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Two state supreme courts dealt same-sex marriage a pair of setbacks today, as the Arizona panel refused to hear a case brought by two homosexual men, and California justices, in hearing arguments in a San Francisco case, appeared to disapprove of the city's mayor issuing licenses to couples of the same gender. In the Grand Canyon state, the Supreme Court decided not to hear Standhardt v. Arizona, a case brought by two single men who were denied a marriage license. The Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed the suit on Oct. 8, and the homosexuals sought review by the state Supreme...

JEFF JACOBYThe end of the gay marriage debate? By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  May 16, 2004 THIS IS THE week that same-sex marriage comes to Massachusetts, and thus to the United States. The fundamental building block of civilization is about to undergo a radical change -- a change opposed by a majority of American adults. How did this happen? The joining of gay and lesbian couples in marriage may turn out to be the most consequential development of our lifetimes. How did we get here? The answer to that question has several parts. At the most obvious level, the...

The court would have to decide if the 4,000 marriages remain valid, if they would be automatically be voided or of they could they be voided at some time in the future. Assuming Newsom's defeat, which many legal scholars predict, the court asked: "Would the marriages that have been performed and registered nonetheless be valid, would the marriages be voidable or would the marriages be void?" Lockyer has already told the court in briefs that the marriages, which have left the newlyweds in a state of legal limbo, are invalid and that those married should get their $82 fees refunded.

…but that's not possible. Here's how the Washington Post's Dana Milbank began his Page 1 analysis of the White House's newly announced position on gay marriage: "With President Bush's embrace yesterday of a marriage amendment, the compassionate conservative of 2000 has shown he is willing, if necessary, to rekindle the culture wars in 2004." This neatly encapsulates everything that's wrong with inside-the-Beltway discussions of the culture war we currently find ourselves in. Presidents do not start culture wars; they react to them. They can fan or soothe passions, but they cannot create divisions that don't already exist. Indeed, both Bush...

Abraham Lincoln once observed that America was founded on a proposition, and that Thomas Jefferson wrote it. He was referring, of course, to the section of the Declaration of Independence that begins, "We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . " The reality, though, is that we are founded on a debate over what Jefferson's proposition means. And the current struggle over gay marriage is but the most recent chapter in that longstanding American argument. The words that started the current controversy were written by John Adams. In 1779, Adams almost single-handedly drafted the Massachusetts Constitution. It was...

Three top Senate conservatives have told GOP conservative groups to lay off Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who helped trigger a controversial investigation into leaked Democratic Judiciary Committee documents. Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), both members of the Judiciary panel, personally delivered that message to a group of nearly 20 conservative leaders last week. Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) also briefly attended the meeting on Capitol Hill. The 90-minute session grew heated at times, as the visiting conservative leaders repeatedly interrupted the senators and questioned their handling of the memo controversy....

That's what it says now. Discuss amongst yourselves...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO — The first of two judges to listen to objections to gay marriage in San Francisco delayed until at least Friday whether to block the city from continuing to issue same-sex marriage licenses.</p> <p>The second judge will take up a different petition Tuesday afternoon.</p>

Article XXX. In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men. ----CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS Maybe I'm missing something, but when the State Supreme Court of Mass. orders the Legislature to pass a law, are they not in direct violation of this article of...

<p>Republicans have "perhaps thousands" of internal Democratic judiciary memos like the 14 that caused a stir on Capitol Hill last fall, says a Republican staffer who resigned after an investigation into how the documents were obtained.</p> <p>"Only a small amount of [documents downloaded from Democratic computer servers] have been made public," said Manuel Miranda, former judicial-nominations counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee. "The ones made public are the least indicting of the ones."</p>

University of Western Ontario and well-known among lawyers as one of the most prominent legal commentators in Canada. Everyone who still appreciates our national heritage of freedom under law should ponder his latest book, aptly titled, The Most Dangerous Branch: How the Supreme Court of Canada Has Undermined Our Law and Our Democracy. With this title, Martin ironically alludes to the assurance by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers on June 14, 1778, that the people had nothing to fear from the powers conferred on the judiciary by the proposed Constitution of the United States. He wrote: "The judiciary, from...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution Wednesday of a condemned inmate who was part of a lawsuit that challenged one of the drugs used to carry out the death sentence. Kevin Lee Zimmerman won his reprieve about 20 minutes before he could have been put to death for a fatal stabbing and robbery at a Beaumont motel in 1987. In a brief order, Justice Antonin Scalia stopped the punishment pending an additional order from him or the court. ``I'm disappointed,'' Zimmerman told a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman, Michelle Lyons. ``I was ready to...

<p>For gay Americans and our millions of allies, 2003 is the year that just kept on giving.</p> <p>Again and again and again, we were given reason to celebrate. And now, largely because we advanced in 2003 as never before, 2004 promises to be very exciting -- and very scary.</p>

The first killing of an abortion doctor by an anti-abortion activist happened in 1993. Since then, six more people have been killed in attacks on abortion clinics, which is fewer people who ended up dead by being in the vicinity of recently released Weatherman Kathy Boudin. Most of the abortionists were shot or, depending upon your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle. This brings the total to: seven abortion providers to 30 million fetuses dead, which is also a pretty good estimate of how the political battle is going. The nation embarked on...

<p>The source of the memos is unclear. The sheer volume of the memos, however, suggests that the memos weren't simply misplaced by someone – they appear to have been intentionally leaked by a Democrat. Also, the memos, which begin in late 2001, cut off suddenly in April 2003. This suggests that they came from a former staffer, rather than someone who recently accessed Democrats' computers. Finally, the only information blacked out in the memos is staffers' names. Whoever leaked these memos did not care about the Senators, but apparently knew the staffers and cared enough to spare them embarrassment.</p>

U.S. Supreme Court rewrites Constitution and 3,000 years of history WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court today rewrote the U.S. Constitution and 3,000 years of legal history by striking down the Texas sodomy law in a 6-3 decision. The court overrode the Constitution, the history of American law, and its own precedent by declaring in Lawrence v. Texas that there is a right to privacy to protect private, adult consensual sexual activity. Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, and only Justices Scalia and Thomas and Chief Justice Rhenquist dissented. The majority reasoned, unbelievably, that because of the trend in state...

SCOTUS sided with the perverts.

Denver Post al knight List of rights keeps growing By Al Knight Denver Post Columnist Wednesday, April 30, 2003 - The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to overrule one of its decisions made just 17 years ago. There are good reasons it should pass up the opportunity. The request, arising from a Texas sodomy case, undermines the notion of stare decisis - a Latin phrase that describes the policy of courts to avoid disturbing settled legal precedent. In the Bowers vs. Hardwick decision in 1986, the nation's highest court said, "The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon...

With the recent publicity surrounding Sen. Rick Santorum's remarks on the issue of sodomy, almost everyone on FR must be familiar by now with the Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas.Petitioner Lawrence and his special friend are trying to overturn a Texas law against homosexual sodomy. There are two issues in this case: 1) Is there a constitutional right for any two adults to engage in any kind of consensual sex, as long as it's behind closed doors? The petitioners say yes, there is, and are asking the court to agree. 2) Does it violate the 14th amendment's guarantee of...

And then there's the one about the surly Bush-lovin' U.S. Supreme Court, soon to be deciding whether a gay Texas couple violated that state's law by having consensual homosexual sex in the privacy of their own home without first taking the necessary precaution of moving the hell away from homophobic big-haired gul-dang panty-bunched Texas in the first place.