By Mark Sherman, Associated Press
Both sides in the same-sex marriage debate agree on one thing: It’s time for the Supreme Court to settle the matter.
Even a justice recently said she thinks so, too.
The emerging consensus makes it likely that the justices soon will agree to take up the question of whether the Constitution forbids states from defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. A final ruling isn’t likely before June 2015, but a decision to get involved could come as soon as the end of this month.
“I don’t see a lot of reasons for them to wait,” says Dale Carpenter, a gay rights expert at the University of Minnesota law school. “You have almost no one at this point opposed to certiorari,” the legal term for high court review.
Officials in five states in which marriage bans were struck down by federal courts have rushed their appeals to the Supreme Court, in time for consideration by the justices when they meet in private on Sept. 29. Moving at breakneck speed, at least for the legal system, Indiana and Wisconsin filed appeals on Tuesday, just five days after the federal appeals court in Chicago struck down their state bans. The Chicago decision itself came just nine days after judges heard arguments, extremely fast for a process that usually is measured in months. Officials in Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia also have appealed to the Supreme Court.
Adding to the momentum, the winners in all those cases — who typically want to preserve their lower court victories and would normally oppose Supreme Court review — want the justices to weigh in.
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So be it. The case boils down to this. Does the secular state have a vested interest in either affirming or defining “marriage” as a civil, legal act as either normative as pertains to a man and women, and whether the concept of “family” is better served in this model, or the secular state has no vested interest in either defining marriage, or having laws which favor one concept over another. Also just what the US Constitution means when it says that all powers not explicit in the Constitution to the federal govt. is reserved to the states. Marriage laws being one of those state reserved powers.
And if it is the latter, as the LGBT community and lobby wishes to codify, then the secular state needs to get out of my business, gets out of the religion business in telling me who and whom I need to marry, or defining it for me. At that point the secular state owes an apology to the LDS in their historic persecutions of plural or poly-amourous groupings, as those are just as valid as two men or two women, or a man wishes to “marry” his pet fish. Why does the secular state get to define what and is not normative or legal.
As pertains to the PCUSA and the secular state, sorry I repeat myself. They just need to keep their damn mouths shut on on what marriage is now, and redefinition of, to suit the popular opinion of the masses. They have nothing to say.
I am no constitutional scholar, but I can do better than that. That first paragraph may have some bearing, but much more important is the 14th amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law. It is also possible if less likely that article Iv section 1 will have some effect, although it did not play a role in Loving v Virginia in 1967 or any other marriage case, it may be a matter of close interpretation as to why one state must recognize another state’s driver’s license but not a marriage license.
The remaining Limbaugh-esque comments say more about the writer than anything useful for the issue at hand. The mean-spirited and absurd canard comparing gay marriage and a relation with animals combines the offensive with the inane (fish CANNOT have the rights of citizens, do not inherit, cannot share custody, do not have power to make medical decisions, do not file joint tax returns, cannot have any of the many things currently denied to gay couples in some jurisdictions). The secular state has never told Pastor Gregory whom he needs to marry. Pastor Gregory is free to not perform a particular wedding or to perform no weddings at all. A UCC pastor is free to perform a religious ceremony anywhere, but in some places that will be a marriage that endows no legal rights to the couple.
I suspect that the secular state already has owed the LDS an apology for past wrongs in interfering with personal affairs (living arrangements in which the state would no longer interfere). I doubt that they are asking for one since the LDS no longer endorse such relationships, but if so they can get in line with many others who have suffered wrongs of similar and often much greater magnitude.
And despite your unkindly phrased advice, the PC(USA) will and must say something about marriage,
I used to wrestle in HS and College, won more than I lost. When in very close quarters an opponent would engage in trash-talk or “smack”. When he was behind on points and talking garbage I would just point to the scoreboard to show him he was behind and was going to lose.
Pres, Mary, Phil, Bobby, Skip, whomever he or she is can wag their mouths all day long and defined their beloved denomination. All I do is point to the numbers. By any measure, metric, slice of data, his beloved PCUSA is behind on points and all numbers point to either institutional death or merger with the greater religious.humanist matrix, UCC, Unitarians, New Age, Quakers. Liberal, protestant Christianity is on the path to extinction within 40 years at current trajectories. God has removed His grace and blessing from your mists, the Holy Spirit has left you and there is only one path. No amount of millennials, gays, spiritual but not religious groups, socially progressive actions, no amount of social accommodations, AI’s, no amount of GAs will change that. And yes the alphabet soup of ECOs, EPCs, ARPCs, CPCs, whatever will remain small and remain somewhat disjointed, and somewhat always in flux. But at the end they will remain standing up at the mat, the mother church? Counted out.
Keep talking, I will only point to the numbers.
Interesting. You say that the PCUSA should “keep their damn mouths shut” and go on to compare the relationships of LGBT people to relationships with animals. And THEN you accuse people of “trash talk” when they point out your boorish and coarse behavior. Followed by off-topic comments with little inherent credibility. Sigh.