Even though we are winning court case after court case for the cause of marriage equality, let's not forget the loss in Louisiana and how the judge came to such a outrageously bad ruling. Matt Baum of the American Foundation for Equal Rights elucidates further on this topic in the above video.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Louisiana marriage equality loss due to multitude of errors by judge
Even though we are winning court case after court case for the cause of marriage equality, let's not forget the loss in Louisiana and how the judge came to such a outrageously bad ruling. Matt Baum of the American Foundation for Equal Rights elucidates further on this topic in the above video.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
It is important to remember that the Louisiana took a strange turn during arguments, and this ruling didn't surprise me at all. The Judge was planning this one.
The plaintiffs were arguing only that Louisiana should recognize only those marriages performed in other states, but the Judge decided he didn't want to decide that issue without also deciding on the full question of marriage equality. I remember the folks at Joe-My-God going crazy believing this meant the judge intended to set aside the ban. In fact, the headline was "And the hits just keep coming," I believe.
In comments then I cautioned that I didn't see anything positive to read into that. In fact, it was my position that this could be a strategy to allow this judge to rule against equal marriage.
Here's my logic. Given that any heterosexual marriage performed anywhere else in the U.S. (and even the world) is recognized in Louisiana, it would be nearly impossible to craft a ruling that said full faith and credit doesn't apply in these cases. In fact, Louisiana, like all other states, even recognizes marriages from other states that would be illegal in Louisiana, so long as they are straight marriages. So, it's just impossible to find any kind of legal reasoning to get around recognizing same sex marriages performed legally in other states. I'm guess the Judge figured this out after reading the briefs.
So, what does he do, he brings a more "states' rights" issue by bringing in the whole question of marriage equality. It gave him an out to find against the plaintiffs, even though their specific case wasn't what he based his legal reasoning on.
I predict that the Indiana ban will go to the supreme court, and will be deemed unconstitutional, and Indiana will still try to find some way to keep from issuing marriage lisences. I predict that even after there is some sort of court order there will be sections of Indiana that will prefer to stop issuing marriage lisences all together than to issue them to same sex couples. And the constitutional ban that is due to go up for a vote in 16 will still be on the ballat unless they are forced to not, and then they will say doing so is a violation of state rights. I also predect that if that is stopped the people in charge will work to ensure that businesses maintain the right to fire people for being gay so that people have to chose between marriage and employment.
In short, Indiana would rather go up in flames killing everyone than afford equal rights to us. and they will prove it.
Post a Comment