Posted on 04/17/2015 12:15:20 PM PDT by massmike
As attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey has written her first friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court, arguing states should not have the authority to ban marriage for same-sex couples.
The issue of states’ rights is near and dear to the Supreme Court’s swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy. He wrote the majority opinion in a June 2013 ruling that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act because it denied benefits to gay couples married in states, including Massachusetts, that define marriage to include gay couples. In doing so, Kennedy repeatedly characterized such states as simply exercising their “sovereign power.”
Massachusetts’ brief supports the appeal of the couples, who are in four states that ban both marriage licenses for same-sex couples and recognition of out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples. Healey is the nation’s first openly gay state attorney general.
Asked why she circulated the brief to every state, she replied, “I wanted to offer all states the opportunity to share their support with the court.”
Healey’s brief seems to anticipate a pushback from Justice Antonin Scalia, known for asking pugilistic questions with political overtones. For instance, in this case, he might ask why gay couples who want to get married don’t just move to a state that recognizes gay marriages.
“Life today is rarely confined to one state,” Healey wrote in her brief to the court. “People move residences approximately 12 times, on average, over the course of their lives. They travel throughout the country and beyond. They often leave their home states for work and school. . . . Individuals work in one state for companies headquartered in another. Many families also have members who reside in multiple other states. Given this complex geography of modern lives, non-recognition profoundly affects married couples nationwide.”
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonglobe.com ...
Should I go second and third wife shopping now or wait for the ruling?/s [chortle]
That’s right, they’re limited by the Constitution, which says nothing about marriage, by the way. Anything not in the Constitution is a state right.
She’s the AG for Massachusetts for pete’s sake! What the heck would she know about the law?
The Constitution has not delegated to the feds any authority to interfere with marriage with the possible exception on a case-by-case basis of Good Faith and Credit between one state and another.
Blah Blah Blah Blah
Marriage - a word in the English language which means a socially sanctified legal union between two persons of opposite gender.
Translates exactly to countless other languages, as does the concept called “gender” since it is genetically distinct.
Ms. Law-yuh from MassaTuchetts probably never took a biology course and if so clearly didn’t pass it since she can’t grasp the fundamental concept.
She’s talking endlessly about something that doesn’t have a word associated with it. So she is trying to re-define a word in the English language.
Don’t let her.
Trying to say that a marriage is legal in 40 states, but illegal in 10 states, is never going to work.
There is no way that Americans, whether a Marine Corps Captain, or a transferred executive, or a federal employee, or a parking lot attendant that moves to another state, is going to find his marriage and his family illegal/legal/illegal/legal, as he moves around.
Does anyone really think that kind of thing will hold up very long?
Marrying your dog is next. Since atheists argue people have no souls, why would leftists object to marrying another animal with no soul?
But the federal government has no limits on it’s powers, right?
“Should I go second and third wife shopping now or wait for the ruling?”
What does your first wife have to say about it?
Shut down Washington DC, beginning with the IRS!!! Return it to the swamp it used to be and send the "swamp creatures" packing!!!
“Trying to say that a marriage is legal in 40 states, but illegal in 10 states, is never going to work.”
Why is the government (state or federal) in the marriage business anyway?
Because marriage has always either been legal or not, whether in Rome, or Greece, or in tribes or in the English colonies, or in America, and whether the law was called government, or was the government religion’s law.
Whether a marriage has actually happened is important, that is why George Washington wanted to make sure that his marriage was legal, and it especially becomes important when a marriage is over, or when one dies.
No it wasn’t.
For instance Thomas Jefferson obtained his license in 1751.
Here is a piece on Virginia marriage law: As you can see, even in the early 1600s you needed a license of a bane.
*An act in 1628 forbade marriages “without lycence or asking in church.” In 1632, in the same group of acts that empowered church wardens to collect penalties of one
shilling for each unexcused absence from church and that required ministers to preach one sermon every Sunday, it was stated that “noe mynister shall celebrate matrymony
betweene any persons without a facultie or lycense graunted by the Governor except the banes of
matrymony have beene first published three severall Sondayes or holidayes” in a church located where
the parties lived.
You needed a license, “or” a bane, or bann.
The use of the Federal courts to fabricate a right to same-sex marriage is a danger to the federal system itself by usurpation of state authority. The federal judiciary’s feat of lawyerly fraud has effectively de-legitimized our entire system of government. If normal political processes cannot be followed to redress grievances or make decisions, what does that leave?
Did she file a Brief prohibiting States from enacting Laws against Incest and Polygamy?
If not, why not?
My example shows that in 1632 you had to comply with the law, and had two choices on how to do it, one was the license, which some people found easier, the other took three weeks.
Here we are 1661 in Virginia” In 1661, the Grand Assembly
enacted a law requiring the posting
of bonds as a remedy to problems
caused by persons marrying outside
their home parishes where their
marital status and character presumably
were known, and by the fact
that most licenses were issued by
the governor, “whose knowledge of
persons cannot possibly extend over
the whole country.” The purpose of
bonding was to insure against any
legal action should the marriage not
take place due to either party
declining to go through with the
union, or should one of the parties be
found ineligible for marriage, the
prime reasons for ineligibility being
that the groom or bride was already
married to someone else, or was
underage and lacked parental
approval to wed.
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