Posted on 02/03/2003 11:17:58 AM PST by Hat-Trick
BY TOM SHAW
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
This Valentine's Day at least six same-sex couples will walk into the Douglas County Clerk's Office seeking marriage licenses.
The couples don't expect to get them.
Their action will be part of a nationwide effort to push for legalizing same-sex unions. Only Vermont recognizes such unions.
The action is being led by the Metropolitan Community Church, which the group says has more than 46,000 members in 22 countries.
Same-sex couples will ask for marriage licenses in several states on Valentine's Day.
The Douglas County couples will be led by the Rev. Barbara Sagat, pastor of Omaha's Metropolitan Community Church, and her partner, the Rev. Sharon Stover, pastor of the Sioux Falls, S.D., church.
Nebraska does not recognize same-sex unions. In 2000, voters approved an amendment to the State Constitution banning same-sex marriages by a margin of 70 percent to 30 percent.
"Our intent is to do this every Valentine's Day until there is equality," Sagat said. "Our relationships really do suffer not having legal status."
The couples want the same rights that marriage provides others, she said, including power of attorney for making medical decisions for a partner.
Sheri Larsen, assistant to County Clerk Tom Cavanaugh, said the office declined to comment.
"We think this is a state issue," she said, adding, "The marriage license laws are governed by state statute, and that's what our office follows."
I have no problem with that. I'm among the 70% of Nebraskans who said let's not call it marriage, and let's not equate that as equal to or with traditional marriage.
How's this for a secular/legal argument:
If we set the legal precedent of "normalizing" and equating a behavior (homosexuality) with an inherent design (heterosexuality), we are opening the door for other types of behaviors to be normalized - some of which lead to the victimization of innocents unable to defend themselves.
Hat-Trick
However, in order to be married you have to have one from each column to satisfy the definition of the word marriage.
Secular enough?
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US 186 (1986)
After being charged with violating the Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy by committing that act with another adult male in the bedroom of his home, respondent Hardwick (respondent) brought suit in Federal District Court, challenging the constitutionality of the statute insofar as it criminalized consensual sodomy. The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, holding that the Georgia statute violated respondent's fundamental rights.
Held: The Georgia statute is constitutional. Pp. 190-196 .
(a) The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy. None of the fundamental rights announced in this Court's prior cases involving family relationships, marriage, or procreation bear any resemblance to the right asserted in this case. And any claim that those cases stand for the proposition that any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is constitutionally insulated from state proscription is unsupportable. Pp. 190-191 .
(b) Against a background in which many States have criminalized sodomy and still do, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" is, at best, facetious. Pp. 191-194 .
(c) There should be great resistance to expand the reach of the Due Process Clauses to cover new fundamental rights. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily would take upon itself further authority to govern the country without constitutional authority. The claimed right in this case falls far short of overcoming this resistance. Pp. 194-195 .
(d) The fact that homosexual conduct occurs in the privacy of the home does not affect the result. Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 , distinguished. Pp. 195-196 .
(e) Sodomy laws should not be invalidated on the asserted basis that majority belief that sodomy is immoral is an inadequate rationale to support the laws. P. 196 .
BURGER, C.J., Concurring Opinion
As the Court notes, ante at 192 , the proscriptions against sodomy have very "ancient roots." Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization. Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards. Homosexual sodomy was a capital crime under Roman law. See Code Theod. 9.7.6; Code Just. 9.9.31. See also D. Bailey, Homosexuality [p*197] and the Western Christian Tradition 70-81 (1975). During the English Reformation, when powers of the ecclesiastical courts were transferred to the King's Courts, the first English statute criminalizing sodomy was passed. 25 Hen. VIII, ch. 6. Blackstone described "the infamous crime against nature" as an offense of "deeper malignity" than rape, a heinous act "the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature," and "a crime not fit to be named." 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *215. The common law of England, including its prohibition of sodomy, became the received law of Georgia and the other Colonies. In 1816, the Georgia Legislature passed the statute at issue here, and that statute has been continuously in force in one form or another since that time. To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.
This is essentially not a question of personal "preferences," but rather of the legislative authority of the State. I find nothing in the Constitution depriving a State of the power to enact the statute challenged here.
No, not that I disagree, but the human definition of "marrige" has its ties to religion.
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