GOP-Appointed Judges Strike Another Blow For States' Rights! (And Gayness)
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 sovereign states that make up our nation. No matter how much you liberals want it to, Big Government can't tell the states how they can run their business! Let's see, what bit of liberty has been restored to the free states, from which all national power derives in accordance with the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, this time? Why, it's the power to define marriage as the union between a dude ... and ... another dude ? ABORT ABORT ABORT
Remember 1996, when liberal hero Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which meant that even if your state decided to recognize same-sex marriage, the feds wouldn't? Well, that's not right, said the three judges of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over not one but two gay-marryin' states (Massachusetts and New Hampshire). The states have defined marriage for themselves since times of yore, and so if you get gay-married in New Hampshire, you should also get gay-Social Security survivor benefits, can file your taxes gay-jointly, and can't get gay-deported if you're gay-married to a gay-American.
Of course, the possibility that you could be recognized as married in one state and not in another opens a horrifying can of equal-protection problems, and puts the federal government in a position of revoking your federal rights when you move from Massachusetts to Mississippi for some reason (suggestion: don't move from Massachusetts to Mississippi). Trying to sort all that out will be gnarly, but should give lots of fun opportunities to dig through the all the legal precedents from previous eras when people had different statuses depending on what state they lived in (i.e., anti-miscegenation laws, slavery).
Anyway, it's not a problem yet, so don't get too excited about exercising all those federal marriage rights, Masshole gays: the case is being stayed pending the inevitable appeal to the Supreme Court, where it's on a collision course with Perry v. Brown, the challenge against Proposition 8. That case is going after gay marriage bans on 14th Amendment grounds and is aiming to be the sweeping Loving v. Virginia of gay marriage, not some states' rights bullshit. The two should crash together into a tasty melange of humans rights legal debates that we're sure the Roberts Court will handle in a forward-looking fashion. [coughs nervously] [ LAT ]
I don'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.