Oh, this REAKS...

[feren]

I just got a pointer to this thanks to one of Kette's friends, who made a comment in her journal about this. Do I oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment? You bet your sweet ass I do. This is a free country, and people who love one another should be allowed to join in a union regardless of their gender/race/religion/whatever. Some up-tight group has decided that this needs to be stopped because it's contributing to the moral decay of America (Yeah, sure... see my earlier rant, Control Your Goddamn Progeny if you want my take on that one), and have proposed an amendment to the Constitution to have it read something along the lines of "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and woman."

Here is where I call bullshit. This needs to stop right here and right now. Please, everyone, even if you don't believe in gay rights, at least see how easily this can lead to laws that trample on personal freedoms and rights that you DO care about, and go to http://www.petitiononline.com/0712t001/petition.html and put your name to this. Slap this down before people start thinking they have the right to define WHO and WHAT you marry -- or worse.

Comments

Re: politics, feh

[pogo101.livejournal.com]

Pardon me for butting in.

I doubt that an amendment TO the Constitution would be judged itself unconstitutional. Generally, courts, when faced with two pieces of law of the same rank that are in some ways inconsistent (for example, two statutes in the United States Code), they will try to construe them so as to give both of them effect, but if THAT isn't possible, the later-in-time law will win out over the earlier-in-time law to the extent that the two are incompatible.

What is going on with that amendment notion is this. The unamended Constitution requires the states to give "full faith and credit" to the judgments and decrees of the other states. That means that if Hawaii or Vermont or another state begins to recognize same-sex marriages (or something close to it), then other states are required to recognize such decrees -- unless the Constitution itself is amended to provide otherwise. And however wrong in policy terms suhc an amendment may be, as a matter of legal mechanics, it would work, IMO. (An amendment specifically limiting what the definition of marriage is, passed after 2000, would probably be held to trump a broad, general provision passed in 1787.)

I read recently that Germany began recognizing same-sex unions of some sort, but I don't know the details. The more conservative federal states within Germany, including Bavaria, which is predominantly Catholic, challenged that law in the country's federal constitutional court, but I heard that they (the challenging states) lost.