King County Executive Ron Sims and other supporters of gay rights are disappointed by Wednesday's state Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on gay marriage.
Sims hopes the next generation of legal minds will recognize a homosexual right to wed. He says his next step is to push for civil unions.
Um, no. That's like saying that back in the day people were hoping that judges would recognize a "Negro right to drink water". There's no such thing as a "homosexual right" any more than there's a "heterosexual right" or a "Jewish right" or a "Laosian right".
From Yahoo! News:
The state Supreme Court overruled two lower courts that had found the ban violated the Washington Constitution's "privileges and immunities" section.
The gay-marriage ban "is constitutional because the Legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival," Justice Barbara Madsen wrote in the controlling opinion.
And how would allowing gays to marry hinder procreation? Are people going to stop fucking because Adam and Steve get hitched? Hell, part of the complaint of the 19 couples was "that they are victims of state-sanctioned discrimination that harms their children".
Meaning they already have children, you morons! Preventing them from marrying isn't going to help those children out!
At least one person in Washington has something of a brain:
In a dissent, Justice Mary Fairhurst said the majority improperly bowed to public opinion. "Unfortunately, the (majority) are willing to turn a blind eye to DOMA's discrimination because a popular majority still favors that discrimination," she wrote.
From the Washington Post:
"At the risk of sounding monotonous," the lead opinion said, "legislative bodies, not courts, hold the power to make public policy determinations." It added that where "no fundamental right is at stake, that power is nearly limitless."
The court ruled that gay couples challenging Washington's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act had failed to show that it denies them either a "fundamental right" or equal protection under the law.
...at the risk of sounding intelligent and even mildly well-versed (mildly-versed?) on this topic, marriage IS a fundamental right, you assholes!
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942).
In fact, I'm going to cite a passage from James Trosino's article "American Wedding: Same-Sex Marriage and the Miscegenation Analogy", omitting his footnotes:
Marriage regulation is traditionally the province of state legislatures. Marriage laws, like all laws, however, must not violate the United States Constitution. Federal court decisions regarding state regulation of marriage recognize marriage as a fundamental right. Under Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, state laws impinging fundamental rights are subject to strict scrutiny.
In Zablocki v. Redhail, the Court invalidated a Wisconsin statute that prohibited any person delinquent in paying child support from remarrying in the state. The Court applied strict scrutiny because the law "significantly interfere[d]" with the right to marry. The Court, however, cautioned against an overly broad interpretation of its holding:By reaffirming the fundamental character of the right to marry, we do not mean to suggest that every state regulation which relates in any way to the incidents of or prerequisites for marriage must be subjected to rigorous scrutiny. To the contrary, reasonable regulations that do not significantly interfere with decisions to enter into the marital relationship may legitimately be imposed.
Prohibitions on gay marriage should--at least conceptually--implicate Zablocki's concern about laws that significantly interfere with the right to marry. In the context of same-sex marriage, however, courts have avoided the apparent mandate of Zablocki by defining marriage as excluding gay couples.
And, hell, let's also quote Chief Justice Kaye's dissenting opinion in Hernandez v. Robles:
Central to the right to marry is the right to marry the person of one's choice (see e.g. Crosby v State of N.Y., Workers' Compensation Bd., 57 NY2d 305, 312 [1982] ["clearly falling within (the right of privacy) are matters relating to the decision of whom one will marry"]; People v Shepard, 50 NY2d 640, 644 [1980] ["the government has been prevented from interfering with an individual's decision about whom to marry"]).
More from the Washington Post:
"Although marriage has evolved, it has not included a history and tradition of same-sex marriage in this nation or in Washington State," the opinion said.
Gah!!! What the hell!? Let's hear back from Chief Justice Kaye now:
Again and again, the Supreme Court and this Court have made clear that the right to marry is fundamental (see e.g. Loving v Virginia, 388 US 1 [1967]; Zablocki v Redhail, 434 US 374 [1978]; Turner v Safley, 482 US 78 [1987]; Matter of Doe v Coughlin, 71 NY2d 48, 52 [1987]; Cooper v Morin, 49 NY2d 69, 80 [1979]; Levin v Yeshiva Univ., 96 NY2d 484, 500 [2001] [Smith, J., concurring] ["marriage is a fundamental constitutional right"]).
The Court concludes, however, that same-sex marriage is not deeply rooted in tradition, and thus cannot implicate any fundamental liberty. But fundamental rights, once recognized, cannot be denied to particular groups on the ground that these groups have historically been denied those rights. Indeed, in recasting plaintiffs' invocation of their fundamental right to marry as a request for recognition of a "new" right to same-sex marriage, the Court misapprehends the nature of the liberty interest at stake. In Lawrence v Texas (539 US 558 [2003]), the Supreme Court warned against such error.
Lawrence overruled Bowers v Hardwick (478 US 186 [1986]), which had upheld a Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy. In so doing, the Lawrence Court criticized Bowers for framing the issue presented too narrowly. Declaring that "Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today" (539 US at 578), Lawrence explained that Bowers purported to analyze--erroneously-- whether the Constitution conferred a "fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy" (539 US at 566 [citation omitted]). This was, however, the wrong question. The fundamental right at issue, properly framed, was the right to engage in private consensual sexual conduct--a right that applied to both homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. In narrowing the claimed liberty interest to embody the very exclusion being challenged, Bowers "disclose[d] the Court's own failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake" (Lawrence, 539 US at 567).
The same failure is evident here.
Back to lunatic land:
It added that because state law prevents both sexes from entering into a same-sex marriage, it does not discriminate on the basis of sex.
Okay, if they passed the bar, then the judges should recognize the error in this. Separate but equal hasn't been recognized as valid for decades now. Which means, of course, that they just don't give a damn and are twisting the law and ignoring precedent so they can come to whatever conclusion fits their bigotry.
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