Posted on 05/31/2012 1:49:02 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The federal appeals court in Boston struck down the Defense of Marriage Act on Thursday, ruling that the federal statute violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian married couples to equal treatment under the law.
The action by a unanimous three-judge panel of the First US Circuit Court of Appeals sets the stage for a much-anticipated showdown at the US Supreme Court over same-sex marriage.
Declaring that tradition alone was not enough to justify disparate treatment of same-sex couples, the appeals court said DOMA failed to pass constitutional muster.
“Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress’ denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest,” Circuit Judge Michael Boudin wrote for the court in a 28-page decision.
Joining the decision were Chief Judge Sandra Lynch and Judge Juan Torruella.
The decision comes three weeks after President Obama announced his support of gay marriage. The Justice Department had initially worked to defend DOMA against the Massachusetts-based legal challenges, but last year announced it would no longer argue for the statute’s constitutionality....
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Not for Romney, but certainly for many other races around the country.
The corrupt court calls the laws of God “tradition alone”. They will answer to a much higher Court one day.
In this Calvinball, normally there would be a second appeal to the circuit to hear it as a whole (”en banc”) rather than as a panel. But who’s keeping score.
Barack will look like a hypocrite to his lefties if he doesn’t embrace this. And if he does embrace it, wanna bet a dozen pancakes that Mitt waffles back to the right again on the issue.
Of course this is only borrowing from the also-traditional idea of family getting tax benefits. Why does marriage have to mean squat? What if I marry my tomcat, does he now get veterinary benefits?
Boudin, Michael
Born 1939 in New York, NY
Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
Nominated by George H.W. Bush on May 18, 1990, to a seat vacated by John H. Pratt. Confirmed by the Senate on August 3, 1990, and received commission on August 7, 1990. Service terminated on January 31, 1992, due to resignation.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Nominated by George H.W. Bush on March 20, 1992, to a seat vacated by Levin Hicks Campbell. Confirmed by the Senate on May 21, 1992, and received commission on May 26, 1992. Served as chief judge, 2001-2008.
Education:
Harvard University, B.A., 1961
Harvard Law School, LL.B., 1964
Professional Career:
Law clerk, Hon. Henry J. Friendly, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 1964-1965
Law clerk, Hon. John Harlan, Supreme Court of the United States, 1965-1966
Private practice, Washington, D.C., 1966-1987
Visiting professor, Harvard Law School, 1982-1983
Lecturer, Harvard Law School, 1983-1998
Deputy assistant attorney general, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 1987-1990
A lefty once told me a grandson should be able to marry his grandmother.
Mitt’s handlers, whatever they be, would be mighty tempted to lean on Mitt about this. This is one of the Mormon elite, after all.
So now we have gay marriage, sex-selection abortions, and John Edwards as the once-and-future Democrat messiah. Are there some other countries we could go to?
The fool has said in his heart “[there is] no God.”
This is only icing on the cake of wickedness. Who would have let on that abortion would have turned into the huge slaughter it did, yet the opposition to that is very muted.
The Sodomizing of Amerika continues unabated..............
Not sure it’s relevant, but it is interesting. One of Boudin’s former law clerks is a Director at GLAD:
http://www.glad.org/about/staff/jennifer-levi
May they be tried by the final judge and found wanting.
The sick and twisted judges are totally blind to the biological basis of marriage. Men living together are friends. Women living together are friends. They cannot be spouses because male/male genitalia, or female/female genitalia are NOT made for union. Male and female genitalia are made for union.
Union can only be achieved for same sex "couples" by means of perverse sex acts that risk the mental and physical safety and health of the perverts, and the population at large for communicable disease such as AIDs.
So, a judge, with one bang of a gavel, can literally create a new man whose being is defined by his sexual practices? We as a nation are well on the way to very dark and evil place.
No, see, that’s different, or something.
Creepy.
Was this “lefty” a woman who - perchance - had the hots for her own grandson?
Holy matrimony is a sacrament of the Church.
Since most liberals believe there must be “Separation” between Church and State, couldn’t it be argued that defining homosexual unions as “marriage” is a direct violation of their own definition of the law?
They should just stick to “Civil Unions” and stay OUT of religion.
Judges are in desperate need of a science education regarding the FACT that behavior is NOT an immutable trait and there is no homosexual conduct gene.
And, to continue but in a sardonic vein, isn’t that monstrously unfair to the men who can handle two wives, or — even closer to the issue — who are bisexual and want to marry one of each?
His past policy decisions in MA preclude Romney taking up this fight. He can’t possibly get away with an “evolved” position in the media like Obama can.
Mais non, I think there’s room for Mitt to frame permissiveness a la Massachusetts as an individual states’ rights issue, without the need for Uncle Sam to weigh in, and thus deftly dodge the political question.
the convo started when she claim rightwingers always bring up the “what about a animal and a human” argument.
And I said, “I wasn’t making that argument but what about a grandson and his grandmother”
I didn’t go into a lot of detail after she said it was ok and why not “if any two people love each other they should be allowed to get married”
I honestly believe their are enough people with influence who don’t care about the sex, relation, or age.
Afterall, we are talking about many of the same people who would mutilate and destroy a living fetus for any reason. Probably more than we know who would support infanticide for any reason.
heh, “Calvinball”...
Nice!
never heard that one before
“Tradition doesn’t justify unequal treatment”
So basically anything can get “married”?
Dogs and humans?
Polygamy?
Kids and adults?
Way to go, idiots!
Here’s what I don’t get. Why doesn’t Texas law get to be enforced in Massachusetts? Isn’t that the argument the homo’s are making about exporting their pervert state laws?
There is actually a case just like this where they are demanding this "right." I'll try to dig it up.
Boy, are these judges gonna be surprised when they stand before St. Peter one day and realize that God doesn’t always treat equally either.
There’s right. And then there’s WRONG.
Lib: “Christian Church! The law says you must marry these two nice gentlemen.”
Pastor: “Sorry, we don't perform marriages at all. We do have Religious Unions, but those are only for a man and a woman. Best as I can tell, the law only applies to Marriage.”
Yes, it's petty, pointless, and childish, but I do so love watching the hissy fits this would create.
“In terms of morality, the judge cited the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision striking down a Texas sodomy law. “Moral disapproval alone cannot justify legislation discriminating on this basis,” Boudin said.”
Typical liberal Democtat judge in America.
This is another reason that Romney must be beaten. A court like this is also likely to force polygamy down our throat, particularly if there should ever be a Mormon president.
One thing those prevert judges seem to miss, all laws are based on tradition...it is tradition not to steal or kill. For instance, where the “tradition” of stealing is not a law can be found in the island nations of the pacific where there was no such thing as stealing because there were no private property traditions.
Well, I hate to say it, the only way around these assh..ls, no pun, is to get an amendment out that says marriage is between one man and one woman. I hate moral amendments but like with prohibition there was one already. Woe be the politician who does not support this issue as it is one sided in the polls...we win, they lose.
It’s a good day for the libs in their campaign to rip traditional morality from America.
God defines marriage, not the State. Anything a State defines is a legal fiction. Jesus tells us that from the beginning of humanity, it was God’s intent that marriage would only be one man and one woman. Scripture in many ways and places also tells us that God defines sexual morality and that people who refuse to practice that morality cannot qualify for the freely given gift of eternal life.
The State attempts to force us to recognize its power. One way is to presume the power to define who is married and who is not. We cede this power in part because we allow the State to tax incomes and estates, so to administer such taxing power, the State must define who it considers to be “married” and who is not. Just as when it defines a corporation to be a “person”, the State does not hesitate to define anyone it pleases as being “married, totally apart from how God would define it.
I don’t want a government that can tell me what I may or may not do in the privacy of my own home or relationships. In a Constitutional Republic with a provision that prohibits Congress from making any law respecting religion, I have to allow others to have their own beliefs and morality. I can only be an advocate for the morality and beliefs that I think are true. I take my understanding of sexual morality from Scripture and that is where I learn that God considers sodomy to be an abomination.
If a State decides that two (or more) people can marry, if that is all that happened, I could live with that because I don’t have to approve, change my beliefs or what beliefs I pass on to my children.
However, once gays have sufficient influence with a State to redefine marriage, gays don’t stop there. They use the State to forbid me from acting on my morality and beliefs. In fact, the State in some cases forces me to accommodation in their practices.
If I have children in public school, the State will insist on teaching them that gay marriage is just as normal as godly marriage. You will be sanctioned as a parent if you attempt to remove your child from such indoctrination.
If you run a business that could provide services to gays, you will be sanctioned if you decline to treat them as any other customer. For example, if you run a wedding photography business, you will be sanctioned if you decline to photograph a gay wedding.
In short, gays will jam their lifestyle down our throats because when the State says they are equal it is forbidden for a private citizen to dissent from that status. In doing so, they seek to force me to give them approval for something that I will never approve of. It is that last point that galls gays the most.
Curiously, when liberal advocates of gay marriage are asked if their policy also would allow polygamy or polyandry, they recoil in horror and insist that it does not. However, logic demands that it does.
I would ask how same-sex parents are going to react in the future when Utah public schools insist on indoctrinating the children that LDS-related polygamy is just as “normal” as same-sex “marriage”. The fact that this will be an issue will show yet again that gay “marriage” is not about marriage at all, it is about forcing the rest of us to approve of repugnant sexual immorality, something that LDS polygamists never demanded.
How about a father marrying a minor son? If the state decides to allow it, does that then compel the feds to recognize it as a legal marriage?
The whole house of cards falls down under the twisted logic of permitting homosexuals to shack up and pretend that the word marriage means something different. So under this ruling, California’s ‘medical marijuana law’ requires medicare to provide payment for prescriptions issued, right?
There is no way of escaping this; the more the courts twist to make it sound reasonable, the more holes they drive through the entire legal system in an urgent hurry to bring political correctness and legitimacy to homosexuality.
I ask the same question over and over: How does one argue against polygamy using the logic that marriage can mean whatever someone decides it mean at the spur of the moment? ‘One person marrying one person’ - seems a far less leap to ‘multiple persons’ once you’ve blasted ‘one man and one woman’...
“Well, that just became a major campaign issue, if it wasn’t before this.”
If the “federal” government cannot deny state recognized homosexual marriage, then what is to stop Utah from reverting back to making polygamy legal and forcing the “federal” government from recognizing it? I’m not trying to be a smart alec here. I can see how this can quickly spin out of control.
What I see as being the eventual end state, will be that the federal taxation system (and other married perks) will end because it will hamper taxation. So, they will just not give anyone “preferential” treatment. The ability to insure your spouse will disappear....I don’t know what it will do to children. There will be no distinction between married and unmarried people.
American families will suffer as a result.
so using that kind of perverted logic then all sorts of marriage can be done and the feds should recognise it.
two men and 5 women, cousins, dogs, what ever right, mariage equality after all means equality for all,
what’s that the homo’s don’t want that , they only want their kind of perverted sham marriage, what bigots.
Bingo.
The two candidates for the presidency both belong to religions that lean towards polygamy. Curious, huh?
Thanks for the link. Sometimes people turn a really apt phrase like you did, and it just gets me.
Ping!!
To really do love big needs a Mormon (duck’n & runn’n).
Good point. Though it may be best to assume that "the law" is not about equality, justice, or uniformity; but it is rather about arbitrarily enforced rules that are themselves arbitrary, this allows the state the maximum power with the minimal justification. (I posit that this model is already in effect: consider both murdergate and the Obama eligibility cases.)
Given the above, it does bring to mind the question of "pedophilia." For maximum state-power, and "uniformity of the law", they could declare that the same definition of "child" applies as that for parent's insurance: 26 years old. Then, applying this definition retrospectively -- it can't be retroactive, that'd be too close to ex post facto -- we get lots of people who must now be registered sex offenders (everyone who's married, or had sexual intercourse with, someone under 27)! That in turn requires them to be registered and allows them to be disarmed as they are obviously prohibited persons.
That is, I think, the way that things'll end up: where everything that could be considered a 'right' is instead contingent upon government approval... and government approval can be withdrawn at any time, for any reason, to include past formerly-approved actions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.