Posted on 01/19/2007 7:14:00 PM PST by Gelato
Romney Violated Massachusetts Constitution by Ordering ‘Same-Sex Marriage’
44 U.S. pro-family leaders signed letter asking him to recant illegal orders
By Meg Jalsevac
HARRISBURG, PA, January 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A letter addressed to Massachusetts’ ex-governor Mitt Romney has just been made public in which 44 conservative, pro-family leaders from across the nation requested that before stepping down from office, Romney would adhere to the Massachusetts Constitution and repeal his order directing public officials to perform ‘same-sex marriages’.
The letter was hand delivered to members of Romney’s staff on December 20th, 2006 at his office. Romney took no action to adhere to the letter’s requests before he left office at the beginning of the New Year.
The letter cited numerous, historical cases and the Massachusetts’ Constitution to assert that Romney’s actions in implementing ‘gay marriage’ were beyond the bounds of his authority as governor. The authors further asserted that his actions were unconstitutional as were the actions of the four initial judges who formulated the official opinion on the matter in the ‘Goodridge’ case, the case that originally brought the matter to national attention.
Commenting on the ‘Goodridge’ opinion, Judge Robert Bork said that it was “untethered to either the Massachusetts or United States Constitution.”
As quoted in the letter, the MA Constitution denies the judicial branch of its government any authority over the state’s marriage policies. So it was that three of the seven judges that heard the Goodrich case strongly dissented that the court did not have authority to formulate laws.
The letter also outlined how the MA Constitution forbids judges from establishing or altering law. According to the Constitution, such a task is to be left to the legislature. The judges’ opinion in the Goodrich case admitted that they were not altering the standing marriage statute in MA.
Instead, Governor Romney took it upon himself, despite legal counsel to do otherwise, to order officials across the state that they would have to perform ‘gay marriages’, even though, according to Massachusetts law, to do so is a felony. Officials who refused were advised to resign their position.
Throughout the whole ordeal, Romney maintained that he was personally against ‘homosexual marriage’ but that he must “execute the law.” The conservatives’ letter clearly illustrates how Romney was not “executing the law” but merely facilitating the agenda of activist judges – beyond even the judges’ own expectations.
The letter clearly explained how Romney’s actions, in reality, are a crime under Massachusetts because of his oath to uphold the Constitution.
The authors called Romney to task for ignoring the solemnity of the oath of office that he took in which he swore to uphold the Constitution of Massachusetts. They requested that Romney publicly repeal his orders to perform ‘same-sex marriages’ throughout the state and confirm the fact that, under Massachusetts law, ‘same-sex marriage’ remains illegal. They also ask that Romney publicly take to task the political officials that worked to undermine the constitution to bring about ‘same sex marriage’ in Massachusetts.
John Haskins, writer and family activist, told LifeSiteNews.com, “Mitt Romney’s contribution to history will be that he pro-actively imposed ‘homosexual marriage’ in stark violation of the state Constitution that he swore to uphold. Those denying this are subverting the rule of law and the plain language of a constitution.”
Haskins expressed frustration at conservatives like Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard and Glen Lavy of the Alliance Defense Fund who he says initially counseled Romney not to permit gay marriage but then defended the governor’s actions saying that he had no choice but to obey the law. On the MassResistance website, Haskins says, “Our lawyers, law professors and pro-family political leaders are blundering this historic challenge because we have wandered far from the Constitutional texts we swore to defend. Some of them are realizing this belatedly. Others appear determined to defend and disguise their own errors (some quite fundamental) at whatever cost to Massachusetts and America.”
The legal background and framework of the letter was researched and confirmed by attorney Robert Paine, an expert on the topic of MA’s unconstitutional ‘same-sex marriages’.
Of the 44 signers of the Romney letter, several prominent conservative leaders are listed including Paul Weyrich, Free Congress Foundation; Robert H. Knight, veteran Washington political activist and a draftsman of the federal Defense of Marriage Act; Linda Harvey, Mission America; Rev. Ted Pike, National Prayer Network; Randy Thomasson, Campaign for Children and Families; Peter LaBarbera, Americans for Truth; Dr. Chuck Baldwin, radio host and columnist; Paul Likoudis, The Wanderer; Phil Lawler, Catholic World News; David E. Smith, Illinois Family Institute; Michael Heath, Christian Civic League of Maine; Gary Glenn, American Family Association of Michigan; Joe Glover, Family Policy Network; and Bill Cotter, Operation Rescue Boston.
As reported previously by LifeSiteNews.com, Romney is known for flip-flopping and wavering on key social issues. Coinciding with his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Romney just recently declared himself a pro-life figure despite a history of inconsistent decisions in life issues.
Read the full text of the letter: http://www.massresistance.com/docs/marriage/romney/dec_lette...
Read ‘Romney Gay Marriage Timeline’ at MassResistance.com http://www.massresistance.com/docs/marriage/romney/timeline....
Read Related LifeSiteNews.com Coverage:
Homosexual “Marriage” Not Legal in Massachusetts, Lawyers’ Coalition Says http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/sep/06092104.html
Despite Past Statements, Former Gov. and Presidential Hopeful Romney Says He is Pro-Life http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jan/07010408.html
Romney Does Flip-Flop and Forces Catholic Hospitals to Distribute Morning-After-Pill http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/dec/05120905.html
Any outside observer can see that Goodridge v. Department of Public Health is the worst case of legislating from the bench in the history of any state or of our nation.
The Courts did not legislate necesarily...
Think this through. Recall that the court ordered the legislature to write a law consistent with their opinion.
Recall also what was the threatened result from disobeying this order. What did the court say would be the result? Their opinion would be converted to law after 180 days, they said. You know this. Their actions can only be construed as legislating.
When Mitt Romney decided to obey the courts, after the legislature disobeyed them, what did he say he was doing? Following the law. Who made that law? The court. Can the court make law? No, the constitutions of states and the nation leave that power in the hands of the legislature.
What, then, are branches of government to do when they see another branch acting so unconstitutionally? According to Marbury vs. Madison, they are under oath to refuse to go along. All Romney had to do was follow the example of the legislature, and, like them, disobey the court.
they redefined the interpretation of the Constitution and the law
And they had no power to do such a thing.
Governor Romney could have decided not to enforce the ruling on the final hour like he did, but he would have been making himself liable to charges.
On what grounds? Under what authority? What happened to the legislature, when they disobeyed?
The courts are the least powerful branch of government, not the most.
You define "harpie clique" (original term, there...is that LP or CP?) as "anyone who hasn't figured out you're Keyes' pimpdaddy on FR," a very small group indeed.
It's hard to believe you could get paid to post the most laughably incredible shillspeak ever seen.
What??
How long has it been since you've discussed the political and constitutional issues that are supposed to be what FR's about? Or do you consider this site just a chat room where you feel free to launch personal attacks?
Do you agree or disagree with Jefferson's words in post #300?
Gee, have you actually read the Marbury v. Madison? (It's not vs. btw) Because you are just making s#!t up about it. Marshall did, of course, find that the Constitution is supreme, and he found that it was the court's job to say that. If it wasn't the court's job to say that, then it wouldn't have mattered, he would just have differed to the legislature and said whatever they say is constitutional is in fact constitutional. But that was the way things were before the case was brought to court. At that point, the court has no reason to exist in regards to the Constitution. Which is the exact opposite of what Marbury v. Madison said.
Anyhow, I was right, you are a Roy Moore person. You believe in the ends justifying the means, you believe that the Court's opinion is irrelevant if it is 'wrong', and you appoint yourself as the sole judge of that fact, and demand that everybody else defy that 'wrong' court order. It might well be wrong, but that's why we have things like elections. Judges aren't around forever, and we can elect/appoint new ones from time to time. But you 'damn the means' people will make it so we have no hope at all in the long run.
"My construction of the Constitution ... is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially where it is to act ultimately and without appeal."
"You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.
"If the [Congress] fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the judges and other officers of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the Constitution, or if they fail to meet in Congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them; if the President fails to supply the place of a judge, to appoint other civil or military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the judges cannot force him. They can issue their mandamus or distringas to no executive or legislative officer to enforce the fulfillment of their official duties, any more than the President or [Congress] may issue orders to the judges or their officers. Betrayed by English example, and unaware, as it should seem, of the control of our Constitution in this particular, they have at times overstepped their limit by undertaking to command executive officers in the discharge of their executive duties; but the Constitution, in keeping three departments distinct and independent, restrains the authority of the judges to judiciary organs, as it does the executive and legislative to executive and legislative organs....
"When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of Constitutional power.
"Pardon me, sir, for this difference of opinion. My personal interest in such questions is entirely extinct, but not my wishes for the longest possible continuance of our government on its pure principles; if the three powers maintain their mutual independence [of] each other it may last long, but not so if either can assume the authorities of the other."
Isn't it possible that Gov Romney has forced the legislature to take the responsibility of representing the will of the people. That is their charter and responsibility.
The final result here is that the question is now being put to the citizens of Massachusetts.
The legislator bobbed and weaved until Romney completely cornered them.
oh boy...you never let the dark side hold office....many times I've voted for an individual I had to hold my nose to vote for...knowing full well the other party was on a sure course to try a take down of America. Sit out this one and there may not be another chance to stop the dark side, the anti-Americans.....
“[This] novel principle...is an invitation to chaos and the end of the American constitutional system. For if the judges, in the constitutional opinions they render, are merely stating what they think they themselves or the country want, they have become makers of policy and ought to be elected for limited terms, like all other policy-makers, to insure their accountability to the will of the people. The only alternative...held that a judge, by the very definition of his function, takes a law he did not make and applies it to particular situations in the manner the lawmaker intended and indicated by the wording of the law....This view allows for reasoning about what the founders intended, about their meaning, about their political philosophy, about the intrinsic needs of republican government--with all the difficulties this often entails--but without ever surrendering the principle that it is their meaning, rather than our ‘wants,’ that must bind judges....
“The judge is the intelligent mouthpiece of the original legislator, nothing more....[H]e is not the savior of society, armed with a discretionary prerogative, unbound by law, to alter even the supreme law of the land as he wishes. According to this understanding, the popular notion of the Constitution as a supreme, overarching, and fixed basic law may be preserved; interpretations of the law have a common objective ground that is in principle capable of being discovered; the rule of precedent may serve as a saving lifeline between the founders’ intentions and all later generations. Absent this understanding, the constitutional links binding the country together are bound to dissolve, with interpretations of law becoming variable, chaotic, idiosyncratic, overbearing, and tyrannical--or merely subject to fashion and temporary popular whim.
“The unspoken premise of the new libertarian philosophy is that it constitutes an intellectual underpinning for liberal democracy vastly superior to that of the founders and framers. This view is rarely stated by sitting judges in their written opinions: they know admitting publicly to changing the Constitution through interpretation would arouse a public furor.”
David Lowenthal, No Liberty for License, Spence Publishing Co., 1997, pp. 58-59.
“The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.”
“It is important…that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism…. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; though this may in one instance be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account."
You may be embarrassed to learn that you are wrong. It could be written a number of ways, according to your personal preference: Marbury V Madison, Marbury vs. Madison, Marbury v Madison, Marbury v. Madison, WILLIAM MARBURY v. JAMES MADISON, or shortened down to Marbury, in context.
I will forgive your gaff, if you will revisit Marbury vs. Madison with fresh eyes.
"By the constitution of the United States, the President is invested with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion, and is accountable only to his country in his political character, and to his own conscience. . . . and whatever opinion may be entertained of the manner in which executive discretion may be used, still there exists, and can exist, no power to control that discretion."
"The constitution is . . . a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means."
"Those then who controvert the principle that the constitution is to be considered, in court, as a paramount law, are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the constitution, and see only the law. This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions."
Yes, liberals have succeeded in twisting this decision with indoctrination in our public schools, but such a handicap can be overcome by simply reading. Continuing:
"Why otherwise does it direct the judges to take an oath to support it? This oath certainly applies, in an especial manner, to their conduct in their official character. How immoral to impose it on them, if they were to be used as the instruments, and the knowing instruments, for violating what they swear to support!
"The oath of office, too, imposed by the legislature, is completely demonstrative of the legislative opinion on the subject. It is in these words, 'I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich; and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties incumbent on me as according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the constitution, and laws of the United States.'
"Why does a judge swear to discharge his duties agreeably to the constitution of the United States, if that constitution forms no rule for his government? if it is closed upon him, and cannot be inspected by him?
"If such be the real state of things, this is worse than solemn mockery. To prescribe, or to take this oath, becomes equally a crime.
"Thus, the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument."
I like how you prove yourself wrong, and refuse to acknowledge it. Are you that cynical or that stupid?
The Court is striking down an act of the legislature, which they find unconstitutional. If the legislature's opinion was equal to the court's opinion on what is or what isn't unconstitutional, then the court wouldn't have stuck any law down at all, because the legislature, by virtue of taking an oath to the Constitution and passing the legislation, had already declared that they thought the act was constitutional.
And I dare you to find me one law book where it's cited as Marbury vs. Madison. I have never seen a court case cited that way in any authoritative book.
How about..."you never let the dark side hold office that's representing your party?...knowing full well the other side [culturally, socially] was on a sure course to try to a take down of America." I mean, what happens if a takeover of the party occurs for the long-term by the cultural underbellies? Then there is no home for the base we represent.
Takes one obsession to know one...
I see you're obsessed with me.
You know that nopardons thinks that Dubya is actually a "better man" than Thomas Jefferson. True.
People of great value to God deserve valued obsession, eh? :)
Nice try. Read it again: "a law repugnant to the constitution is void." In other words, the Constitution is supreme, and anything contrary to it is void. Are courts exempt from this? No: "[C]ourts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument."
I know that runs contrary to what judicial supremacists tell us, but it's the truth. Marbury did not grant a new power to the judiciary, it merely affirmed the obvious: that all branches of government are beholden to the Constitution. They all have the prerogative and duty of constitutional review.
To quote Marbury again, since you apparently skipped over it:
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