Tag Archives: same-sex marriage

national news, political news

U.S. Constitution alive and well

There are those who say the U.S. Constitution is carved in stone.

Others say it is a living document.

I will side with the living document folks.

Consider this, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision that legalizes gay marriage across the nation.

The Constitution, when it was written, granted full citizenship rights to just a portion of the population.

* Men were allowed to vote. Not women.

* Black people were the property of white people; they were considered to be three-fifths of a human being.

Eventually, the Constitution underwent change.

The 19th Amendment gave women got the right to vote. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery.Ā The 24th Amendment barred poll taxes as a requirement to vote in federal elections.

The courts stepped in on a number of fronts. The Supreme Court tossed out a state law that prohibited interracial marriage; it tossed out “separate but equal” provisions in public education, resulting in integration of our public schools; it ruled that women have a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

Now it has ruled that same-sex couples are as entitled to marry as heterosexual couples.

The Constitution has evolved over time.

I believe the evolution will continue with this latest ruling.

 

legal news, local news, State news

Judge will marry gays, if duty calls

Potter County Judge Nancy Tanner is on record already on an issue that well could generate a good bit of controversy.

Back when she was running for the office to which she was elected, Tanner — along with her four Republican primary opponents — took part in a candidate forum sponsored by Panhandle PBS. I was privileged to be one of the journalists questioning the candidates.

One of the panelists asked all the candidates a most probing question: Given that Texas law gives county judges the authority to perform marriage ceremonies, would you — as county judge — be willing to perform a ceremony uniting a same-sex couple in matrimony?

Some of the candidates hemmed and hawed. One of them said “no,” he wouldn’t do it.

Tanner’s response? She was unequivocal. If the courts rule that gay marriage is legal in Texas, then she would follow the law. She would marry anyone with a valid marriage license. That would be herĀ responsibility as county judge and she would perform it.

Her answer was straightforward as it could have been. It didn’t harm her at the polls, as she won the GOP primary outright and went on to be elected county judge in November 2014.

As of this morning, the issue hasn’t yet presented itself to Judge Tanner. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said county clerks can refuse to issue marriage licenses if they have a religious objection to the Supreme Court’s ruling that legalized gay marriage.

There’s been no word that I’ve heard about whether Potter County Clerk Julie Smith is going to follow the law or ignore it, per Paxton’s decision.

Tanner’s take on the issue is clear. What’s cloudy and muddled is whether another countywide elected official, Smith, is going to follow the law.

Stay tuned. This could get dicey.

legal news

Next up for Supremes? Gay marriage

Given that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act, with two conservative justices joining the liberals to form a majority coalition, it is fair to speculate about the gay marriage ruling that’s coming up.

My trick knee is throbbing and it’s telling me the court is going to declare that gay couples can legally be married.

What’s more, if conservatives think they’re angry now at Chief Justice John Roberts’s ruling in favor of the ACA, wait to see the reaction if he decides that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause applies to gay couples.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/18/cruz-courts-evangelical-voters/

Republicans, such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, say that religious liberty is under attack. Cruz, who’s running for the GOP presidential nomination, told the Faith and Freedom Coalition: ā€œI would encourage everyone here to be lifting up in prayer the court that they not engage in an act of naked and lawless judicial activism, tearing down the marriage laws adopted pursuant to the Constitution.ā€

There he goes again, using that word “lawless.”

The case under consideration deals with whether a gay couple can be married legally in one state and have it recognized in another. Federal judges have overturned state bans on gay marriage, declaring that such bans violate the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law for all citizens. Gay people are citizens, too.

The court surprised a lot of Americans — including me — by upholding the ACA.

I’m sensing a less-surprising outcome on the gay marriage issue.

The reaction, though, could be ferocious.

legal news, State news

Let’s now await high court ruling on gay marriage

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott knows when the Legislature has finished its work and there’s no need for “overtime.”

Thus, he has nixed the idea of a special session to deal with same-sex marriage, which legislative conservatives wanted to do.

To what end? Beats me.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/08/abbott-no-special-session-same-sex-marriage/

Texas already has approved a constitutional amendment that says, by golly, marriage should involve a man and a woman. The amendment came on top of an existing statute that said the very same thing.

Now the stateĀ is awaiting — along with 49 other states — a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that well could render all of that action moot. The court is going to decide, more than likely, whether states’ bans on same-sex marriage violate the federal Constitution, the one to which all state governments must adhere.

Texas legislators considered a bill that dealt with religious freedom, a bill that resembled legislation approved in Indiana, but which attracteded a torrent of protest from gay-rights groups. The Indiana bill would have allowed businesses to deny serving same-sex couples on the basis of business owners’ religious convictions. Critics said the bill, in effect, permitted business owners to discriminate openly.

The Texas bill didn’t pass. Legislators, though, did approve a bill that, according to the Texas Tribune says this — and you’ll have to follow it closely to understand it: The bill protects those from being from forced to “solemnizeĀ any marriage or provide services, accommodations, facilities, goods or privileges for a purpose related to the solemnization, formation or celebration of any marriage if the action would cause the organization or individual to violate a sincerely held religious belief.ā€ The bill awaits action from Gov. Abbott.

Hey, all of this could be tossed aside if the high court rules that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees every American “equal protection” under the law, regardless of who they love or intend to marry.

I’m pretty sure that covers Texas.

 

political news

Huck needs to cool the rhetoric

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“We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity.”

That was the Rev. Mike Huckabee in a conference call to conservative activists. The one-time Baptist preacher and former Arkansas governor is going to announce soon his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination and this is going to be a theme of his second White House campaign.

Honestly, he needs to settle down.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/27/republican-candidates-evangelicals_n_7148310.html?ir=Politics&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

Huckabee and a host of other GOP candidates are roiling the party’s base by using scary rhetoric, declaring that there’s a phony war against Christians in the United States. Rick Santorum says it. So does Bobby Jindal. Same for Scott Walker. They all oppose same-sex marriage and suggest that this issue is pretext for the war against Christian belief in this country.

I once considered Huck to be a fairly reasonable man. He ran for president in 2008 and acquitted himself fairly well during much of the GOP primary. He’s gotten a bit overheated in recent years. His statement now about the threat of “criminalizing” Christianity goes beyond what’s reasonable discourse.

He knows that’s not going to happen. Ever.

In this supercharged political climate, it plays well among the party’s base, which seems to believe anything thatĀ its political leaders say out loud.

 

legal news

Conservatives show quick trigger fingers

You have to hand it to conservative political leaders, who demonstrate time and again how quick they are to seize an initiative and outflank their liberal foes.

Take the call by religious leaders for liberal U.S. Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse themselves from an upcoming hearing on same-sex marriage.

http://thehill.com/regulation/240163-religious-leaders-want-justices-restrained-from-ruling-on-same-sex-marriage

They contend that Kagan and Ginsburg have put their personal views on the subject above the U.S. Constitution and thus have surrendered their moral authority to decide on this issue.

Is there a more impractical demand than this?

It wouldn’t fly any more than some liberal political interest — say, the American Civil Liberties Union — demanding that conservative justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas recuse themselves because of their often-stated bias against same-sex marriage.

The court is going to hear a case, Obergefell v. Hodges, involving same-sex marriage bans in four states — Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan and Kentucky. The justices might rule that states cannot supersede the U.S. Constitution that guarantees citizens the right to equal protection under the law; or, they might rule that states have that authority.

It should be decided, quite naturally, by the full court comprising liberals, conservatives and swing justices, such as Anthony Kennedy and, possibly, Chief Justice John Roberts.

Still, the hair-trigger response by faith leaders demanding the recusal by liberal justices offers a lesson in how to make a quick-strike political demand.

They’ve honed the strategy almost to an art form.

 

legal news

Gay marriage to get big test

The U.S. Supreme Court is going to decide soon whether Americans have a constitutional right to marry someone of the same sex.

My guess is that if the conservative court majority is as “strict constructionist” as its members claim to be, the issue could be a slam dunk.

They’ll declare a ban on same-sex marriage to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

State courts and lower federal courts have been striking down state bans left and right. Texas’s own ban is among those that the courts have ruled violated someone’s constitutional rights.

The issue, as I see it, rests within the 14th Amendment, which guarantees Americans the right to “equal protection” under the law. It doesn’t specify that citizens need to be of a certain sexual orientation.

State bans have flouted, in my view, that constitutional guarantee. That is why the federal courts have stepped in.

So, the highest court in the land is set to decide this issue.

I remain perplexed by the notion of calling same-sex unions “marriage.” But that’s just me. I do not question the constitutionality of same-sex marriage.

Neither should the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

political news

Rubio is right: Sexual orientation is no 'choice'

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Sen. Marco Rubio wants to be president. To do that he’s got to sound reasonable.

The young Florida Republican, by golly, is starting to get some traction on the reasonableness bandwagon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/19/marco-rubio-gay-rights_n_7096180.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

One’s sexual orientation, he said today on “Face the Nation,” is not a choice. It’s who that person is.

Good call, senator.

He stops short of endorsing gay marriage, though. He believes marriage should be a union involving a man and a woman. He says he favors “traditional” marriage.

I am heartened, though, to understand that he does not buy into the tripe being tossed around that someone states a “preference” for being intimate with someone else. I’ve long believed sexual orientation — whether it’s heterosexual or homosexual — is part of a person’s DNA.

I’m glad to see that Marco Rubio understands it, too.

Now, if we can just get him to change his mind about normalizing relations with Cuba …

 

State news

Who works for whom?

I need help with this one.

State Rep. Molly White, a Republican from Belton, Texas, has refused to meet with constituents who want to complain to her about some legislation she’s proposing.

Why? She says it’s a waste of her time and she won’t talk to — that’s correct — her constituents.

The issue is gay rights. Rep. White calls herself a Christian who follows God’s word. The legislation she’s backing would allow businesses to deny service to Texans on religious grounds. She also wants to exempt the state’s ban on same-sex marriage from court rulings.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/04/texas-lawmaker-refuses-to-meet-with-constituents-who-dont-share-her-views-staff-says-it-is-a-waste-of-time/

ā€œMarriage is a Holy union of one man and one woman created and ordained by God. There is no other definition. As a Christian, I am guided by Godā€™s Word,ā€Ā White explained in a statement.

Some folks in her Texas House district disagree with that and want to talk to her about it.

White will have none of it.

Hmmm.

OK, I now will try to explain briefly why this is wrong.

In a representative democracy such as ours, the people who hold public office work at the pleasure of the people they represent. They don’t work only for those who vote for them, they answer to all the people in a governing subdivision, in this case a Texas House of Representatives district. Therefore, if someone wants to gripe at a lawmaker, they are entitled to do so.

And the lawmaker, it seems to me, is obligated to give them a fair hearing. They can argue face to face. They call each other names if they wish. The lawmaker, though, doesn’t have the liberty of stiff-arming a constituency group merely because they disagree with his or her point of view.

As the Rawstory reported: “Janet Adamski, a political science professor at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, noted that lawmakers are not required to meet with their constituents, but refusing to talk to a constituent because of their views runs contrary to the purpose of being of representative.”

Put another way: Rep. White works for them, not the other way around.

 

national news, State news

When did we realize these bans were illegal?

A question comes to mind regarding the recent spate of court rulings against statewide bans on same-sex marriage.

The 14th Amendment, which includes the “equal protection clause,” was ratified in 1868. Why has it taken until just the recent past to realize that equal protection means all citizens are guaranteed such protection under the law?

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2015/02/texas-judge-rules-same-sex-marriage-ban-unconstitutional/

A Travis County probate judge recently ruled that the Texas ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Judge Guy HermanĀ “ruled the stateā€™s ban violated the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of theĀ 14th Amendment,” according to the San Antonio Express-News.

The amendment has been on the books for 147 years! Only now has the issue come up as a reason to ban same-sex marriage.

It is true that gay couples have been largely hidden from public view for most of the history of the Republic. We didn’t have “gay pride rallies” at the turn of the 20th century, let alone in the middle of the 19th century. Same-sex couples lived in the shadows. They didn’t get married. They simply lived together, which was their right to do — except in some states, such as Texas, where it was actually illegal for same-sex couples (notably men) to be intimate; our state enforced something called an “anti-sodomy law” until it, too, was ruled unconstitutional.

So here we are now. Courts are ruling left and right that states cannot violate a civil right written into the U.S. Constitution just three years after the end of the Civil War.

It took us awhile to get to this point. But we’ve arrived. Finally.