Any minute between now and June 4th I think. That is an end deadline, the opinion could come at any time.
No, conservatives believe in abiding by the law. We need to come up with the proper term for people who believe that their opinions and not the text of the law constitute what courts should enforce. I have a few thoughts along that line, but they’re propably not appropriate for GD.
I’ll bet my first (edited) reaction to jtgain was worse than yours! I’ve wanted to punch Iowa Rep. Steve King in the nose all afternoon.
We all know how you are. Any decision you don’t like is “judicial activism.” I’ll bet you didn’t even attempt to read the decision. You’re ability to constantly revel in your lack of knowledge is astounding.
Is there any way to stop you from spouting uninformed nonsense constantly?
Your ignorance doesn’t constitute inventing things out of whole cloth.
jtgain, the Iowa Constitution doesn’t say anything about marriage being between a man and a woman. So, the judges didn’t do anything to the Constitution.
They simply ruled that the same-sex marriage ban violated the equal protection clause. It did the exact same thing against slavery back in 1839.
Actually, the earliest Iowa can have an amendment is 2012.
That law would clearly be in violation of both the text and the original intent of the constitution. A judge who struck that law down would simply be doing his job and not injecting his own personal beliefs into the equation: Exactly what the Iowa Supreme Court and the posters here are NOT doing.
You are in favor of gay marriage, you want it to be legal. Therefore the Constitution must clearly allow it, even though this “fact” was missed by the authors of the document, as well as almost all legal scholars until a few years ago. Some of the more honest posters will at least admit that you give no credence to what the document really says, you just subscribe to an “evolving standards” doctrine.
Now, that’s great for gay marriage, but what happens when the Court goes the other direction and starts restricting your rights? You point to the Constitution and say “It says here I have a right to do XXX”. Then the Court says that XXXX no longer applies due to evolving standards?
When the words and the intention behind the words don’t mean anything, then the guarantee behind them is worthless…
But they are, in fact, going precisely by what the words of the constitution say. You’re the one who wants to ignore the actual text in favor of unstated intentions.
So, you’re still not going to even attempt to read the decision?
It’s not just their personal beliefs - it’s their professional beliefs. One of the duties of the SC is to make sure the state’s laws do not violate its Constitution. They (unanimously) believe that this particular law does.
You state this but do not go into details. What specifically in your opinion is the legal flaw in the opinion of the court?
You’re claiming that all seven justices have either independently deliberately thwarted the law to further a personal agenda, or that they have all, without exception, conspired together to further their personal agendas. That is quite a claim! Do you see why we would ask you to substantiate this, rather than just to state it? What are the flaws in the legal opinion?
This is a genuine question, not an attempt at a “gotcha”, so I’d be very interested in the views of some of our more legally inclined members. I hope Bricker joins the thread!
To do a parallel, and any gay people forgive the comparison: The Founding Fathers never intended that people might advocate Communism. But, the sedition aspect of post-WWII Communism to one side, being able to advocate for the political beliefs of your choice is one major aspect of freedom of speech tht they did guarantee. I trust you;d agree with me and most Americans that the U.S. should not go Communist? And yet, if those who believe it should are barred from so advocating, we’ve lost a key freedom – because it’s in the unpopular exercise of a right that the right is tested. Nobody is going to ban Methodist church services – but they’re protected by the same law that protects the services of Neopagan covens. In this case, equal protection means, if Iowa recognizes legal marriages, and there are no sufficient grounds to overcome the equal protection guarantee in sound secular reasons for a law prohibiting gay marriages, then the rights of gay people to marry are protected by and to the same exten as the clause that protects other people’s right to marry.
Who needs that? **Jtgain **obviously knows the law better than the Iowa Supreme Court, so why bother?
Jtgain, do you have some kind of legal argument about why the Court was wrong? If not then how can you claim the judges didn’t follow the law when you don’t even know anything about it?
It’s interesting how you’re so quick to analogize the expansion of rights for some (under the textually sound “equal protection”) to the restriction of rights for others (under the significantly less sound “Fear-mongering Bullshit Phantom Hypothetical”).
It’s also convenient that you consistently talk about the “orginal intention”–are you some sort of mind-reader of the Iowan dead? Have you been holding political seances with the original drafters of the state’s constitution? Because if you have, then you’d probably know that giving the womenfolk and the darkies the vote was also not one of their original intentions either. Judicial activism run amok!
Let’s face facts: a conservative group of judges (largely appointed by conservative politicians) in a fairly conservative state have demonstrated that Anti-Gay sentiments don’t have a legal leg to stand on in the fight for SSM. You can moan and complain and weep for the downward trajectory of the Republic and gnash your teeth that one of the Seven Signs of End Times have come to pass, but that doesn’t change the reality that the legal system is going to be generally less cooperative when it comes to codifying arbitrary bigotry as Law from here on out.
But since you’re no more concerned about “judicial activism” as you are an advocate of genuinely faithful textual interpretations, you’ll need to go somewhere else if you want sympathy for no longer having the same freedom to impose your own personal/“religious” beliefs on the rest of us as you’ve been used to in the past.
Yes. I believe that each and every one of them, deep in their hearts, though they would never admit it publicly, and it in fact may even have made speeches denouncing the evils of homosexuality as a whole to appease voters, clergymen, mothers and those of sensitive constitutions, specifically intended it to allow same-sex marriage.
Now prove to me that your knowledge of their intentions is superior than mine. We’re both making shit up that will prove our points.
I think people have real fears of gay marriage. Whether they are actual or not isn’t the point. The fears do exist. Now that MA and CA and CT have gay marriage, and MA has had it for awhile, the arguments start to fall apart.
Before “who knew” what would happen if gay people got married? Now we have an idea. And it’s harder to deny someone an outcome when you now have a gage of what will happen.
Of course people with an agenda and the press push this. Obama is a mixed race person but he’s always billed as “African American” or “Black.” This is so the next person who has a black father AND a black mother can share his umbrella.
Also with the economy what it is, this ALWAYS takes first place. Look at stem cells, pro-choice people have got through without much press. People are too worried about other things to make a fuss now.
A. He self-identifies as black, and most black people in this country have some white ancestry.
B. Nonsense. Do you have any evidence for this whatsoever, or just doing your usual thing in GD?
It is worth noting, amongst the usual bleating about “judicial activism,” that judges in Iowa must be elected to retain their position on the bench after their initial appointment, up to and including the Supreme Court.
Thus, the whole “unaccountable to voters” aspect of the usual “judicial activism” argument is completely invalidated.
The authors of Iowa’s equal protection clause need not have had pro-SSM intentions in order for this ruling to be sound even on basis of an original intent interpretation. Those authors would have thought that the state did have a compelling interest in forbidding SSM, based on outdated and flat out wrong factual views about homosexuality. But the factual views of the authors of Iowa’s constitution surely are irrelevant to the case - their intent in writing the equal protection clause was to require the state to treat people equally absent a good reason to do otherwise. Since in the judgement of the court the state failed to present a good reason, the state must now do as the authors of its constitution intended - treat people equally.
Disclaimer: I know nothing about the history of Iowa equal protection decisions, and it’s entirely possible this one isn’t in keeping with precedent. Don’t know, don’t care. But many people keep presenting this argument like it means something, and it’s actually completely beside the point. “Nobody originally intended for equal protection to apply to gays!” Well no shit. Surely you’re a genius of historical investigation to have ferreted out that tidbit. But the simple fact is that they wouldn’t have been thinking “Let’s put in a clause that says to treat everyone equally, except the Sodomites.” They would have been thinking “The state should have to justify itself when it treats people unequally. And since teh gey [that’s how it was referred to back then] is a crime against nature the state is of course not lacking in justification in forbidding it.” Now we think that such justification is plainly wrong, and that the state has not presented any other legitimate justification for unequal treatment. Original Intent is followed, Original Beliefs about the Factual Nature of Homosexuality are quite rightly ignored as false.
I’d like to think so. If the government wants to restrict something, they should be required to prove that it needs to be restricted to avoid harm to other people. Anyone who supposes banning same-sex marriage, or “assault weapons”, or flag burning, or anything like that without this proof can go jump.