I'll keep my input here civil !
Posted on 02/06/2004 1:03:23 PM PST by PhiKapMom
ABA Prepares to Add Gay Marriage Views
By GINA HOLLAND
.c The Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO (AP) - The American Bar Association, the nation's largest lawyers' group, is not ready to consider endorsing same-sex marriage but will debate whether to urge Washington to stay out of the issue.
Marriage of homosexuals is expected to be the most contested issue to come up during the ABA's winter meeting. The plan coming up for a vote Monday would encourage states to write their own marriage rules, without interference from Congress.
The ABA has been criticized in the past for advocating a moratorium on the death penalty and endorsing women's right to abortion, positions that angered conservative members.
``We're not raising it to be controversial. We're raising it because we think it's good policy,'' said Mark Agrast, a Washington, D.C., attorney who worked on the recommendation.
He said state leaders are busy with healthy debates on the rights of gay couples, and the ABA is saying ```let a thousand flowers bloom.'''
The ABA voted to encourage courts to allow gay couples to adopt children together, during a meeting in San Francisco last summer.
The more conservative Texas is the setting of the 400,000-member group's winter meeting. Texas is among 37 states - soon to become 38 with Ohio - that have laws recognizing only marriages between men and women.
The civil weddings proposal is wedged among ABA resolutions on the rights of criminal suspects and immigrants, along with issues like judges' retirement benefits and lawyer training on discrimination.
Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Texas, said supporters of the ABA proposal are correct that states traditionally have set marriage policy on such questions as the minimum age for people to tie the knot. But, he said, the lawyers may not have much influence with Congress.
``On more technical issues, where they can claim special expertise, they carry real weight,'' Laycock said. ``The politicians view this as an issue that a man on the street can decide just as well as a fancy Wall Street lawyer, maybe better.''
The topic comes up after a week of developments around the country on same-sex marriages.
On Wednesday, the Massachusetts high court said that gay couples are entitled to nothing less than marriage, not Vermont-style civil unions, which sets the stage for the nation's first legally sanctioned same-sex weddings by springtime.
In Ohio this week, the Legislature approved what is considered one of the strictest same-sex marriage bans. It prohibits state employees from getting some marital benefits for their unmarried partners, whether homosexual or heterosexual.
If the ABA's policy-making board should pass the plan, the organization can lobby against a pending constitutional amendment in Congress. President Bush has indicated he would support changing the U.S. Constitution if necessary to limit marriage to a man and a woman.
State practices vary widely. Vermont recognizes marriage-like civil unions, while California, Hawaii and New Jersey grant various rights to same-sex couples registered as domestic partners.
``There's not a void that Congress should step in,'' said Cincinnati lawyer Phyllis Bossin, who oversees the ABA's family law matters. ``It genuinely is a states' rights issue. Some states are going to go one way and some states are going to go another.''
David Wagner, a conservative law professor at Regent University, said that there are concerns that civil unions in one state would have to be recognized in another state.
``Unless there's a better reason to believe what Massachusetts does stays in Massachusetts, I think for those who believe in traditional marriage a federal solution might be necessary,'' Wagner said.
On the Net:
ABA: http://www.abanet.org/
02/06/04 15:08 EST
I thought, who cares?
http://www.fed-soc.org/Publications/ABAwatch/feb04.pdf <-- Link (about 131 kB)
What do you do with lousy lawyers?
Make them judges.
There is, today, only one real difference between the ABA and the Teamsters Union. The ABA drives briefcases rather than trucks. But otherwise, it is the same, corrupt, self-interested special interest seeking to feather the nest of its remaining adherents, regardless of its effects on American society.
Did I miss anything?
Congressman Billybob
Of course, when abortion is the issue, these same people demand that every state eliminate any law or policy which prevents a single baby from being killed as quickly as possible. The problem may not be the judges; the problem may be the lawyers--the pool from which the judges are chosen.
Let the States decide.
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." -- Ronald Wilson Reagan
I'll keep my input here civil !
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