Because Justice Blackman was not interested in law. He was interested in advancing the secular liberal agenda.
Let's say that the homosexual activists get the NJ or MA Supreme court to rule in favor of homosexual marriage. Let's say that the activists then proceed to go to federal court to force other states to accept their false marriage. What follows is my analysis that suggests it is not necessarily a done deal for homosexuals to use the "full faith and credit" clause to force marriage on the other states.
First of all, and perhaps the most important, (the liberals in the media don't want you to know this), The Supreme court did not rule in Lawrence V Texas that there is a "Fundamental Right" to homosexual sodomy. In fact this is one portion of the Bowers V Hardwick ruling that was left intact.
In order for something to be found a "Fundamental Right" and therefore be subject to a much higher standard of review (Strict Scrutiny) it must be "Some principle so rooted in the traditions and conscience of the people as to be ranked as fundamental." Snyder V Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 291 US 97 (1934).
This standard was upheld more recently in Reno V Flores 507 US 292 (1993) where again the court ruled that a Fundamental Right must be considered "So rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental."
Most Recently in Washington v. Glucksberg. 521 US 702 (1997) "The Court's established method of substantive due process analysis has two primary features: First, the Court has regularly observed that the Clause specially protects those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition. E.g., Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 503 (plurality opinion). Second, the Court has required a "careful description" of the asserted fundamental liberty interest. E.g., Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 302. The Ninth Circuit's and respondents' various descriptions of the interest here at stake--e.g., a right to "determin[e] the time and manner of one's death," the "right to die," a "liberty to choose how to die," a right to "control of one's final days," "the right to choose a humane, dignified death," and "the liberty to shape death"--run counter to that second requirement. Since the Washington statute prohibits "aid[ing] another person to attempt suicide," the question before the Court is more properly characterized as whether the "liberty" specially protected by the Clause includes a right to commit suicide which itself includes a right to assistance in doing so. This asserted right has no place in our Nation's traditions, given the country's consistent, almost universal, and continuing rejection of the right, even for terminally ill, mentally competent adults. To hold for respondents, the Court would have to reverse centuries of legal doctrine and practice, and strike down the considered policy choice of almost every State. Respondents' contention that the asserted interest is consistent with this Court's substantive due process cases, if not with this Nation's history and practice, is unpersuasive. The constitutionally protected right to refuse lifesaving hydration and nutrition that was discussed in Cruzan, supra, at 279, was not simply deduced from abstract concepts of personal autonomy, but was instead grounded in the Nation's history and traditions, given the common law rule that forced medication was a battery, and the long legal tradition protecting the decision to refuse unwanted medical treatment. And although Casey recognized that many of the rights and liberties protected by the Due Process Clause sound in personal autonomy, 505 U. S., at 852, it does not follow that any and all important, intimate, and personal decisions are so protected, see San Antonio School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 33-34. Casey did not suggest otherwise. Pp. 15-24."
The homosexual activists cannot argue that Homosexual marriage is deeply rooted in the traditions and conscience of the American people.
In fact even in cases where the Homosexual Activists have won a right to marriage under a state constitution, those same activists courts could not rule that Homosexual Marriage was not a fundamental right. In Baehr V Lewin (The marriage case before the Hawaii Supreme Court.) The majority found: "we do not believe that a right to same-sex marriage is so rooted in the traditions and collective conscience of our people that failure to recognize it would violate the fundamental principles of liberty and justice that lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions. Neither do we believe that a right to same-sex marriage is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if it were sacrificed. Accordingly, we hold that the applicant couples do not have a fundamental constitutional right to same-sex marriage arising out of the right to privacy or otherwise."
So with a Fundamental Right argument dead in the water, the Homosexual Activists must retreat the the full faith and credit clause option.
I believe that here as well the Homosexual Activists do not have a leg to stand on. The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution does not mandate that one state accept the laws of another, in addition it specifically gives Congress the Authority to provide for implementation of the Clause. (Congress has done so with the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.)
The Supreme Court has ruled in two cases on the extent of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The first Pacific Employers Ins Co V Industrial Accident Commission of California 306 US 493 (1939) The Court ruled : "we think the conclusion is unavoidable that the full faith and credit clause does not require one state to substitute for its own statute, applicable to persons and events within it, the conflicting statute of another state, even though that statute is of controlling force in the courts of the state of its enactment with respect to the same persons and events."
The court restated this principle in Sun Oil CO V Wortman 486 US 717 (1988) where it stated "The Full Faith and Credit Clause does not compel a state to substitute the statutes of another state for its own statutes dealing with a subject matter concerning which it is competent to legislate."
Now please keep in mind, these principles do not stop individual state supreme courts from using judicial activism to find a right to homosexual marriage in a specific state. They can only be used to stop activists winning in one state, then forceing other states to accept those false marriages.
Individual State Constitutional Amendments on Marriage will go much further than state Statutes in defending marriage in individual states from activist state courts.
Better yet would be a United States Constitutional Amendment to defend marriage once and for all, but short of that, we as conservatives, do have other options.
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