Gay Marriage: Panicky Weasels Running in Circles No Purpose

GOP-RW Since Gay Ruling

Seen on Every GOP
(What about Gay family members - oops)

                                         

GOP's "Fair and Balanced" Thinking and Policy

(pick and choose rules)

Some headlines like from here since the 5-4 gay marriage ruling:

Following the emotional high from the weekend after the decision wore off, a budding resistance had emerged from mostly RED states unwilling to give up their gay-marriage bans without a fight. For example:

1.    Texas AG Ken Paxton has deemed state employees exempt from granting same-sex couples with marriage licenses if it violates their religious beliefs.

2.     Conservatives in Tennessee have started drafting legislation that would protect religious leaders from being forced to preside over same-sex marriages.

3.     Utah and Mississippi are considering doing away with state-issued marriage licenses.

4.     County clerks in Kentucky and Alabama have already taken it upon themselves to stop granting licenses altogether. (NOTE: they should be fired for neglect of their duties).

While such push back looks poised to provoke legal action, constitutional experts (like Greg Magarian, a professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis) say most of these state efforts are “the political equivalent of temper tantrums” attention-getting yet extremely difficult to implement.

In fact, moves to stop issuing marriage licenses to anyone, for one thing, are highly problematic, and if a state continues to recognize religious marriages but doesn’t offer any legal opportunity for same-sex marriage, that state would inevitably end up handing out marriage-based benefits only to those who’ve participated in a religious ceremony, which is unconstitutional.

It would then only be a matter of time, before someone who doesn’t want a religious ceremony sues the state for discriminating against their religion or lack thereof by preventing them from having a civil ceremony. They would sue and they would win and the state would will be ordered to start issuing civil marriage licenses again.  

Married couples receive benefits not only from the state but from the federal government as well.

So even if states managed to remove themselves from the marriage business entirely, ceasing to provide benefits in addition to marriage licenses, it’s not as if the problem would just disappear.

Similarly to the result of states refusing to set up health insurance exchanges in accordance with the ACA, marriage would become the federal government’s responsibility.

“You can stand in the corner and hold your breath until you’re blue in the face, but people in your state will still be signing up for Obamacare, only now you’ve given the authority over it to the federal government” the professor said. From a political perspective, daring the federal government to take over a long-held state responsibility like marriage would be “a strategically stupid move.”

In the fight against gay marriage, opponents have long cited concerns that legalization would result in Catholic priests, Evangelical pastors and other religious clerics being forced — against their beliefs — to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples. That is an unfounded fear like legislation currently being drafted by a pair of Republican Tennessee lawmakers.

They aim to prevent it from becoming a reality. NOTE: THE USSC RULING DID NOT MANDATE SUCH ACTIONS FOR ANY GAY MARRIAGE CEREMONY OR ANYTHING ELSE… THAT IS MISGUIDED FEAR - THE GOP'S MIDDLE NAME.

My advice to the overly nervous and panicky GOP would be this from FDR's First Inaugural Address: "... so, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." 

Closely related: 

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is the language as straightforward and as moving as political rhetoric ever gets, and we live in its light today just as we did when we broke from England and become the United States of America in on July 4, 1776.  “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.”(Historical background here)

Historians still debate how Thomas Jefferson arrived at those three words. Surely, most say he surely had in mind the English philosopher John Locke, who wrote in 1690 that “no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.” 

Even that took several turns:

For example, in 1774, two years before the Congress met in Philadelphia, the now little-remembered Declaration of Colonial Rights paraphrased Locke in asserting a right to “life, liberty and property.” But Jefferson, with the backing of Benjamin Franklin, prevailed on the other drafters to substitute the phrase and insert “happiness.”

Sadly, even today and over the years, there are those, notably like libertarian followers of Ayn Rand, who think Jefferson unfairly shortchanged the word “property.” But those who think that way seem to forget that the “property” angle along with “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects….” Kind of guarantees that right since it is in the Bill of Rights and can’t be taken away (what we commonly refer no “search and seizure clause without proper warrant” clause).

Justice Kennedy’s decision in the Obergefell v. Hodges gay ruling, striking down bans on same-sex marriage, didn’t directly reference the Declaration per se (although the dissents by Justices Scalia and Thomas did, as they make the exact opposite point).

But Kennedy’s opinion did cite a ruling in a 1967 case — Loving v. Virginia, which struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriage (white man married black woman), saying the right to wed “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

It is a bit ironic that now we reflect on that ruling as recently as that year such an opinion could be written without acknowledging in its language that women might also be pursuing happiness through marriage.

I don't know, but I suspect the Goofy Old Poops won't give up on this "cause celebre" anytime soon... look how long they have clung to repealing ACA (Obama-care). Stay tuned.