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Activist Judge Overturns Iowa AntiGay Marriage Law

gdnp said:
Congratulations on your 1000th post.
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Thanks! I didn't even notice.

However, there is a problem with a state refusing to honor a contract of another state. As noted by Dr. A:
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A contract is neither a public Act, record, or judicial proceeding.

If people could change the rules by crossing state lines there would be chaos.
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Arguably, there is chaos. :)

I'm actually taking a class right now on this very subject. A typical case involves A and B who make a contract in state X, and then there's a suit in state Y, and the contract, or a provision thereof, is illegal in state Y. So the Y court has to decide whether to apply X's law or Y's law, and thus whether to validate or invalidate the contract or provision. If the Constitution required Full Faith & Credit to contracts, this would be a much shorter and easier class.
 
Brown said:
Damn! I should've applied for the million dollars, because I could have predicted with 100 percent accuracy the following (from various news services):This shows that Steele (1) has not read the decision or (2) does not understand the decision, or most likely (3) both.
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You forgot the other option: doesn't care what the decision says.
 
My favorite part of the decision

"If the marriage statute was truly focused on optimal parenting," Justice Cady observed, "many classifications of people would be excluded, not merely gay and lesbian people." Like who? Child abusers, sexual predators, parents neglecting to provide child support, and violent felons can all be straight, can all get married and can all be really horrible parents. Besides being unable to keep unfit people for being parents, the statute also is flawed because it protects the rights of couples who have no intention or ability to have children… as long as they're opposite-sex couples.
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I love this. It really hammers on the "Think of the children!!!!!" nonsense. Basically the court is saying, "You don't worry about the children when it comes to other marriages, why are you singling out gay people?" It clearly indicates the homosexual discrimination.
 
pgwenthold said:
My favorite part of the decision



I love this. It really hammers on the "Think of the children!!!!!" nonsense. Basically the court is saying, "You don't worry about the children when it comes to other marriages, why are you singling out gay people?" It clearly indicates the homosexual discrimination.
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One I like is "They can't have childern", yet infertile women (and men) are allowed to marry--as are people who declare an intent NOT to have childern.
Shall we dissolve THEIR marriages?
Where's the popcorn?
 
The argument against gay marriage basically boils down to, "I don't want gays to get married because I think it's icky." Logically, they have nothing.
 
Dr Adequate said:
How do we know that it isn't unconstitutional? Has there been a case yet?
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And yet, you cited the reason, Dr A.

Dr Adequate said:
So ... Article IV, section 1:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.​

Does that mean that if you get gay-married in Iowa, you remain gay-married in Utah? If not, why not?
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Lets review that again:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.​

It's not going to be a pretty case, shall we say. Congress has proscribed a manner (not at all) and an effect (absolutely none). This may not seem fully within the spirit of the law, and it's really just not, but it's hardly cut and dried.

Believe me, there are, at this very moment, people who in their spare time are researching the intent of every Founding father, as expressed in all letters, official communication, unofficial communication, and private writings, as to the point of that particular clause, and whether this would fall under 'their intent' or not.
 
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As I have mentioned previously, Iowans in modern times resisted efforts to amend the Iowa Constitution to provide equal rights for women. In part, this resistance was grounded in mistrust of trial lawyers who would use such a constitutional amendment to upset the apple cart of Iowa's jurisprudence.

In part, the concern was that women ought to be kept in their place. No kidding. Some of the propaganda used to defeat the State ERA was premised upon maintaining "traditional" and perceived Biblical sexual roles. In other words, some people in the second half of the Twentieth Century actually argued that women should not be awarded equal rights because women were not really equal to men as human beings. God said so, they said.

There were also a few bat-spit crazy folks who said (yelled, would be more like it) that an ERA would give legal rights (gasp!) to those God-cursed sodomites. After all, the amendments said, in effect, that there should be no discrimination on account of "sex" (in one version) or "gender" (in another version). The fear was that such language in the Constitution could encompass sexual orientation.

What a conventional ERA would PROBABLY have done is to convert the Court's standard of scrutiny in gender-based discrimination cases from "intermediate" to "strict."

A few years back, Iowans adopted a more laid-back ERA, recognizing that "All men and women are, by nature, free and equal...." The words "and women" were added. That was the extent of the amendment.

Now Justice Cady quotes that very language as part of the opinion (page 19). He does not rub anyone's face in it, of course, nor does he mention any constitutional amendment to add "and women."

But oh, how the bat-spit crazies are wailing and gnashing their teeth.

Even many in the so-called "mainstream" religions are showing a stunning ignorance about the law of the State and what the opinion actually said.

According to the Des Moines Register (and other sources), Catholic leaders are upset and say that the decision will grievously harm children. From my standpoint, I don't think the Catholic Church has any moral authority to lecture anyone about hurting children.
 
Brown said:
A few years back, Iowans adopted a more laid-back ERA, recognizing that "All men and women are, by nature, free and equal...." The words "and women" were added. That was the extent of the amendment.
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Interesting that intersexed individuals do not have equal rights in Iowa.
 
GreyICE said:
Lets review that again:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.​
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Yes. Now the question is can Congress "by general Laws prescribe" that no "Faith and Credit" shall be given whatsoever, and that "the Effect thereof" should be zip?

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Oh, and here's a puzzle. If "Full Faith and Credit" doesn't apply to gay marriage, is there anything to stop someone from marrying one man in Iowa and another man in Vermont?

It would be amusing if DOMA made gay bigamy legal ...
 
Dr Adequate said:
Yes. Now the question is can Congress "by general Laws prescribe" that no "Faith and Credit" shall be given whatsoever, and that "the Effect thereof" should be zip?
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As I already laid out, that's exactly the dilemma. It does not appear to be fitting exactly within the spirit of the wording, but it does appear to be fitting exactly within the most ambiguous interpretations of the wording.


Oh, and here's a puzzle. If "Full Faith and Credit" doesn't apply to gay marriage, is there anything to stop someone from marrying one man in Iowa and another man in Vermont?

It would be amusing if DOMA made gay bigamy legal ...
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Yes, local state laws. I'd assume that states already have statutes about recognizing marriages made in other states, and if both allow gay marriages, then both are going to recognize the potential bigamist as married.

The DOMA only said that states do not have to recognize gay marriage, not that they MUST NOT.
 
parky76 said:
I am not a fan of same-sex marriage. I think marriage should between a man and a woman and same-sex couples should get EVERYTHING but the title of married.
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Sooo...

If it walks, quacks, and swims like a duck, please call it a "duck facsimile"?
 
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KingMerv00 said:
Sooo...

If it walks, quacks, and swims like a duck, please call it a "duck facsimile"?
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Remember: Separate, but equal! Separate, but equal!

I've really never understood that position on the issue, since I'm really having a hard time coming up with an example from history where parallel programs instituted to deal with the thing for two different groups ended up NOT diverging significantly. Hell even male/female sports programs have issues, and there's really really good reasons to keep them separate (as opposed to really non-existent reasons to keep a gay 'not-marriage marriage' and a 'real marriage' separate (and in the language I used, I think we can see where I see THAT going).
 
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parky76 said:
I am not a fan of same-sex marriage. I think marriage should between a man and a woman and same-sex couples should get EVERYTHING but the title of married.
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What difference does the title make if you're giving them the exact same rights anyway?

It seems like you're saying, "You can be married, just not married."
 
ponderingturtle said:
Interesting that intersexed individuals do not have equal rights in Iowa.
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HA! Well this should amuse you...maybe...

Where I work(in Iowa) we had a M to F transexual patient. He was married to a woman when he was a man, and then became a woman and is now married to a man. The thing is he is still pre-op when he got married and was still technically a man. The state however recognized him as a woman because he was in the preparation to become a fully converted male to female.

What I wonder is why the anti-gay lobby doesn't attack situations like that? Why is just the straight up homosexuals?
 
thesyntaxera said:
HA! Well this should amuse you...maybe...

Where I work(in Iowa) we had a M to F transexual patient. He was married to a woman when he was a man, and then became a woman and is now married to a man. The thing is he is still pre-op when he got married and was still technically a man. The state however recognized him as a woman because he was in the preparation to become a fully converted male to female.

What I wonder is why the anti-gay lobby doesn't attack situations like that? Why is just the straight up homosexuals?
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I was talking about intersexed though, not transexuals. That individual always identified as only one sex though.
 
My dad voted to ban gay marriage in Georgia while I voted against banning it, but his reasoning was allowing gays to marry would hurt the social security system.

Just to point out someone that doesn't seem to fit into any of the categories all ready listed.
 
Sefarst said:
My dad voted to ban gay marriage in Georgia while I voted against banning it, but his reasoning was allowing gays to marry would hurt the social security system.
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A pretty poor arguement though. It is such a small percentage of the population that it will have little effect.
 
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