union, defined as a legal marriage under current law, given all of the same benefits, with spouse rights recognized for things like insurance or social security, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything based on religion. But do you view it the same as you do your own marriage for legal purposes? If you owned a bakery, would you refuse them a cake? Would you even ask them about their religious beliefs before you took their order?

What about marriages by religious people that are not Christian? If 2 people of Jewish faith wed, do you recognize that? Whose religion gets used to define marriage for the law? Can a Jewish person marry a Muslim?

I just don't see how you can define a marriage, using religion as a base, and not specify which religion. And if you do that, you must therefore exclude all other religions from the law as well. Once you do that, you've opened up a big can of worms.

I sincerely don't believe that the fight to recognize gay marriage as legal is a battle against religion at all. If you view it as an attack on faith, do you also exclude other faiths from being able to wed under the law? I'm genuinely interested to hear thoughts on this without it becoming a thread lock. I'm not trying to promote or discriminate against any religious belief at all.

Without turning this into a theological discussion, I would just say that those who believe the Bible is God's Word would say that God defined marriage way back with the first two people on the earth (Gen. 2) as a man a wife, and mankind can not redefine it to mean two men or two women.

My view is that government has no business defining who and who can not enter into a civil arrangement that affords them the same protections that marriage currently does under the law. Also, if you believe that God defines marriage a certain way, that doesn't change no matter what your government calls it.

 

[mrjarrell]

^^^This. Btw, my "partner" and I are finally getting married at the end of March. We've been together almost 24 years and yet have to travel to another state to do so. Anyhoo, I digress.

Congratulations! Sorry you have to travel for that, but one of these days that will change.

 

[CathyInBlue]

I saw "Article 1, Section 32. of the […] Constitution [is] unconstitutional" and my heart skipped a beat.



As to the topic at hand, if a Shinto couple marries in Japan, it's a legal marriage. If they move to Indiana, they are still married, and Indiana has to recognize that legal marriage. But if a gay Christian couple marries in Iowa, it's a legal marriage, but if they then move to Indiana, Indiana can ignore that legal marriage declaring for purposes of the state it's not a legal marriage? Excuse me?

Now, if that same couple of Shinto practitioners, prior to their Japanese nuptials, were to move to Indiana, they could still get married here legally, but IndyGal65, presumably a native, has to travel out of state, to a different jurisdiction, to get married? Excuse me?

This is an issue of basic fairness and state-sponsored capriciousness.

 

[Llamaguy]

^^ This has always bothered me, too! States explicitly have to recognize contracts and such of other states, except for this. Makes no sense to me at all!

 

[mrjarrell]

See? Cathy gets it. There is no equality before the law in Indiana and other states. That's what this judge in Texas just ruled. It's unfair on its face and unConstitutional. You can't vote away peoples Rights and make then unequal. Doesn't matter if 100% of your citizens think it's right.

 

[Trigger Time]

One day discrimination by the GOVERNMENT will stop. First we have to kick out all of the public servants who put their personal beliefs before the constitution.

 

[Leadeye]

Only one thing for sure to come from all of this, law firms making big money.

 

[Hohn]

Only The Shadow, and federal judges, know what Emanations lurk in The Penumbra!

IANAL but I get the reference. What a crock of crap that entire doctrine has produced!

 

[Hohn]

I saw "Article 1, Section 32. of the […] Constitution [is] unconstitutional" and my heart skipped a beat.



As to the topic at hand, if a Shinto couple marries in Japan, it's a legal marriage. If they move to Indiana, they are still married, and Indiana has to recognize that legal marriage. But if a gay Christian couple marries in Iowa, it's a legal marriage, but if they then move to Indiana, Indiana can ignore that legal marriage declaring for purposes of the state it's not a legal marriage? Excuse me?

Now, if that same couple of Shinto practitioners, prior to their Japanese nuptials, were to move to Indiana, they could still get married here legally, but IndyGal65, presumably a native, has to travel out of state, to a different jurisdiction, to get married? Excuse me?

This is an issue of basic fairness and state-sponsored capriciousness.

I think the root of this discord comes from the fact that previously there was a lot of overlap between judeo-christian values and the values of the State. As prof Robert Dahl defined it (RIP--he died last week), politics is the "authoritative allocation of values in a society."

The values being allocated, so to speak, are now differing from those of the Judeo-Christian tradition, creating a tension that never heretofore existed.

For a long time, the religious institution of marriage and the civil institution of marriage have been treated as one and the same. That is no longer true.

Since the State is redefining the civil half of marriage, it must be separated from the religious part of marriage.


While it does offend me that the idea of a homosexual partnership is morally equated to an institution ordained by God, I accept the idea of a homosexual civil union. It's not really marriage, not matter what they call it. Since we already have means in the law for someone to designate another person power of attorney, medical POA, life insurance benefits and such, it seems like not a big deal to create "package' of legal documents that lets someone execute several legal documents simultaneously.

I do find it odd that many of my fellow Christians think that homosexual unions are the end of the institution of marriage. As if 50%+ divorce rate had nothing to do with it. As if all the shacking up and cohabitation has nothing to do with it.


Gay marriage can't destroy the institution of traditional marriage, because that job was complete a long time ago.

I blogged about this awhile ago in which I made a case for Christians to tolerate gay "marriage."

h

 

[digitalphoenix]

Well, Texas will turn blue before too long...

 

[CathyInBlue]

While it does offend me that the idea of a homosexual partnership is morally equated to an institution ordained by God, I accept the idea of a homosexual civil union. It's not really marriage, not matter what they call it. Since we already have means in the law for someone to designate another person power of attorney, medical POA, life insurance benefits and such, it seems like not a big deal to create "package' of legal documents that lets someone execute several legal documents simultaneously.

I've heard this argument a lot (in the distant past) so I'd read up on it. The "package" you describe requires dozens of separate filings by professional lawyers to get the maximum allowable approximation of a legal marriage resulting in over $3000 in direct costs to the marrying couple. All this to get a product inferior to what a heterosexual couple gains for a single $25 filing in the form of a marriage license. Separate and unequal. Equal protection under the law. Wow. What a concept.

 

[CathyInBlue]

Well, Texas will turn blue before too long...

Only if the Social Conservatives try to hold onto their dreams of Theocracy.

 

[Hohn]

I've heard this argument a lot (in the distant past) so I'd read up on it. The "package" you describe requires dozens of separate filings by professional lawyers to get the maximum allowable approximation of a legal marriage resulting in over $3000 in direct costs to the marrying couple. All this to get a product inferior to what a heterosexual couple gains for a single $25 filing in the form of a marriage license. Separate and unequal. Equal protection under the law. Wow. What a concept.

Right. That's why I think you cannot defend the idea of denying gay couples the right to "marry' on purely civil grounds.

There's no justification for the idea that someone shouldn't be able to "marry" a person and automatically get all the legal statuses at once in a batch, just like regular couples do.

The entire equal protection argument, at a high level, fails. There is no equal protection violation because both gays and straights were "equally" being denied homosexual marriage. Now it just happens that only one of those groups actually wanted gay marriage-- but the law DID apply fairly, as a straight man could not legally marry a straight man.

The inequality then is not a result of the law treating people differently, as all were equally subject to it. Instead, the law treated people's PREFERENCES differently. But this happens all the time. Those how prefer not to do cocaine are preferred in the law over those who do not prefer cocaine. But these people are not being treated unequally before the law.

Like any law that draws a line between two preferences, the line ends up arbitrary. The law separates those who prefer to drink from those who don't. Moreoever, it establishes an arbitary line of what "sober" means in the law.

What is sober? It is having no alcohol in your system. Anything less than no alcohol isn't sobriety, but only degrees of being un-sober. There is *zero* legal reasoning that can say that 0.08 BAC is "impaired" but 0.07 isn't. It's a purely arbitrary line drawn in state law. But there's NO legal principle that says the legislature couldn't move it to 0.03 or 0.20. It's arbitrary-- a product of the whim of a governing authority.


Of course, there's also NO legal principle that allows a person to be in favor of gay marriage but oppose polygamy. Every argument for opening up marriage to any ONE other person naturally points to being able to make marriage open to more than one person.

The polygamists will be next. And they will win, because once "equality of *preference*" is granted in the institution of marriage, limitations on that preference CANNOT be legally defended. Any and all such limits will be arbitrary.

They too will win their "rights" thanks to the pioneering work in eliminating all vestiges of religious overtone to a marriage.



Sometimes, getting what you ask for isn't the best outcome.

h

 

[Hohn]

Nothing good will come of this. As if our country is not divided enough already.

And therein is the point. A divided people are easily conquered.

 

[ajeandy]

So I happen to be one of those people that thinks marriage is not a religious institution.

However, I have a question for those that feel it is a religious institution. I'm not trying to stir things up, but a genuine question.

How do you view a marriage that takes place between one male atheist & one female atheist that wed at the courthouse? Should that also be illegal in your view? This is a union, defined as a legal marriage under current law, given all of the same benefits, with spouse rights recognized for things like insurance or social security, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything based on religion. But do you view it the same as you do your own marriage for legal purposes? If you owned a bakery, would you refuse them a cake? Would you even ask them about their religious beliefs before you took their order?

What about marriages by religious people that are not Christian? If 2 people of Jewish faith wed, do you recognize that? Whose religion gets used to define marriage for the law? Can a Jewish person marry a Muslim?

I just don't see how you can define a marriage, using religion as a base, and not specify which religion. And if you do that, you must therefore exclude all other religions from the law as well. Once you do that, you've opened up a big can of worms.

I sincerely don't believe that the fight to recognize gay marriage as legal is a battle against religion at all. If you view it as an attack on faith, do you also exclude other faiths from being able to wed under the law? I'm genuinely interested to hear thoughts on this without it becoming a thread lock. I'm not trying to promote or discriminate against any religious belief at all.

THIS. It's an excuse. They don't agree with it, this is their weapon they take to battle, religion.

 

[88GT]

And state's rights further erodes. Shall we just get rid of this thing called the 10th Amendment now or what?

It's been relegated to the trash heap of history for all intents and purposes. The semantics game being played with the "rights" vs. "powers" argument is just a red herring. It's an easy way to disregard the fact that the states no longer have the authority to govern themselves are are nearly completely subordinated to the feds.

States never had the right to discriminate.

Actually, they did. And they did it quite frequently. State were never subject to the limitations of the BoR until the doctrine of incorporation was fabricated by the 14th. Even after that, SCOTUS had ruled that the states were not limited by the 1st and 2nd amendments. And it wasn't until very recently that the 2A achieved incorporated status.

I've heard this argument a lot (in the distant past) so I'd read up on it. The "package" you describe requires dozens of separate filings by professional lawyers to get the maximum allowable approximation of a legal marriage resulting in over $3000 in direct costs to the marrying couple. All this to get a product inferior to what a heterosexual couple gains for a single $25 filing in the form of a marriage license. Separate and unequal. Equal protection under the law. Wow. What a concept.

It wouldn't require separate filings. You can conceivably lump all of the common law-based rights/responsibilities and privileges/protections into a single document. That said, I oppose this avenue because it is almost impossible to explicitly cover all the rights/responsibilities and privileges/protections of marriage. Contracts of that nature are also more easily de-constructed and voided by judges. They also require the participants to defend the union after the fact. The example I give most often is that of the inheritance of a spouse's estate. Under the current paradigm, the surviving spouse is recognized as the first in line for succession. Any claims to the deceased's estates must prove the invalidity of the spouse's relationship to the deceased. On the other hand, if the spousal privilege of succession is defined by an explicit contract, then claims to the deceased's estate create a reversal of standing for the surviving spouse. Now the spouse must prove the validity of the relationship via the contract. What if the contract is lost? Or what if the wording left open an opportunity for the claimant to benefit where none was intended? Or worse? What if the non-spouse's claim is that he/she IS the spouse and produces a contract to that end? Do we really want to give the secretary the opportunity to forge a document giving her primacy in a succession hearing?

So while the actual logistics of re-creating the contractual nature of marriage aren't prohibitive in nature, the actual form of that contract falls far short of the common law-based version of marriage we have now. To that end, I fully support state-recognized marriage unions between anybody and everybody that wants to enter into it.