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July 07, 2006

POWER TO THE PEOPLE (only if they agree with us)

Stunning implicit admission from the NYTimes

New York's highest court has harmed both the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and its reputation as a guardian of individual liberties by denying same-sex couples the right to marry.

The 4-to-2 ruling by the Court of Appeals, which left standing the state's discriminatory marriage laws ...

Note that the NYTimes states "discriminatory" as if this is an established fact. They don't/won't discuss that even the idea that the definition of one man/one woman marriage is "discriminatory" is both recent and historically unprecedented. If we are to assume that marriage law is "discriminatory" due to gender of the people involved, then we can also assume that it is discriminatory due to number of people. Or familial relationship of the people involved.
... comes at a time of intense debate over gay marriage. [...]

But the immediate impact of the decision is to shift the battleground over gay marriage from the state courts to state lawmakers.

OMIGAWD! Hold your head and run in circles, scream and shout! How dare anyone even contemplate that the definition of a public institution be left to The People!

The NYTimes is left of center, but not a far-Left fringe paper. They are mainstream Left and this official editorial demonstrates that all the posturing by the Left about "power to the people" is lip-service.

Lip-service. Nothing more.

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Posted by Darleen at July 7, 2006 09:16 AM

Comments

No matter how many times you dishonestly characterize the subject, it won't change the substance of the problem.

You leave Equal Protection issues in the hands of legislatures in the 60s, blacks stay in the back of the bus. The purpose of the Courts is to ensure that not only are the statutory laws being followed, but also the constitutional laws.

We have Equal Protection in this country. This means that no matter what statutory laws We The People wish to write, they have to apply to everyone, equally. You wanna allow marriage? then allow it.

You wanna define marriage as "two people" then define it as two people.

But you can't exclude two men because "well, we just always assumed that only one man and one woman would ever want to get married". Most states did not have, and several states still DON'T have, the "one man, one woman" clause in their marriage laws.

For those states which do not have "one each" clauses to deny two men a marriage license is for the state itself to break the law; for states which have recently changed their laws to require "one each" to claim it was done for any reason other than to deny gays their ability to get married is fabricated bigotry in the extreme.

Posted by: rwilymz at July 7, 2006 10:51 AM

Marriage between a man and a woman, has been
a religious and secular ceremony for thousands of years.
There is nothing stopping gays from creating a new name for their own "unions".
There is no reason to attempt to hijack a cherished and sacred ceremony (by almost all religions), that was never meant for gays, polygamists, incest, or beastiality.
This has nothing to do with equal protection, and everything to do with advancing an agenda.

Posted by: Ben USN (Ret) at July 8, 2006 02:56 AM

- For the Left to adver, by some dent of ledgerdomain, that it is apropos to define "marraige" in terms of "number", "famial orientation" and "species", but somehow "sex" is a special category, unacceptable to follow the same choice based on popular social moors, is the usual Liberal claptrap "cause I want it" logical garbage writ large. Apparently Progressives never get tired of looking feckless to the extreme, and trying to "justify" any number of rediculous positions by nothing more than a childlike "it must be right because we say so" naivete'. They are as children, and must be delt with thusly.

Posted by: Big Bang Hunter at July 8, 2006 10:12 PM

It should be pointed out a bit more strongly that this IS the opinion page. Editorials legitimately are more biased -- that is, more opinion-based -- than hard news stories.

Posted by: Strider at July 11, 2006 08:43 PM