Posted on 12/08/2007 8:02:12 AM PST by mngran2
In a split decision, Rhode Island's top court said yesterday that it will not allow a lesbian couple who married in Massachusetts to get a divorce in the Ocean State.
The 3-to-2 ruling was viewed by advocates of gay marriage as a setback and by those who oppose the recognition of same-sex unions as an act of wisdom.
The court concluded that a key 1961 Rhode Island law defines marriage as an legal union between a man and a woman, not same-sex couples. Unless and until the Legislature changes the wording, same-sex couples married in Massachusetts cannot get divorced in Rhode Island family courts, it said.
Cassandra Ormiston, who married Margaret Chambers in Fall River in 2004 after Massachusetts became the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriages, denounced the ruling, saying it discriminates against same-sex couples.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Why defend state law? Why defend the laws of America? Cannot the Citizens of America understand? Elected officials are not elected to defend the law. If elected officials were actually elected to defend and preserve the law, then the law would be defended and preserved. When surveying the landscape, one should remember chaos is preferred over the law. There is more money in chaos.
Now please, survey the landscape and tell me, is not chaos the way to go? A resounding YES, just echoed across America from our elected and the media, and our elected know what is best. Just another way to pay off the media, during an election year.
Rember one of the main reasons FOR Gay marriage?..... They’re more likely to stay together.
Why would they need divorce?
GLBT advocates are not going to stop trying to attain everything on their agenda. Their agenda includes gay marriage and then goes beyond it. (See, for example, the 1973 Gay Rights Platform formulated in Chicago. It’s available on the web at a number of sites.) Right now, R.I. is exercising states rights, but with an on-going push from these groups, R.I. may not be able to do so in the future.
You can also point out to your niece that marriage was not previously defined in legal documents as being between a man and a woman because gay marriage was not even remotely on the horizon. Even in the turbulent 1960s, if you had mentioned that we’d be considering this issue in a few decades, people would have looked at you as if you were crazy. Drastic measures (like amending the Constitution) are being considered because the demand for gay marriage is extreme, not having even existed in ancient Rome or Greece.
When gays divorce they really rarely stick it to each other.
No, not me. They just probably didn’t want to waste the “greenhouse gases” driving to Mass to get divorced.
But but but we'd lose Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry and Joan Edwards!!!!
Yes, but apparently they are arguing over custody of the Turkey Baster.
Whether marriage is immutable in your mind is hardly the point. The question is state and federal acknowledgment of gay “rights,” which may or may not include legally redefining marriage.
I think there are conservative arguments to be made either for leaving gay “rights” to the states or for enacting a constitutional amendment. The first argument would appeal to states’ rights, as you suggest, and the second would appeal to traditional family values. The messy truth is that everyone — at least, every thinking person — holds ethical standards that eventually come into conflict. God has universal standards; the trouble for mere mortals is figuring out what they are in a complex world.
Ultimately, my belief in Scripture trumps my belief in states’ rights. That’s why I believe in a federal amendment on gays and, for that matter, abortion.
Not unless they take California with them.
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