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To: LowCountryJoe
Kind of silly for Pat to ask:

...If Bay State legislators will refuse to pass the law demanded by the court, and Romney will refuse to sign such a law and orders the bureaucracy to ignore the court, what could the court do?

Courts have fashioned their own remedies in the past, getting involved in minute detail, if they felt they had to. This Court will just simply declare that being gender opposites is no longer a qualification for marriage, and will order lower courts to accept applications on that basis. All subordinate courts are bound by the state's Supreme Court, and they won't even bother ruling against a gay couple who brought a case based on a refusal of whoever registers marriages to do so with theirs.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court did not set up the 180 days as a period of time to allow people to thwart it. It could have ordered gay marriages to be registered immediately. It was giving the governor and the legislature a chance to avoid a Constitutional battle on the US level, and adopt a civil unions plan.

If the governor tries to stick a finger in the Court's eye, he might find their fist back in his face. The time for setting off the BS alarm was years before, when these cases were making it through the lower courts. It wasn't possible to get an anti-gay-marriage amendment through the MA legislature then, it won't be possible now.

5 posted on 11/22/2003 10:22:33 PM PST by hunter112
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To: hunter112
This could end up in Federal Court, the Mass Constitution reserves matters conserning marrage to the General Court and the Governor, this could get interesting, though I doubt it.
38 posted on 11/29/2003 12:08:16 PM PST by Little Bill (The Bard of Avon Rules, The Duke of Cambridge was a Mincing Quean.)
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