(no subject)

[vaxjedi]

Here is the last little bit from this article:

Meanwhile, New Mexico's Sandoval County said it will issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because it had no legal grounds to refuse them.

New Mexico law defines marriage as a civil contract between contracting parties and does not mention gender.

"This office won't say no until shown it's not permissible," said Victoria Dunlap, county clerk of Sandoval County, which is home to 90,000 people just north of Albuquerque.

Mass., San Franscisco, Chicago and now New Mexico....

Comments

[purplepants.livejournal.com]

It's very cool, but it's important to note that MA has yet to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple..

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[vaxjedi]

According to what I have read, the court ruled that the issuing of same-sex marriage licenses would begin in May, in order to give the bureaucracy time to create a process for it.

Re:

[purplepants.livejournal.com]

The ruling gave the option for MA to either get themselves together and issue the licenses or write a constitutional amendment to ban them--civil unions were deemed not equal and therefore illegal, so those are the choices. It's looking rather scary because it's pushed the conservatives into the corner and they're lashing out with more extreme measures. It hasn't come to pass yet and I'm holding my breath because it's certainly not a given that they will issue the licenses...

[norbman.livejournal.com]

Just read the full article.

I'm sorry, the phrase "Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger" still sounds weird.

[elf]

Gonna be an explosion of protestors who don't know exactly what a "marriage" is, but they're damned sure you can't have one between two people of the same gender.

I'm fascinated by the argument that gay marriage somehow attacks the "sanctity of marriage"... but a 27-year-old on her fourth divorce with five kids from different fathers, about to get married to an 83-year-old man on life support, doesn't attack that sanctity.

(And then there's the fun point that our legal system doesn't acknowledge "sanctity" of anything--it sometimes acknowledges that *some people* find something sacred, and that they are welcome to do so--but legal policy is that "it's sacrelige to me" is not a reason to prevent other people from doing it.)

Gonna have gay marriages popping up everywhere. (And we may have a challenge for a constitutional amendment--but we've never made an amendment that *removed* people's rights before. Time to drag out the rhetoric that was used in the Virginia vs. Loving case; we're gonna need it.)

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[frosttalon.livejournal.com]

...but we've never made an amendment that *removed* people's rights before.

What about Prohibition? Or does that not count because it didn't take away rights, just made something illegal?

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[elf]

That's pretty much how I think of prohibition--it wasn't civil rights (not exactly) that were being removed, and it wasn't aimed at a *portion* of the population. It didn't say, "these people may use alcohol, and these other people may not." (Even though exceptions were made in individual cases.)

This may be the first case where the "restricted" class is variable--it is not "gays" who are forbidden to marry, but "those who want to marry their own gender" (a point that gets lost in the rhetoric sometimes), and that's not a category you can point to, not something you can notice in public & single out for discrimination easily.

I am, however, fascinated to no end by the "sanctity of marriage" arguements, that get more vehement & less coherent every day.

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[frosttalon.livejournal.com]

You mean the argument that goes 'marriage is sacred, it says so here in this book that was written at the earliest 500 years after the events in it take place'? Where the people fail to realise that (a) modern marriage is nothing like biblical marriage and (b) not everyone believes in said book?

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[vaxjedi]

My continuing comment on that is "If someone else's marriage undermines the sanctity of your marriage, then your marriage has sanctity issues already."