Marriage News Watch, 7/6/15

With the job done and victory won, Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights makes his final report on same-sex marriage:




And in Texas, the Hood County couple shown in the clip below (they have been together for 27 years; one has a doctorate in nursing, the other has a master's degree in education) who were denied a marriage license and thrown out of the office by the God-fearing, Bible-believing county clerk last week were issued a license this morning, just hours after they and their attorney filed suit against her in federal district court.  She now says her office will issue marriage licenses to all couples.



Update: I misread.  Apparently County Clerk Katie Lang made a one-time exception to her Bible-based stand in order to evade being sued. The attorney for Jim Cato and Joe Stapleton says that while the couple are delighted that they have been issued a license in their home county, "the lawsuit will not be dismissed until and unless we have an agreement from Clerk Lang that her office will issue marriage licenses to all couples, gay and straight, without delay, and an agreement to pay Jim and Joe’s attorneys’ fees for being forced to file the lawsuit."

Hood County is just a short drive west of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, and the county seat of Granbury is a pleasant place to spend a day browsing through the shops and cafes around the lovely old courthouse square. My late husband Cody and I used to enjoy visiting there; here's a couple of snaps he took of me there in years gone by - sadly, there are no pics of us together in Granbury, as there were no selfie sticks in those days:

March 2003.

July 2004.

I'm not sure if there are any other counties in Texas still not issuing licenses; if I find out, I will post more here later today.


Flashback:  How did I miss this outburst?  Must have overslept that day back in April.  From the New Yorker:

There was a shocking, ugly moment during the argument of Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage case, in the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Right after Mary Bonauto, the lawyer challenging marriage bans in several states, completed her argument, a spectator rose from a back row and started screaming, “If you support gay marriage, you will burn in Hell!” As the man yelled, “It’s an abomination!,” guards carried him from the courtroom.

That wasn’t the ugly part, though. In the quiet moment after the man was removed, as his shouts vanished into the hallway, Justice Antonin Scalia filled the silence with a quip. “It was rather refreshing, actually,” he said.

It may have been just a joke from the senior Associate Justice on the Court, but what kind of joke—or was it really a joke at all? Scalia probably did think that the directness of the protester was bracing—“refreshing.” Indeed, there’s every reason to believe that Scalia more or less shared the protester’s view of the immorality of homosexuality, and that he regards the Court’s toleration of gay people as one of the great disasters of his nearly three decades as a Justice.

Scalia’s counter-outburst was a notable contrast to the respectful tone of the rest of the argument, including from his fellow-conservatives. It is one measure of the success of the gay-rights movement that all the other Justices felt compelled to phrase their questions in ways that honored the humanity of gay people.

The humanity of gay people . . . why is this so hard to understand?

Marriage News Watch, 6/29/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:




Also in today's news: despite the defiant blustering of recalcitrant state officials over the weekend, gay marriages are now taking place in Louisiana and Mississippi, though some county clerks in Alabama and Texas are still refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples because God, Bible, and "religious liberty," etc.


And law professor Michael Dorf at SCOTUSblog makes a wry observation on Justice Scalia's assoholic dissent in Obergefell:

And then there is Justice Scalia, who professes to worry about the ruling’s implications for democracy but seems more irked by Justice Kennedy’s prose style. In perhaps the most intemperate line in the U.S. Reports, Justice Scalia mocks the opening line of the majority opinion: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.”

Justice Scalia replies: “If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began” in this way, “I would hide my head in a bag.” This from a Justice who – just in cases that are centrally relevant to the issue in Obergefell – once began a dissent by accusing the Court of mistaking “a Kulturkampf for a fit of spite” (as though Prussian anti-Catholic policies were an appropriate model for Colorado’s treatment of its gay and lesbian minority), in another dissent compared same-sex intimacy to bestiality, and in a futile effort to read Loving as having nothing to do with evolving values, invented his very own inaccurate text of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Forget about the bag. Justice Scalia should not appear in public except in a full burka.

Dorf also explains why the majority opinion is firmly grounded in the Constitution's guarantee of Equal Protection, emphasis mine:

Were the dissenters more interested in understanding than ridiculing the majority opinion, they would see that equal protection considerations help explain why a right to same-sex marriage does not necessarily open the door to polygamy, adult incest, and the other supposed horribles in their gay shame parade. With a few notable exceptions, for thousands of years people have been stigmatized, beaten, and killed for the sin of loving someone of the same sex. The dissenters regard this shameful history only as the basis for continued denial of constitutional rights. The majority, by contrast, sees in this history of subordination a special reason to be skeptical of the reasons advanced for excluding same-sex couples from the institution of marriage.

Justice Kennedy writes: “Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, th[e] denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them.” It really is that simple.

And while your Head Trucker is no legal expert, he finds a very interesting philosophical parallel in reasoning between the marriage ruling and the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954):

To separate [children in grade and high schools] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. . . . We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

Equal justice under law. That's the way it goes in these United States. 'Nuff said.

The west pediment of the Supreme Court building.

Marriage News Watch, 6/22/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:




Just so you know, the remaining dates on which the Supreme Court may issue the gay-marriage ruling are this Thursday, Friday, and next Monday, which is the last day of the term. See the court's calendar at Scotusblog.  A summary of proceedings to date on Obergefell v. Hodges is here.

Marriage News Watch, 6/15/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:




Here's a link to that Pew Research Center poll that Matt mentioned.

Marriage News Watch, 6/8/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:




More on the Guam marriage ruling here.

Marriage News Watch, 6/1/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 5/25/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 5/18/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 5/11/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 5/4/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 4/13/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 4/6/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:




What I Say:  On a tangent matter - Ya know, fellas, as much as I look forward to nationwide marriage equality, I am sick and tired of hearing about the damn wedding cakes. Food, lodging, transportation, employment, and housing are all necessities of life. Wedding cakes are not.

Yeah, yeah, I understand the arguments - but it's possible to win the battle and lose the war, you know? Screaming and crying about cakes is just so unnecessary, in my view, and causes hard feelings on the other side that distract from the big issues - a cake is a tiny thing that can be done without for now.

And as a widower left alone and stranded in small-town Texas with no rights whatsoever when my husband died unexpectedly ten years ago, I would much rather have had legal recognition of our union than any silly cake.

There's my 2 cents.

Marriage News Watch, 3/30/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 3/23/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 3/16/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 3/9/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 3/2/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

And this morning federal District Judge Joseph F. Bataillon struck down Nebraska's ban on same-sex marriage. writing:

Marriage is about more than procreation. The ostensible "procreative" purpose does not hold up in light of the situations presented by infertile, intentionally childless, or elderly couples, all of whom are allowed the benefits and responsibilities of a state-sanctioned marital relationship. Even if the State's purported justifications could be seen as important interests, a same-sex marriage ban is simply not substantially related to those interests.

The court agrees with Judge Posner's statement in Baskin that "these cases are about discrimination against the small homosexual minority in the United States. But at a deeper level, as we shall see, they are about the welfare of American children." The State essentially pays lip service to marriage as an institution conceived for the purpose of providing a stable family unit, but it ignores the damage done to children by denial of the right to marry to numerous same-sex households.

To the extent the State's position is that it has an interest in promoting family stability only for those children who are being raised by both of their biological parents, the notion that some children should receive fewer legal protections than others based on the circumstances of their birth is not only irrational—it is constitutionally repugnant.

Full text of Judge Bataillon's ruling in Waters v. Ricketts here.

The state has announced its intention to appeal to the Eight Circuit here. Unless the circuit or the Supreme Court issues a stay, Judge Bataillon's ruling will come into effect on March 9.

Marriage News Watch, 2/23/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 2/16/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:

Marriage News Watch, 2/9/15

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:




Despite Matt's drama-queen talk of federal troopers swooping in to crush the Alabama rebels, this morning's news from the Heart of Dixie is much less dramatic:

Same-sex couples marry in Alabama after U.S. Supreme Court refuses stay

Text of Supreme Court order denying stay of Alabama marriages

Same-sex couples marry in some Alabama counties: Live updates from across the state

Updated marriage map from Wikipedia; click here for legend.

Update, 12:45 p.m.: Alabama Governor Robert Bentley has issued a statement:

I am disappointed that a single Federal court judge disregarded the vote of the Alabama people to define marriage as between a man and woman. . . .

This issue has created confusion with conflicting direction for Probate Judges in Alabama. Probate Judges have a unique responsibility in our state, and I support them. I will not take any action against Probate Judges, which would only serve to further complicate this issue.

We will follow the rule of law in Alabama, and allow the issue of same sex marriage to be worked out through the proper legal channels.