But I’m pitting then because it took them 4 years.
Don’t worry, Kansas will get it wrong again before too long, and then the natural harmony will be restored.
(Seriously though, good on them for doing the right thing… five years too late. Bah.)
it will be cancelled out by the inclusion of Intelligent Design in the schools.
But at least they got this one right.
So what you’re saying is, “Kansas, go fuck yourselves?” 
That’s what courts are for, you fucking assholes. Actually, I take that back. Clearly you people have something against fucking assholes. Remind me again, which commandment was it that said, “Thou shalt not fuck thy neighbor’s asshole”? Maybe that was one of the ones from 11 to 15 on the tablet that Moses dropped on his way down the mountain.
Well, you’re not supposed to covet your neighbor’s ass, but I will certainly grant that the Commandments are silent on the subject of fucking it. So we can conclude based on the Commandments that it’s OK to fuck your neighbor in the butt as long as you don’t really want to.
That was the Eleventh Commandment, but after much consultation, it was dropped.
Are you sure it’s “covet”? I always thought it was “cover.” That’s why I consider assless chaps to be a sacrament.
What are courts for, exactly? Are you saying courts ARE supposed to have the authority to make laws over the Legislature’s authority?
Courts are to determine that the legislature follows the rules. The Kansas court determined that by treating homosexual sex differently from heterosexual sex, the legislature was not following the rules. That is what courts are for.
The court made no law, it merely decreased the unequal penalty for the same action. The legislature is perfectly free to pass another law increasing the penalties for both types of sex if it chooses, as long as the penalties are equal.
Hmmm? While I see where you’re reading sturmhauke’s post as advocating judicial activism in the Nixon/Bush sense (and it’s a fair implication, IMO), what, pray tell, does that have to do with the OP?
As I understand the Kansas State Supreme Court’s reasoning, the sentence imposed on Matthew Limon (in accordance with one section of Kansas statute law) was deemed to be at odds with the Equal Protection Clause (cf. Lawrence) in placing on a homosexual act committed in cooperation with an adolescent minor a sentence 13.73 times as long as a heterosexual act committed in similar circumstances. It was therefore deemed excessive, and the case returned to the trial court for resentencing (which, given the fact that he has already served 53 months of a 206-month sentence for what would have been a maximum 15-month sentence under the new ruling, means “time served”).
Where, in that, do you see anyone “making new laws” (in the statutory sense, as opposed to “making law” in the judicial-ruling-sets-precedent sense)?
I agree with the above.
I don’t.
In sturmhauke’s post I saw something that was unclear and potentially inaccurate. In the actual case, no problems.
Thanks for the answer, Rick. I had a hunch that was what you meant; for obvious reasons, I very much wanted to clarify what it was you were arguing.
I was just saying that one of the things the courts do is rule on the validity of laws. Someone beat me to the equal protection reference.
Why am I the only one on this board (after reading every freakin gay marriage thread available) who personally takes issue with the government being involved in marriage at all (gay or straight?) I thought that wedding vows were a religous bit? Personally and IMHO, marriage licences are a load of tripe. If the government wants to regulate ‘unions’ between men/women/sheep/robots/super intelligent bacteria, that’s fine. Treat it as a commercial contract. But don’t use the word marriage. It cheapens the institutions around them.
It does make me wonder if the pro gay marriage crowd would support, instead of legalizing gay marriage, a legalization of gay civil unions if the government then prohibited straight ‘marriage licences’ and instead issued to straight folk ‘civil union licences,’ just like they do for gays?
~Mang
(PS: Please support the National Coalition For Sexual Freedom!)
I’ve said the same thing many times.
Get out of the marriage business entirely. License civil unions, period.
Because there’s absolutely no way the American public would go for that, and the backlash of any such concerted proposal would be devastating to the gay rights movement. Straight America is never going to get behind equal recognition of gay relationships if it’s done in terms of taking something away from them. Fucks like James Dobson are always going on about how letting gays marry will “destroy” marriage as we know it. I don’t think it would serve our ends to prove him right.
It’s a fine enough idea in abstract, I guess, but as a political strategy, it would be staggeringly ineffective.
I agree. I’d love to see the gov’t get out of the marriage business, but the anti-SSM folks would go absolutlely apeshit ballistic if they thought gays were “taking marriage away from them”-- even more ballistic than they are now when they don’t want gays to have the same marriage they have.
So, to answer fushj’s question: Many of us think like you do, but it just ain’t gonna happen.
Doesn’t that last sentence contradict itself?
Anyway, I do in fact think that’s the way to go. Morals take generations to shift. Making the institution of marriage, adoption and so on, restricted to a man and a woman is very clearly in violation of the equal rights of men and women. If you test this against that part of the constitution, you cannot maintain the amendments. Since the constitution does not lspecify marriage has to involve children, or has to be between man and woman, but does specify that men and women have equal rights, then such rights and priviliges that go together with the institution of marriage may not be limited at the state level.
Removing the emotional aspect of legal marriage by redifining the term may well be the right first step and compromise to a more just society. The next generation may then either not consider the traditional institution of legal marriage important enough to change the name, or be wisened up to the injustice of limiting the rights and priviliges of marriage to a man and a woman.
(disclaimer: I am currently under the influence of fever nor am I an expert on U.S. legal issues, so maybe I’m overlooking something or just making no sense at all)