Posted on 02/19/2004 10:11:50 AM PST by The G Man
Longer than that. Baehr vs. Lewin was filed in Hawaii in May, 1993. There used to be a file on qrd.org -- anyone know where they've gone? Have they changed the site name? The file gave the whole history of the case, including the changes in the name of the case over time.
Basically, some gay couples filed under the Hawaiian constitution for injunctive relief, demanding a license to marry. Lambda Legal assisted in the case, but not apparently (as far as I could discover) in the very early days of the case.
The Hawaiian supreme court ruled in favor of the gay couples: Hawaii has a very liberal constitution and constituency, and a very liberal supreme court. However, the state government, defending the case, got a stay, and the people of Hawaii amended the state constitution, mooting Baehr vs. Lewin, so that gay marriage didn't go forward in that state. Lambda immediately switched to Vermont, where they got half a loaf with a Vermont supreme-court decree that the state had to provide civil unions (which were bitterly contested by the people, who don't believe in that stuff any more than the Hawaiians did). Then another gay legal-aid group went forward with the Massachusetts case.
All these cases are related to the James Dale case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court a few years ago, in which the Boy Scouts of America defended and prevailed, against Lambda Legal again, which briefed for the complainant, James Dale, a Scouter who was expelled when he outed himself at college. The gays haven't given up yet on the BSA and are trying to pressure the BSA into capitulating what they'd won before the Supreme Court bar by attacking their funding sources and using back-stairs political influence to get the Boy Scouts thrown off and excluded from public property everywhere.
In all these cases involving "marriage" and the Boy Scouts, the homosexuals' objective has been a decree from the highest authority in the United States Government saying that homosexuals are moral equals of all the Judeo-Christians who revile homosexuality. It's not as good as getting the U.S. government to consign the Bible to a "memory hole", but it will suffice as a platform from which to prosecute their political endgame, which is to marginalize and legally oppress nonreconciling religious believers with "hate-speech" laws, and drive Christianity and Judeo-Christian morality underground.
This, of course, would itself be an establishment of morality of its own, and the morality that would be established would be that of homosexuality itself, defined by gay, pedophile, necrophile, and paraphilic political activists according to their own pleasure.
Since these people are such a small minority in our society, such a victory would also be a great defeat for democracy, and the final realization of the significance of Chief Justice John Marshall's promulgation of the power of judicial review.
Where did qrd.org go? Did they change their name? They had a file posted on Baehr vs. Lewin, the Hawaiian SSM case.
At least it would keep the various state marriage statutes immune to an attack by the homosexual lawyers using the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
The irony in all this, and the catch to passing ordinances and statutes, is that gays argue, as they're doing right now w/ reference to Massachusetts's political warfare, that "diversity" in state laws and institutions is a good thing, and that if Vermont wants "civil unions" and Massachusetts craters on marriage, then they ought to be able to redefine their domestic arrangements if they want.
But the homosexuals are lying like a rug, as usual. The Full Faith and Credit Clause would thrust the lowest common denominator on all the states with respect to marriage and a lot of other institutions, and that is exactly what they want: one way, our way, everywhere.
So the only way to protect what people want as a definition of marriage in each state is to make exceptions as per your argument to the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
This may still require an amendment to the Constitution, if a Supreme Court ruling honoring the exception could not be obtained.
Makes sense to me.
Yet, political analysts give Robbins and three other candidates in the 29th Congressional District race little or no chance of winning. The reason: They are running against Rep. Henry A. Waxman, one of the most recognized and well-funded liberal politicians in the nation.
[Quoting LAT] As an openly gay candidate, Robbins can count on some support from progressives and gay voters in Silverlake, West Hollywood and Santa Monica. And the fact that his opponent is a veteran congressman who bounced 434 checks in the House bank scandal -- and who is at the very heart of the Capitol Hill political Establishment -- doesn't hurt either. The incumbent, Robbins never tires of saying, "represents all that's wrong with the political system today."
Robbins lost with 26% of the vote, to Waxman's 61%. I met him at a party not long after the election. "Hey, I voted for you," I said. He responded with a smile, "I wish more people had." Now he's the Bush administration's appointee as general counsel at the Office of Personnel Management.
Postrel's weblog: http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/index.html
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