Posted on 07/28/2014 11:21:44 AM PDT by Alter Kaker
WASHINGTON — The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals held Monday that Virginia’s ban on same-sex couples’ marriages is unconstitutional. On a 2-1 vote, the appeals court joined the wave of court decisions declaring such bans unconstitutional. The decision, by Judge Henry Floyd acknowledged both the debate over such laws and, in the court’s view, the clear constitutional impediment to laws banning same-sex couples from marrying.
“We recognize that same-sex marriage makes some people deeply uncomfortable,” he wrote. “However, inertia and apprehension are not legitimate bases for denying same-sex couples due process and equal protection of the laws.”
The court’s opinion is not effective immediately. According to the court’s judgment in the case, the judgment will take effect after the mandate is issued in the case. The mandate, under the court’s rules, will be issued “7 days after expiration of the time to file a petition for rehearing expires, or 7 days after entry of an order denying a timely petition for panel rehearing, rehearing en banc, or motion for stay of mandate, whichever is later.”
(Excerpt) Read more at buzzfeed.com ...
A W appointee 2003..
Is a litmus test in order?
Or maybe we could just change the country name to
The Gay States of America
How less than 3% sculpt our society and judges nod okiendokie..
How nations crumble.. The latest submission
America under a GLAAQD Obama
absurd.
Unfortunately, the way the USSC decided last year, this wave of decisions was inevitable. We can blame Bush for this particular judge, but we can blame Anthony Kennedy for voting with the leftists and writing a completely terrible decision.
We can also blame Scalia for writing a dissent that made this inevitable. In Windsor, he argued that
"By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition,".... Henceforth those challengers will lead with this Court's declaration that there is "no legitimate purpose" served by such a law, and will claim that the traditional definition has 'the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure" the "personhood and dignity" of same-sex couples.... The majority's limiting assurance will be meaningless in the face of language like that, as the majority well knows."
Practically every judge who has struck down SSM bans since Windsor has cited Scalia -- who made their argument for them.
Regarding judges subjectively reading gay marriage into the Equal Protections Clause, please consider the following. Justices from the same generation that ratified 14A had clarified that 14A added no new protections to the Constitution. It only strengthened enumerated protections.
“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.
Again, since the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect gay agenda issues, gay rights have no constitutionally-based civil rights protections regardless of 14A.
Also note that the Supreme Court has historically sternly warned against interpolating meanings from the Constitution which is what these pro-gay activist justices are doing with respect to the Equal Protections Clause imo.
“3. The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction and no excuse for interpolation or addition [emphasis added].” —United States v. Sprague, 1931.
One possible remedy for patriots to stop activist judges from legislating special interest rights from the bench is the following. Patriots need to work with their state and federal lawmakers to make punitive laws which require judges to do the following in every case which deals with the Constitution. Judges need to be required to promptly, clearly and publicly reference all constitutional clauses which justify their case decisions to the satisfaction of voters. And judges who fail to do so should be minimally permanently removed from the bench, possibly serving some jail time.
And when the Constitution is silent about a given issue, judges should be required to clarify that the issue is a 10th Amendment-protected state power issue.
2 males uniting does not equal what we mean by marriage. Is that a better way of saying it?
I still don’t get how any state/government can redefine marriage.
Can they also redefine what a ‘week’ is?
I’d imagine that if thousands upon thousands of same-sex couples were walking down the aisle, we would have heard about it by now. That all we hear is crickets chirping makes me think that it just isn’t happening.
I'm not 'uncomfortable,' deeply or otherwise.
I have the apparently now-rare ability to discern between things, people, concepts, etc. Marriage has had a definition since the dawn of man. It is based in biology, common sense, history and functionality vis-a-vis civilization. If you are religious, that's even more reinforcement, perhaps the most significant kind.
We don't enter dogs in the Kentucky Derby for a simple reason: they aren't horses.
Marriage is, was and always will be an institution wrapped around a practicality - not an impracticality designed to destroy the institution to which it claims to seek access.
Like the old saw about the most dangerous assassin being the one who doesn't know he's an assassin, gays have been taken in completely by power-hungry statists and their constant attempts to undermine free societies.
Gays are so desperate for what they mistakenly perceive to be approval, acceptance, recognition, and even praise that they will gladly participate in the destruction of that which gave them the freedom to 'be themselves' in the first place. While they rail against sodomy laws in certain states or localities they ignore the categorical bans that exist - and are rigidly enforced - in Islamic or communist nations.
Politicians and judges have abdicated their role as representatives of the people and keepers of the law, respectively. We now hear all manner of nonsense about equality - despite the self-evident inequality between real marriage and the fake version. We also hear about 'not standing in the way of love.' But have these government officials read their own document i.e. a marriage license/certificate? The word 'love' does not appear - for it's strictly a legal instrument - which means, of course, that the politicians are willingly promulgating a falsehood, having succumbed to vanity and cowardice (again).
And so, they have their pitiful, awkward, painfully forced ceremonies with confusing, pointless and derivative husband/husband and wife/wife designations. Even worse is the choice of partner/partner - empty, sterile, meaningless titles that evoke law firms and funeral homes, not marriage and family.
Why not? What could they do to me?
This goes back to the question I’ve asked for years now...
Who, in their right mind, would even want to be president and have to govern over this drain-circling country?
Which is why.. no matter how they try to paint it.. the whole concept of "gay marriage" is a false one. They can try to go through the motions and buy all the trappings.. but it will never.. EVER reach the level of a traditional event.
So these judges have just reclassified the right to exercise deeply held religious beliefs as “inertia and apprehension”.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
All the wisdom of the ages on the subject of marriage, family and the rearing of children is reduced to "inertia and apprehension." There is NO HOPE AT ALL for this country. None.
Hogwash. Tell him. Scream it from the rooftops. For God's sake, start talking, people! Start telling people you disagree with the homo agenda (and the "Green" agenda, the Common Core agenda, and everything else being pushed by the Commies), that you won't stand for it, and be ready to fight back, possibly in the literal sense.
We've gone so long being meek, compliant and quiet, that our enemies have us against the ropes. The only way to win back our Republic is to fight. Hopefully, it'll be just with words, picket signs, and maybe fists, but if it goes further, we have only ourselves to blame.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
This is all about judges who have bought the myth of “born that way” to justify sexual deviance.
How many of these “pillars of virtue” are just looking to justify hedonism to cover their own indiscretions? (cheating on their wives, husbands, etc.)
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