Posted on 03/05/2013 4:54:36 PM PST by Lurking Libertarian
On Thursday, dozens of American corporations, including Apple, Alcoa, Facebook, eBay, Intel, and Morgan Stanley will submit an amicus brief in the landmark Hollingsworth v. Perry case broadly arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that laws banning same-sex marriages, like California's ballot initiative Proposition 8, are unconstitutional under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. According to a draft copy obtained by Fortune, the companies argue that such laws "send an unmistakeable signal that same-sex couples are in some way inferior to opposite-sex couples, a proposition that is anathema to amici's commitment to equality and fair treatment to all." At least 60 companies had committed to signing the brief as of Tuesday evening, according to Joshua Rosenkranz, who is counsel of record on the brief and head of the Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. That number is expected to rise by Thursday, however, according to Rosenkranz. Others who have already committed to sign include AIG, Becton Dickinson, Cisco, Cummins, Kimpton, Levi Strauss, McGraw Hill, NCR, Nike, Office Depot, Oracle, Panasonic, Qualcomm, and Xerox. (Update: Verizon and Cablevision have now joined.)
(Excerpt) Read more at features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com ...
God doesn’t determine His morality by counting noses.
SBB, you are a good person of faith, it is not G-d they fear, they may not know him, but they fear attorneys, they are so of this world...
As Lenin said, capitalists will sell communists the rope to hang themselves
The love of money is the root of all evil.
That could be the underlying motive right there. A straight-up business decision which affects the bottom line.
No marriage certificate? No spousal bennies. End of story.
I posted the following analysis about Obama's inappropriate application of the equal protection clauses in federal and state constitutions a few days ago in a related thread. Freepers who missed it will hopefully find it interesting.
If both patriots and Obama would just take a few minutes to examine relevant amendments to the Constitution which were added after the 14th Amendment (14A) was ratified, then there would be no question that lawless Obama has once again not done his homework regarding how federal and state constitutons should be interpreted, so-called gay marriage rights the issue in this case. (As I've ranted elsewhere, sometimes I think that many patriots interpret the Constitution's "pursuit of happiness" clause as a license to spend all their time merely complaining about tyrants like Obama; the Founding States arguably wasted their time writing everything following the pursuit clause.)
To begin with, the Equal Protection Clause of California's constitution is expressly based on the Equal Protection Clause of the federal 14th Amendment as the link below will show.
CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION ARTICLE 1 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS SEC. 7.
And since 14A's equal protection clause is now in the picture, what Constitution flunky Obama is wrongly doing with the equal protection clauses of both federal and state constitutions for political gain is this. He has put on his "magic glasses of self-deception" in order to read into these clauses the indefensible generalization that the states cannot make laws which discriminate against people. But examples of perfectly legal discriminatory laws are plentiful as evidenced by age requirements for purchasing things like alcoholic beverages and cigarettes, driving privileges, and gender distinctions as evidenced by men's and women's restrooms, etc..
The problem with Obama's PC fantasy concerning equal protections and gay marriage is that it ignores the following sequence of events. After the Civil War had ended, regardless that the brand new 14th Amendment's equal protection clause was undoubtly still very fresh in the minds of federal and state lawmakers, evidenced by California's inclusion of much of the language of 14A into its own constitution, note that some states continued to enforce voting laws which prohibited people from voting on the basis of race, sex, owed taxes and age as evidenced by the post 14A ratification of the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments respectively, 26A actually making prohibition of voting by age uniform among the states.
At this point, Obama's equal protection idea concerning gay marriage is trashed imo. This is evidenced by states, including California until 1911, which continued to prohibit otherwise qualified voters from voting on the basis of sex until 19A was ratified in 1920, regardless of 14A's Equal Protection Clause. So Obama's mischievous cherry-picking of California's equal protection clause to defend gay marriage doesn't hold water imo.
But let's also consider the Supreme Court case of Minor v. Happersett, decided after 14A was ratified.
Minor v. Happersett, 1874
In this case justices decided that, regardless if a woman is a natural born citizen (ahem), being an nbc did not imply a constitutional right to vote if a state had a voting law which prohibited women from voting.
But more importantly, note that justices referenced the 14th Amendment in the Minor opinion. This is glaring evidence that the 14A's Equal Protection Clause did not trump state power to make laws which discriminated on the basis of sex.
Again, since California's equal protection clause is expressly based on 14A's Equal Protection Clause, the Constitution's history shows that Obama doesn't know what he's talking about concerning, among other things, equal protection clauses and so-called gay marriage rights.
Finally, as a side note to the consequences widespread ignorance of the Constitution and its history, please consider the following. The consequence of rich people and rich companies not knowing about the Founding States' division of fedreal and state powers is the following. Rich companies don't understand that much of the federal taxes that they try to avoid paying by hiding money in foreign bank accounts, Congress actually has no constitutional authority to tax such funds in the first place.
More specifically, Justice John Marshall had officially clarified that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes for anything that it cannot justify under the Constitution's Section 8 of Article I, mostly defense funding.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." --Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Every state's laws are different. Same with mandated timeoff. I worked in HR software for awhile. Every year, the code had to be tweaked to permit this or that option depending on the state of the participants working for the client company.
Some states require time off exceptions (even if they are unpaid) for visits to vet, etc.
Every state's laws are different on a whole lot of things. Some states (like CA and WI) had 20 pages of such regulated exceptions. Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Texas does not recognize same sex marriages yet you have some districts that require “partners” of city employees to be covered. Such payouts even existed when same sex sodomy itself was illegal in this state.
There is cancer in this nation that ignores the law and does whatever it wants. WITH public funds.
How many of these “same sex partner benefits”, homosexual-only target ad campaigns, celebration and sponsorships of Gay Pride Month, and signing of such petitions is ever put to a vote of the shareholders?
We are told that all corporations are “conservative” because liberals don’t have a lot of money. Clearly money is being siphoned off into political avenues by SOME liberals within these corporations.
It’s ironic. Big businesses often complain about family decay, the toll of divorces and unwed motherhood.
Actually, they DO NOT. Too many big corporate execs have their own multiple divorces and no morals. But the business leaders do complain, indirectly, when they say that kids applying for jobs are under-educated and have no work ethic. The executives are just clueless as to the actual cause.
I was wrong. Apparently it's gay "marriage" then pedophilia.
The rest can wait.
Once gay "marriage" is the law of the land, how can ANYONE argue against polygamy? They can't make a cogent aguement against it, since the standard is "loving" each other.
That's it.
So let those men who molest their daughters out of jail. They "love" each other.
I’ve always looked at such matters this way. What big business wants, big business gets. If they figure there’s money to be made, or money to be saved to increase their profitability, they’ll support it.
If big business, let’s say a good-sized chunk of the Fortune 500 companies, come to the conclusion that same-sex marriage is good for business, well, that’s that.
I predict that SCOTUS will make SSM the law of the land by 2015 at the latest. Who knows, maybe even this year.
Big business also wants socialized medicine....they would love for the government to take worrying about insuring their employees off of their hands.
What's different about you and me and say 25% of other people for whom it's blindingly obvious?
Is the Holy Spirit helping us TO SEE?
Marriage is a religious institution and did not orginated by the government. The first recorded marriage was in the bible. Gay don’t want civil unions or legal rights to protect themselves, that would be easy to do. They hate that all major religions (God) say homosexuality is wrong and harmful. They want to force Christians to not just accept their behavior, but say that God is wrong. They want to force their beliefs on everyone and especially children. Mark my words pastors, priest, rabbis will be sued or worse, florist, bakeries, photographers.....if they don’t “validate” there lifestyle by working the wedding. Today it’s gay marriage tomorrow ??? I’d question why so many people are trying to lower the age of consent for children. Parents today who think they are being fair may one day understand its not about equality. It’s about rejecting God.
I’m quite sure that a good many companies in the Fortune 500 would quite cheerfully let the Feds take over healthcare completely. Well, not the health insurance companies, of course....they’d lose it all.
But the rest of them, sure. Think of all the money they could save if they realized they no longer had to provide health insurance for their employees and employees families. Billions, all nicely added to the bottom line.
Can I send the Supreme Court my briefs? Skidmarks and all.
I for one would like to commend Apple, Alcoa, Facebook, eBay, Intel, Morgan Stanley and anyone else who would come forward in support of "gay marriage."
I would much rather have these companies come out of the closet --- so to speak --- so that I know who to stop buying goods and services from and direct my dollars towards companies that support my values.
So Intel, my next computer will have an AMD Processor in it. eBay, well I stopped buying anything off eBay several years ago. Facebook can always KMA and fortunately for me, I closed any Morgan Stanley investment accounts I had long ago, 1999 IIRC.
As for Apple, well let's just say my last iPad purchase (last year) was my LAST purchase from Apple.
I like to call it "Informed Capitalism." And that's as it should be. Let's have all these homosexual, sodomy loving companies come out of the closet so we know who they are and stop supporting them. It's that simple.
And trust me on this: Average, every day Americans DO pay attention to the companies that work against their own personal interests and do NOT buy from them. That again, is as it should be.
Do you think He will? Prepare yourself and your loved ones. If His wrath isn’t poured out on America and the world nations that support this crap, He owes Sodom & Gomorrah an apology.
Impossible? No, it's not impossible. Alot of work to either (a)find alternatives to those companies or (b)decide to do without. But not "impossible."
Agree with you on the 'disheartening' part. It does seem as if good old-fashioned common sense Conservative values are under assault from literally every angle these days.
Here's the thing though: We're on the right side, both politically and morally. Sometimes that's not easy.
Keep the faith.
AMD is considered reasonably LGBT friendly.
Not as friendly as Apple, mind you, but they’re above 50% on the Human Rights Campaign’s list of companies. They score 5% higher than Wal-Mart.
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