Quote:
Originally Posted by GRH
I think it's an unwise course of action to push this issue towards the Supreme Court. The Court, as it now stands, is too conservative to reverse policy regarding same-sex marriage. As plausible as 14th Amendment equal protection arguments sound, they do not necessarily hold water based on legal precedence. Homosexuality does not fall under strict scrutiny as a protected status, therefore, the unequal application of the law between different classes of citizenry is not illegal. I'm not suggesting that I like things this way, but that's how the Constitution would be interpretted by the current court.
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I actually agree -- I think if this is pushed to the Supreme Court, they'll rule against it and bounce it back as a State's right issue. They'll basically NOT see this as a civil rights issue and say -- much like the California Federal Court did -- that state residents should have every legal right to amend their state constitutions as they see fit. So, for those that want to see same-sex marriage passed as much as possible, they really should let it be a state's right issue, that is continually put up to ballot initiatives, since there's a nice little momentum going in favor OF same-sex marriage right now. There's a little bit of a bounce out there. However, I think if the GLBT community tries to take this to the Federal level, it's going to backfire on them and you're going to suddenly throw a giant monkey wrench into that momentum -- not to mention, you'll now give same-sex opponents all-new legal ammunition to block things, by way of a ruling from no less than the Supreme Court itself.
Oddly enough, the OTHER problem here -- politically speaking -- is that the economy is now going to play a big part in this. Right now, far too many people feel that Obama is spending waaaaay too much in Washington and is making the government TOO big and TOO intrusive into our lives. In fact, the latest Gallup numbers show that while people basically still like Obama personally (he's at about 60%), a whopping 67% of the country -- essentially 7 out of 10 people -- now feel we're now going in the wrong direction, and 57% think things are actually getting WORSE. In short, Obama's spending too much, moving too fast, trying to take over and change too many things at once, and it's now making people a bit nervous as they stop and say "Uh, you know, I wanted change, but not THIS much change. I kind of liked some things just the way there were."
The result of this is that more and more States have now begun to adopt a new, populist, anti-big government revolt ideology, which centers on State legislatures declaring that -- since the United States is technically a Republic -- that their inherent State's rights SUPERSEDE the rights or mandates of the Federal government. In short, more and more States are starting to declare that the suits back in Washington have no right to dictate to them. After all, that's NOT how the United States was created or set up.
So again, I think if the GLBT community pushes this to the Supreme Court as a civil rights issue...and the Court then leans to the right in its ruling (which frankly is the way the court does lean) and it says, "No, this is a matter of sexuality and personal choice, so states can decide for themselves"... like I said, you're going to empower the States more than ever before and this will really drag on for another few decades, given how much time the GLBT community would have to deal with between election cycles and the requirements to put initiatives up for a vote, etc. On the other hand, if the GLBT community really gets their act together and makes a massive push for state by state constitutional changes, I think same-sex marriage will ultimately be established much quicker...