Is anyone else worried about being ruled by judges? I don't know there reasoning, and they might have a good one, but if they don't then this is just rule by the unelected- AKA tyranny.

I would prefer that they find tax and other code advantages that discriminate in favor of married couples be found "unconstitutional". In reality of course only about 10% of what the government does to us (not for us) has, at best, a very tenuous connection to constitutionality. The rest, not so much.

Remove all the financial incentives for marriage and get rid of all law and regulation regarding it.

And no, this is not an exercise in sarcasm.

> Is anyone else worried about being ruled by
> judges?

Not really. It has always been the role of the judiciary to ensure that the other branches of governement act within the constitution.

If an act was passed declaring Catholicism the official state religion, how else would such an act be declared unconstitutional if judges aren't involved?

Great day in Boston today! I'm a happy gay man! Cheers everyone!

"If an act was passed declaring Catholicism the official state religion, how else would such an act be declared unconstitutional if judges aren't involved?"

Such an act would NOT be passed because Congress or the President would not let it be.

Face it, every branch has the obligation to pass judgment on the Constitutionality of the law. The Courts are only the last resort.

It pissed me off to no end when Bush said, "I think campaign finance reform is unconstitutional, but I will let the Courts decide." They decided it was, to the detriment of all of our 1st Amendment rights. (Was that campaign finance? I forget now.)

The point being: he should not have passed the buck. Each of them have a duty to uphold the Constitution and the notion that the Courts are somehow unique will place us all under oligarchs.

I do not want to risk the fact that the Courts get to decide whether Catholicism is the state religion.

-Jut

When my younger daughter came out to me, she was only 11. My first thought was "How in the hell am I going to protect her from the @$$hats that are going to try to use her as a pawn in their stupid political games?"
She's not a second class anything. She's a human being, a brilliant, creative, beautiful, loving, thoughtful, musically gifted young lady whom I love more than my own life. Anyone that says differently will deal with the Mama Dragon.
I raised her to know that she is, first, last and always, loved and cherished, and nothing some stupid person that doesn't matter any more than what I scraped off of the bottom of my shoes says will change that.
On the other hand, it is no one's business who she loves. Period. As long as she is a happy, healthy, productive member of society that is doing no harm, y'all are cordially invited to butt the hell out, and I say that in the most loving way possible.

Apparently, according to these "Pillars of the Black Community" Gay Marriage is not a Civil right. No one stops to explain why *they* are the arbiters of who gets civil rights, but hey, Black! amirite?

http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/30/national-black-church-leaders-gay-marriage-not-a-civil-rights-issue-video/

What a steaming pile of bigotted horse shite. These are such glaring examples of hipocrasy that even a child would recognize how wrong they are, and yet, not once does the reporter call them on it. Shameful!

I don't care if you are black, white, gay, straight, purple with pink polkadots, I listened to Dr Martin Luther King Jr when he said to judge people on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. That applies to sexual orientation as well. You a good human being, that's all I care about. The only people that care about race today are the ones running around calling the rest of us racists to make money off of the weak-minded sissies who went to public schools and got PC brainwashed.

The problem is that when marriage was institutionalized by the many states for inheritance, estate, paternity purposes they used the default definitions out of the Christian bible or the Torah (Gen 1:28, Lev. 34a, B. Yev. 62b, Gen 2:18). Technically, the marriages the states recognized have always been civil unions with a predefined contract. This is the same thing as the medical power of attorney and living will that you could ask for at the front desk at any surgery center.

Now we role into the 21st century. The GLBT community is no longer the pariah and unaccepted as it was even twenty years ago. They want to alter the predefined civil contract. The problem is that both sides have used the term marriage to refer to the religiously based private contract and the civil contract interchangeably for centuries.

The alteration of the the civil contract has no effect on the religiously based contract. The right refuses to see that. The left prefers not point out that the religious can continue to hold the same ceremony as they have for centuries. If the religious institution wants to recognize the GLBT, they can or cannot as their preference. But the left is also trying to force acceptance by the religious. That attitude is wrong.

Another part that doesn't help is how much the word "marriage" has been codified in the state and federal tax codes. The social engineering done by the word "marriage" that is actually unconstitutional is amazing.

If the GLBT were to break it into the two halves and ignore the religious aspect, they probably would have more success.

Apparently, according to these "Pillars of the Black Community" Gay Marriage is not a Civil right. No one stops to explain why *they* are the arbiters of who gets civil rights, but hey, Black! amirite? -- Kat at May 31, 2012 7:15 PM

Technically, they are right. Loving v. Virginia was a Fourteenth Amendment case.

Marriages, as enacted by the states, are subject mostly to the 10th (The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.). The U.S. Constitution is mute on marriage. It is not in the federal Constitution.

The problem is that so many laws and codes have been set at the federal level for inheritance, IRS, child support, medicaid, medicare, etc. that to disentangle it all will probably take decades.

As I noted in my earlier post, the social contract does not need to equate to the religious contracts.

Jim P.
I have been "married" 3 times. Twice in front of a JP, the so-called 'civil union', and once by a minister. (my current, last, and never to be repeated wonderful marriage).
I thought like you at first. Yeah, there are some folks on the left that are just trying to get the goats of the Religious Right by making them concede the word 'marriage', but then why are heterosexual people in civil unions referred to as "married"? Why not just say "If you aren't married in a church, you are not married, Period.". And follow thru by not giving anyone, hetero or homo-sexual any benefits based on marital status, and instead allow people to choose to cover their 'life partners' and children? I mean, we pay for those benefits, why shouldn't we choose who gets them?
I don't really give a flip whether it's called a civil union, marriage, hand-fasting, or whatever, the bottom line is that families are being denied basic civil rights based on an outmoded, bigoted and stupid prejudice. And to hear people who should know better, who's parents and grandparents truly fought for civil rights, and who present themselves are bastions of civil liberty activism saying in effect "All for me and none for thee" infuriates me.

Kat,

I support gay marriage. I'm sorry if you got the wrong impression or I wasn't clear.

The issue is to separate the civil contract from the religious contract.

Part of the issue is modifying the state developed contract from the federal contract and both being separated from the religious contract.

This is going to get long, unfortunately. :-(

As the U.S. Constitution was originally written, every person had a dual citizenship. They were a citizen of their state first and a citizen of the United States was the secondary. If a state found you objectionable for whatever reason, they could declare you persona non grata and tell you to move anywhere else.

The southern states had every right to secede from the union before the civil war. The post civil war view was that the federal rights overrode the individual state's rights.

Cases such as Wickard v. Filburn (commerce clause) and abuse of the "General Welfare" clause have led to the situation we are in now that the fed has the right to interfere in the individual states.

So any state could declare homosexual marriage legal or illegal (mods to the legal contract) but the fed technically has no say because its a states issue.

The problem is that the so much of the federal tax code is tied to marriage. So the individual is screwed.

Jim P said: "If the religious institution wants to recognize the GLBT, they can or cannot as their preference."

Jim, for now, for now. There's reason for a battle over the word.

Kat said: "there are some folks on the left that are just trying to get the goats of the Religious Right by making them concede the word 'marriage'"

Oh, they're just such merry pranksters! Or not. To me, they look like zealots executing a long march strategy.

Once the word is conceded, it's just one more step to force every religion to perform same sex marriages. Because any contrary beliefs are just hateful bigotry. And very shortly punishable hate speech too.

And I cannot for the life of me distinguish this (privileging of the LGBT POV over all others) from an Establishment of Religion.