Oops, I missed that “preferably in favor of them” part. My mistake.
In this case it comes down to evolution of “Freedom of Speech”. I doubt you’d find anyone who would argue with the notion that since speech is protected, so is the written word, since that is simply speech in a different form. However, you’ll note that “Free Expression” is not mentioned anywhere in the First Amendment, and as such I object loudly to the notion that burning a flag in protest is protected. However, the courts have altered “Speech” to include non-verbal protest activities, for which I think it was never really intended.
It’s also the case that punishing someone for burning the flag would be a stretch, because while it is a cherished symbol, when you get down to it it’s simply a piece of cloth being burned in a provocative manner, and thus really violates no laws (except maybe the Clean Air Act). When a judge decides in either manner he’s either making law based upon an emotional response or (what I consider to be) a tortured interpretation of the Constitution. Either way, it’s bad law. So what needs to happen is a Constitutional Amendment about that, or else we accept that the rules will remain vague and imprecise and that you do something like that at your own risk.
What a way to run a railroad.
:rolleyes:
This statement is trite and shallow and only shows you’d rather roll off nifty bon mots than seriously consider the arguments in favor of strict constructionism (N.B.: not the same thing as political conservatism).
Are their folks, especially politicians, who misuse the phrase “judicial activism” in furtherance of their own agendas? Sure. But I can think of a lot of phrases that are similarly misused. That doesn’t mean that those phrases have no meaning, or that they are nothing more than cover for political opportunism.
Frankly, when I use that phrase, I’m talking about a fairly discrete thing (judicial decisionmaking that is out of step with the goals of the authors of the original text). So are most other serious-minded strict constructionists. It does me, and them, a disservice to suggest we’re just secretly advocating results-driven jurisprudence, especially given that results-driven jurisprudence is the very opposite of what strict constructionism is all about.
Technically, this is not true; the court held that separate was inherently unequal and thus segregation was unconstitutional. It did not overrule Plessy. The abstract notion of separate but equal is still good law – it’s just that in the real world, the two cannot simultaneously exist at the same time.
But of course, I’m being hypertechnical, counting angels on the heads of pins. We live in the real world, not a world of abstract constructs. As a practical matter, Plessy is overturned. Believe me, no one’s going to cite it as good precedent these days. 
What “Civil Rights Amendment” are you referring to? The post-Civil War amendments to the constitution? They were in place when Plessy was decided. The 1964 Civil Rights Act? OK, but that isn’t a constitutional provision – Congress could theoretically repeal it at any time. More to the point, Brown wasn’t premised on the 1964 Act (seeing how it wouldn’t be written for around another decade); it was premised on the constitution. If a case arose with facts such that the 1964 Act and its progeny didn’t render the issue moot (tough to imagine, granted), the court could theoretically revisit the constitutional reasoning it applied in Brown. All of that is pretty damned unlikely, natch, but theoretically not impossible.
Well, I think that Katie Bates would agree that that would be the appropriate patriotic song to celebrate the above amendment. 
Well, let’s see who’s actually sponsoring this event, so maybe you won’t feel too out of place.
Al-Fatiha DC
American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers)
Asian Pacific Islander Queer Sisters
Asian Queers United for Action
DC Radical Faeries
DontAmend.com
DC Statehood/Green Party
Equality Maryland
Full Page Project
International Socialist Organization (this is where I come in)
Marriage Equality Meetup DC
Metro Teen AIDS
Pride at Work DC
Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League
Soulforce DC
Outfront DC
Student Equal Rights Campaign
and yes, we did contact the Log Cabin Republicans and the Gertrude Stein Democrats about sponsoring the event, but I don’t believe we’ve heard back from them on this one…
Oh, for crying out loud.
You might want to read a little, outside your comfort zone. You might discover that most of the people who oppose gay marriage also oppose casual heterosexual marriages and quickie divorces like Britney Spears’
I’m sick of being clubbed over the head with her lovely example. If it were up to me, she wouldn’t have been married to begin with, due to the residency requirement and waiting period.
Had she become married, the annulment may have been easy at the outset, but divorce later on would be considerably harder, because of the elimination of no-fault.
I’m dead serious about marriage, and I want to make it stronger, not weaker, like a generations of “reforms” in family structure and law, mostly supported by liberals, have left it.
For the record, while I oppose gay marriage, I do support civil unions, open to those people for whom traditional marriage isn’t a viable option for creation and maintenance of a household.
Do keep in mind that there are a number of people who have lost all respect for marriage and consider it valueless because it is formulated in a discriminatory way. A number of them will argue quite vehemently that other people should not get married because the institution is morally bankrupt in their eyes.
Marriage is made stronger by being the way that families get recognised. If families exist that cannot be recognised by marriage, then the value of the institution is degraded. People chuck it and come up with alternatives, and encourage other people to abandon it as well.
Yeah, yeah, we know. Strengthen marriage. Get rid of no-fault divorce. Start enforcing residence requirements again. All stupid ideas, true, but here’s the thing: none of them have a goddamn thing to do with gay marriage.
See, here’s where you’re an asshole. The idea that letting gays marry will somehow weaken marriage is bigoted, plain and simple. Unless you can provide some rationale for barring gays from marriage that is based on some sort of observable data, and not on pure ideology, of course. Can you?
Thank you, Mr. Plessy.
And I’m sick of media reports on things like gay pride parades that pull out 25 seconds of footage of freaks out of a four hour event and pretend like it’s representational, so I guess we all have our crosses to bear.
But of course you are completely unable to explain how making more people eligible to enter into legal marriages “weakens” it in any way. Interesting.
The only reason “traditional marriage” isn’t a “viable option” for gay couples is because of narrow-minded nitwits. Fortunately the narrow-minded have been roundly defeated in Massachusetts.
(Really, she’s not gay. She’s just never had sex with a man. And sex with Ellen, well, that’s just like a hobby.)
So she’s not gay. She’s “Ellen gay.”
Sort of like Anne Heche
runs for cover
I’m proud of the Mass. Supreme court. Way to go!
:: sigh :: You’re right. It’s a shame, but you’re right.
About a month ago, I had a recorded message on my voice mail from an organization opposing gay marriages. This group was organizing a protest, and was calling random people in Massachusetts to urge them to take part in their protest. The gist of the message was that the bible condemned homosexuality, advocated marriage between one man and one woman, and that children and the economy would be irrepairably harmed if same sex marriages were allowed to happen. All of this I’d heard before, and I almost deleted the message without hearing it through to the end. I’m glad I didn’t, or I would have missed the true gem, guaranteed to make me see the light. “Massachusetts is the birthplace of American Freedom. Let’s not let the freedom our ancestors worked so hard far be taken away from us. Come to our demonstration and show the world that Massachusetts does not want gay marriage.” :wally
In general, I’m anti-marriage (in that it’s not something I personally care to try again and that I feel too many people rush into it), but I have to say it’s about time that all couples who feel a need to marry are allowed. I’ve only known two same-sex couples, but both of those have endured for many years and appear to be more solid relationships than those of many heterosexual couples I know. Way to go Massachusetts! 
Recognizing that basic human rights are not subject to the will of the majority. GREAT day.
Glad to see this story, it really made my morning.
I feel pretty good about this overall. If you’re going to deny people certain rights, you should have to look them straight in the eye when taking it away. The way it was before allowed lawmakers to do nothing and keep gay people down. Lazyness and inertia kept things that way, now that the landscape is changed it will take a specific and considerable effort to put things back the way they were.
If it was really really wrong and really really completely against the will of the people, the constitution can be changed. There’s a nicely documented process for it, go right ahead and get support for changing it.
I suspect that people generally don’t give a crap one way or the other and are not going to support change one way or the other. They won’t support a law giving marriage rights to gays, and they won’t support a law taking them away.
Dear Gobear,
You’re awesome. 
Yours,
sperfur
I think most of us would love a Federal mandate making gay marriage legal. Unfortunately, we’re just not there yet.
Until then, we take baby steps. It sucks, but its what we’re forced to do. Then we celebrate our baby steps, like this one. Is that wrong? Absolutely not.
I don’t know about gobear, but I consider myself politically to be a libertarian. The way I look at it is I’m a Democrat when it comes to personal freedoms and a Republican when it comes to money. In other words, keep the government out of my bedroom, personal life, and wallet.
Whether you like it or not, it is a perfect example. Its concrete, recent proof that marriage is not the sacred institution the Anti-GM folks want us to believe it is.
Who gives a rip that ‘most of the people who oppose gay marriage also oppose casual heterosexual marriages’? The problem is that one group has the right and the other doesn’t.
One more thing - who are you to say ‘if it was up to me, she wouldn’t have been married to begin with’? What frickin’ business of yours is it what someone else does? Did it harm you in any way? Or, as my dad would say, ‘who died and made you boss?’ You need to get that string between your asshole and your eyeballs trimmed back a little.
Are you familiar with the examples of Alaska and Hawaii in this regard?
- Rick
Bricker, those amendments happened long enough ago that I thought they were states where the consitutions have always prohibited gay marriage. Strange that I hadn’t heard any talk about the amendments with the news I’ve read on this. Thanks for bringing this up.
Just in case anyone else is as ignorant of this as I was, Alaska and Hawaii were in (seemingly) the exact same situation Mass is in today (court saying that the ban is unconstitutional) and passed amendments prohibiting gay marriage, so it was all legal-like.
So, everyone who is jumping up and down ‘mourning’ this turn of events can take heart that it’s certainly possible that gay folk won’t be ‘ruining’ your marriage thing for much longer. Hope that makes you all feel better about yourselves. Nothing quite like stepping on someone else to make your spirits rise.
I refuse to be that pessimistic. What I’m hoping for is that by the time it comes up before the legislature again some significant number of gay marriages will have occured (I dunno, a couple hundred at least?) and (amazing!) the sky will not have fallen and all het marriages won’t have suddenly fallen apart and in general all those horrible things the anti-gm people claim will happen WON’T have happened. Instead, well, some people will have had nice ceremonies that made them happy and they’ll check different boxes when they file their taxes and they’ll have a convenient and understood term to use in referring to their mates – none of which will impact on the lives of anyone else to any significant degree.
And the vast majority of people, those who generally find enough to do living their own lives instead of running other peoples, will shrug and ignore the anti-gm people trying to whip them into frenzies.