Gay marriage, immigrant licenses: Battles over official status

Sacramento Bee ^ | 6/6/5 | Dan Walters

[SmithL]

Government differs from private business or even nonprofit organizations in many ways - its police powers, most noticeably - and one of those differences is government's singular ability to confer official status.

That's quite evident in the international arena, where the official recognition of a revolutionary regime by more established nations lends legitimacy, and where military security treaties and trade agreements divide the globe into us-vs.-them spheres.

The power to confer status underlies many of the political conflicts in state government as well. Those who have obtained official status of some kind, and the social and economic benefits that accompany it, resist efforts by others to gain the same recognition, while strivers make equally strenuous efforts to secure what others have already obtained or carve out some new and exclusive niche for themselves.

The specific conflicts may vary widely in content, including such contentious issues as whether Indian tribes should have the exclusive right to operate gambling casinos, whether health care providers who are not medical doctors should be allowed to intrude on physicians' practices, whether certain job fields should be elevated into state-licensed professions, whether some favored industries should receive subsidies that are denied to others or whether certain groups of public employees should be given pension benefits that are substantially better than other groups. All of those issues and many others are, however, really competitions for official status of one kind or another.

Two of this year's most contentious legislative issues are, at their heart, battles over official status, as the debates and votes on gay marriage and granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants last week revealed. . . .

[joesnuffy]

Soon sodomite illegal aliens can now drive to their wedding
and get free AIDs treatment on the dole...

And they call this progress?

[Carry_Okie]

Government differs from private business or even nonprofit organizations in many ways - its police powers, most noticeably - and one of those differences is government's singular ability to confer official status.

"Equal protection" notwithstanding.