Is President Obama lying about opposing gay marriage?
hose of us who view gay marriage as a slam-dunk, open&shut
equal-protection issue don’t need to rely on any precedent.
The 14th amendment says that “no state shall … deny to any person
under its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”.
If there is a man whom my sister can marry but I can’t,
then we are not equally protected, so the state’s treating us
that way is unconstitutional. END of discussion. Or at least it ought to be.
Couples as opposed to individuals are a little more complicated because “deny to any person”
does not say exactly the same thing as “deny to any couple”.
It is hard, though, to deny the couple withOUT denying either or both of the people in it — SO hard that when that FINALLY (in 1968) reached the Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, they dismissed
the claim that bans on inter-racial marriages did NOT violate the equal protection clause — because white people and black people were both equally prohibited from marrying someone of the opposite race — with extreme prejudice.
See Is President Obama lying about opposing gay marriage? Daily Kos
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A Gay Justice?
Former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen Sullivan is, according to the National Law Journal, one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. She’s a nationally prominent scholar and teacher of constitutional law, and author of the nation’s leading casebook in constitutional law.
Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, is founding director of Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, and is a leading expert on voting and the political process.
Sullivan and Karlan are both frequently mentioned as possible Supreme Court nominees for President Obama.
Both women also happen to be openly lesbian. … Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the conservative Family Research Council, says that “the real issue would not be the person’s private life but the issue would be would they be imposing their personal ideology upon the court. In this case would they be imposing a pro homosexual ideology, a pro-same sex marriage ideology.”
Sullivan, for instance, joined a friend of the court brief arguing that same sex marriage should be legal even if the “equal protection” clause “would not always have been interpreted by the courts to forbid discrimination against gay people.” Not allowing same sex marriage is a violation of “both due process and equal protection; the former because the right to marry is a form of liberty and the latter because the restriction treats lesbians and gay men differently from straight individuals.”
That she believes that because she’s lesbian, and not because she believes the refusal to allow same sex marriage constitutes unconstitutional discrimination, is another matter.
Either way, discussion about a Justice Sullivan or a Justice Karlan comes at a time when the Obama administration is hearing some impatience voiced by gay and lesbian activists on other issues.
“I think there is some disappointment in the gay community that (President Obama) hasn’t in this initial period spoken more directly and more forcefully about some of the issues he spoke about on the campaign,” Richard Socarides, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton on gay and lesbian issues, told us for Good Morning America today. “Specifically the ‘Don’t ask/Don’t tell’ policy in the military.” See Gay Justice?
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Iowa Supreme Court strikes down gay marriage ban
(Des Moines, Iowa) In a unanimous ruling, the Iowa Supreme Court Friday said that the state law banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional - upholding a lower court ruling.
“The Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa …
Tags: Civil Marriage, Des Moines, Equal Protection Clause, Gay Marriage Ban, Iowa Supreme Court, Man And A Woman, marriage, Moines Iowa, same sex marriage
