{"id":4468,"date":"2014-01-15T03:17:32","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T03:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=4468"},"modified":"2014-01-15T03:17:32","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T03:17:32","slug":"okla-same-sex-marriage-ban-nixed-is-texas-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=4468","title":{"rendered":"Okla. same-sex marriage ban nixed; is Texas next?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Well, this is a fascinating development in the on-going debate over same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n

A U.S. district judge has struck down Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage, declaring that the state’s constitutional amendment violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one granting equal protection under the law.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/msnbc\/oklahoma-gay-marriage-ban-struck-down<\/p>\n

I’ll point here that Oklahoma is arguably even redder — meaning more Republican — than Texas, which is pretty darn red.<\/p>\n

That begs an obvious question, in my mind. Would the Texas constitutional amendment stand up under a challenge such as the one mounted in Oklahoma?<\/p>\n

Judge Terrence Kern wrote: \u201cEqual protection is at the very heart of our legal system and central to our consent to be governed. It is not a scarce commodity to be meted out begrudgingly or in short portions. Therefore, the majority view in Oklahoma must give way to individual constitutional rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two couples of the same sex challenged the Oklahoma ban on same-sex marriage in 2004. Oklahoma’s constitutional amendment was approved by a majority vote of all Oklahomans. The judge’s ruling declares that even with a majority vote, the amended state constitution cannot supersede the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

Precisely the same thing happened in Texas, where voters approved a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. To be honest, that vote made me uncomfortable for a number of reasons, the chief of which was that the state already had a statute on the books that prohibited people of the same sex from marrying each other. The Legislature, though, decided to add some extra enforcement of that law by piling on a constitutional amendment.<\/p>\n

Texans then said “not just ‘no,’ but ‘hell no!'” to the same-sex marriage prohibition.<\/p>\n

Is our state’s constitutional amendment any more legitimate than the one struck down in Oklahoma?<\/p>\n

I’m thinking it’s not.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, this is a fascinating development in the on-going debate over same-sex marriage. A U.S. district judge has struck down Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage, declaring that the state’s constitutional amendment violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one granting equal protection under the law. http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/msnbc\/oklahoma-gay-marriage-ban-struck-down I’ll point here that Oklahoma is arguably … Continue reading Okla. same-sex marriage ban nixed; is Texas next?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3404,4088,4596],"class_list":["post-4468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-oklahoma-constitution","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-texas-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}