Court: Heart of gay marriage law unconstitutional

[TrackerSam]

I am a socialist. I actually love personal freedom. And I'm not a registered Democrat. :waitasec:

So here, why don't you stop telling me what I think? But oh wait, then conservatives like you would have to drop their cartoonish view of what socialists actually are.

America - only country in the world where people consider a centrist politician and party like Barak Obama and thhe democrats to be socialists, and that socialists are out to establish Dictatorships or something. hoh:

You don't think about anything near as I can tell. :floorlaugh: I use words like 'most' and 'majority' and you read 'all'. :waitasec: :doh:
Why don't you stop trying to change what I write? This might help -

http://www.time4learning.com/readingpyramid/comprehension.htm

 

[Gardenlady]

The SC will have to rule on the constitutionality of each states definition of marriage. No state out right bans gay marriage, so the SC can't possibly rule against what doesn't exist.
You see restricting alcohol (dry counties) as evil while restricting Happy Meals is good. Is there any consistancy in your thinking or are you just throwing darts at issues tacked on a wall. The people in those counties chose to be dry, I know you hate personal freedoms to do things like vote and free speech drives liberals bananas.
Check this web site out. kill-scott-walker-angry-libs-flood-twitter-with-death-threats-after-wisconsin-recall-defeat
The rest of your reply is alot of nonsensical claims that you can't back up.
The majority of people registered as Republicans are really libertarians and the majority of liberals are really socialists registered as Democrats. Socialists hate personal freedom.
Now I have to get back to the Scott Walker victory party.

No "most", no "majority", just "socialists".

Ad even with qualifiers, you're still wrong. But you know that. It simply serves
your purpose to mischaracterize people you disagree with. Because if you and the rest of the far right can successfully paint Obama and Democrats as socialists, and actual socialists as people who hate freedom, then your whole voting bloc is too scared to think for themselves about who and what exactly they're voting for. You just convince each other that the only thing that matters is voting against the eeeeevil socialists.

 

[TrackerSam]

:sleep:

 

[Nova]

You don't think about anything near as I can tell. :floorlaugh: I use words like 'most' and 'majority' and you read 'all'. :waitasec: :doh:
Why don't you stop trying to change what I write? This might help -

http://www.time4learning.com/readingpyramid/comprehension.htm

Tracker, with respect, when you post things like "The people in those counties chose to be dry...." you seem to be speaking of ALL the people. In fact, a majority of voters in a specific election (almost always a minority of total voters) chose to prevent everyone else from purchasing alcohol.

Not the same thing.

 

[Nova]

FWIW, the Supreme Court does NOT have to decide gay marriage rights on a state-by-state basis. It's unlikely, but it could rule that marriage is a universal right, one held by gay people as well as straight. (Actually, this will happen someday, but I don't expect it in the near future, perhaps not even in my lifetime.)

Or it could simply rule that the California constitution prevents the revocation of a minority right once it has been established (the issue in the Prop 8 case). This would make gay marriage legal in CA but not in any other new state.

Or it could decide that each state must recognize legal marriages performed in any other state (i.e., overthrow DOMA), which is as it was throughout most of recent US history. This would tend to may gay marriage legal everywhere, but force gay couples to actually get married in the states that allow it.

Or it could do none of these things, by overturning lower court rulings. Or it could allow the above to stand by refusing to hear appeals of lower court rulings.

SCOTUS has quite a number of options, given that several gay marriage-related cases are making their ways toward the Supreme Court.

 

[gitana1]

FWIW, the Supreme Court does NOT have to decide gay marriage rights on a state-by-state basis. It's unlikely, but it could rule that marriage is a universal right, one held by gay people as well as straight. (Actually, this will happen someday, but I don't expect it in the near future, perhaps not even in my lifetime.)

Or it could simply rule that the California constitution prevents the revocation of a minority right once it has been established (the issue in the Prop 8 case). This would make gay marriage legal in CA but not in any other new state.

Or it could decide that each state must recognize legal marriages performed in any other state (i.e., overthrow DOMA), which is as it was throughout most of recent US history. This would tend to may gay marriage legal everywhere, but force gay couples to actually get married in the states that allow it.

Or it could do none of these things, by overturning lower court rulings. Or it could allow the above to stand by refusing to hear appeals of lower court rulings.

SCOTUS has quite a number of options, given that several gay marriage-related cases are making their ways toward the Supreme Court.

Thanks for this. You're right. Depending on the Supreme Court's ruling on whatever issue they decide to review, we could eventually get a definitive answer on gay marriage across the board, or not.

I am with you in the hopes that this Supreme Court fails to review the issue of whether marriage is a universal right of all competent, consenting adults. But if they do, I can't see how they get past Loving v. Virginia which definitively states that:

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/loving.html

Sexuality can and should easily replace "race" in the above ruling. Especially since the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment, which the ruling in Loving is based on, says nothing about race, just that: "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; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

But, after taking a year of constitutional law during law school and seeing how different courts (liberal leaning and conservative leaning) will stretch and twist to get certain facts to fit that court's specific constitutional interpretation, I know it is very possible that the Supreme Court may simply ignore the holding in Loving and find a way to continue to deny civil rights to one sector of the population, based on something, much like the color of one's skin, that that population cannot change.

We are living in an incredible time. As the years go by, fewer of us will be able to remember when it was okay to deny people of color, basic civil rights. But every one of us here right now will be able to recall, to future generations, the time when the United States of America, the nation that created the constitution, that represents freedom, that authored the famous quote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", denied those very rights to a certain section of the population based on nothing more than prejudice and ignorance.

The rest of the free world, the other of the developed, advanced nations, some of whom copied our notion of freedom and equality and ran with it, have begun to move quickly past discrimination and inequality when it comes to the LGBT population. But not us. Not yet.

The country of my mother's birth (Holland) recognizes gay marriage. So does the country of my father's birth (Spain). Why can't the country of my birth, my country, the country that created modern notions of equality and freedom, do the same?

 

[Quiche]

You mean like regulating what people eat and drink? Happy Meal toys? Now Berkely Cal. is trying to outlaw sitting on the sidewalk. No wait -----that's what liberals do.

Really? I though those type of things, plus all the helmet laws and such, were super do-gooder "no one is as smart as me" right wing fanatics! :floorlaugh: Funny how what we don't like MUST be the "other" side.

For the record, I believe in the individual and his personal decisions: Such as, marriage.

:moo:

 

[Nova]

Beautifully put, gitana1. I hadn't realized the language in Loving v. Virginia was so explicit.

But particularly after Bush v. Gore, I am sadly aware that Scalia, et al., can mangle language and logic to get any result they prefer. I'm really hoping the Court refuses to take the case.

 

[Jack]

I would really like for all non-religious commitments to be civil unions, gay or not. The 'marriage' ceremony is a religious ceremony and it has no place in our laws.

 

[gitana1]

I would really like for all non-religious commitments to be civil unions, gay or not. The 'marriage' ceremony is a religious ceremony and it has no place in our laws.

True, Jack. Most wedding ceremonies today are based on religious ceremony. But, marriage is and always has been, since ancient times, a civil contract between two parties that bestows certain rights on spouses and their offspring, which have everything to do with money/property.

In certain ancient cultures (Hebraic), law and religion were inextricably linked. That's why the ceremony surrounding the contract began to take on a religious aspect. But, religion is not a necessary component of marriage. In essence, marriage is really just a civil union. I don't know that we need a separate category.

Some people object to the role that clergy can play in performing the ceremony and completing the license. They state that such a role amounts to a violation of the First Amendment (separation of church and state. Yes, that's right, the first amendment actually mandates a separation of church and state, people, as various Supreme Court decisions have determined and as one of the founding fathers explained).

I don't have a problem with marriage being a civil contract, and for those who desire, being a separate, religious rite or sacrament, at the same time. It does not have to be both and for some people, it is only religious in nature and does not include a civil component. But I understand why some do.

 

[Jacie Estes]

Thanks for this. You're right. Depending on the Supreme Court's ruling on whatever issue they decide to review, we could eventually get a definitive answer on gay marriage across the board, or not.

I am with you in the hopes that this Supreme Court fails to review the issue of whether marriage is a universal right of all competent, consenting adults. But if they do, I can't see how they get past Loving v. Virginia which definitively states that:http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/loving.html

Sexuality can and should easily replace "race" in the above ruling. Especially since the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment, which the ruling in Loving is based on, says nothing about race, just that: "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; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

But, after taking a year of constitutional law during law school and seeing how different courts (liberal leaning and conservative leaning) will stretch and twist to get certain facts to fit that court's specific constitutional interpretation, I know it is very possible that the Supreme Court may simply ignore the holding in Loving and find a way to continue to deny civil rights to one sector of the population, based on something, much like the color of one's skin, that that population cannot change.

We are living in an incredible time. As the years go by, fewer of us will be able to remember when it was okay to deny people of color, basic civil rights. But every one of us here right now will be able to recall, to future generations, the time when the United States of America, the nation that created the constitution, that represents freedom, that authored the famous quote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", denied those very rights to a certain section of the population based on nothing more than prejudice and ignorance.

The rest of the free world, the other of the developed, advanced nations, some of whom copied our notion of freedom and equality and ran with it, have begun to move quickly past discrimination and inequality when it comes to the LGBT population. But not us. Not yet.

The country of my mother's birth (Holland) recognizes gay marriage. So does the country of my father's birth (Spain). Why can't the country of my birth, my country, the country that created modern notions of equality and freedom, do the same?

BBM

You are correct about interpretation of courts and there is also implementation of Legislative and Executive factors. Having studied tribal law, as well as laws, policies and executive acts pertaining to Indians, I'll use Worcester v. Georgia and Cherokee Nation v. Georgia as examples of SCOTUS being usurped by Executive action. Andrew Jackson's statements such as "cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, Christian community" was a prelude to the Indian Removal Act and we know how that turned out. I am glad that there is a President, at this time, who is not displaying the bigotry and small mindedness of Andrew Jackson. One can only hope that this move to allow gay marriage will not be usurped. I would advise no one in this effort sign a treaty; the US is not very good at honoring them.
IMHO-signed a 'savage'