States forced to foot legal bills for gay activists to tear down their marriage laws: $5 million+

May 7, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- US natural marriage supporters are not only facing the possibility of attacks on their freedom of conscience and religion as marriage redefinition is forced on states across the country. They’re being compelled to foot the legal bill for homosexual activists as well.

A federal judge in Oklahoma awarded almost $300,000 last Friday to attorneys who brought the state’s constitutional marriage amendment down in court.

The decision brings the total taxpayer tab nationwide to more than $5 million for legal fees federal courts have ordered states to pay after having their marriage protection laws overturned.

U.S. District Judge Terence Kern ruled that the legal team of lawyers advocating homosexual “marriage” for Oklahoma used “sound billing judgment,” and gave them $298,000 for costs incurred in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, where local officials took the case after Kern declared the amendment unconstitutional in January of last year.

Oklahoma voters had approved the state constitutional amendment protecting natural marriage by a three-to-one margin in 2004.

Kern, a 1994 Clinton appointee, said in his March 2014 decision striking down the amendment that the U.S. Constitution grants a right to same-sex “marriage” by prohibiting unequal treatment.

“Therefore,” Kern wrote, “the majority view in Oklahoma must give way to individual constitutional rights.”

In awarding legal fees to the attorneys arguing for “homosexual marriage” in Oklahoma, Kern did not allow $48,000 in plaintiffs’ fees for unsuccessfully petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court, according to The National Law Journal, but did award more than the $108,000 amount defendants had argued was suitable.

Kern rejected arguments by Tulsa County officials that the plaintiffs’ lawyers overcomplicated the case on appeal.

“Defendant’s arguments reflect a lack of appreciation for the complexity of this appeal and the legal nuances in the Supreme Court’s Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence,” Kern wrote. “For what should be obvious reasons, this was not a routine appeal from summary judgment in state court; instead, it presented a complex legal question in an uncertain and evolving legal landscape.”

Advocates of natural marriage decried Kern’s decision assigning the nearly $300,000 legal tab for marriage redefinition to Oklahoma citizens.

“This is an outrageous ruling,” National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown told LifeSiteNews. “A rush to judgment on a case that could very well be reversed by the US Supreme Court.”

“We encourage the state not to pay anything until we get a ruling on the underlying issue from the US Supreme Court,” Brown said. “Even then, it is wrong to reward activists for challenging a validly enacted constitutional amendment.”

It doesn’t matter what the Inferior Court says, NO STATE is Bound by ANY Decision of any INFERIOR COURT. See Roy Moore

A recent detailed study of the courts of all 50 states and the District of Columbia determined that 46 states and the District of Columbia adopt the position that the precedents of lower federal courts are not binding in their jurisdictions. Wayne A. Logan, A House Divided: When State and Lower Federal Courts Disagree on Federal Constitutional Rights, 90 Notre Dame L. Rev. 235, 280-81 (2014). The position of three other states is uncertain. Only one state (Delaware) defers to the constitutional decisions of lower federal courts. Id. At 281.

Federal courts have recognized that state-court review of constitutional questions is independent of the same authority lodged in the lower federal courts. “In passing on federal constitutional questions, the state courts and the lower federal courts have the same responsibility and occupy the same position; there is a parallelism but not paramountcy for both sets of courts are governed by the same reviewing authority of the Supreme Court.” United States ex rel.Lawrence v. Woods, 432 F.2d 1072, 1075 (7th Cir. 1970).

Although consistency between state and federal courts is desirable in that it promotes respect for the law and prevents litigants from forum-shopping, there is nothing inherently offensive about two sovereigns reaching different legal conclusions. Indeed, such results were contemplated by our federal system, and neither sovereign is required to, nor expected to, yield to the other.

Surrick v. Killion, 449 F. 3d 520, 535 (3rd Cir. 2006).

The United States Supreme Court has acknowledged that state courts “possess the authority, absent a provision for exclusive federal jurisdiction, to render binding judicial decisions that rest on their own interpretations of federal law.” Asarco Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605, 617 (1989). Two justices of the United States Supreme Court in special writings have elaborated on this principle.

The Supremacy Clause demands that state law yield to federal law, but neither federal supremacy nor any other principle of federal law requires that a state court’s interpretation of federal law give way to a (lower) federal court’s interpretation. In our federal system, a state trial court’s interpretation of federal law is no less authoritative than that of the federal court of appeals in whose circuit the trial court is located.

Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U.S. 364, 375-76 (1993) (Thomas, J., concurring). See also Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452, 482, n. 3 (1974) (Rehnquist, J., concurring) (noting that a lower- federal-court decision “would not be accorded the stare decisis effect in state court that it would have in a subsequent proceeding within the same federal jurisdiction. Although the state court would not be compelled to follow the federal holding, the opinion might, of course, be viewed as highly persuasive.”).

I'm not willing to do that. If THEY want something else, THEY can call it something else.

As Scalia pointed out last week, the ancient Greeks and Romans were very tolerant of homosexuality and they NEVER considered same-sex marriage.

IF, and it's a big if, there's a right to marriage, homosexuals HAVE AND HAVE ALWAYS HAD the same rights to marriage as everyone else. An unmarried person who isn't incarcerated and of legal age to marry is free to marry a person of the opposite sex within the guidelines of state laws regarding incest, etc. Homosexuals are free to do this.

Homosexuals have what would best be described as a sexual partnership. Unlike marriage, this partnership is solely centered on carnal sexual desires. There is NOTHING prohibiting any group of two or more people from forming a legal partnership for the purposes of fulfilling their lust AND owning property, establishing trusts, etc. People enter partnerships and buy property, borrow money, etc. every single day and they can be dissolved quite easily. States don't care if the partners consist of two sodomite males, three lesbians, four transvestites and a transgender and they can add or remove partners however the partnership bylaws prescribe. It is PERFECT for their lifestyle.

As far as the arguments about hospital visitation, prison visitation, etc., I agree that they should have them. What they do may be immoral, damnable and unhealthy, but I see no reason that same-sex partners shouldn't have the same visitation privileges that married couple do.

On the matter of taxes, trusts and partnerships actually protect the assets better than marriage. That being said, do away with estate taxes for EVERYBODY and the issue becomes moot.

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