Michigan legislative action thread
Posted on 01/15/2015 8:44:53 AM PST by cripplecreek
DETROIT, MI -- The state must fully recognize the marriages of couples who wed on the one day it was legal in Michigan last year, U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith ordered in a preliminary injunction issued Thursday.
The injunction won't take effect for 21 days, but unless an appeals court further stays the decision, it means the state will have to provide spousal benefits to same-sex couples who got married on March 22, 2014.
Some 300 couples received marriage licenses that day, after a federal judge struck down the state's same-sex marriage ban, and before an appeals court put that ruling on hold in a case that's currently in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Clerks in Oakland, Muskegon, Washtenaw and Ingham counties opened their doors that day to issue the licenses on a Saturday.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette sought to void those marriages in November, after the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the gay marriage ban.
But Goldsmith ruled that "what the state has joined together, it may not put asunder."
"This Court concludes that the continued legal validity of an individual's marital status in such circumstances is a fundamental right comprehended within the liberty protected under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment," Goldsmith ruled.
"Even though the court decision that required Michigan to allow same-sex couples to marry has now been reversed on appeal, the same-sex couples who married in Michigan during the brief period when such marriages were authorized acquired a status that state officials may not ignore absent some compelling interest -- a constitutional hurdle that the defense does not even attempt to surmount. In these circumstances, what the state has joined together, it may not put asunder."
The state could appeal the decision.
"We are reviewing Judge Goldsmith's decision but as I have said repeatedly, the sooner the United States Supreme Court makes a decision on this issue the better it will be for Michigan and America," Schuette said in a statement.
The U.S. Supreme Court to hold a conference Friday and decide whether it will review the case that challenged the constitutionality of Michigan's gay marriage ban, along with similar cases out of three other states.
Religious freedom? Federal government says no.
What if they simply say, “No?”
This Nation Requires a HOUSE CLEANING coast to coast from top to bottom
Same sort of mess across the Nation.
Propisition what?
“Whe dont got to obey no steenkin Proposition 18 “
The governor should say “No.”
If there was no authority to issue a license by the State, there is no valid marriage.
It seems the Federal judiciary has been completely compromised to strike down state laws against gay marriage.
The FEDERAL judiciary has no power to force anything on the SOVEREIGN states. Michigan should just ignore the ruling and move on as if it never happened.
Are we reaching a “Pinochet moment”? I think we are.
I agree.
We need a Governor with balls to tell the Feds to stand down.
This sort of thing is why there is a strong movement in Michigan to return the power of infrastructure to the state.
Federal funding is both the carrot and the stick used by the federal government to impose their will on the states.
States’ rights on this issue was a phony argument to buy time until federal judges could order the entire nation around. “We the people” has become “we the judges.”
We need a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man, one woman. The basic definition has been federal since the start of the Republican party and the adding of Utah to the Union.
Or what?
Since the state previously had previously exercised its 10th Amendment-protected power to ban constitutionally unprotected gay marriage, this appears to be a pro-gay activist judge legislating from the bench in a last act of defiance.
It was a Reagan appointed judge who ruled to OK gay marriage last year.
There was a lot of deliberate manipulation on the part of his long time legal clerk who is a lesbian. She has her adopted kids call him “grandpa”, had lunch with him on the day of the ruling and had the kids in the courtroom when he handed down his verdict.
Government of the Judges, by the Judges, and for the Judges.
States have that power already. Each sovereignty over its territory. Federal funding? Pish. Just instruct citizens to send all their federal tax payments to the state capital instead of the IRS. Then, tell the feds you don’t need money from Washington. If the IRS complains, expel them from the state and use county sheriffs and state courts to protect citizens from any enforcement actions.
Christian bakers and florists, Beware!
Sodomites are always trying to get that one foot in the door to fully push their agenda later.
A court has upheld their marriage amendment, and it stands as it was intended.... period!
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