Not Just Whistlin’ Dixie!
“The ‘Ruthies’ are so ahead of the curve.”
Advocates for extending marriage rights to same-sex couples think they are on a roll with New York State’s action. Lawmakers and lobbyists cut a midnight backroom deal to push a marriage bill through Albany. They would not dare to submit this issue to New York voters. Some of them remember how state voters turned back the ERA in the Empire State thirty years ago.
Of course, New York is home to our liberal media elites. They naturally think the Big Apple is the center of the world and shape of things to come. The heroes who defended marriage there were former New York Giant David Tyree, who is black, and Democratic state Sen. Ruben Diaz, a Pentecostal minister. The sellouts were Republicans.
It is a fine irony that New York and New England elites, who once prided themselves on being “progressive,” now fear their own citizens. Not one state in New England that has tried to force acceptance of same-sex relationships as marriages has allowed the people to vote. New York joins five other states in overturning marriage laws.
Compare this with thirty-two states have put marriage protection on the ballot. In those thirty-two states, tens of millions of Americans have expressed their firm belief that marriage should continue to as a union between one man and one woman.
I’m especially proud of my home state of Ohio. In 2004, Buckeye voters approved a state constitutional amendment protecting marriage by a thumping 62%. As the Ohio secretary of state at that time, I had to fend off attempts by liberals to throw the measure off the ballot. They were desperate to prevent the people from speaking on this vital issue.
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If NOM is such a champion of the people’s right to vote directly on same-sex marriage, why are they pushing to send a Constitutional marriage amendment to the states for ratification? The citizens of a state are forbidden (by the Constitution!) to vote on amendments directly. And if passed, the amendment would prevent citizens from ever voting directly on SSM.
NOM claims to support the people’s right even while they’re working hard to take it away.
NOM like the rest of us is pushing for a Federal Defense Amendment because the homosexual activists will not honor the lawfull vote of the people. What the homosexuals really are saying is if they had won a vote, it represents a mandate of the people and we should respect that, but if they lose then the homosexuals go judge shopping and are trying to get SSM imposed by the courts.
Look at Prop 8 in CA. Did the homosexual activists respect the lawfull vote of the people? No. They are launching lawsuit after lawsuit trying to find a leftist judge who will thumb his nose at the voters. They are trying to use the courts to get DOMA overturned.
The homosexuals never respect the right of the people to vote and are always trying to take it away.
Wait, is this THE Ken Blackwell, the notorious former secretary of state of Ohio who lost his re-election bid in 2006, and whose sole mission in life, it sometimes seemed, was to PREVENT people from voting? For example, by disqualifying voter registration forms that were not on the proper kind of paper stock?
This is the guy you’re rolling out to advocate for the people’s right to vote on other people’s civil rights?
That’s funny.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/30/opinion/30thu1.html
http://emmanyc.blogspot.com/2008/10/ken-blackwell-voter-fraud.html
Rob is being disingenuous here. I don’t speak for NOM, but I suspect they would support a national popular referendum on the issue. That option is not currently available, so they support the next best thing, statewide referenda on this issue. It appears they also support making the federal DOMA law into a constitutional amendment.
Making the federal DOMA law into a constitutional amendment would still allow each state to define marriage (by referendum or otherwise). The current federal DOMA law prohibits one state from imposing its definition of marriage on another and prevents one state from imposing its definition on the federal government. I support that.
Thanks John Noe, you’re the first here to admit NOM is dishonest when they say they support the right of the people to vote. Anyone else?
You place the cart before the horse.
Neither NOM or the people want to vote on SSM as an end in itself.
The end goal of the people is to stop SSM. Voting is merely a necessary and temporary means until a Constitutional Marriage Amendment can permanently stop SSM.
Okay, now we’ve got two people, John Noe and bman, admitting NOM isn’t being honest when they say they believe in the right of the people to vote directly on this. Anyone else?
Constitutional amendments can be ratified by state conventions rather than by the state legislatures, as was done in the 21st amendment. The constitution does not specify to rules for conducting such conventions. Congress could, in theory, require each convention to be based on a democratic vote within the state.
One of my goals, as an end in itself, is to preserve the principle of democracy, whether indirect democracy through the election of legislators or direct democracy through referendum. I believe that democracy can be reasonably tempered by institutions designed to make democratic decision making slow and deliberate, but it should not be deliberately subverted, neglected, or by-passed as a fundamental principle of just government. The amendment process easily meets that standard.
It doesn’t seem likely that the US would add discrimination against a minority group to its national constitution. Not at this stage of the game, although I realize the rhetoric energizes some folks.
Rob as usual is lying and putting words in my mouth. NOM is not dishonest and has always along with me supported the right of the people to vote on marriage. However a FDA is still necessary for the following reasons.
(1) The federal government has the right to define marriage as one man and one woman as it deals with the over 1000 benefits that are granted in a marriage. An FDA clarifys what the federal government would do regardless of whether individual states honor SSM or not. In the New Hampshire debate Michele Backman said she wanted an FDA but would not overturn the individual states marriage laws.
(2) The perverted and dishonest conduct of the homosexual activists speak for themselves. Every time the people have wanted to vote they go to court to try and block it. When we the people do vote on marriage and affirm that it is one man/one woman, the gays immediately crybaby their way down to the courthouse looking for a judge to overturn the law. When Congress enacts DOMA the homosexuals immediately go to court and try to get it overturned.
(3) When they win by court in one state they try to use one state’s verdict as a mandate to impose SSM on the whole country. These people have proven before that they do not give a damn about democracy and the vote of the people. They are determined to impose SSM on us all by litigation and using the courts. An FDA will stop this nonsense.
Nothing in the DOMA amendment mentions any minority. All men and all women would be equally subject to the law. Nothing in the constitution requires all preferences to be treated equally or all behaviors for that matter.
I am saying you probably misunderstood NOM and that your accusation is most likely based on a false premise derived from your misinterpretation.
John Noe, what part of my comment is a lie? That NOM claims to support the right of people to vote directly on same sex marriage? That’s true
That the people would not get to vote directly on an amendment to ban SSM? That’s true.
That such an amendment would prevent people from voting directly on SSM? That’s true.
John, if you’re going to call someone a liar, simple decency suggests you should point out the lie.
You said, “John Noe, you’re the first here to admit NOM is dishonest….”
John did no such thing, however.
He even stated that part of your comment was false. Yet, here you are asking what part it was!
The points you listed about NOM seem true but they do not demonstrate dishonesty.
Your interpretation is the problem because you need to restrict NOM’s comments to the context in which they were made.
I think if you took a poll of 100 people and asked, “Do you support allowing the people to vote on SSM?” most would say yes.
I think most would also say yes if asked in that same poll, “Would you support a Constitutional Amendment that marriage is only for one man and one woman.”
Would that make them dishonest?
Of course not.
All it proves is they need to clarify further.
Bman the pinch hitter does it agian. The Yankee Rob made a false accusation at me and I had to step up to the plate and rebut the accusation. But pinchhitter Bman stepped up to the plate and delivered a grand slam for the Sox. Now I do not have to post.
“Nothing in the DOMA amendment mentions any minority.”
DOMA uses a surrogate, different-sex couples, to discriminate against gay people, who form same-sex couples. Gays and lesbians are a sexual minority.
“All men and all women would be equally subject to the law.”
But all sexual orientations would not be, and are not now. Since there is no rational basis for the federal government to distinguish between straight married couples and gay married couples, there’s no reason for a DOMA law.
“Nothing in the constitution requires all preferences to be treated equally or all behaviors for that matter.”
Nothing except the 5th Amendment and the 14th Amendment guarantees of equal treatment and due process. That may be no big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me, and lots of other people. You can’t treat similarly situated persons differently without a rational public purpose to do so. Since there is no rational public purpose in treating gay people differently for the purposes of marriage, doing so creates a constitutional violation.
Thanks John!
I also noticed your posts are well argued and many times I was impressed at how well you made your point. We learn from each other.
What are you getting at bman? That NOM is just too confused to realize they’re promoting two contradictory positions? That would get them out of the dishonesty allegation and reduce it to mere incompetence.
“The heroes who defended marriage there were former New York Giant David Tyree, who is black, and Democratic state Sen. Ruben Diaz, a Pentecostal minister.”
Why is the race or religion of any person, supporter or opponent, relevant to the question of marriage equality for LGBT people? There are also people of color and religious people on our side of the issue. So?
@Sean
The Supreme Court rejected these challenges in Baker v. Nelson and for good reason.
Sean may object that was in an era when certain private behaviors were criminalized (even if those laws were rarely enforced), but as Sean reminds us, even criminals had a right to marriage. Criminalization had nothing to do with the absence of a federal constitutional issue.
No state asks your sexual orientation when you apply for a marriage license or any other license. There is no test for the gay gene when you apply. The law is orientation blind, just as it is racially blind. No state dissolves your marriage if you discover you have a new orientation. Again the law is neutral with regard to orientation. The law treats you just the same whether you are gay or straight. Gays and straights are being treated exactly equally. There simply is no constitutional violation.
“No state asks your sexual orientation when you apply for a marriage license or any other license.”
Yes they do, when they create a gender requirement, which acts as a surrogate for sexual orientation.
Sexual orientation isn’t changeable. States have, in fact, rules relating to gender reassignment and marital status. Again, the law is not neutral with regard to sexual orientation: it uses a surrogate, different-sexedness, as a proxy for sexual orientation.
Gays and straights are being treated differently, and nearly all courts considering the matter have acknowledged that. The legal issue has been, however, is that discrimination constitutional. Some courts using the least restrictive level of scrutiny has said there’s no constitutional violation. All courts that have used a heightened level of scrutiny have said it is a constitutional violation, usually unanimously.
@Sean
Orientation is not the same as gender and gender is not the same as race. All your arguments require conflating them.
It has not been proven that orientation is inevitably immutable. Dr. Robert L. Spitzer Professor of Psychiatry and Chief of Biometrics at Columbia University interviewed 200 subjects whose experience was that their orientation had changed.
“Like most psychiatrists,” says Dr. Spitzer, “I thought that homosexual behavior could be resisted–but that no one could really change their sexual orientation. I now believe that’s untrue–some people can and do change.”
Moreover, orientation is not an absolute binary trait, but exists along a continuum.
The so-called equal rights amendment did not pass. Gender distinctions are constitutional, though not in Massachusetts, where a state ERA did pass. If gender distinctions are constitutional, it is hard to imagine that the vague and mutable distinction of orientation rises to the level of consideration you give it. It is after all, a feeling. Feelings are the sort of thing that the law can find to be unconstitutionally vague. People change their feelings and some people have changed their orientation.
Ways in which the strict scrutiny level is inappropriate in this case.
1. It requires the group to be politically powerless. This is laughable, particularly in California or in the Obama administration.
2. The characteristic must be irrelevant to the policy aim. In this case the argued policy aims include encouraging procreative marriages, connecting parents to their biological offspring, and protecting women in their asymmetric relations with men. Gender is clearly relevant to these aims, as is orientation.
3. The characteristic must be immutable. See my previous post.