Posted on 10/06/2007 1:03:45 AM PDT by Brices Crossroads
A leader of the Parents' Rights Coalition in Massachusetts says he believed all along that Gov. Mitt Romney chose to implement "gay" marriages in that state, and now a court has confirmed that it did not have the power to order that change.
John Haskins, associate director of the family-support organization, told WND that three years after the Goodridge decision by the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts, "Americans merely have to note that the judges admit now … that they have no power over the other branches of government, and that the state constitution says that only the legislature can suspend laws."
[snip]
"...Mitt Romney, no less than anyone, is subverting the Constitution day by day, having ordered public officials to solemnize sodomy marriages though they remain illegal," Haskins told WND. "On Mitt Romney's order alone, town clerks and justices of the peace are compelled to violate the Constitution they swore to uphold and the statute – which remains among the Massachusetts General Laws."
He said the early advice from conservative activists – for Romney to just ignore the court's conclusion – was the right one.
"Hiding in Wednesday's ruling like an elephant in a courtroom is still more proof that Romney had a choice. The court has admitted, as it does whenever it really doesn't want to order the Legislative or Executive branches to obey the Constitution, that it actually can't.
"If there were no Massachusetts Constitution, no other proof of the high crime of Mitt Romney – this ruling proves that Mitt Romney had a choice and he chose wrong. He imposed homosexual marriage illegally, using the Goodridge decision as a smokescreen. No court forced anything on him, nor did they have any such authority, and that historic admission is implicit in this ruling," Haskins said.
RobertPaine.Blogspot.com.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Ping!
Remember abortion, we are told by his supporters, that within his Mormon leadership role that Romney was pro life, while he was pro choice among the non Mormon citizens of Massachusetts.
In this case his Gay “marriage” decisions , would only affect people outside of his religion.
I really don’t know what Romney’s “values” are.
Want to watch Romney on film supporting my post?
Two of Massachusetts’ previous governors, Bill Weld and Paul Celluci, were also cowered by the state’s powerful buggery lobby. Mitt just went along to get along..... yeah, some leader.
I wrote this in "Reformed Egyptian."
It is true. Mitt never got in a drag down fight. It would of been different if he fought and in the end had to obey a Federal court, but, well, that would have been messy, hard, not nice-ee-poo.
“He could have ignored and refused to implement” This is nonsense. Pointless grandstanding would have played right into the hands of the liberals and obscured the point. The judges made a ruling. If it was wrong, you impeach the judges and/or you correct them via constitutional amendment. To not follow the court orders is to fail to live up to the oath of office to execute the laws; leaving you on no solid ground to point out how the judges were failing to live up to *their* oath of office in over-reaching on their ruling.
“He opted to implement gay marriage even though the Court lacked the power to order it.” And you have law degree credentials and have *done this yourself* to prove it can be done? Of course not.
This refusal to follow the law as defined by court order is the strategy Judge Roy Moore used ... and where is he and his statue now? Did it work? No, of course not.
“If he had been a conservative and a constitutionalist, like Fred Thompson, he would have ignored the unlawful ruling.”
BS. Shows us a statement from Fred Thompson declaring that. You can’t because Fred Thompson would surely not agree with this lunatic point of view. He’s too good of a lawyer to agree with such a bad idea that contravenes conventions of the powers of each branch of govt.
“he believed all along”
Opinion, taken as such.
Listen. You might learn something. If the state supreme Court orders taxes to be raised, does the governor send out his revenue officers to collect the money “appropriated by the Supreme Court”? How foolish would that be? It is a separation of powers issue. I do not expect you to understand it, but one coordinate branch of the government cannot usurp the functions of another. The state Supreme Court had no authority (under the state constitution) to change the law on marriage as it did (a legislative function) and to order the governor to enforce it (an executive function). Romney compliantly allowed it to do both, either through ignorance or (more likely) political opportunism, becasue it gave him an issue to promote.
When you mention Roy Moore, your ignorance shows again. What court ordered Moore to remove the ten commandments?? It was a FEDERAL court, so the issue was not one of separation of powers between equal branches of government which Romney confronted, but of the Supremacy Clause, Article VI of the United States Constitution. Since you obviously never heard of it, let me put it in simple terms for you: it basically provides that federal law supercedes state law. Thus, the state Supreme Court (and Roy Moore) had to follow the ruling of the federal court to remove the commandments.
Your apparent zeal for the FMA masks your slavish defense of all things Romney. He could have said there is no legislation and refused to enforce it. Even the Court recognized that it had usurped a legislative function and that its ruling was unenforceable.
If you wish to call my arguments “nonsense” and “lunatic” I highly recommend that you brush up on your knowledge of constitutional law, because it is woefully inadequate. I repeat what I said. Had Romney followed this course, which the Alliance Defense Fund and other Christian conservative groups urged upon him, “gay marriage” would never have gotten underway In Massachusetts. Mitt Romney blew it, but you continue to apologize for him, and you now have an issue to demagogue. Enough Christian activists in Massachusetts remember what he did. This is his record and he cannot run from it.
I am not optimistic that you will understand this. I can explain it to you but I can’t make you understand it.
Exactly my point. Try to explain this to WOSG.
Poor fella is lost in the weeds, tied up in knots trying to defend Mitt.
Give Romney time, he’ll have another conservative deathbed conversion and call homosexuality a sin. (Checks watch & whistles)
I think he didn’t fight because it wasn’t efficient. The is the bad part of the businessman/financial part of him. It’s hard to get behind someone that won’t fight. A fight that doesn’t even get mess your hair.
The court made two decisions. 1. The Mass. constitution as it then existed required allowing gay marriages. 2. The state legislature had to vote on a marriage amendment. The forced legislature vote was what was pronounced to be wrong. Issue 1 was what caused Mitt to allow to marriages, and that issue hasn’t changed.
Recipe:
Spaghetti and Mittballs: Mix pasta with two parts pro-life and one-part expired pro-choice. For the Mittballs, mash together a hunk of shoe polish, a pile of money, and a glob of hair gel, and let sit until January 2008. Marinate in America’s moral cesspool before roasting over the Salt Lake Olympic torch. Serve with Caffeine-Free Diet Coke.
He was under no obligation to implement the Ruling, without legislative action. He began allowing it without legislative action, allowing it to become a fait accompli, and the Court has stepped in to further enshrine it by setting up legislative hurdles it must clear before there can can be a referendum.
When the history books are written, the advent of gay marriage will be laid squarely at Mitt Romney’s flippers, er...feet. Historians will comment on the irony that his inaction permitted the abuse to occur and that, having cooperated in its creation, he demagogically tried to profit from it politically by promoting a Federal Constitutional Amendment (with no chance to pass) and portrayed himself as a defender of marriage. The real irony is that some people are so ill informed that they actually buy this schtick.
ROFLOL. That is a hoot.
Post #9 well said!
Thanks. I hope Fred gets in his face about this at the next debate.
Romney has always opposed same-sex marriage. He diligently lobbied Congress in favor of a Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) to the U.S. Constitution defining marriage to be between one man and one woman. Romney testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the Federal Marriage Amendment, and sent a letter to all 100 U.S. Senators on June 2, 2006 asking them to vote for the Amendment. Sen. John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson oppose the FMA.
Maggie Gallagher, writing for National Review Online, wrote that the Governor’s testimony on the issue before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee was one of “the single most eloquent and articulate defense of our traditional understanding of marriage I have heard from an American politician.”
Governor Romney: “Some argue that our principles of federalism and local control require us to leave the issue of same sex marriage to the states—which means, as a practical matter, to state courts. Such an argument denies the realities of modern life and would create a chaotic patchwork of inconsistent laws throughout the country. Marriage is not just an activity or practice which is confined to the border of any one state. It is a status that is carried from state to state. Because of this, and because Americans conduct their financial and legal lives in a united country bound by interstate institutions, a national definition of marriage is necessary.”
(”The Importance of Protecting Marriage”, Letter from Gov. Romney to U.S. Senate, June 2, 2006)
Regardless of the gay angle, the court was making law, which is what leftist liberal judges have been doing since FDR. Everyone knew it. Romney could of fought it.”
Wrong. He *did* fight it, the right way. He called for a constitutional amendment. Romney had advice from Ed Meese and others on this matter and he did what he could do to deny out-of-state residents gay marriage licenses, and he fought to get the state lege to sign up for constitutional changes. See quote below. Why are you mis-stating the record?
The Romney critics are on crack think the Judge Roy Moore fall-on-your-sword play would work. It never has. Disagree?
Please tell me where your law degree came from to justify your expert opinion on this.
http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller200512141539.asp
QUOTE:
Despite this fiscal achievement, a pair of social issues has done far more to define Romney’s governorship: gay marriage and embryonic-stem-cell research. On either matter, a good case can be made that Romney has fought harder for social conservatives than any other governor in America, and it is difficult to imagine his doing so in a more daunting political environment. “On marriage and cloning, he has provided aggressive leadership as a positive, pro-family governor,” says Kris Mineau of the Massachusetts Family Institute. “On a scale of one to ten, I’d rank him an eight, and I’m a tough grader.”
Gay marriage featured prominently in Romney’s 2002 election because everybody knew the Massachusetts supreme court was poised to rule on the matter. From the start, Romney made it clear that he believes marriage should exist only between a man and a woman. When the court’s decision came down, however, it said that the state constitution mandates gay marriages. So Romney began plotting a counterstrategy, seeking advice from former attorney general Edwin Meese as well as constitutional scholar Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation. They zeroed in on an obscure law from 1913 that has the effect of voiding gay marriages conferred upon non-Massachusetts residents, and so Romney has used his administrative powers to prevent Boston from becoming a same-sex version of Las Vegas. Although this policy is now under legal assault, Romney has so far saved 49 other states from the judicial controversy afflicting his own.
In addition, he has tried to amend the state constitution, which is the only way to undo the court’s ruling as opposed to merely limiting it. Under Massachusetts law, this is a complicated, multi-step process in which the governor plays no formal role. Romney, however, has used his bully pulpit to call for a total ban on gay marriage. The legislature complied, but only on an amendment that also permitted civil unions. Romney wasn’t happy about this. He also had no alternative. “If I have to choose between gay marriages and civil unions,” he says, “I’ll choose civil unions every time.” For this amendment to be fully adopted, the legislature must approve it one more time (which it may in fact refuse to do). If it clears this hurdle, it then will go before voters as a referendum. (In the meantime, Romney is also pushing for a federal constitutional amendment to protect marriage.) Whatever the outcome, there’s no denying that Romney has pulled every lever within his reach to defend traditional marriage. “In the worst possible circumstances, he confronted one of the toughest issues of our politics with considerable moral seriousness and political skill,” says Spalding. “That’s the mark of a conservative statesman.”
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