Posted on 10/26/2006 10:55:44 AM PDT by Coleus
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Law Center, condemned the ruling, “The New Jersey Supreme Court has engaged in a reckless act of social engineering and judicial activism which, if allowed to stand, will have bitter consequences for society in the future. No consideration was given to the instability the Court’s social experimentation will have on society as they cavalierly detached marriage from procreation and the traditional family of one man and one woman. This decision should be a wake-up call to the vast majority of Americans who oppose same-sex marriages. Perhaps the chief lesson of yesterday’s decision is the importance of providing traditional marriage with constitutional protection.” In 2004, the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, collaborated with the Coalition For The Protection Of Marriage and other pro-family groups, such as the American Family Association of Michigan, to draft and secure passage of Michigan’s Marriage Amendment. When opponents of the amendment claimed it was unnecessary because Michigan law limited marriage to the union of one man and one woman, the Center warned that a constitutional amendment was the best guarantee against a redefinition of marriage by an activist court.
Patrick T. Gillen, the Thomas More Law Center attorney who drafted Michigan’s Marriage Amendment for the Coalition, noted another lesson to be learned from the decision. “The defense of traditional marriage was fatally compromised by the Attorney General’s failure to defend the role that marriage plays in promoting the true good of the spouses and children who enter the family. Once society fails to appreciate these essential goods of marriage, damage to the family and, ultimately, the common good, becomes inevitable.” Last week Gillen appeared before the Michigan Supreme Court in a case where the Law Center argues that Michigan’s Marriage Amendment prohibits public schools from recognizing and subsidizing same-sex domestic partnerships. Yesterday, the Law Center filed an appeal from a decision dismissing its claim that the Marriage Amendment prohibits Michigan State University from recognizing and subsidizing same-sex domestic partnership benefits. In both cases the courts refused to rule on the merits of the claim, dismissing the suits based on narrow jurisdictional grounds.
Currently, Massachusetts is the only state that has authorized same-sex marriages. Two other states, Vermont and Connecticut authorize civil unions. Nineteen states have adopted constitutional amendments that explicitly ban same-sex marriages. On November 7th eight additional states will be voting on constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriages -- Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.
The person who, IMHO, will really be hurt by this is Rudy. I've long felt he has a good chance for the 2008 GOP nomination, and that he could become acceptable to social conservatives and evangelicals in the GOP because of his strong stance on national security issues, but if Rudy is forced to take a position on this issue, and agrees with Bloomberg..then he's toast...so there may be a political implication at play here..
I strongly disagree with this guy. The defense of traditional marriage was fatally compromised once governments got into the business of giving out marriage licenses in the first place. The best defense against same-sex marriage is to shake the dust off our feet and stop pretending that a government's definition of "marriage" means -- or ever did mean -- anything at all.
I can easily see the day when people with serious religious inclinations simply stop getting "licenses" when they get married.
Eff yah! Its the gift that keeps in giving. democrats and liberals secretly want to shove this down America's throat and most everybody does not want it.
If NJ wasn't so close-minded, interspecies marriage should also be on the ballot. See article in Bay City Times. The Will and Trigger show is just around the corner.
The Bay City Times ^ | Tuesday, October 24, 2006 | TIM YOUNKMAN
(mlive.com) A 44-year-old Saginaw man remains jailed today on charges of bestiality after he was seen engaged in sexual acts with a dead dog, Michigan State Police troopers said. Ronald Kuch was arrested after police searched the area of Midland and...
The idea that a title makes a difference is ridiculous. Even a domestic partnership is essentially a marriage. All the domestic partner law did was make it easier for the judges to claim discrimination because the "union" benefits were not the same.
Any time you (or anyone) posts a Stanley Kurtz article, it would be good to add his name to the keywords. Thanks for posting this.
Self: later pingout.
I think he is absolutely right. The AG made a huge blunder in not defending those "rights" given to heterosexual marriage as being based especially for the benefit of children raised in a natural and normal relationship.
That left the court with only the argument they used...that the state had no reason to prohibit same sex couples from those benefits.
Because the state of NJ has stupidly promoted homosexuals the court was left with little choice.
You cannot really disagree that the state has no onterest in marriage: the tax deducts, the right of inheritance and the rest all develope stability.
I think Guiliani is already on record for civil unions which are federally recognized as marriage in all but the "M" word.
The ONLY way Guiliani can recover would be to announce support for the Federal Marriage Amendment (which as a lawyer, he KNOWS is the only way to make normal marriage the law of the land safe from judges) AND reounce the sham civil unions.
This he also knows as a lawyer since cohabitation agreements, advance directives take care of the civil union issues.
An attorney general can't possibly stand up and make that case and keep a straight face these days, seeing how a marriage is a state-sanctioned contract that is violated and broken with such boring regularity that it is basically meaningless. Heck -- there is even an entire branch of the legal profession (divorce law) that was created specifically to deal with all of the cases in which these contracts must be "undone."
You cannot really disagree that the state has no onterest in marriage: the tax deducts, the right of inheritance and the rest all develope stability.
Yes, I can. If you need any proof of this, just realize that families were far more stable -- and homosexual marriage such a bizarre notion that nobody even thought about it -- when people got married without any formal government recognition at all.
The state really has no BUSINESS in marriage. Tax deductions are related to a state function (taxation of income) that is barely even legitimate in my eyes. Rights of inheritance can be given to anyone with the proper documentation (regardless of family relations). And as I pointed out previously, the notion that there is anything resembling "stability" in heterosexual marriage in New Jersey state law anymore is a joke.
Any time you (or anyone) posts a Stanley Kurtz article, it would be good to add his name to the keywords. Thanks for posting this. >>>
I was going to. the new fr policy is to only allow 4 topics and keywords or the article won't be posted.
I guess none of these commentators see a problem with the New Jersey Supreme Court telling the NJ Legislature what laws they must pass and giving them a deadline to do it! At least I haven't seen it discussed.
No...I know what the court means. My question was, what is the difference between what the court ordered and what they already had through the state's domestic partner laws?
Oh..but the court left to the democratic process naming rights.
If there are any Republicans left in New Jersey they should be all over this!
And just how does the court intend to enforce this ultimatum?
you can probably go on most gay-agenda websites and find out the info there.
One can circumvent that by adding another keyword after the article is posted. That works.
yes, I know that.
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