It’s a terrible idea, but I would savor the chance to vote against Alito and Scalia. (and Thomas too).
I would be afraid that Cliven Bundy’s friends would show up.
Here’s a specific example of a couple being refused a license and suing: East Texas same-sex couple sues after being denied marriage license
If the gay couple wins the suit (which seems likely), who would be paying out? Would it be the clerk or the state?
He put the notice out on the official State Attorney General’s website. It certainly sounds to me like the State of Texas is guaranteeing that lawyers are standing by pro bono.
My reaction is to say, “Sure. Anywhere that presently allows two first-degree relatives to marry will have to afford that right to people of the same gender. Anywhere that presently allows marriage among more than two people will have to afford that right to people of the same gender.”
This man on dog shit is a desperate gambit to distract from the point.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if they cited Paxton as an accessory?
Here’s another way to think about it…
Many people have remarked on the quite remarkable speed with which public opinion has swung on Gay Marriage (due, I’m sure, to the fact that it is so obvious that it should be legal once you actually think about it). Some of that is due to old bigots dying. But a lot of it is due to people changing their minds.
So suppose 10,000 people have been changing their mind each week. Presumably the week before they changed their mind, they were still against gay marriage. After all, that’s what changing ones mind means. At that point, is it (a) fair and accurate to call them a hate-filled-bigot, and (b) productive to call them a hate-filled-bigot?
To repeat myself, I hope I don’t come off as a patronizing tongue-clucker of the “no, THIS is how you gay people should be acting if you want to affect social change” variety, which I realize I’m certainly skirting close to. But in this particular case it’s abundantly clear that it is possible for people’s minds to be changed, BECAUSE IT HAS HAPPENED SO MUCH. And I think that even with this decision there’s still benefit to changing minds, because that will just make crap like the random jerks in Texas who are refusing to comply with the new ruling that much less common. So what’s more likely to change minds… unyielding but calm and polite (I wont say “respectful”) debate, or hatred?
I am not entirely convinced you are asking in good faith, but I’ll play. First, there is a substantial practical issue with consanguinous marriage that is not present in same-sex marriage (that is, consanguinity and the resulting risk of genetic disorders in children born of the relationship.)
Second, Kennedy very carefully avoided identifying any new principles on which the decision was based, as he has done to some extent in other LGBT rights cases. So it’s pretty much impossible to say what the impact of the decision is outside the narrow question presented.
In any event, as a practical matter the proponents of consanguinous marriage need to get a certain level of support before SCOTUS will entertain the idea over overturning the bans on it. They do not operate in a vacuum. In 1986, the upheld sodomy bans in Bowers v. Hardwick, because the general public attitude to homosexuality was “OMG, eww, fags.”
In the same year, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality (fully) from the DSM. From 1973-1986 they had something called ego-dystonic homosexuality in there which was made up to placate the psychiatrists who were mad about removing homosexuality from the DSM in 1973.
Since then, as we’ve seen, homosexuality has become less of a taboo. It is entirely fair to say that the court has taken public opinion into account in its evolving stance on laws burdening homosexuals.
I’m thinking that over the last few years, the Pro-SSM side hasn’t bothered with polite debate over the topic. Despite that, public opinion has swung very quickly. I do not believe it is a coincidence, and I see no reason to change tactics now.
One might say that they’re catching more flies with vinegar than with honey. BTW, if you’re making a fly trap, go with vinegar, it really works.
Our Atty General pretty much admitted that gay marriage is now legal in Texas. He mentioned that employees who were directed by God to avoid their work* should* be protected by the Constitution. There will be pro bono lawyers–enough to go around? He also noted that “the strength of any such claim depends on the particular facts of each case.” In other words, “Good luck!” (Details in this giant thread at The Texas Observer.)
The case in Tyler said nothing about religion; the clerk was just waiting for the right form. Most urban Texas counties started marrying people in Friday. The Republican Clerk in Harris County (Houston) dragged his feet until a memo from our County Attorney set him straight.
This sounds like a lawyer versus lawyer thing. No Federal Troops needed!
It’s true that a lot of people have changed their minds for various reasons. I don’t know what method works best. But I think being called a hate-filled bigot probably did change some minds. I think some people think about politics stuff in the abstract. Like they have a platonic ideal of what marriages and families should be and the laws should conform to that. Being called a bigot could remind them that we are in the real world, and the laws don’t affect abstract concepts, they affect people and their lives.
Also, it’s not a binary switch, where someone goes from thinking gay marriage is the downfall of civilization and gays will burn in hell and then they change to being someone who is pro-gay marriage and marches in the pride parade and donates to the Human Rights Campaign. It’s more of a continuum. A lot of people who recently changed to being pro-gay marriage were probably not the people dripping with hate towards gay people, it was more that they were uncomfortable with it, or didn’t see the point, or think it’s a sin but not at all the worst one. Those people can be switched over to be at least not against gay marriage by being reminded of the harm that being against gay marriage can cause.
I actually think Paxton is sort of right, but only up to a point. Whether or not any given employee in a county clerk’s office has to issue same-sex marriage licenses may be some sort of personnel problem for them to work out. But I don’t think that the county can simply refuse to provide any same-sex marriage licenses on religious grounds. In other words, the individual people in the office may personally object but the county as a governmental body is going to have to provide accommodation somehow to people that want the licenses. This appears to be the position of many county attorneys, as well, although I’m sure we’ll get to see some fun litigation in the days and weeks ahead.
Isn’t that enough? I mean, sure, same-sex couples who were unble to marry could get, by various a la carte bits of bureaucracy, many of the things married different-sex couples get as a mater of course, but since we already have that table d’hote mechanism in place, it’s a lot easier to simply open that up to same-sex couples if we’re going to allow them access to these things at all.
In any case, Human Rights Campaign says there are 1,138 Federal benefits available exclusively to married couples, and probably more in various states; even if that number is a bit imprecise, I wouldn’t dismiss it as “a bunch of tax and property issues.” It’s a pretty big bunch.
The fundamental soundness of the ACA was decided a couple of years ago; King was just stupid bullshit.
IANAL. But my gut response to this particular slippery-slope argument is that incest is not a sexual orientation. “I’m only attracted to my relatives” strikes me as a different (and much, much rarer, if extant) thing from “I’m only attracted to men.”
I don’t understand this viewpoint. The issuing clerk is functionally a license-issuing robot, no? Issuance indicates only that the forms were correctly filled out and the fee was paid, not that the person wielding the stamp personally approves; it’s an objective thing.
What’s likely to happen is that as more and more people know openly gay married couples and discover that they’re not the baby-raping mutant sex fiends they’ve been portrayed as in some right-wing circles, it will become even less of a big deal.
Nate Silver had an interesting article recently showing how acceptance for gay marriage has been much more rapid than one might expect, even adjusting for age. And the reason does seem to be higher visibility for gay people.
If you wish to normalize incestuous marriage, you need to start winning hearts & minds. When is Incest Pride Week? Will you walk in a parade, hand in hand with Mom (or Daughter)?
Take the cudgel & let us know how it works.
OK. Thanks for the explanation, since I asked for clarification to make sure I was reading your post correctly. I can see now that I did not. However, I still disagree that those are good reasons to ban polygamy. You could say the same thing about re-marriage by couples with children from previous marriages. That would be the “decreasing tensions” part. I don’t think either that, or polygamy, have anything to do with “insularity”. At least not any more than monogamous marriages do-- we all have friends who, literally, disappear from the social scene once they get married.
There’s a clear precedent here in civil rights law - the Southern Manifesto and similar efforts to avoid or resist the exercise of federal authority to grant rights to blacks. It’s worth remembering that it wasn’t really that long ago that the U.S. fucking Army was in Little Rock to enforce a Supreme Court decision that wasn’t well received in certain quarters. Schools and public accommodations didn’t just become integrated overnight (and in some cases they never really did). There’s no question that there are means available. What it really depends on is how far the states are willing to go to challenge federal authority, and what they do about it specifically.
Cooper v. Aaron, the rare unanimous opinion issued per curiam, i.e. not by an individual justice, but by all of them.
Well, if I was starting up a new country from scratch, I don’t know if I’d ban polygamy. I’d consider on whether it should be allowed or not.
But in the US, it is currently banned for several reasons, including religious ones and because often when it happened in the past it ended up with women and children being abused and neglected. The bans could be overturned if there starts being a movement of people wanting to have polygamous marriages, and showing how they just want to live their lives and no one would be harmed, but as far as I know there isn’t really a movement like that, unlike what there was for gay marriages.
I was for gay marriages to be allowed, because I listened to gay people, and because there were studies showing that gay marriage doesn’t harm children or anyone else. If polygamous people start making the same arguments, I’m willing to listen. But it seems that so far every time I see polygamous marriage brought up, it’s not by actual polygamous people wanting to make it legal, but it’s by people against gay marriage or people playing devil’s advocate trying to derail conversation.
The army was there to protect against the very real threat of violence, which I don’t think is a concern in this case. And they didn’t show up the same week as the SCOTUS decision. I’d rather give this some time and let it work out peacefully.