Suck it, Taxachusetts libs! Some federal appellate judges appointed by America's greatest presidents, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, just struck down a law signed by a Democrat president that puts the federal government's nose where it doesn't belong: in the business of the
Yes, I only mentioned Title 2 because it&#039;s the part that&#039;s relevant to <em>losing</em> Federal rights if you move from Mass. to Miss. in a stunning display of masochism. Of course, until Title 3 is struck down, you&#039;d have no Federal rights to lose.
It&#039;s at once comforting and disturbing that the gov&#039;ts lawyers had to scrape the barrel so severely in their ham-handed attempts to defend Title 2. Comforting in that there&#039;s clearly no case law to support non-recognition of other states&#039; marriages except where everyone agrees there&#039;s a line that separates normal relationships from deviancy but reasonable minds differ on the exact location of that line; disturbing because of the sheer number of bigots, at least two* of whom are on the Court, who think same-sex marriage is deviant.
* Roberts and Alito haven&#039;t had the opportunities to prove themselves that Scalia and Thomas have, but the latter pair seized their chances with both hands to make proud exhibitions of homophobia.
Wouldn&#039;t it have been nice if <em>Lawrence</em> had specified a standard of review rather than merely hinting it was something stronger than rational basis? [Edit: and isn&#039;t it strange in the 1st Circuit&#039;s opinion how when they&#039;re discussing the standard of review, they mention <em>Romer</em> but do not mention <em>Lawrence</em>? Probably wouldn&#039;t matter since they cite standing 1st Circuit precedent which postdates <em>Lawrence</em> and makes a good case they&#039;re currently foreclosed from reaching as high as intermediate scrutiny]
Personally I really struggle to understand how it&#039;s possible for anyone to look at the history of homophobia and fail to conclude that <em>Carolene</em> footnote four applies. Although I guess even there &quot;more searching legal inquiry&quot; is not exactly prescriptive of a particular level of scrutiny.
Speaking of lazy, overrated hacks, the fucking Solicitor General failed to point out to Justice Scalier* that the &quot;Cornhusker Kickback&quot; was not in the Act.
* Yes, that is intended to imply that he&#039;s somehow reptilian
The Texas law at issue in <em>Lawrence</em> was a same-sex only buttsechs law. Kennedy&#039;s opinion said you can&#039;t outlaw buttsechs in private between consenting individuals, regardless of gender, because of the penumbra etc. etc. plus Due Process; O&#039;Connor&#039;s concurrence was that <em>Bowers</em> should&#039;ve been left intact and banning <em>all</em> buttsechs is OK because screw privacy but singling out teh gheys is unconstitutional on Equal Protection grounds. Which of course made no sense at all, because <em>Bowers</em> was <em>all about</em> the homos, but O&#039;Connor&#039;s a strange old coot and I&#039;m unsurprised at this inconsistency.
The major point of <em>Lawrence</em> was that it suggested that homosexual activity is included in the liberties protected by the Due Process clause:
<blockquote>The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons.</blockquote>
When you combine that with <em>Loving</em>&#039;s embrace of the right to marry the person of your choosing (as long as they consent) regardless of skin color under that same Due Process-protected liberty, you&#039;re getting well on the way to building a case for a right to gay marry, which would of course strike down all of DOMA. You could make a case that Kennedy&#039;s circumscription of his opinion indicates an awareness of that implication but an unwillingness to admit it. So, it&#039;s baby steps for now.
BTW, as a matter of the history of the United States, clearly the theory of the nation has been that it <em>is</em> OK for some states to offer fewer rights than others (slavery, Jim Crow being the most obvious examples), <em>especially</em> pre-incorporation, but even now there&#039;s plenty of &quot;non-fundamental&quot; rights that are not protected by the Federal Constitution and therefore at states&#039; discretion to grant or deny.
yes. (blushes). i know it was expected and...romantic. but they LOVED it.
also, there was a recently bereaved gentleman there - with his two children. they read some children&#039;s book about &#039;my different family&#039; and yeats and behan and anne morrow lindburgh pretty much flew out the window.
but thank you all. it was so nice to spend a few days getting acquainted or reacquainted with poetic geniuses.
this week i&#039;m on to skriker which is quite another thing altogether.
Legal or political &quot;progress&quot;, in the sense that we radical commie liberals mean it, tends to follow social or cultural progress. Women&#039;s suffrage was achieved by the Suffrage Movement. The Civil Rights Act was a result of the Civil Rights Movement. The 14th Amendment was a result of the Civil War. Etc.
When Clinton signed DOMA (which I hope at least wakes him up occasionally at night) sixteen years ago, the national level of support for same-sex marriage was quite a bit less than it is now, and certainly well below 50%. (Hell, I was only 48 -- there were a <i>lot</i> of older motherfuckers than me, and most of them were craaanky).
At the time, I was disappoint. But I did give some credence to the idea that accepting DOMA was a way of cutting off possibly even more severe anti-gay legislative bullshit, and also giving Bubba a little more working room with an all-Republican legislature. This rationale would, of course, be easier to defend if he had kept li&#039;l bubba in his pants and not fucked up his whole second term, but hey.
Anyhow, you&#039;re right. It will be good when we can just treat people like people. But we come out of history, and historical attitudes change slowly. The good thing about law is that when attitudes surge forward, we can sometimes pin those progressive attitudes down with law, and after a while the law helps the progressive attitude get more broadly internalized. And the &quot;average opinion&quot; moves a little bit.
A final observation: I am an old Boomer, one of the first. There&#039;s a lot of shit we didn&#039;t handle as well as we should have, but the one that really sticks in my craw is that we could not ratify the fucking ERA (four states short, as I recall). This says something about the complicated political system the Founders left us.
Incidentally, are you aware of the upcoming transit of Venus on 5 June? Last one for a century or so. I missed the one in 2004, so I&#039;m surprisingly excited about this. We get so few opportunities to observe the non-geocentricity of the universe directly.
I don&#039;t have much capacitance for this.
Yes, I only mentioned Title 2 because it&#039;s the part that&#039;s relevant to <em>losing</em> Federal rights if you move from Mass. to Miss. in a stunning display of masochism. Of course, until Title 3 is struck down, you&#039;d have no Federal rights to lose.
It&#039;s at once comforting and disturbing that the gov&#039;ts lawyers had to scrape the barrel so severely in their ham-handed attempts to defend Title 2. Comforting in that there&#039;s clearly no case law to support non-recognition of other states&#039; marriages except where everyone agrees there&#039;s a line that separates normal relationships from deviancy but reasonable minds differ on the exact location of that line; disturbing because of the sheer number of bigots, at least two* of whom are on the Court, who think same-sex marriage is deviant.
* Roberts and Alito haven&#039;t had the opportunities to prove themselves that Scalia and Thomas have, but the latter pair seized their chances with both hands to make proud exhibitions of homophobia.
You mean, <a href="http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch\?v=xbRFDcl2GIA" target="_blank">this time</a>?
Wouldn&#039;t it have been nice if <em>Lawrence</em> had specified a standard of review rather than merely hinting it was something stronger than rational basis? [Edit: and isn&#039;t it strange in the 1st Circuit&#039;s opinion how when they&#039;re discussing the standard of review, they mention <em>Romer</em> but do not mention <em>Lawrence</em>? Probably wouldn&#039;t matter since they cite standing 1st Circuit precedent which postdates <em>Lawrence</em> and makes a good case they&#039;re currently foreclosed from reaching as high as intermediate scrutiny]
Personally I really struggle to understand how it&#039;s possible for anyone to look at the history of homophobia and fail to conclude that <em>Carolene</em> footnote four applies. Although I guess even there &quot;more searching legal inquiry&quot; is not exactly prescriptive of a particular level of scrutiny.
Speaking of lazy, overrated hacks, the fucking Solicitor General failed to point out to Justice Scalier* that the &quot;Cornhusker Kickback&quot; was not in the Act.
* Yes, that is intended to imply that he&#039;s somehow reptilian
The Texas law at issue in <em>Lawrence</em> was a same-sex only buttsechs law. Kennedy&#039;s opinion said you can&#039;t outlaw buttsechs in private between consenting individuals, regardless of gender, because of the penumbra etc. etc. plus Due Process; O&#039;Connor&#039;s concurrence was that <em>Bowers</em> should&#039;ve been left intact and banning <em>all</em> buttsechs is OK because screw privacy but singling out teh gheys is unconstitutional on Equal Protection grounds. Which of course made no sense at all, because <em>Bowers</em> was <em>all about</em> the homos, but O&#039;Connor&#039;s a strange old coot and I&#039;m unsurprised at this inconsistency.
The major point of <em>Lawrence</em> was that it suggested that homosexual activity is included in the liberties protected by the Due Process clause:
<blockquote>The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons.</blockquote>
When you combine that with <em>Loving</em>&#039;s embrace of the right to marry the person of your choosing (as long as they consent) regardless of skin color under that same Due Process-protected liberty, you&#039;re getting well on the way to building a case for a right to gay marry, which would of course strike down all of DOMA. You could make a case that Kennedy&#039;s circumscription of his opinion indicates an awareness of that implication but an unwillingness to admit it. So, it&#039;s baby steps for now.
BTW, as a matter of the history of the United States, clearly the theory of the nation has been that it <em>is</em> OK for some states to offer fewer rights than others (slavery, Jim Crow being the most obvious examples), <em>especially</em> pre-incorporation, but even now there&#039;s plenty of &quot;non-fundamental&quot; rights that are not protected by the Federal Constitution and therefore at states&#039; discretion to grant or deny.
And, &quot;What&#039;s that on your Coke can?&quot;
Even those of us who are neither irish nor jewish (although midwestern) suspect Yeats was well received.
Occupy (in the traditional military sense) Missippi!!!!!
yes. (blushes). i know it was expected and...romantic. but they LOVED it.
also, there was a recently bereaved gentleman there - with his two children. they read some children&#039;s book about &#039;my different family&#039; and yeats and behan and anne morrow lindburgh pretty much flew out the window.
but thank you all. it was so nice to spend a few days getting acquainted or reacquainted with poetic geniuses.
this week i&#039;m on to skriker which is quite another thing altogether.
Legal or political &quot;progress&quot;, in the sense that we radical commie liberals mean it, tends to follow social or cultural progress. Women&#039;s suffrage was achieved by the Suffrage Movement. The Civil Rights Act was a result of the Civil Rights Movement. The 14th Amendment was a result of the Civil War. Etc.
When Clinton signed DOMA (which I hope at least wakes him up occasionally at night) sixteen years ago, the national level of support for same-sex marriage was quite a bit less than it is now, and certainly well below 50%. (Hell, I was only 48 -- there were a <i>lot</i> of older motherfuckers than me, and most of them were craaanky).
At the time, I was disappoint. But I did give some credence to the idea that accepting DOMA was a way of cutting off possibly even more severe anti-gay legislative bullshit, and also giving Bubba a little more working room with an all-Republican legislature. This rationale would, of course, be easier to defend if he had kept li&#039;l bubba in his pants and not fucked up his whole second term, but hey.
Anyhow, you&#039;re right. It will be good when we can just treat people like people. But we come out of history, and historical attitudes change slowly. The good thing about law is that when attitudes surge forward, we can sometimes pin those progressive attitudes down with law, and after a while the law helps the progressive attitude get more broadly internalized. And the &quot;average opinion&quot; moves a little bit.
A final observation: I am an old Boomer, one of the first. There&#039;s a lot of shit we didn&#039;t handle as well as we should have, but the one that really sticks in my craw is that we could not ratify the fucking ERA (four states short, as I recall). This says something about the complicated political system the Founders left us.
Nah, mang. Boies and Olsen (I <i>love</i> writing that) are on top of it in Cali.
What, you think god gives rights to homos?
If there is a bottle of vermouth in the refrigerator near the cocktail onions, the eventually resultant martini is unacceptably sweet.
Why are you awake?
Incidentally, are you aware of the upcoming transit of Venus on 5 June? Last one for a century or so. I missed the one in 2004, so I&#039;m surprisingly excited about this. We get so few opportunities to observe the non-geocentricity of the universe directly.
Well, it&#039;s London, so hurling will probably feature noticeably.