You assume incorrectly with regards to federal and MA equal protection standards. The MA equal protection clause:
Now, I don’t know that the MA courts haven’t treated some of these classifications differently from others, but the constitution clearly puts them on par with one another.
The concurring opinion says this:
Compelling purpose, no other reasonable manner. That sounds like strict scrutiny to me. I guess I could be wrong, though.
I like this argument. You can’t disagree with me over whether the rational basis test has been met, because disagreement entails that it has been. Very slick. You might want to watch the comparison to the Babel fish argument, however, since it entails a contradiction and hence can be used, if its premises are accepted, to prove that black is white, and the next thing you know you’ll be run over at the next zebra crossing.
First, we need evidence that MA courts have historically employed the bar-so-low-it’s-just-painted-on-the-floor version of the rational basis test with regards to their interpretation of the state equal protection clause.
Second, assuming you pass the first test, you need to show that changing how the rational basis test is applied amounts to activism. It may disrespect stare decisis, but neither you nor I think stare decisis is an absolute rule. The low-bar rational basis test isn’t derived from any text anywhere, so shifting to a tiny-bit-higher-bar rational basis test wouldn’t run afoul to anything explicit.
Third, you need to show that the case for some higher level of scrutiny is also so weak as to require activist interpretations. (I think we agree that the statute has no chance of passing any higher scrutiny.)
Then, and only then, will I concede that the court was activist.
The first issue I don’t have a clue about. You can probably come up with something for the second, though whether it will convince me of “activist decision” rather than “bad decision” is an open question. The third I don’t think you can do.
It’s “the Supreme Judical Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” – “the SJC” is the proper acronym.
What is the status of the proposed Mass. constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage but allow civil unions?
Dewey will bullshit his way into perverting the reality of a situation into the dog and pony show he’d like it to be.
He has as much validity as the Chicken Lawyer on Futurama selling the Chewbacca defense with less class.
PinkMarabou might be even more surprised to learn that he’s a he.
If that’s the case, my poor husband will get the shock of his life! He’d be so sad without my volumtuous parts and long red hair.
Female. Very, very, very liberal.
I believe that the obtuseness rests on you, since the point I’m making is quite plain. I see both sides talking about judicial activism; the only difference is that one side says it’s rampant while the other says it doesn’t exist. I see both sides talking about the same thing. Meanwhile, your contention has been that one side is misrepresenting what judicial activism is, while the other side (yours, of course) is innocently mislead by the scoundrels. Your bias is almost Wagnerian in its boldness.
It may surprise you to learn that, despite slanderous opinions to the contrary, the vast majority of men are quite capable of deep and lasting emotional commitments entirely innocent of carnal considerations.
Well, maybe not the vast majority. Many, many men. Some. A few.
I think it exists, I just don’t think it’s rampant or that it was present in either Goodrich or in the Schiavo case.
For me, a classic example of judicial activism would be the whole cloth fabrication of “Ceremonial Deism,” an imaginary loophole in the 1st Amendment which was concocted solely to preserve Establishment violations. I don’t see conservatives complaining about that one.
Well, that isn’t quite the argument. The argument is that you can’t say reasonable minds can differ on a question and at the same time say that your opponents are acting irrationally. If you say one, you cannot say the other.
Remember, the court in applying rational basis isn’t deciding if procreation is in fact central to marriage; they are only deciding if a rational legislator could hold that view.
The first and second can be dealt with by simply understanding that rational basis is the polite, legalese way of saying “this isn’t the sort of thing the equal protection clause is supposed to deal with.”
The third is dealt with by simply recognizing that we take the case as written: the Massachusetts Supremes did not in fact make the case about a specifically protected class. They could have twisted themselves into making it a gender case, ala Justice O’Connor in Lawrence, an approach with rather serious problems of its own, but they did not do so.
And I love you, too, snookums.
When come back, bring argument.
Out of curiosity, do you think exempting libel or false advertising from free speech protection is activist?
If there is no written law exempting those things, then yes, it would be activist for a judge to do it. It would represent a failing on the part of the legislature not have written those exceptions already, not on the bench for being forced to uphold them as free speech.
Of course, once the legislature does pass those laws, they are subject to a constitutional test by the judiciary. I may disagree with whatever decsion they make in that regard but it would not be activist for them to disagree with me unless they put words into the constitution.
No, my husband would be sad without my “funbags”. I assure you. He would really be confused if I became a man overnight. Then we’d have the issue that DtC and Bricker and DCU are arguing about. 
I’m not knocking less-built women here, but it’s pretty obvious that I am a woman. No one is mistaking it when they see what I look like. I didn’t think after looking at my screen name anyone would question it, but you never know. Maybe there are men out there who like their clothes and shoes adorned with pink marabou.
I know quite a few, actually. Of course, considering the circles I run in… 
Just barely passed the last session of the Great and General Court (that’s “Legislature” in states whose names are not derived from the Pilgrims). It has to pass again, most likely will not, and that’ll be the end of it.
Bricker, I do sort of admire your ability to claim that this:
mean this:
They said they were making a change in the history of the law, not the law itself.
You’re still strenuously arguing that a court that’s interpreting a law according to the relevant constitution is therefore being impermissibly activist. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be doing their job. We know this is a matter you get emotional about, sure, but it would help you more to be rational.
A more honest poster than *you * would recognize that the law did indeed violate the MA state constitution. That’s exactly what the ruling said. It is not possible that you could not have known that before dumping on **Diogenes ** for telling the truth. We know you’re not that stupid - are you?
We have a lot of volumtuous people in Ohio.
The Big and Tall Stores do a whopping business.
This is not in any way an observation regarding PingMarabou.
Wha?
(Caution: an analogy taken from abstract mathematics follows. It was the first thing that came to mind, sorry.)
Argument A: the smallest hyperbolic 3-manifold is the Weeks manifold.
Argument B: the smallest hyperbolic 3-manifold has yet to be found.
Argument C: the smallest hyperbolic 3-manifold is a small fluffy fruit bat found only in Antarctica on the days after a full moon.
Reasonable minds can differ on whether A or B is correct, but C is irrational, and those two statements are not contradictory. Just because reasonable minds can differ doesn’t automatically mean that all arguments get a pass.
So you therefore believe that the first amendment protects libel and false advertising? Is it activist when the Supreme Court carves out those exceptions?
Again with the circular reasoning: the ruling’s conclusion is correct because that is what the ruling concluded.
Well, I never said that, unless you completely ignore the context of my remarks.
In this case, there’s only one premise – marriage’s primary purpose is procreation. If you find that premise to be of the kind over which reasonable minds can differ, even if you disbelieve it yourself, you cannot also say it is irrational.