Gay marriage will destroy the GOP

Since last year, the progress toward marriage equality has been nothing less than stunning. Nearly a year ago, the Supreme Court granted full federal recognition of married same-sex couples in declaring the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. In rapid succession since then, federal judges in 13 states have overturned their state’s respective bans on same sex unions. The latest was last week in Pennsylvania, when Judge John E. Jones III, a G. W. Bush appointee, overturned the ban, writing, “We are a better people than what these laws represent.” Because Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has declined to appeal the judge’s decision, Pennsylvania is now the 19th state to legalize same-sex marriage.
Federal judges have ruled against the bans as diverse as Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. Gay marriage isn’t just for blue states anymore.
One of the most eloquent statements against the bans was issued earlier this month by Arkansas federal judge Chris Piazza, who argued that state’s ban violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “Procreation is not a prerequisite in Arkansas for a marriage license,” he said. “Opposite-sex couples may choose not to have children or they may be infertile, and certainly we are beyond trying to protect the gene pool. A marriage license is a civil document and is not, nor can it be, based upon any particular faith. Same-sex couples are a morally disliked minority and the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages is driven by animus rather than a rational basis. This violates the U.S. Constitution.”
These cases, and the others that will likely follow, can lead to just one thing: another historic case about gay marriage before the Supreme Court, one that could establish a constitutional right to marriage equality, something few legal experts thought would happen so soon after last year’s DOMA case.
Public opinion on this issue is marching forward as well. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, 59 percent of Americans now support gay marriage. Only a third opposes it, nearly the reverse of the same poll 10 years ago. Forty percent of Republicans support it, and nearly 60 percent of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 29. Even 51 percent of white evangelicals under 35 support it.
And yet the Christian Right, or at least most of its self-proclaimed leaders, just won’t let it go. In mid-May, a group of them called the Conservative Action Project met outside Washington, D.C., to plot their next moves and devise their agenda to push back against the Republican leadership in Congress, whom they see as too soft on Obama and his agenda. Mainstream business groups like the Chamber of Commerce, which is keen to see a GOP takeover of the Senate after missed opportunities in 2010 and 2012, are siding with the leadership.
Although some of the attendees do not share the Conservative Action Project’s anti-gay agenda, most of them do. At the mid-May meeting, they reaffirmed their explicit opposition to same-sex marriage along with opposition to abortion and illegal immigration reform. Tony Perkins, head of the anti-gay Family Research Council, led a panel about restoring the “traditional family” as a Republican Party priority, as if almost universal opposition to gay rights has not been the party’s priority for several decades.
Polling consistently shows that independents, younger voters and women—all of whom used to routinely vote Republican in presidential contests—are now more often than not reliable Democrat voters. They are also pro-gay rights and same-sex marriage, especially younger voters. Unless Republicans begin to win some of them back with policies of social tolerance, they will simply no longer be in contention in presidential elections. Slavish devotion to right-wing social policies is the road to oblivion on the national stage.
So it’s time to stop letting the anti-gay tail wag the Republican dog. The Christian Right spokesmen’s pious pleas for tolerance for their anti-gay religious convictions will fall on deaf ears (and should) as long as they continue their own intolerance for those who practice different faiths or have different sexual orientations than they do.
Ending their tight grip on the party’s social agenda, and its 2016 platform, must be the top priority of those who wish to bring the Republican Party into the 21st century and make it appeal to more than just old white men.

Orrin Hatch: Gay Marriage Will Become Law Of The Land

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch conceded Wednesday it's only a matter of time before gay marriage is legal across the country, even though he doesn't think that's the right way to go.

Hatch said people who can't see what's happening aren't living in the real world. He made the remarks during an appearance on KSL-Radio's Doug Wright Show (http://bit.ly/1koFdlh).

"Let's face it: anybody who does not believe that gay marriage is going to be the law of the land just hasn't been observing what's going on," said Hatch, a seven-term Republican senator who has been a proponent of keeping marriage exclusively between a man and a woman.

He said he doesn't agree with the string of pro-gay marriage rulings, but defended two Utah judges who issued such decisions. Hatch said Robert Shelby and Dale Kimball are both excellent federal judges. Hatch recommended both for the bench — Shelby in 2011 and Kimball in 1997.

"How do you blame the judge for deciding a case in accordance with what the Supreme Court has already articulated?" Hatch said.

His only criticism of Shelby was that he didn't immediately put his ruling on hold when he struck down Utah's same-sex marriage ban in December. More than 1,000 gay and lesbian couples until the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay more than two weeks later. The case is before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

Gay rights activists have won 14 lower court cases since a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling last summer. Gay and lesbian couples currently can marry in 19 states and the District of Columbia, with Oregon and Pennsylvania being the latest states to join the list.

Hatch also questioned whether judges should be able to tell states how to handle an important matter like marriage.

He said he believes nobody should suffer discrimination, and said religious people should try to understand other people's beliefs.

The former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee predicted the Supreme Court would take a gay marriage case in 2015.

"Sooner or later gay marriage is probably going to be approved by the Supreme Court of the United States, and certainly as the people in this country move toward it, especially young people," Hatch said. "I don't think that's the right way to go, on the other hand, I do accept whatever the courts have to say."

Add caption

Follow me:
http://they-all-do-it-like-that.tumblr.com/

Disclaimer:This blog does not claim credit for any images, videos, or other media items featured on this site, or sites linking to it, unless otherwise specified. All visual content, copy and images, are copyright to it’s respective owners. If you own rights to any of the featured images and articles and do not wish it to appear here, please email me and it will be removed from this blog. Bear in mind that the media items found within this site were all found publicly on the web, so removal from this site is not removal from the entire World Wide Web. I do my best to provide the most accurate information but errors and inaccuracies can occur. I do however not make warranty as to the correctness or reliability of the blog’s content. Should you encounter an error or inaccuracy, please inform us so it can be corrected. This is just all in good fun!

Hot, Humid and more hot!.... summer has hit the Ole South! This year has been a strange one here, weather wise for sometime now! Hope everyone is having a great week so far! I am for sure!! Am never really sure who looks at my blogs but got the surprise of my life yesterday when a old high school friend contacted me via my blog, High school feels like 100 years ago to me! but how very cool and exciting this has happened and I will be following up on the connection! so I guess my silly little blogs may have some merit to them after all!

As a U.S. district judge — appointed in 2012 by President Barack Obama with support from Utah's two conservative Republican senators — Shelby ruled last December that the state's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

Since then, in an unbroken string of victories for gay-marriage backers, a dozen other judges in states across the nation have followed suit by overturning bans or ordering states to recognize gay marriages from out of state.

Collectively, these judges are diverse — white and black, male and female, gay and straight, some appointed by Democratic presidents and some by Republicans. However, they seemed to draw common inspiration from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June 2013 that ordered the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages.

In most of the cases, the rulings have been stayed pending appeals, and a final nationwide verdict on same-sex marriage will likely come from the Supreme Court as some of the cases head there. But the judges' opinions — often embellished by soaring language — reflected a yearning to be on what they had come to see as the right side of history.

Shelby, in his 53-page decision, said the constitutional amendment that Utah voters approved in 2004 violated gay couples' rights to due process and equal protection. The state, he said, failed to show that allowing same-sex marriages would affect opposite-sex marriages in any way.

"In the absence of such evidence, the State's unsupported fears and speculations are insufficient to justify the State's refusal to dignify the family relationships of its gay and lesbian citizens," Shelby wrote.

A look at some of other judges and their rulings:
___

MICHIGAN:

Long before the current spate of marriage litigation, Detroit-based U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman learned firsthand about the aspirations of gays and lesbians seeking to raise families.

Friedman, a Republican appointed to the federal bench in 1988 by President Ronald Reagan, hired an openly gay University of Michigan Law School student as his clerk in 1995. The clerk, Judith Levy, went on to bear children and this year became a federal judge in Michigan.

In March, Friedman — now 70 — struck down the gay-marriage ban approved by Michigan voters in 2004. The day after his ruling, in a brief window before a stay was issued, Levy performed several same-sex marriages.

The case was initiated by two Detroit-area nurses seeking to overturn Michigan's law banning joint adoptions by gay couples. They later expanded it to challenge the marriage ban itself.

"State defendants lost sight of what this case is truly about: people," Friedman wrote in his opinion. "No court record of this proceeding could ever fully convey the personal sacrifice of these two plaintiffs who seek to ensure that the state may no longer impair the rights of their children and the thousands of others now being raised by same-sex couples."

___

VIRGINIA

With experience as a no-nonsense federal prosecutor and also as a public defender, Arenda L. Wright Allen saw the justice system from both sides. She won unanimous Senate confirmation in 2011 when Obama appointed her as the first black woman to serve on the federal bench in Virginia.

In February, after a high-profile trial, she overturned Virginia's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage with an opinion that evoked civil rights struggles of America's past.

"Justice has often been forged from fires of indignities and prejudices suffered," she wrote. "We have arrived upon another moment in history when We the People becomes more inclusive, and our freedom more perfect."

She also noted that Virginia was the focal state when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws against interracial marriage in 1967.

"Tradition is revered in the Commonwealth, and often rightly so," Wright Allen wrote. "However, tradition alone cannot justify denying same-sex couples the right to marry any more than it could justify Virginia's ban on interracial marriage."

___

ARKANSAS

Four years ago, a judge little known outside of Arkansas made waves by overturning a state law that prevented gays and lesbians from adopting or fostering children. It was a harbinger of things to come. On May 9, that same jurist, Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Chris Piazza, struck down Arkansas' ban on gay marriages.

The first same-sex marriages in the South ensued, before a stay was issued. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, among others, was not pleased.
"Allowing one single member of the judicial branch to become Lord God of law is dangerous and unconstitutional," Huckabee wrote.
However, any voters upset by Piazza's ruling can't vent their frustration at the polls — the 67-year-old judge didn't draw a challenger in his bid for re-election this year and will serve another six years.
Like Wright Allen in Virginia, Piazza evoked the 1967 Supreme Court ruling on interracial marriage.

"It has been over 40 years since Mildred Loving was given the right to marry the person of her choice," Piazza wrote. "The hatred and fears have long since vanished and she and her husband lived full lives together; so it will be for the same-sex couples. It is time to let that beacon of freedom shine brighter on all our brothers and sisters. We will be stronger for it."

___
OREGON
Michael McShane, one of a small number of openly gay federal judges, harkened back to his own youth in his ruling May 19 striking down Oregon's voter-approved 2004 ban on gay marriage.

"Generations of Americans, my own included, were raised in a world in which homosexuality was believed to be a moral perversion, a mental disorder, or a mortal sin," he wrote. "I remember that one of the more popular playground games of my childhood was called 'smear the queer.'"

In preliminary court proceedings, the question was raised as to whether McShane — as a gay man raising a child with his partner — should recuse himself. However, McShane said he had never attended a rally or spoken publicly about gay marriage, and the issue was not vigorously pursued by gay-marriage opponents.

In his ruling, McShane extolled the same-sex couples who had filed the lawsuit.

"I believe that if we can look for a moment past gender and sexuality, we can see in these plaintiffs nothing more or less than our own families," he wrote. "With discernment we see not shadows lurking in closets or the stereotypes of what was once believed; rather, we see families committed to the common purpose of love, devotion, and service to the greater community."

___

PENNSYLVANIA

Before last week, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III was perhaps best known for handling of one of the biggest courtroom clashes between faith and evolution since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. In a 2005 decision, Jones barred the Dover Area School District in southern Pennsylvania from teaching "intelligent design" in biology class, saying its first-in-the-nation curriculum decision violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

On May 20, Jones once again had an impact of the nation's culture wars, striking down a 1996 Pennsylvania law that was the Northeast's last ban on gay marriage.

A former small-town public defender and head of the state's Liquor Control Board, Jones was appointed to the federal bench in 2002 with the approval of Pennsylvania's two Republican U.S. senators, Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum. Santorum, an outspoken critic of same-sex marriage, called Jones "an outstanding litigator" during a confirmation hearing.
In his ruling on marriage, Jones said the plaintiffs — a widow, 11 couples and one of the couples' two teenage daughters — were courageous.

"We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history," Jones wrote.