The right's dangerous legal argument

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-13-2008
The right's dangerous legal argument
1537
Thu, 03-05-2009 - 9:46pm

Appearing for the supporters of Prop 8, Kenneth Starr, the former Whitewater prosecutor, said the people hold the right to modify the state constitution by adding or subtracting protections for civil rights.


Court appears ready to uphold Prop. 8



Full length fiction: worlds undone


"You have no power over my body..." ~ Anne Hutchinson


"You think you know, sir!" ~ Cornflake Girl ~ Tori Amos.


Full length fiction: worlds undone

"You have no power over my body..." ~ Anne Hutchinson

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iVillage Member
Registered: 12-07-2006
Wed, 04-01-2009 - 8:55pm
Unfortunately, when emotions become involved, logic flies right out the window.
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-04-2005
Wed, 04-01-2009 - 9:04pm

The USSC invalidated the bans added to keep black and white couples from marrying, they'll do it again.

YOU may have equality, but "we" do not.


iVillage Member
Registered: 12-07-2006
Wed, 04-01-2009 - 9:11pm

No, I did not admit that marriage is not defined.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-04-2005
Wed, 04-01-2009 - 9:18pm

It was "commonly understood" that blacks were inferior, and that interacial marriage was an abomination.
That common understanding was wrong.
The USSC corrected it.
And they'll correct this as well.


iVillage Member
Registered: 08-13-2008
Wed, 04-01-2009 - 9:23pm

No, I did not admit that marriage is not defined.


Full length fiction: worlds undone

"You have no power over my body..." ~ Anne Hutchinson

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-04-2005
Wed, 04-01-2009 - 9:41pm

http://sgsnow.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/same-sex-or-inter-racial-marriage-take-the-quiz/


Arguments against same-sex marriage are nearly identical to those used to condemn “inter-racial” marriage. Discrimination against both have been justified by tradition based on “natural law”, and the opponents of both types of marriage have used the Bible to justify legislated discrimination. Both have attempted to add to the Constitution words governing which types of marriage the state may sanction, yet both claim their efforts to exclude certain types of citizens from marriage are somehow “non-discriminatory”. The parallel is uncomfortably close, as anti-miscegenation laws have only recently been repealed across the United States.



In the 1660s, Maryland became the first colony to prohibit interracial marriages. By 1750, all the southern colonies as well as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania made interracial marriages illegal. For example, Virginia had a law stating that “All marriages between a white person and a colored person shall be absolutely void without any decree of divorce or other legal process.” (Code Ann. A7 20-57)


In Maryland, when slavery was introduced in 1664, “the law also prohibited marriages between white women and black men…. between 1935 and 1967, the law was extended to forbid marriage between Malaysians with blacks and whites. The law was finally repealed in 1967.”


During the 1950s, half of the states still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage. By the early 1960’s at least 41 states had enacted anti-miscegenation statutes.


The apologists for these laws insisted that they were not “discriminatory,” as one Republican congressman from Illinois phrased it, because it “applies equally to men and women.”


Legal arguments used claims that interracial marriage was unnatural and immoral in order to find a way around the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection under the laws.”


How did judges do this? They insisted that because miscegenation laws punished both the black and white partners to an interracial marriage, they affected blacks and whites “equally.” This argument, which is usually called the equal application claim, was hammered out in state supreme courts in the late 1870s, endorsed by the United States Supreme Court in 1882, and would be repeated by judges for the next 85 years.


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2009
Wed, 04-01-2009 - 9:46pm

I think you're right about that (and everything else you've posted).


(And when it happens,

Kate

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2009
Wed, 04-01-2009 - 9:49pm
You clearly are not in a position to judge the hearts and minds of others.

Kate

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2009
Wed, 04-01-2009 - 9:50pm

Wow.

Kate


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Kate

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