S.C. ATTORNEY GENERAL: BAN SHOULD REMAIN IN EFFECT UNTIL SCOTUS RULES
By FITSNEWS || S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson told a federal judge the Palmetto State’s ban on gay marriage should be upheld until the Supreme Court says otherwise.
In pleadings before U.S. District Court judge Richard Gergel, Wilson claimed the “recent tide of same-sex marriage cases” – including a fourth circuit case striking down gay marriage bans – run counter to a “well-reasoned” opinion from the sixth circuit upholding such bans.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the fourth circuit case – effectively upholding the unconstitutionality of gay marriage bans like the one 78 percent of South Carolina voters approved in 2006. Meanwhile the S.C. Supreme Court has stepped in to block the issuance of same sex marriage licenses pending a resolution of the issue at the federal level – making South Carolina the only state in the fourth circuit not to permit gay marriages.
In Charleston, S.C., city councilwoman Colleen Condon is suing for the right to marry her partner – Nichols Bleckley. Condon and Bleckley want Gergel to block South Carolina from enforcing its gay marriage ban, arguing that the fourth circuit ruling invalidates it.
According to that ruling, gay marriage bans “impermissibly infringe on … citizens’ fundamental right to marry” – thus prohibiting same sex couples “from participating fully in our society.”
“We recognize that same-sex marriage makes some people deeply uncomfortable,” the fourth circuit court wrote. “However, inertia and apprehension are not legitimate bases for denying same-sex couples due process and equal protection of the laws.”
By contrast, the sixth circuit ruling permitted states “to retain authority over an issue they have regulated from the beginning.”
“How can we say that the voters acted irrationally for sticking with the seen benefits of thousands of years of adherence to the traditional definition of marriage in the face of one year of experience with a new definition of marriage?” the sixth circuit court asked hypothetically.
Additionally, the sixth circuit ruling argued that the case against gay marriage bans “fails to account for plural marriages, where there is no reason to think that three or four adults, whether gay, bisexual, or straight, lack the capacity to share love, affection, and commitment, or for that matter lack the capacity to be capable (and more plentiful) parents to boot.”
Hmmmmm …
“If it is constitutionally irrational to stand by the man-woman definition of marriage, it must be constitutionally irrational to stand by the monogamous definition of marriage,” the court ruled. “Plaintiffs have no answer to the point.”
Given the direct conflict between these two rulings, it’s increasingly like the Supreme Court will be forced to take a position on the issue. In fact in a dissenting opinion to the sixth circuit ruling, judge Martha Daughtrey accused her colleagues of having “purposefully taken the contrary position to create the circuit split regarding the legality of same-sex marriage,” thus paving the way for the high court to take up the case.
This website’s oft-stated view on this issue is abundantly clear: No government – local, state or federal – should have the ability to ban (or compel) marriage, gay or straight. Or plural, for that matter. That’s because marriage isn’t a government institution, it’s a religious one – meaning the question should be left to individual congregations. As for civil unions, we believe the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment compels government to acknowledge both homosexual and heterosexual unions.
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23 comments
This gay marriage debate is silly.
1. Why should anyone care who gets marriage?
2. How can gay marriage cheapen an institution that is already flawed?
3. Fifty percent of marriages already end in divorce, will gay marriage cause that number to increase?
4. Of the remaining fifty percent, many of those marriages are open relationships and the non-open marriages usually have at least one spouse who cheats or leads a secret life.
5. Then you have scores of married men who are on the down low and or closeted gay or bi, or just enjoy the sexual excitement and rush of same-gender sex.
6. Could you imagine what would happen in Columbia if every gay man publicly disclosed at least one of the married men they meet for sex?
For the life of me I cannot understand who anyone could want to deny someone happiness and love.
The Colonel,like most Republicans, subscribes to the words of Conservative saint William F Buckley,Jr.
They proudly stand athwart the ramparts of history and yell,
“STOP!”
For my lost friends
(There’s a military suicide every 18 hours)
For:Donny
http://vimeo.com/82978694
‘Cross The Green Moutain
I crossed the green mountain
I slept by the stream
Heaven blazing in my head
I dreamt a monstrous dream
Something came up
Out of the sea
Swept through the land of
The rich and the free
I look into the eyes
Of my merciful friend
And then I ask myself
Is this the end?
Memories linger
Sad yet sweet
And I think of the souls
In heaven who will meet
Alters are burning
The flames far and wide
The foe has crossed over
From the other side
They tip their caps
From the top of the hill
You can feel them come
More brave blood do spill
Along the dim
Atlantic line
The ravaged land
Lasts for miles behind
The lights coming forward
And the streets are broad
All must yield
To the avenging God
The world is old
The world is grey
Lessons of life
Can’t be learned in a day
I watch and I wait
And I listen while I stand
To the music that comes
From a far better land
Close the eyes of our captain
Peace may he know
His long night is done
The great leader is laid low
He was ready to fall
He was quick to defend
Killed outright he was
By his own men
It’s the last day’s last hour
Of the last happy year
I feel that the unknown world is so near
Pride will vanish
And glory will rot
But virtue lives
And cannot be forgot
The bells
Of evening have rung
There’s blasphemy on every tongue
Let them say that I walked
In fair nature’s light
And that I was loyal
To truth and to right
Serve God and be cheerful
Look upward beyond
Beyond the darkness that masks
The surprises of dawn
In the deep green grasses
And the blood stained woods
They never dreamed of surrendering
They fell where they stood
Stars fell over Alabama
I saw each star
You’re walking in dreams
Whoever you are
Chilled are the skies
Keen is the frost
The ground’s froze hard
And the morning is lost
A letter to mother
Came today
Gunshot wound to the breast
Is what it did say
But he’ll be better soon
He’s in a hospital bed
But he’ll never be better
He’s already dead
I’m ten miles outside the city
And I’m lifted away
In an ancient light
That is not of day
They were calm, they were blunt
We knew them all too well
We loved each other more than
We ever dared to tell
Bob Dylan-‘Cross The Green Mountain
Things Change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzwHyXIxkXs
And we’re all products of inbreeding? That explains everything.
If you take The Bible literally,you shouldn’t be teaching ‘history’.
Literal is as literal does. All history is written by the winners, until it isn’t.
I’ve been teaching formally and informally for the better part of 30 years. In that time history has “evolved” in multiple waves. When I was a child I learned the H. W. Longfellow version of history. Now when I teach “The midnight ride of Paul Revere”, I teach the whole story, Paul Revere, William Dawes, Sam Prescott, Israel Bissell and even Sybil Ludington, the fact that Revere was captured before he finished his ride, the fact that “the British are coming” would have made no sense to anyone since the colonists were all “British” (what they said was “the regulars are coming”). Where there is a record or other reliable primary source, I use it, where there isn’t I try to present all of the interpretations of the event.
All that said, I wasn’t around when the world was formed and I’ve yet to see unequivocal evidence of evolution, lots of evidence of selection, but not evolution. The big bang suggests the universe is still expanding but Wetterich suggests that it is actually shrinking. I’ll continue to present all the possibilities, probabilities and options until the “trumpet sounds” or I see equivocal evidence one way or the other or the bus hits me and I simply cease to exist.
While not completely possible, I try to prevent my personal opinions, beliefs and bias from coloring the presentation of historical events. When asked by a student, I will opine on subjects within my scope of knowledge but I studiously avoid doing so in a normal classroom presentation.
I won’t be getting married.The one and only love of my life died.The last thing this world needs is more children from serial marriages;people who fall in lust,repeatedly,and don’t really want their children.What an awful thing to do to the innocent victims of heterosexual marriage.
Sorry to hear that.
Have you ever sucked a big dick? You’d love it.
Appears you are trying to solicit sex with children. Shame on you!
Sounds like you need some lessons…I bet you’re a natural…
Just an Allen Wilson and Nicky Haley Fund Raising Project.
They can’t win and they know it. Just playing to their audience while giving hundreds of thousands of SC Tax Payer money to their Trial Lawyer buddies. Who will in turn, plow money back into Wilson’s and Haley’s Campaign funds.
SAD SAD SAD playing to the fools.
T-Rav doesn’t marry them, he just bangs them.
The opinions of the ignorant, such as yours, have no consequence and are entitled to no consideration.
Thank you for your consideration in your reply. Fool.
Gay marriage will ruin the sanctity of marriage…
Sincerely,
T Rav
Trash
You are a fool.How’s your Ebola?
Lovely, yours?
I never said anything about “…the best interest of people…”. It is in the interest of the state for unions to produce offspring and thus taxpayers.
Snappy retort, no what?
Good choice for a governmental model…
Absolutely not. The coupling of a man and woman is the only union capable of raising a biological family. It is not required that they raise a family.