No ****, HornBud. We have inalienable rights that cannot be voted away or bartered by others. I am just amazed how many people think it is OK to have a vote on whether some people can enjoy the same rights as others, i.e., be treated equally and allowed to pursue their own happiness that is not harmful to others. Frankly, I think this is an area where Obama is a complete pansy. He should just come out and say it isn't right, instead of beating around the bush. Hell, the Terminator has a lot more political courage on this issue.
Doesn't matter if the state approves slavery, it is expressly forbidden by the 13th amendment to the Constitution. Habeas corpus is included in the Constitution as well, Article one, section 9. The 26th amendment to the Constitution set the age for voting to 18. All this would trump any state law passed. I doubt defining marriage as between a man and woman was on the mind of the writers of the Constitution.
So only the parts of the US Constitution that the majority agrees with can override state law or constitutions. Got it.
Then the idea of a 'state constitution' as I know it is a misnomer and fantasy. Better to call state constitutions something more accurate like 'federal-government's-*****'s-allowed-rules-for-now' or 'federal government-humors-the-masses-with-a-collection-of-laws'. And are we talking tyranny of the majority here or tyranny of the minority? Does one always trump the other?
According to Wiki, the judge, Vaughn Walker, is himself gay. Hummm... you don't think he's biased on this issue do you? After the 9th Circus Court upholds his decision, it will go to the Supremes and hopefully, unless Obama gets yet another appointment, it will be overturned.
Though you might view this as jumping the shark, I'll try to simplify using an analogy. Say a state wants to burn all jews in ovens, if the states had ultimate authority then this could be allowed. However, thankfully, in such a situation, the federal government could step in since it violates the US constitution.
Since when is a "civil right" = special privileges granted by the state? State marriage is not a "right," it is a special privilege granted to any opposite-gender pair of individuals, to the exclusion of everybody else, including people who do not wish to marry members of the opposite gender, anyone who prefers to remain single, and people who prefer multi-party marriage. It's unfair, and the entire regime needs to be shut down. I'm gay, I will enter into a marriage contract with whomever I choose, and I don't need or want the state's permission or help to do so.
I think this decision should overturned. The government should be kept out of marriage, and allowing them to redefine something that has had a very clear definition for thousands of years is not the way to do that. The government shouldn't have that much power. Nobody is trying to keep anyone from getting married. If a man wants to get married, marry and woman. If a woman wants to get married, marry a man. The government and the courts should not be given the authority to over rule the people, and redefine that which already has a specific and absolute definition, just because they have the misguided opinion that people have the RIGHT to define things however the want. Marriage is what it it is. Get the government out of it. If gays want to have their relationships validated and recognized, that's what civil unions are for. They don't meet the criteria for marriage, as defined by the will of the people, thousands of years of tradition, and God, and they never will.
This is what happens when government becomes too big: private issues assume the center stage in politics because the tendrils of the Federal government are now wrapped around them. Here, the big one is income taxation.
Under Prop 8, may hermaphrodites marry? Or are they, as neither truly biologically men nor women, forbidden? What about XXY males? Do former men who have had medically necessary orchiectomies and/or penectomies still count as men? What about electively emasculated persons? What about individuals with mosaicized XY and XX DNA? May they marry? Who tells them whom they may legally wed? Do we establish a commission? Or might it be simpler to get the government out of marriages altogether?
It sounds as though the pro-Prop. 8 folks may have done a poor job of representing in front of Judge Walker:
