Momentary Hope for Straight Conservatives?

[_Darth J]

Also, bcspace, any discussion you would like to add as to your understanding of reverse incorporation would be great.

You know, so nobody gets the mistaken impression that your waving all this off as some liberal gay agenda is nothing so much as you labeling anything you don't understand as an offense to your tribal god.

[_krose]

Heck, at this rate they might even bring in some precedent or tradition from an ancient society on the island of Lesbos.

I'm thinking Clarence Thomas would volunteer to do the research if it involved viewing some hot girl-on-girl video evidence.

[_subgenius]

...(snip)...Droopy, I would like to know what legal rights and duties of the childless, geriatric marriage between Dallin H. Oaks and his current wife could not be performed by two people of the same sex. Please list them here, and feel free to add more numbers if you find that there are more than 5 such legal rights or duties that depend on the parties to the marriage being of the opposite sex:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

i will take a guess....just for kicks

1. spousal child support and/or child visitation
2. living in zoning districts termed "family only" (this should be a good one - for example in NY "oning may not exclude a group which "in every but a biological sense is a single family" (White Plains, supra); or a household "which poses no threat to the goal of preserving the character of the traditional single-family neighborhood" (McMinn supra).")....if the "character" is not same-sex then......

wait a second...

currently DOMA defines that all of them cannot be performed by same sex couple.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

i will take a guess....just for kicks

1. spousal child support and/or child visitation
2. living in zoning districts termed "family only" (this should be a good one - for example in NY "oning may not exclude a group which "in every but a biological sense is a single family" (White Plains, supra); or a household "which poses no threat to the goal of preserving the character of the traditional single-family neighborhood" (McMinn supra).")....if the "character" is not same-sex then......

wait a second...

currently DOMA defines that all of them cannot be performed by same sex couple.

Hello Mr. Sub-Genius,

How could a same-sex couple not "perform" child support or child visitation?

How could a same-sex couple not live in a "family only" neighborhood?


-Doc

[_Droopy]

Heck, at this rate they might even bring in some precedent or tradition from an ancient society on the island of Lesbos.

I'm thinking Clarence Thomas would volunteer to do the research if it involved viewing some hot girl-on-girl video evidence.

Hold your breath and keep diving, Krose. You haven't hit the bottom yet.

[_krose]

Hold your breath and keep diving, Krose. You haven't hit the bottom yet.

From ABC News in 2010:

A former girlfriend of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has broken her 19-year silence about a "serious" relationship the two had during the 1980s, reigniting the debate over Thomas' sexual behavior first sparked by Anita Hill's famed confirmation hearing testimony in 1991.

Lillian McEwen, a retired prosecutor, law professor and administrative law judge, discussed her intimacy with Thomas in a lengthy television interview Friday with reporter Rebecca Cooper of ABC affiliate WJLA in Washington, D.C.

"He was obsessed with pornography," McEwen told Cooper. "It was something he talked about quite frequently."

During their roughly five years together, according to McEwen, the couple occasionally went to a porn shop called Graffiti, where the owner stocked Thomas' preferred products behind the counter.

McEwen said that on several occasions Thomas looked at pornographic materials during intercourse.

"His interest in women's breasts was a fantasy. And when I say women's breasts I mean huge breasts," said McEwen. "He would get porn that emphasized that, that had the photographs of women with huge breasts."

Your point?

[_MeDotOrg]

The Supreme Court will probably rule DOMA Unconstitutional.

Everything's unconstitutional, or constitutional...today, and unconstitutional or constitutional...tomorrow.

Its a "living" constitution, remember?

So is it wrong for the Supreme Court to reverse itself?

Should we still be 'separate but equal?'

Dred Scott was correctly decided?

We were right to incarcerate Japanese-Americans in World War II?

Good thing the court never makes a mistake...

[_Brackite]

From The Huffington Post:

Supreme Court DOMA, Prop 8 Cases: Justices Have Range Of Options On Gay Marriage

...

WASHINGTON — The waiting is almost over.

Sometime in the next week or so, the Supreme Court will announce the outcomes in cases on California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

The federal law, known by the shorthand DOMA, defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman and therefore keeps legally married gay Americans from collecting a range of federal benefits that generally are available to married people.

The justices have a lengthy menu of options from which to choose. They might come out with rulings that are simple, clear and dramatic. Or they might opt for something narrow and legalistic.

The court could strike down dozens of state laws that limit marriage to heterosexual couples, but it also could uphold gay marriage bans or say nothing meaningful about the issue at all.

A look at potential outcomes for the Proposition 8 case and then for the case about DOMA:

___

Q. What if the Supreme Court upholds Proposition 8?

A. This would leave gay Californians without the right to marry in the state and would tell the roughly three dozen states that do not allow same-sex marriages that there is no constitutional problem in limiting marriage to a man and a woman.

Such an outcome probably would trigger a political campaign in California to repeal Proposition 8 through a ballot measure, which opinion polls suggest would succeed, and could give impetus to similar voter or legislative efforts in other states. Proposition 8 itself was adopted by voters in 2008, but there has been a marked shift in Americans' attitudes about same-sex marriage in the past five years.

___

Q. What if the court strikes down Proposition 8?

A. A ruling in favor of the two same-sex couples who sued to invalidate the gay marriage ban could produce one of three possibilities. The broadest would apply across the country, in effect invalidating constitutional provisions or statutes against gay marriage everywhere.

Or a majority of the justices could agree on a middle option that applies only to California as well as Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey and Oregon. Those states already treat gay and straight couples the same in almost every respect through civil unions or domestic partnerships. The only difference is that gay couples there are not allowed to marry.

This so-called seven-state solution would say that the Constitution forbids states to withhold marriage from same-sex couples while giving them all the basic rights of married people. But this ruling would not implicate marriage bans in other states and would leave open the question of whether states could deprive gay couples of any rights at all.

The narrowest of these potential outcomes would apply to California only. The justices essentially would adopt the rationale of the federal appeals court that found that California could not take away the right to marry that had been granted by the state Supreme Court in 2008, before Proposition 8 passed.

In addition, if the Supreme Court were to rule that gays and lesbians deserve special protection from discriminatory laws, it is unlikely that any state ban on same-sex marriage could survive long, even if the justices don't issue an especially broad ruling in this case.

___

Q. Are there other potential outcomes?

A. Yes, the court has a technical way out of the case without deciding anything about same-sex marriage. The Proposition 8 challengers argue that the private parties defending the provision – members of the group that helped put the ban on the ballot – did not have the right to appeal the trial judge's initial decision striking it down, or that of the federal appeals court.

The justices sometimes attach great importance to this concept, known as "standing". If they find Proposition 8's proponents lack standing, the justices also would find the Supreme Court has no basis on which to decide the case.

The most likely outcome of such a ruling also would throw out the appeals court decision that struck down the ban but would leave in place the trial court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. At the very least, the two same-sex couples almost certainly would be granted a marriage license, and Gov. Jerry Brown, D-Calif., who opposes Proposition 8, probably would give county clerks the go-ahead to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

...

This is what I predict that the Supreme Court will rule with regards to Proposition 8:

The narrowest of these potential outcomes would apply to California only. The justices essentially would adopt the rationale of the federal appeals court that found that California could not take away the right to marry that had been granted by the state Supreme Court in 2008, before Proposition 8 passed.

Let's see if I will be right on my prediction here.

[_Darth J]

...(snip)...Droopy, I would like to know what legal rights and duties of the childless, geriatric marriage between Dallin H. Oaks and his current wife could not be performed by two people of the same sex. Please list them here, and feel free to add more numbers if you find that there are more than 5 such legal rights or duties that depend on the parties to the marriage being of the opposite sex:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

i will take a guess....just for kicks

1. spousal child support and/or child visitation

Nope. Child support and visitation not only are not legally required elements of marriage (because having children is not a legal element necessary to validate a marriage), they exist independent of marriage. The Uniform Civil Liability for Support Act does not distinguish between divorced parents and never-married parents regarding a duty to support one's children. That is why you see never-married fathers being ordered to pay child support. Also, never-married parents can petition to establish paternity and visitation rights.

There is nothing about biological differences between the sexes that is relevant to paying alimony.

And the Supreme Court of Kansas recently held that a co-parenting agreement between a lesbian couple was enforceable after the couple broke up. http://law.justia.com/cases/kansas/supr ... 03487.html

Keep trying.

(By the way, Dallin H. Oaks and his current spouse will never have to address the issues of child support and visitation, because they have no children and are not going to have any. And yet they have a valid marriage under the laws of the State of Utah. Go figure!)

2. living in zoning districts termed "family only" (this should be a good one - for example in NY "oning may not exclude a group which "in every but a biological sense is a single family" (White Plains, supra); or a household "which poses no threat to the goal of preserving the character of the traditional single-family neighborhood" (McMinn supra).")....if the "character" is not same-sex then......

wait a second...

Oh, yes. So if a local government were to designate some neighborhoods as "white only" or "non-Mormon only," then that would prove that non-whites or Mormons are not entitled to equal protection of law, because all you have to do to subvert the 14th Amendment is pass a discriminatory law.

currently DOMA defines that all of them cannot be performed by same sex couple.

As soon as you find the place in Article I that gives Congress the authority to define marriage for the states, you'll be sure to copy and paste it, right?

[_Brackite]

Supreme Court Punts on Texas Affirmative-Action Case:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... TopStories