I lived in Colorado then and voted for Amendment 2. The courts found that Amendment 2 singled out homosexual and bisexual persons, imposing on them a broad disability by denying them the right to seek and receive specific legal protection from discrimination. In other words when we voted for Amendment 2, we said that no jurisdiction could create specific laws protecting homosexuals.
Justice Kennedy said however, that oftentimes a law will be sustained under the equal protection clause, even if it seems to disadvantage a specific group, so long as it can be shown to "advance a legitimate government interest." Amendment 2, by depriving persons of equal protection under the law due to their sexual orientation failed to advance such a legitimate interest. Had Colorado specified for example that no homosexual adoptions could take place, nor any nontraditional marriage, I see no reason why it would be overturned as Amendment 2 was. The Florida decision seemed to confirm that.
They see the Boy Scouts as the equivalent of the KKK because they won't send little boys camping with gay scoutmasters.
Yes, liberals see it that way. Not sure the KKK comparison is valid, but in any case, the USSC supported the Boy Scouts in this issue, as you pointed out.
but it's pretty apparent that there are already four votes on the court to expand the gay agenda exponentially.
The USSC refusal to accept the 11th Circuit appeal seems to indicate that it will be a long time before that happens.
Combine that with Kennedy, or the appointees of a future Democrat president, and were hanging by a thread.
Kennedy voted with the majority on the Boy Scout case. The only four possible replacements for the years to come are liberals. I see no danger of this relatively conservative court suddenly shifting its moral compass.
You seem to be using the same argument that moderate Republicans always use. Why, there's no need to pass a law banning "X"! It's unthinkable that anyone would ever try to legalize something as unpopular and untraditional as "X"! Let's concentrate on more important things like the budget deficit or our trade imbalances, rather than stirring up turmoil by talking about "X"!
I'm not questioning your motives in the slightest. So would appreciate the same in return. Nevertheless, in this particular case, there are far more important issues to deal with including immigration reform, the war on terror, including those you listed above.
But once again, I do think we are not addressing the same issue. I am discussing only a challenge to DOMA. Others here are discussing an amendment to prevent a state from exercising powers granted to it in the Constitution. This I can never agree to.
We can argue back and forth about this forever. It all comes down to whether we trust the judiciary or not. I don't. That doesn't mean they're always wrong, but they're wrong often enough to merit concern. Issues that are easily demagogued by the left, with allegations of "racism" and "sexism" and "homophobia" are particularly prone to invite judicial imperialism.
We could list examples all day. Forced busing. Racial set-asides. Women at the Citadel & VMI. Abortion. All these issues involved the Supreme Court far exceeding its constitutional authority. Even when they rule correctly there's no guarantee they won't revisit the case later and reverse themselves, as they did with sodomy laws (upheld in the 80s, but declared "unconstitutional" a couple of years ago).
Romer vs. Evans was a warning shot. It was a patently absurd decision, as well as expanding the 14th Amendment into the territory of sexual perversion. The only way Amendment 2 could have been unconstitutional is if the Constitution obligates states or localities to enact gay "rights" laws. If it doesn't, how is a state constitutional amendment preventing such laws unconstitutional? Basically, the court implied that constitutional amendments are themselves unconstitutional. Virtually every amendment places a barrier to someone enacting a law. Using the lopsided reasoning in Romer, it violates the 14th's guarantee equal protection for a state to amend its constitution to protect religious freedom, on the grounds that opponents of religious freedom have had a barrier placed in front of them while proponents of religious freedom have not.
The fact that the court hasn't taken Romer any further yet doesn't soothe me very much. They generally wait for the right time and the right case to pull off these judicial coups. They won't order nationwide gay "marriage" any time soon, but once state judicial fiats on this issue are in place in enough states, and there's a Democrat majority in Congress to kill any marriage amendment in committee, they may strike.
Then again, they may not. But I wouldn't bet on it. Our robed masters are waiting until the right time to foist this upon us.
I'm going into further detail here on the absurdity of Anthony Kennedy's reasoning in Romer.
The constitutional guarantee of Equal Protection of the Law was never by any stretch of the imagination intended to apply to homosexuality, a deviant sexual fetish. You admitted that in an earlier pose when you asserted that the 14th Amendment could not be used to void state laws against gay "marriage", as it definitely was used to void state laws against interracial marriage, because the 14th dealt with racial discrimination, not discriination against gays.
I responded that the Supreme Court has unconstitutionally expanded the 14th Amendment far beyond its intended limitations. It now applies to gender issues (as in the Citadel and VMI cases). And Romer expanded it to include sex perversity.
In an effort to justify these judicial power grabs, the court created the doctrine of "legitimate government interest". If the elected branches of government can prove to the Supreme Court that they have a "legtimate government interest" in treating men differently from women (for example) then the court will allow it. Otherwise they won't. In practice, what this means is that the court strikes down the laws they disagree with, while upholding the ones they don't have any problem with. They simply announce that there was a "legitimate government interest" for the latter, and not the former.
They get to decide what's "legitimate". The problem is, the voters were supposed to be the ones to decide that on issues outside the scope of the 14th Amendment. It's not the court's place to decide there's no "legitimate" reason for VMI to be all male. Nor is it the court's place to decide that Amendment 2 had no "compelling state interest" behind it. The fact that A) the voters approved it and B) nothing in the Constitution addresses it one way or the other is compelling enough reason for the court to uphold Amendment 2.
So there's no question the court exceeded the 14th Amendment by expanding it to "protect" homosexuals as a class. But even so, it still wouldn't be unconstitutional to pass Amendment 2. Here's why:
The 14th Amendment prevents discrimination by government, not by private individuals. Persons wishing to pass laws prohibiting discrimination by private individuals may seek such passage, but only within existing legislative parameters. There is no constitutional expectation that such laws will be passed under the 14th Amendment.
Suppose I'm a pet owner, and I'm having trouble finding a good apartment to rent because so many landlords won't allow pets. I contact a lawyer and ask him to sue the landlords for discriminating against pet owners. The lawyer turns down the case because THERE IS NO LAW IN MY STATE PROHIBITING LANDLORDS FROM REFUSING TO RENT TO PET OWNERS. So, I launch a lobbying campaign to pass such a law in the state legislature. Lots of my fellow pet owners join me. A bill to prohibit landlords from refusing to rent to pet owners is introduced in the legislature and has a shot at passing.
But the landlords trump me. They go straight to the voters, warning them that the law I'm seeking to pass is a threat to the rights of property owners. The voters agree, and approve a state constitutional amendment barring the state government from enacting a law requiring landlords to rent to pet owners.
I've thus been blocked from seeking enactment of the law I want passed. I now can't get that law passed unless I first manage to repeal the state constitutional amendment. A barrier has been thrown in my way, and in the way of a class of people (pet owners who rent). That barrier doesn't apply to other classes of people. Someone wanting to pass a law to prohibit discrimination by landlords against the blind, for example, would still be free to pass their law. But I can't pass mine.
So is the class of people in question (pet owners who rent) being victimized by this state amendment? Are they being denied equal protection? No, BECAUSE THERE IS NO OBLIGATION ON THE PART OF THE STATE TO PROHIBIT PRIVATE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST PET OWNERS. If there was such an obligation, I wouldn't have needed to lobby for the law in the first place.
AND THERE IS NO OBLIGATION FOR THE STATE OF COLORADO TO ENACT LAWS BANNING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST GAYS. The court's idiotic reasoning in Romer, which was that Amendment 2 prohibited a class of people (homosexuals) from seeking such laws, is an assault on the very concept of constitutional government. The very purpose of constitutional limitations on state authority is to erect a barrier to such authority. By definition, that places a barrier on any class of citizens wanting to exert the authority in question.
A constitutional provision setting Senate terms at six years places a barrier in the way of any class of citizens who want Senate terms to be four years. Is that class of citizens thus victimized by discrimination under the 14th Amendment? How ridiculous it would be to make such a claim! Yet the Supreme Court made it regarding homosexuals as a class in Romer, which is easily one of the five most moronic rulings the court ever rendered, and it's why Scalia's dissent is such a classic.