"Gay Marriage" banned in Texas

[alphamale]

Texans overwhelmingly adopted a state constitutional amendment. Whether it stands depends on how soon Sandra Day O'Connor leaves.

[Godless Dave]

It does? So far all consitutional questions regarding gay marriage have been settled at the state level, because they have to do with state constitutions. Marriage is a state, not a federal, issue.

[inland wave]

Originally Posted by alphamale

Texans overwhelmingly adopted a state constitutional amendment. Whether it stands depends on how soon Sandra Day O'Connor leaves.

Does this really surprise you? After all, you are talking bible belt state.
It's a state matter not a federal one. Oh, I think this has already been noted.

[erimir]

Doesn't the wording in the amendment nullify ALL marriages in Texas?

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

Note the italicized parts. Since heterosexual marriage is identical to marriage, it cannoy be recognized according to the amendment.

Or did they fix it?

[viscousmemories]

Nope, that's how it's worded.

Anyway this constitutional amendment is little more than a technicality, since gay marriage was already illegal here. What we need is a Rosa Parks for gays, who refuses to give his seat up to the next Republican politician who knocks on the stall door until they have equal rights.

[viscousmemories]

I found this on some website I can't be arsed to look for again:

-- Doesn't Texas already have a law banning "gay marriage"?

Yes. But laws -- unlike constitutional amendments -- can be overturned in state court. This occurred in California and Washington state, both of which saw state courts strike down their respective laws banning "gay marriage." (Both rulings are being appealed.) Neither state had a marriage amendment -- which, once enshrined in the Constitution, cannot be challenged in state court.

[alphamale]

Originally Posted by Godless Dave

It does? So far all consitutional questions regarding gay marriage have been settled at the state level, because they have to do with state constitutions. Marriage is a state, not a federal, issue.

In the current era, lots of laws that should be settled at the state level have been taken over by the USSC - for example, Bush v. Gore, sodomy laws in texas, abortion, on and on. The court as it now exists would probably invalidate it on the (misconstrued) basis of the Equal Protection clause, or perhaps one of their infamous "discovered" rights.

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by erimir

Doesn't the wording in the amendment nullify ALL marriages in Texas?

Well, at least they're stupid, eh?

[Petra]

So do sodomy laws apply just between men and men, or does it also apply between men and women?

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by lunachick

So do sodomy laws apply just between men and men, or does it also apply between men and women?

Bugger if I know!

[Petra]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

Bugger if I know!

I saw that you'd said "arse" a few minutes ago. You're turning antipodean.

[viscousmemories]

The power of koala compels me.

[Adora]

It's kind of sad how they're just resisting the inevitable. Even if the laws do survive, one day they're going to be as useless as those stupid ones about a husband owning his wife's hair, or whatever the whacky ones are.

[Carnivale Ed]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

What we need is a Rosa Parks for gays, who refuses to give his seat up to the next Republican politician who knocks on the stall door until they have equal rights.

I know this is being pedantic, but hearing this phrase in connection with this issue irks me. A gay man has the same right to marry a woman that I do. Similarly, I don't have the right to marry a man any more than he does. We have the same rights, it's just that the right we have is far more useful to me than it is to him. The issue, for me then, is one of fairness, not actual inequality. A small point, I concede, but an important one if we're not just engaging in rhetoric.

I agree with Adora, though. Gay marriage is probably an inevitability, and I think those that vehemently oppose it will look back in future years and regret many of their actions.

[viscousmemories]

Sorry, it was just a lame attempt at humor. "Give up his seat" = consent to anal sex.

Anyway in my opinion the right in question isn't "the right to marry a woman", but "the right to marry whomever you want". In Texas heterosexuals have that right to marry whomever they want, homosexuals don't. Assuming of course that heterosexual people will tend to want to marry members of the opposite sex, and homosexuals will tend to want to marry people of the same sex.

[inland wave]

[QUOTE=erimir]Doesn't the wording in the amendment nullify ALL marriages in Texas?

Hey sssshhhhhh! You would have to bring that up wouldn't you....... I would like to keep my marriage together, thank you very much...Warren is working graveyards, don't give him any ideas...........

[alphamale]

Here's the libertarian view, to which I subscribe: the state ought to have nothing to do with marriage. It's should be a religious or private cultural affair. Incidentally, the gays don't gain much legally by being allowed to marry. What they're up to is part of the political/media campaign to mainstream homosexuality, in this case by co-opting a heterosexual institution.

[livius drusus]

You're just saying that because you have a drag queen as your avatar.

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by erimir

Doesn't the wording in the amendment nullify ALL marriages in Texas?

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.

[alphamale]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

You're just saying that because you have a drag queen as your avatar.

Hillary is a drag queen??? Omigod! And here I was hoping for "diversity" in the white house. Guess we'll have to settle for "perversity" when her husband was there.

[Carnivale Ed]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

Sorry, it was just a lame attempt at humor. "Give up his seat" = consent to anal sex.

Ta, but the original 'stall' reference was pretty clear, I was just focusing on the end of the sentence. Nice use of imagery, though .

[livius drusus]

Originally Posted by alphamale

Hillary is a drag queen??? Omigod! And here I was hoping for "diversity" in the white house. Guess we'll have to settle for "perversity" when her husband was there.

Someday you'll get a joke, I promise. Keep trying, little shaver.

[Sock Puppet]

Originally Posted by Carnivale Ed

Gay marriage is probably an inevitability, and I think those that vehemently oppose it will look back in future years and regret many of their actions.

I think you're giving them far too much credit. Those who vehemently oppose gay marriage are entirely too solidified in their worldviews to change them that drastically, even years down the road. Maybe a few will, but I suspect most will continue to beat their sorry drums until their dying breaths. If/when gay marriage is on the same legal footing as hetero marriage, those vehemently opposed will use it as further evidence of the decline in "morals," and will manage to see it as evidence of "repression" of their beliefs, as a bonus.

[Carnivale Ed]

Originally Posted by Sock Puppet

I think you're giving them far too much credit. Those who vehemently oppose gay marriage are entirely too solidified in their worldviews to change them that drastically, even years down the road. Maybe a few will, but I suspect most will continue to beat their sorry drums until their dying breaths. If/when gay marriage is on the same legal footing as hetero marriage, those vehemently opposed will use it as further evidence of the decline in "morals," and will manage to see it as evidence of "repression" of their beliefs, as a bonus.

I guess when I said this, I was thinking of the civil rights movement and school integration. My understanding is that many people, even those vehemently opposed to it at the time, now regret their actions. These would be people who genuinely thought their way of life was being threatened, people who didn't know any better, for lack of a better term. Bigots just because they lived in a bigoted society, as it were.

Because he's a politician, he's probably not the best example (too prone to flipping positions depending on which way the wind's blowing), but George Wallace is the probably most well-known of people I'm talking about. This guy stood on the steps of the University of Alabama to symbolically bar the enrolment of black students and, yet, years later, fully apologised and reversed his position, becoming an advocate for integration. He was even elected governor again with substantial support from the black community.

My thinking is that many people are against gay marriage because they fear the unknown. If it's ever shown to them that their fears are baseless, then it's entirely possible that they'll drop their resistance to it.