Posted by jrd_x on 5/14/2012 4:59:00 PM (view original):
Posted by tecwrg on 5/14/2012 4:54:00 PM (view original):
Posted by jrd_x on 5/14/2012 4:15:00 PM (view original):
Posted by tecwrg on 5/14/2012 3:57:00 PM (view original):
It's good to know that in the United States of JRDmerica, the states should not be trusted to be responsible enough to make their own laws.
I never said that.
States are trusted to make thousands and thousands of laws.
Just not this one.
I'm still waiting for you to give me a legal reason to deny same sex couples the right to marry.
Why not this one?
Who decides which laws states can make and cannot make themselves? You?
Laws that restrict the rights of groups without passing the compelling interest test violate the 14th amendment of the constitution. States aren't allowed to pass laws that violate the constitution*.
*But they still do it, and then it goes to court, and then it gets overturned. When I say aren't allowed to, I mean in the sense that they shouldn't.
Maybe you're constant invocation of the 14th amendment needs a little more thought on your part:
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Marriage_Amendment
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed, "for want of a substantial question," an appeal by two men who unsuccessfully challenged Minnesota's marriage statutes in state court. Because the case, Baker v. Nelson, came to the Court through mandatory appellate review (not certiorari), the summary dismissal established Baker v. Nelson as a binding precedent.[3]
One federal appellate court has upheld a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage: the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Citizens for Equal Protection v. Bruning. The Eighth Circuit, citing Baker v. Nelson, affirmed the constitutionality under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause of Nebraska's constitutional amendment which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and states that unions of two people in a same-sex relationship as marriage or similar to marriage shall not be valid or recognized in Nebraska, and reversing a ruling by Judge Joseph F. Bataillon of the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska that a prohibition on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.[4]