SCOTUS rules: gay marriage approved

[werepossum]

Oh, Please. Clause 1, Section 4, of Article 4 of the Constitution states:



And when you put that Clause together with Clause 2, Section 1, of Article 4, it's absurd to claim the states are powerless to make laws, since they are stated to have the power to charge charge people with crimes and bring them to justice:



Nevertheless, state and federal governments are barred from denying Americans their inalienable rights under the Constitution, including the right to privacy, which was construed in Roe v. Wade to include the right of a woman to get an abortion.

You are neglecting the fact that these were state laws which over overturned by Roe v. Wade, which effectively created a new right from whole cloth. (Not that I'm necessarily opposed to that; assuming the new right doesn't infringe on others' existing rights, it's a good reminder that our specifically guaranteed rights are not necessarily all our natural rights.)

The supposed right to privacy (which the federal government infringes in pretty much every possible way other than abortion) was an absurd reasoning. Much better had the decision been based on self-determination and/or self-ownership.

 

[Darwin333]

Normally I'd agree, but as has been pointed out she holds an elected office and those who can impeach her are highly unlikely to do so. Therefore jail seems to be the best compromise.

Though I'm not sure that would change anything as she could just as easily refuse to do her job from jail. But if everyone in that office who refuses to do the job gets put in jail, at least the county saves some money. Maybe they can invest it in a regular bus route to the twenty-first century.

I didn't realize that she couldn't simply be fired when I wrote that. Did she actually commit a criminal offense, if so I'm all for locking her up in this situation.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

She kind of has. She refuses to issue any marriage licenses and this is what she was elected to do. Certificates and record keeping appear to be the only thing her position requires.

 

[shira]

You are neglecting the fact that these were state laws which over overturned by Roe v. Wade, which effectively created a new right from whole cloth. (Not that I'm necessarily opposed to that; assuming the new right doesn't infringe on others' existing rights, it's a good reminder that our specifically guaranteed rights are not necessarily all our natural rights.)

The supposed right to privacy (which the federal government infringes in pretty much every possible way other than abortion) was an absurd reasoning. Much better had the decision been based on self-determination and/or self-ownership.

Not a "new right," just an interpretation of the meaning of the due process clause of 4th Amendment. Or do you also think that DC v Heller created a "new right" when the SCOTUS ruled in 2008 that private citizens have a right to own firearms under the 2nd Amendment?

If you recall, Roe v Wade was passed by a 7-2 majority, versus only 5-4 for Heller. So if anything, the right of private citizens to own firearms is MORE of a stretch - more of a "new right" - than the right of women to obtain abortions is.

 

[Darwin333]

The supposed right to privacy (which the federal government infringes in pretty much every possible way other than abortion) was an absurd reasoning. Much better had the decision been based on self-determination and/or self-ownership.

The Supreme Court can never make a ruling based on "self-ownership". If they did things like prostitution and personal drug use would have to immediately fall under the same thing.

Take prostitution for example. The very tenant of ownership is being able to sell, lease, rent or use it in any way that doesn't infringe upon another persons rights.

 

[werepossum]

I didn't realize that she couldn't simply be fired when I wrote that. Did she actually commit a criminal offense, if so I'm all for locking her up in this situation.

Not really. But she is refusing to do her job, and as a side effect of that arguab

Not a "new right," just an interpretation of the meaning of the due process clause of 4th Amendment. Or do you also think that DC v Heller created a "new right" when the SCOTUS ruled in 2008 that private citizens have a right to own firearms under the 2nd Amendment?

If you recall, Roe v Wade was passed by a 7-2 majority, versus only 5-4 for Heller. So if anything, the right of private citizens to own firearms is MORE of a stretch - more of a "new right" - than the right of women to obtain abortions is.

Heller was protecting a right specifically protected by the Constitution, not creating a new right.

The Supreme Court can never make a ruling based on "self-ownership". If they did things like prostitution and personal drug use would have to immediately fall under the same thing.

Take prostitution for example. The very tenant of ownership is being able to sell, lease, rent or use it in any way that doesn't infringe upon another persons rights.

Good point. Hadn't occurred to me since I think those should be legal anyway, but I can see how certain portions of the populace would go ape shit.

 

[shira]

Heller was protecting a right specifically protected by the Constitution, not creating a new right.

If that was so, how come 4 justices disagreed? And why would a well-respected CONSERVATIVE judge, Richard Posner, in a review of Scalia's book "Reading Law," argue the Heller was wrongly decided:

Scalia is a pertinacious critic of the use of legislative history to illuminate statutory meaning; and one reason for his criticism is that a legislature is a hydra-headed body whose members may not share a common view of the interpretive issues likely to be engendered by a statute that they are considering enacting. But when he looks for the original meaning of eighteenth-century constitutional provisions—as he did in his opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, holding that an ordinance forbidding people to own handguns even for the defense of their homes violated the Second Amendment—Scalia is doing legislative history.

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III has argued that because the historical analysis in Heller is (from the standpoint of advocates of a constitutional right to own handguns for personal self-defense) at best inconclusive, judicial self-restraint dictated that the District of Columbia’s ordinance not be invalidated. His argument derives new support from a surprising source: Judge Easterbrook’s foreword to Scalia and Garner’s book. The foreword lauds the book to the skies, but toward the end it strikes the following subversive note: “Words don’t have intrinsic meanings; the significance of an expression depends on how the interpretive community alive at the time of the text’s adoption under-stood those words. The older the text, the more distant that interpretive community from our own. At some point the difference becomes so great that the meaning is no longer recoverable reliably.” When that happens, Easterbrook continues, the courts should “declare that meaning has been lost, so that the living political community must choose.” The “living political community” in Heller consisted of the elected officials, and the electorate, of the District of Columbia.

Easterbrook goes on: “When the original meaning is lost in the passage of time…the justification for judges’ having the last word evaporates.” This is a version of the doctrine of judicial self-restraint, which Scalia and Garner endorse by saying that a statute’s unconstitutionality must be “clearly shown”—which it was not in Heller. Justice Scalia’s interpretation of the Second Amendment probably is erroneous, but one who doubts this should conclude that the relevant meaning of the amendment had been “lost in the passage of time,” and so the Court should have let the District of Columbia’s gun ordinance stand.

Heller probably is the best-known and the most heavily criticized of Justice Scalia’s opinions. Reading Law is Scalia’s response to the criticism. It is unconvincing.

To put the above excerpt briefly: Scalia is a scathing critic of judges who seek to determine the legislative history of a legal text in order to decipher its meaning. But attempting to determine the legislative history of the 2nd Amendment is exactly what Scalia did in Heller. And even with this analysis, the meaning of the 2nd Amendment is unclear as regards private use of firearms for self defense, so judicial self-restraint dictated that the SCOTUS should have deferred to DC and allowed the DC gun-control ordinance to stand.

To put this even more simply: It is not at all clear - not to four members of the SCOTUS, not to Judge Posner, and not to many, many legal scholars - that the 2nd Amendment "specifically protected" a PRIVATE right to own firearms. So it's completely reasonable to characterize Heller is "creating a new right."

 

[sportage]

Rick Santorum on Bill Maher (of all people, of all shows).
Rick listed the sanctity of marriage still up for grabs, in need of protecting.
Well Rick... that sanctity of marriage now includes same sex marriage.
And the definition of traditional marriage now also includes same sex marriage.
That is the LAW!
Still, what continues to get my goat, is this perception by people like Rick that his side are sole owners of the definition of marriage.
As if this were written in stone, somewhere somehow someplace?
Since the thoroughly legal ruling from the United States Supreme Court in the Summer of 2015, same sex married people own the definition of marriage every bit as much as any other legally married persons or group of persons.
I sure wish someone would stand up to the Rick Santorum's of America and repeat this every time same sex marriages are left out of the newly and legally defined traditional marriage definition.
I mean, why take this crap?
Why allow the Rick Santorum's to dare sole ownership of marriage in America?
If they indeed own marriage, I want to see the signed document of ownership with only their name listed on it.
And that is not the Bible.

 

[Murloc]

you are basing your reasonings on the separation of church and state and on the fact that civil marriage before the state and the religious contract before God are two completely separated things, with a common biological origin but different conclusions.

People like Santorum will never get it.

 

[werepossum]

If that was so, how come 4 justices disagreed? And why would a well-respected CONSERVATIVE judge, Richard Posner, in a review of Scalia's book "Reading Law," argue the Heller was wrongly decided:



To put the above excerpt briefly: Scalia is a scathing critic of judges who seek to determine the legislative history of a legal text in order to decipher its meaning. But attempting to determine the legislative history of the 2nd Amendment is exactly what Scalia did in Heller. And even with this analysis, the meaning of the 2nd Amendment is unclear as regards private use of firearms for self defense, so judicial self-restraint dictated that the SCOTUS should have deferred to DC and allowed the DC gun-control ordinance to stand.

To put this even more simply: It is not at all clear - not to four members of the SCOTUS, not to Judge Posner, and not to many, many legal scholars - that the 2nd Amendment "specifically protected" a PRIVATE right to own firearms. So it's completely reasonable to characterize Heller is "creating a new right."

No. Scalia is a scathing critic of judges who attempt to redefine legal texts from their clear meaning. He is fine with using historic meanings where they support the law's clear meaning.

One question: How could it remotely be considered a right to bear arms only in government's service? That is an obligation, not a right.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Looks like I was wrong, she is the only person in that department that can issue Marriage certificates. There seems to be someone else whom can fill in when she is not available, I remember a mention about that person being a judge that was down the street?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/la...n-to-supreme-court/ar-AAdLzXr?ocid=spartandhp

 

[Ns1]

simon says, get the F- out!

Washington (CNN)The Supreme Court on Monday night denied an emergency application from a Kentucky clerk who has been refusing to issue marriage licenses because of her religious objections to same-sex marriage.

The clerk, Kim Davis, sought to put a lower court ruling on hold pending appeal, and in a one-page order the Supreme Court refused.

Davis is now faced with a lower court order that her office begin issuing licenses effective Monday.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

From another article:

MOREHEAD, Ky. (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled against the Kentucky county clerk who has refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, and the clerk will arrive at work Tuesday morning to face her moment of truth.


Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis will have to choose whether to issue marriage licenses, defying her Christian conviction, or continue to refuse them, defying a federal judge who could pummel her with fines or order that she be hauled off to jail.

"She's going to have to think and pray about her decision overnight. She certainly understands the consequences either way," Mat Staver, founder of the law firm representing Davis, said on Monday, hours before a court-ordered delay in the case expired. "She'll report to work tomorrow, and face whatever she has to face."

A line of couples, turned away by her office again and again in the two months since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the nation, plan to meet her at the courthouse door.

"Wow, wow, wow, I can't believe it, we might finally be able to get a license tomorrow," April Miller said Monday night, shortly after the court's decision. She has been denied twice to marry her partner of more than a decade.

Davis stopped issuing all marriage licenses in the days after the landmark decision. Two gay couples and two straight couples sued her, arguing that she must fulfill her duties as an elected official despite her personal religious faith. A federal judge ordered her to issue the licenses, and an appeals court upheld that decision. Her lawyers with the Liberty Counsel filed a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking that they grant her "asylum for her conscience."

Justice Elena Kagan, who oversees the 6th district, referred Davis' request to the full court, which denied the stay without comment. Kagan joined the majority in June when the court legalized gay marriage across the nation.

If Davis continues to turn them away, the couples' attorneys can ask a judge to hold her in contempt of court, which can carry steep fines or jail time.

Dan Canon, an attorney representing the couples, said he hopes Davis will simply hand his clients licenses on Tuesday, and the controversy will end. Davis behind bars is not an outcome they are hoping for, he said.

"But if she continues to defy the court's order, we cannot let that continue unaddressed," he said Monday night. "It all depends on what happens tomorrow."

Meanwhile, a couple that had been turned away went to Rowan County Attorney Cecil Watkins to ask that she be charged with official misconduct, a misdemeanor defined by state law as a public official who "refrains from performing a duty imposed upon him by law or clearly inherent in the nature of his office." The crime is punishable by up to a year in jail.

Watkins cited a conflict of interest and forwarded the complaint to Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, whose office will decide whether to appoint a special prosecutor, generally a county attorney from a surrounding jurisdiction, who would decide whether to file charges.

As the clock wound down for Davis on Monday, the tension intensified between dueling groups of protesters outside her office window on the courthouse lawn.

Hexie Mefford has stood on the lawn waving a flag nearly every day for more than two months. The flag is fashioned after Old Glory, but with a rainbow instead of the red and white bars.

Mike Reynolds, protesting in Davis' defense, shouted at her that he found the flag offensive: He is an Army veteran, he said, and they had desecrated the American flag. The two groups roared at each other. Davis' supporters called on the activists to repent; the activists countered that their God loves all.

It was a marked difference from the cordial protests that unfolded there every day since Davis declared she would issue no licenses.

Rachelle Bombe has sat there every day, wearing rainbow colors and carrying signs that demand marriage equality. One particularly hot day, Davis, the woman she was there to protest against, worried Bombe would get overheated and offered her a cold drink. In turn, Bombe said she's checked in on Davis, whose lawyer says she's received death threats and hate mail, to make sure she's holding up despite the difficult circumstances.

"She's a very nice lady, I like her a lot," Bombe said of Davis. "We're on the opposite sides of this, but it's not personal."

On Monday, Davis' supporters stood on the grass and sang "I am a Child of God."

The marriage equality activists chimed in after each refrain: "So are we."

 

[nickqt]

Well, looks like Davis will soon be an elected official from Kentucky.

Anyone start a GoFundMe for her yet?

I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of bigots ready to throw money at her.

 

[bozack]

the rules changed under her tenure, when she was elected this was a non issue and now it is...the challenge is that if she quits or steps down then she doesn't get any severance and is essentially without pay and finding a job of comparable income given what she has been doing I am guessing is pretty difficult.

There should be a mechanism where she can vacate the position and collect some type of benefits and or where they can remove her but allow her to file for unemployment.

It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow, regardless of if she opts to issue certificates chances are she will still be sued so its almost better for her if she just holds the line and continues to fight it out in the hopes that she gets some type of a deal to be removed from office.

 

[Ns1]

There should be a mechanism where she can vacate the position and collect some type of benefits and or where they can remove her but allow her to file for unemployment.

or she could like, do her job.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

the rules changed under her tenure, when she was elected this was a non issue and now it is...the challenge is that if she quits or steps down then she doesn't get any severance and is essentially without pay and finding a job of comparable income given what she has been doing I am guessing is pretty difficult.

There should be a mechanism where she can vacate the position and collect some type of benefits and or where they can remove her but allow her to file for unemployment.

It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow, regardless of if she opts to issue certificates chances are she will still be sued so its almost better for her if she just holds the line and continues to fight it out in the hopes that she gets some type of a deal to be removed from office.

Every job changes, all requirements change, all processes change over time.

 

[bozack]

Every job changes, all requirements change, all processes change over time.

for those in the private sector possibly, but this is something that has been a constant for arguably a long long time, and only out of judicial action did the change come about.

They really should have a mechanism for letting her go and allowing her a severance.

 

[shira]

No. Scalia is a scathing critic of judges who attempt to redefine legal texts from their clear meaning. He is fine with using historic meanings where they support the law's clear meaning.

One question: How could it remotely be considered a right to bear arms only in government's service? That is an obligation, not a right.

You're failing the comprehend the distinction between - on the one hand - "trying to determine the legislative history" of legal language in order to understand the intended meaning, and - on the other hand - "using the historic meaning" of legal language. The former is a method of determining the "intended meaning", while the latter is just a circular statement: one must determine the "historic meaning" before one can use it. The problem is, what method did Scalia use to arrive at the "historic meaning?" Answer: He examined the legislative history of the 2nd Amendment. The problem, as Easterbrook points out, is that the legislative debate consists of numerous voices and shifting ideas, and the more remote in time that debate was, the less clear becomes the overall "intent" of the legislature. That's why he states that at some point "the original meaning is lost in the passage of time." And when that happens, it's time for the courts to stop imposing their own guesses at the lost meaning.

You believe that the "original meaning" of the 2nd Amendment defines a private right to own firearms for the purpose of self-defense. But the fact is that Scalia had to go back into English common law in his attempt to justify that "interpretation." A clear statement about "private citizens owning firearms for self defense" is simply not a part of the actual historical debate over the 2nd Amendment. And that being the case, it's totally fair to say that the SCOTUS "created a right" in Heller. That fact that you can't see that is just a statement about your own bias.

 

[sandorski]

Imagine if a Muslim or Jew became head of the FDA and refused to certify Pork because of "Religious Freedom".

Should everyone's Freedom/Rights be dependent on some random Individuals Beliefs?

 

[bozack]

or she could like, do her job.

according to her she has a moral issue with providing certificates to gay couples...I am sure you nor I can relate

Thankfully for me I don't work in a field where I would have to worry about a situation where a job requirement change could go against any moral convictions I may feel I have.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

for those in the private sector possibly, but this is something that has been a constant for arguably a long long time, and only out of judicial action did the change come about.

They really should have a mechanism for letting her go and allowing her a severance.

That is up to the County to decide I guess. I don't agree with that thought. I still predict that the county will allow some kind of county stamp to be used then she doesn't actually have to sign the paperwork, they'll puss out somehow.

 

[bozack]

Imagine if a Muslim or Jew became head of the FDA and refused to certify Pork because of "Religious Freedom".

Should everyone's Freedom/Rights be dependent on some random Individuals Beliefs?

this is a stawman as pork is something that is and has already been "certified" whereas in this case you're talking about arguably something that has never been recognized now being acknowledged under the letter of the law and something highly polarizing from both a political, personal, and religious stance.

 

[bozack]

That is up to the County to decide I guess. I don't agree with that thought. I still predict that the county will allow some kind of county stamp to be used then she doesn't actually have to sign the paperwork, they'll puss out somehow.

Do you think she will go for a stamp though? like I said she at this point is damned if she does, damned if she doesn't as she is already getting sued. Worst is she gets fined and or jail time, and as someone said above there will be plenty of folks who would contribute to her cause financially so will be interesting what she decides to do. I am guessing the legislature will have to eventually act to remove her from office under pressure from the public.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Do you think she will go for a stamp though? like I said she at this point is damned if she does, damned if she doesn't as she is already getting sued.

I'd bet it would be some kind of "Office of Deeds" or generic stamp that she could find in her heart to use and allow her to keep her job plus save face.

Honestly she either hates gays or is stupid. She processes Divorces, she herself may be divorced (I'm not so sure about this). These are all against the Christian values she is concerned about violating and they are not considered minor infractions.