Louisiana judge exposes his ignorance (and bigotry) in upholding state's same-sex marriage ban

By Michael J.W. Stickings

With most of the country moving in a progressive direction on same-sex marriage, you knew you could count on a retrograde place like Louisiana to strike a blow for good-ol'-fashioned stupidity, bigotry, and medievalism:

People who think gay Americans do not deserve the same rights as straight Americans finally have something to celebrate.

After a disastrous losing streak in the federal courts — every single federal court to consider the question after the Supreme Court struck down the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 2013 has sided against marriage discrimination — Team Anti-Gay finally found a single court in Louisiana that was willing to stand up for the the principle that same-sex couples should not be allowed to marry. Judge Martin Feldman, a Reagan appointee to the federal trial bench, has now written the only federal court decision in the country holding that gay couples are not entitled to the same rights as straight couples.

Oh, but it took some of the usual right-wing ignorance to make it happen:

Political operatives seeking to cast aspersions on Feldman's approach to gay rights will find a lot to work with in his opinion. At one point, he describes being gay as one of several "lifestyle choices" a person can make. At another point in his opinion, he compares same-sex marriage to marriage between "aunt and niece," "aunt and nephew," or "father and child." He also likens marriage equality to polygamous marriages.

And on and on. ThinkProgress goes on to pick apart what turns out to be a remarkably unlearned opinion, an opinion obviously rooted not in an appreciation for the law, nor in an understanding of the issue at hand, but in the judge's own biases, an opinion that screams right-wing judicial activism. It's bigotry with respect to gay rights, but also astonishing ignorance with respect to the law, as well as to the basic elements of judicial review.

But this guy's a Republican. What else did you expect?

Anti-bullying

By Mustang Bobby

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) responded to the Supreme Court's ruling on DOMA by standing up against bullying... of bigots.

My hope is that those of us who believe in the sanctity and uniqueness of traditional marriage will continue to argue for its protection in a way that is respectful to the millions of American sons and daughters who are gay. It is also my hope that those who argue for the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex marriage will refrain from assailing the millions of Americans who disagree with them as bigots.

So there you have a bully begging not to be bullied for being a bigoted bully.

After DOMA, the fight for marriage equality moves to the states

By Mustang Bobby 

Florida Gov. Rick Scott on the repeal of DOMA:

Look, I've been married since I was 19. I believe in traditional marriage.

This was, in his lizard-brain reaction, his way of saying that the repeal has no impact on the laws of Florida and its constitutional amendment passed in 2008 banning same-sex marriage.

But Mr. Scott is predicting the next battle for marriage equality. The fact that he is (we assume) happily married doesn't mean anything other than there is connubial bliss in the Scott household, and his marriage doesn't have any bearing on the people next door. Equal rights is not a zero-sum game. Granting marriage equality to a gay couple doesn't take it away from the straight people. (Please don't let's rehash the slippery slope argument of man-on-dog marriages. That will only happen when a dog has the ability to comprehend and accept the terms of a contract. Dogs may rule, but that's not a part of the deal.)

The fact that DOMA is now dead means that states that do not recognize all marriages no longer have much of a leg to stand on in denying spousal benefits when a married couple named Fred and Paul from Massachusetts relocates to Palmetto Bay, Florida. And in a way, Justice Antonin Scalia, in his rant against the ruling, predicted the next shoe to drop. Marriage equality at the state level is coming up next.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Rand Paul thinks dog marriage is next

By Frank Moraes 

As you all know, I have major problems with real libertarians -- to a large extent because most of them have a good understanding of the problems of governing and I don't see why they don't recognize their very clear blind spots. But people who claim to be libertarians who don't understand the philosophy and just throw the word around because it sounds cooler than "conservative" are another matter. I hate them.

The most prominent pretend libertarian is Rand Paul. This doesn't mean that I don't agree with him from time to time. Hell, I agree with Rick Santorum now and then. One nice thing about real libertarians is that you can usually predict where they stand on any given issue. But not so with Paul. He is anti-abortion, for example. Now I understand that some libertarians are anti-abortion. But I don't get it. A 16-cell zygote has equal human rights to the mother? Really?!

But there are many more clear examples. He isn't, for example, in favor of drug legalization -- just cannabis. Now, I'm all for legalizing cannabis. But at this point, the argument isn't the libertarian one that people should be allowed to make their own choices. It is the (true) conservative argument that cannabis is no more dangerous than other legal drugs. At least Paul's father, Ron Paul, acts like a true libertarian in this regard.

And now, Rand Paul is making the media rounds to complain about the Supreme Court's overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. He was on Glenn Beck's show (another pretend libertarian) warning that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy. I actually agree with him that this ought to lead to polygamy. I'm very much a libertarian on this issue: people should be able to enter whatever contracts they want with each other. But Paul brought this up as a note of caution: polygamy is bad.[1] This is clearly not a man who believes that people's lives are their own.


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Chris Christie hates DOMA ruling, reveals abject ignorance of American constitutionalism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you may have heard, sometime Republican superstar Chris Christie, the bullying blowhard (and media-friendly) governor of New Jersey, isn't terribly impressed with the Supreme Court for striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

The ruling is an "example of judicial supremacy," he said yesterday. "I don't think the ruling was appropriate," he opined. "I think it was wrong."

He criticized the justices, or at least five of them, for replacing "the judgment of a Republican Congress and a Democratic president" with "their own judgment," adding: "I thought that Justice Kennedy's opinion was, in many respects, incredibly insulting to those people, 340-some members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, and Bill Clinton."

Okay, we already knew Christie was a bigot -- yes, if you're against same-sex marriage, that's what you are, period. But what he showed with these comments is that he's an ignorant fool as well, with little regard for the checks, balances, and the rule of law.

Does he really have so little understanding of the Constitution, the history of the Supreme Court, and the concept of judicial review, particularly as established early on with Marbury v. Madison, one of the country's defining cases? 

This is what, in essence, the U.S. Supreme Court does. It rules on the constitutionality of federal laws, providing a check on the other two branches of government. And what it said on Wednesday is that DOMA is unconstitutional. It had every right to do so. It's in the fucking Constitution.

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DOMA never had a chance

By Mustang Bobby 

It's easy to say that the Defense of Marriage Act was doomed from the outset and that its demise yesterday was inevitable. Passed in the heat of the election campaign of 1996 and foisted as a knee-jerk reaction to the possibility that Hawaii was about to legalize same-sex marriage (this was before the Aloha State was considered an "exotic" place to be from), it had a relatively short life span; a little under 17 years.

For a while it looked like it was carved in stone. The full weight of the federal government, in all its intricacies of laws, orders, rules, and codes, was behind the denial of spousal benefits of marriages between two people who shared similar genitalia. And once a federal law is in place, it is very hard to extract the tentacles.

But its doom was ordained by its own existence. Born in a fit of pique and panic, it begged for states to pass marriage equality, or at the very least civil unions, and once they did, DOMA -- an assault on the Equal Protection clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments anyway -- became moot.  Equal rights to married couples granted by states such as Massachusetts or New York were being denied by the federal government, and that put DOMA on the path to invalidation.

What is especially ironic is that all of the arguments against DOMA are deeply conservative and traditional right wing talking points, ranging from big government intrusion into the lives of citizens to the hatred of the Internal Revenue Service and its big-footing of the tax code. The plaintiff in the case that brought DOMA to the Supreme Court wasn’t looking for the federal government to bless her wedding; she wanted to be treated fairly by the tax collector. How hard is that for a Republican to understand and sympathize with?

From the day DOMA was signed into law by President Clinton (who must acknowledge his own chutzpah for championing the ruling yesterday), I believed it would be thrown out. That does not lessen the joy and satisfaction that I left yesterday morning when the ruling came down. If anything, it affirms my belief in the law and the inevitability of marriage equality, even if I am still single. (Hope springs eternal.)

And we are one step closer to putting an end to an adjective-enhanced society, such as "gay marriage" or "lesbian couple." We're just people.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

SCOTUS rulings on DOMA and Prop 8: A great day for gay rights, equality, and America's noblest ideals

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(photo from the San Francisco Chronicle)

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 was quite the day:

Well, a really good, and potentially historic, day for gay rights, equality, and the ideals to which America professes to aspire.
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) June 26, 2013

No, not a perfect day in these terms:

-- SCOTUS's Prop 8 ruling was based on standing, not on the merits of the case, and so not in and of itself a validation of same-sex marriage. The lower court ruling against Prop 8 stands, meaning that same-sex marriage is now legal in California, but this has no impact on other states.

-- SCOTUS did find the odious DOMA unconstitutional in that it violates the Fifth Amendment, and this is a much greater victory, but state laws against same-sex marriage remain in place and states are not required to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.

The hope is that the argument against DOMA -- "deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment," Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority -- ultimately applies in some form to states as well.

But here's also a sense that the Roberts Court as currently constituted may simply want to move on from this. It didn't block progress, and didn't pull a Dred Scott (issuing a terrible ruling that will be widely ridiculed in future). It struck down a federal law as many lower courts had done, and it stayed out, more or less, of a state matter. Sure, we know where Scalia, Alito, and Thomas stand on the matter, but as a whole SCOTUS, perhaps rather predictably, fell short of making a sweeping decision and sent the matter back to the states to deal with. Which is to say, it took a generally conservative view of federalism and waved progress along without interfering too much, nudging it back on the right track.

In any event, these two rulings add up to a major, historic victory for same-sex marriage and, more broadly, as I tweeted, for the ideals to which America professes to aspire.

With so much of the political landscape dominated by Republican extremism, obstructionism, and scandalmongering, with so little being done to address America's problems (including its culture of rampant gun violence), with President Obama pushing an old-fashioned moderate Republican agenda instead of progressive change (we can believe in), and with so much recent attention on the NSA and the growing surveillance state, and the erosion of civil liberties that that entails, I must say I had lost a great deal of whatever hope and optimism I had left, which wasn't much but still something to cling to.

No, the world didn't change yesterday, but for once things seemed to get a whole lot better.

**********

Here, from TPM via Mustang Bobby, is the day, a great day, in 100 seconds:

Waiting for the court

By Mustang Bobby

There is a chance that the Supreme Court will hand down rulings today on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Prop 8 cases. Mondays are usually good for Court rulings, so it will either be today or a week from today.

There are any number of ways the Court could rule on DOMA. They could go full tilt and overturn it completely, saying that federal law has no business dictating to the several states how to define marriage, or they could overturn the section of the law that denied marriage benefits to a legally married couple in New York, which was the basis for the suit in the first place. Or they could not rule at all, leaving the lower court rulings in place. Not being a lawyer or a dug-in Court watcher like SCOTUSblog, I have no tea leaves to read and report on, but my gut tells me that the Court will come down narrowly on the side of tossing DOMA to the point that it is basically ineffective and unenforceable. I’m guessing 5-4 with a vehement dissent from Scalia who will carry on like a diva about how the homosexual lobby has driven the Court to a politically correct ruling. (After Bush v. Gore, irony is not Justice Scalia’s strong suit.) I don’t hold out much of a possibility that they will leave DOMA intact. They would not have waited this long on that ruling.

As for California’s Prop 8, the Court could go the same way as DOMA: they could rule that the voter-approved ban on marriage equality in California violates the equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution and thereby reinstate the 2008 California supreme court ruling that marriage equality is permissible in the state. If they narrowly apply that ruling — meaning it is specific only to the case in California — then marriage equality would be the law there and only there. Or they could rule that bans on marriage equality violate the equal protection clauses, thereby overturning them in the states that provide for civil unions but not marriage, which would only apply to those states that have civil unions. Or they could rule that all bans on marriage equality are unconstitutional and overturn every state law prohibiting it, much as they did with Loving v. Virginia in 1967 that ruled bans on interracial marriage anywhere were unconstitutional, not just in Virginia. Or — and here’s the out for the Court — they could rule that the party suing to keep the ban in place did not have standing to sue, which would mean the case would be tossed and the lower court ruling — in favor of marriage equality — would stand. A punt win for equality.

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