“Romney implemented gay marriage in Massachusetts.”
What choice did he have? The legislature, following the orders of the Mass. Supremes passed the damned thing.
Or do you believe that there exists a dictatorship vis a vis the Gubernatorial seat in Massachusetts?
~”Or do you believe that there exists a dictatorship vis a vis the Gubernatorial seat in Massachusetts?”~
That’s a good point, Grunthor. Some of the people who complain about Romney implementing the law that he was required by the other branches of the MA government to obey somehow at the same time make the ridiculous claim that Romney was some kind of dictator.
If he were a dictator, wouldn’t he have simply told the MA Supreme Court where to stick it?
It cannot be ignored that his actions after that decision (i.e. enforcing an obscure law, pushing for a constitutional amendment, etc.) set the gay marriage agenda back by at least a couple of years.
Unfortunately, you're fact-challenged. The court, acting with no legal or constitutional basis, ordered the legislative branch to pass a law legalizing gay marriage. The legislature rightfully ignored them. That's when Mitt Romney stepped in and implemented gay marriage in Massachusetts, in violation of his sworn oath to uphold the constitution of the Commonwealth.
The legislature checked an out-of-control court, until Governor Romney used his executive power to join with the lawless court and check the legislature.
THAT is what actually occurred.
The Governor’s New Clothes; How Mitt Romney Brought Same-Sex Marriage To America
Part VII - Mass. Same-Sex "Marriages" Are Legally Void
Massachusetts same-sex “marriages” are, therefore, legally void and Governor Romney was and remains under a Constitutional and sworn duty to acknowledge this reality.
“Massachusetts since 1780 has been governed by a written Constitution, wherein the various organs of government are enumerated and their powers defined. The people themselves and all branches of their government, legislative, executive, and judicial alike, are bound by it and owe to it implicit obedience. . . . Since the people have themselves adopted the Constitution with its amendments for their government, they are bound by the provisions and conditions which they themselves have placed in it[. For instance,] when they seek to enact laws by direct popular vote they must do so in strict compliance with those provisions and conditions.” Sears v. Treasurer and Reciever General, 327 Mass. 310, 320-22 (1951). Likewise, when the SJC and the Governor act, they must (not unlike the people) “do so in strict compliance” with the words of the Constitution.[128]
“[I]t is always to be presumed that a coordinate branch of the government has acted within the limits of its constitutional authority, until the contrary shall clearly and satisfactorily appear.” [129] When any one of the branches of government acts outside its Constitutional authority, those unlawful actions are null and void.[130] For example, the legislature cannot supplant the judicial function.[131] Similarly, the executive cannot perform a legislative function.[132] The same applies to unconstitutional acts of the Judiciary[133] as well. Exceeding the scope of legal authority granted to or overreaching the jurisdiction bestowed upon a court, is a nullity.[134] It is quite clear that the act of granting a license must be annulled when the law does not permit its issuance.[135]
Simply because the SJC ignored the explicit words of the Constitution in no way required Governor Romney to do the same.[136] Article 30 creates a separation of powers among the branches of government[137] and our democracy depends on this separation.[138] No branch of government is required to seek from another branch permission to assert its Constitutional duties.[139] To the contrary, when one branch of government attempts to perform an unconstitutional function that it has no right to perform, as the SJC has done in Goodridge, it is the duty of the other branches to check that power and prevent its misuse and usurpation.[140] Even the doctrine of stare decisis does not require the Court to be bound by its own prior illogical decisions.[141]
For separation of powers to mean anything then, it is fully within the discretion and authority of the Governor to not honor (i.e., ignore) the void and unconstitutional actions of the other branches of government – in the very same way that the SJC ignores the legislature’s unconstitutional actions as well as the illegal actions of the executive branch.[142] The SJC cannot, through the use of an unauthorized/unconstitutional declaration, prevent the Governor from performing his responsibilities to the people to execute the laws of the Commonwealth.[143]
Each branch is separate, and each is equal. Separation of powers is not some meaningless, abstract, wishful thought free of any practical application.[144] Rather when observed, it ensures that we remain a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”[145] Each branch may and sometimes must act independently.[146] Otherwise the doctrine of separation of powers is a meaningless concept.[147]
This is self-evident, but the Court’s majority was confident that neither the Legislature, nor the press, nor the civic culture of the Commonwealth would have the will or desire to call their bluff. Nor, as it turned out, would the governor, who was bound by his oath to the Constitution to reject the Goodridge ruling as meaningless, at the very least until the Legislature rescinded the existing marriage law in order to please the court. But only a very small minority of legislators were willing to even consider voting to establish homosexual marriage. Thus when Governor Romney ordered state officials to begin issuing marriage licenses to homosexual couples, he was going far beyond what the Court, the Legislature, and the people expected him to do. More than that, he was violating the Constitution he had sworn to defend. Not even the Marshall court majority implied in even the faintest way that it fell upon the governor as chief executive to ignore the still binding law of the Commonwealth and issue orders that violated that law and violated the Constitution’s Separation of Powers. To the constitutionally ignorant (which now includes Justice Roderick Ireland of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court),[148] the governor’s actions had and have today the appearance of being forced by the Goodridge ruling. Governor Romney’s public statements have repeatedly cloaked his unconstitutional actions as a mere carrying out of the law. In fact, it is not possible to even argue such, since Massachusetts law to this day defines marriage just as it has for well over two centuries.
Governor Romney acquiesced in the SJC decision and actively authorized same-sex “marriage.” Resembling what the Emperor saw in the mirror, Romney’s reliance on the SJC’s decision to justify his subsequent actions, therefore, was based on nothing.
Although he does not like to take credit for it, on April 26, 2003, Governor Romney, without being authorized by the legislature ordered the terms on the official marriage certificate changed[149] and in May he ordered the town clerks, even ones with religious conscience concerns, to solemnize the marriages.[150] In so doing, Governor Romney failed “to act in strict compliance with the words of the Constitution” and failed to execute the laws of the Commonwealth. He also placed the public officials in criminal jeopardy, but for the fact that he will not enforce the marriage statute, which prohibits the certification of and solemnization of marriages that violate the marriage statute.
The truth is, Governor Romney knew the SJC had violated the Constitution.[151] In a Wall Street Journal editorial he said:
With the Dred Scott case, decided four years before he took office, President Lincoln faced a judicial decision that he believed was terribly wrong and badly misinterpreted the U.S. Constitution. Here is what Lincoln said: "If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." By its decision, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts circumvented the Legislature and the executive, and assumed to itself the power of legislating. That's wrong.[152]
Romney, therefore, also knew he had no duty, nor any legal power, to change the documents or issue marriage certificates. Indeed, his duty was to uphold the laws of the Commonwealth and, therefore, to do the exact opposite of what he did.[153]
So then, what is the legal status of the licenses that have allegedly been certified and the “marriages” that have purportedly been solemnized without legal authority? The answer lies in the venerable legal principle that one can only receive the title (power, authority, ownership) that one has been given; that is, a person can stand in no greater position, nor obtain greater ownership than that which was transferred.[154] Nemo dat qui non habet (“You cannot give what you do not have”). Thus, no matter how many licenses the town clerks churn out, neither the statute, nor the Constitution permit same-sex “marriage.” Governor Romney’s lack of power and his failure to execute the laws of Massachusetts means that “no valid [marriage certificate] has been issued.[155] . . . Only by preserving this fundamental principle can constitutional government be preserved and orderly progress assured.”[156] “It would be astonishing and intolerable if the [words] so carefully inserted in the [Constitution] could be disregarded by [the Supreme Judicial Court and the Governor] without consequence and so in effect turned into mere admonitions and recommendations. The Constitution is not ordinarily treated in that manner.” Sears v. Treasurer and Reciever General, 327 Mass. 310, 321-22 (1951).
The power the Governor lacked (both because the SJC had no authority to authorize any “marriage” that contradicts the word embedded in the Constitution and because the statute continues to prohibit same-sex “marriage” since it has not been changed, nor repealed), makes the “marriage” certificates, that have been and are being handed out by town clerks to same-sex couples, void. They were void from their inception because there was and there continues to be no legal authority to issue them.[157] Couples holding those same-sex “marriage” licenses hold nothing because issuing “marriage” certificates (pursuant to Chapter 207) to same-sex couples is a legal impossibility.[158] There was no authority to issue the certificates nor to solemnize the relationships and, therefore, they are void.[159]
How many times did he turn down and force the legislation to override him on any of the objectionable efforts from the left?