Posted on 10/11/2014 5:17:50 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear a collection of marriage-equality decisions and deferred for another term what seems now an inevitable ruling for marriage equality. The very next day, the Ninth Circuit handed down an opinion, Latta v. Otter, striking down a number of same-sex-marriage bans.
In doing so, the appeals court provided the first of what will surely be many such decisions from which the Court can choose when the justices consider what cases they might hear in the future—and so offers potential rationales by which they might make marriage equality the law of the land. The Ninth Circuit’s majority opinion rejects same-sex-marriage bans because they violate the Equal Protection Clause by discriminating based on sexual orientation, which is a standard reason courts have struck down these bans.
But there is a twist: According to one judge, this is about sexism, too. In her concurrence, Judge Marsha Berzon argues that same-sex-marriage bans also constitute sex discrimination and therefore violate Equal Protection on additional grounds.
In some respects, Berzon’s concurrence was nothing new. Since the beginning of the fight for marriage equality, advocates have argued that a failure to allow same-sex couples to wed amounts to sex discrimination. This argument has, with a couple of notable exceptions, failed in courts. The Hawaii Supreme Court used this logic in 1994 when it issued the first decision in the U.S. for marriage equality (later nullified by a state constitutional amendment), and the argument has only succeeded in a Utah federal district court since then.
The formalist argument is that such bans classify on the basis of sex in a very basic way: In states where a man cannot marry a man, he is deprived of this right by virtue of his sex.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Pass all the laws you want to. There is no such thing as same-sex marriage. Never was, and never will be.
No.....racist though....for sure.
Pass laws? Who needs that when you have activist judges that exceed their own authority?
I’ve never heard of more errant nonsense in my entire life.
No one is prevented from marrying someone of the opposite sex. Now liberals proclaim that’s sexist.
You know when they run out of arguments to defend the indefensible.
Ping.
So, they bring out the “sexism” label for opponents of state-sanctioned homosexual relationships. Curious. If your position is so inevitable and, supposedly, embraced, then why make such a claim? Smacks of desperation.
Gay marriage bans are biblical.
bttt!
Maybe we should call the electrical industry Sexist....they require certain “male” and “female” items in order to make things work don’t they? Sheesh.
I would think gay marriage would be itself sexism in that it discriminates against one of the sexes.
This is a kritarchy, and will require a civil war to end
Where did these misguided activist judges go to law school? (I don't really want to know.)
As mentioned in related threads, regardless of the 14th Amendment's (14A) Equal Protections Clause (EPC), the Supreme Court didn't buy Virginia Minor's argument in Minor v. Happersett that her citizenship, in conjunction with the EPC, automatically gave her the right to vote regardless that she was a woman.
The Supreme Court countered Ms Minor's argument by clarifying, as evidenced by the excerpt below, that the 14th Amendment didn't add any new rights to the Constitution, that it only strengthens enumerated protections and immunities as Section 1 of 14A clearly indicates (RTFM).
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphasis added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.
In fact, the Court's statement about 14A reflects the clarification of the scope of 14A by John Bingham, Bigham the main author of Section 1 of 14A, where the EPC is found. Bingham had clarified that 14A applied only those rights amended to the Constitution by the states to the states, as opposed to PC "rights" that are subjectively read into the EPC by activist judges.
“Mr. Speaker, this House may safely follow the example of the makers of the Constitution and the builders of the Republic, by passing laws for enforcing all the privileges and immunities of the United States as guaranteed by the amended Constitution and expressly enumerated in the Constitution [emphasis added].” — Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 42nd Congress, 1st Session. (See lower half of third column.)
And since the states hadn't amended the Constitution to expressly protect the right to vote based on sex before the Court heard Ms Minor's argument, there was no such protection for women after 14A was ratified.
But Ms Minor's efforts did not go unrewarded. This is because the states later ratified the 19th Amendment (19A) to the Constitution which essetially gave women the right to vote.
But unlike the ratification of 19A to give women the right to vote, it remains that the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect the so-called “right” to gay marriage. So it also remains that the states are free to exercise their unchecked, 10A-protected power to make laws which discriminate against constitutionally unprotected things like gay marriage, imo, as long as such laws don't also unreasonably abridge constitutionally enumerated rights.
So much energy gets spent on this. My take... same-sex unions aren’t desirable for a number or reasons, but shouldn’t be suppressed by the government, which should stay out of it. But, these unions shouldn’t be called marriage, either. Or maybe, it should be called marriage-with-an-asterisk, like the home run records of baseball players who took steroids. It’s just not the same.
The fact is that marriage as an institution has been with us for millennia, and has suddenly been reinvented to satisfy homosexual activists. Please excuse those who don’t recognize this sham.
Are bans on pedophilia anti-children? Pedophiles think they are being nice to children. They give them compliments and candy and make them feel good. It’s sick and twisted. But that’s their logic.
Come to think of it, it makes as much sense as rectum rupturing anal sex.
nope.
trying to stem the tide of immorality.
These pro-sodomy doofuses apparently didn't get the memo.
Opposition to pervert pretend marriages is caused by global warming.
If the deviants weren't determined to destroy the ancient definition of "marriage" above all else, they could continue their perversion unmolested and invisible.
Insisting on flouting their clinical insanity has made it impossible to simply live and let live.
Normal families with pro-sodomy children or other relatives may want to re-examine their unconditional support of the disgusting practice.
I suppose I could also say the same about the "conservative" Fox News staff.
For me, forget about watching Megyn Kelly after two years. Stealth pro-sodomy supporter.
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