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Originally Posted by erimir
Doesn't the wording in the amendment nullify ALL marriages in Texas?
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Sure looks that way, doesn't it? The first sentence defines marriage and the second decrees that marriages -- i.e., a "legal status identical . . . to marriage" -- cannot be recognized. From now on, the President and the First Lady are living in sin whenever they set foot in their home state. Strangely enough, the evil, godless, sodomite, judicial activist state of Massachusetts recognizes the validity of Shrub's marriage but Texas doesn't.
Of course, no court would ever hold that the quoted language does away with heterosexual marriages. If any such case is ever brought, textualism will be summarily shitcanned in favor of nebulous discussion regarding the intent of the drafters and the voters.
Still, these neanderthal provisions can have some rather ghastly unintended consenquences. Ohio voters passed a strongly worded anti-gay marriage amendment to their state constitution in November 2004. Based on language disturbingly similar to the Texas amendment, a number of Ohio trial courts have dismissed domestic violence prosecutions on the ground that that the Ohio amendment voids that state's criminal domestic violence law as applied to unmarried heterosexual couples. Those cases are now on appeal. Once again, courts have the unenviable job of cleaning up yet another shit-smellin' social conservative mess.