The Connecticut same-sex marriage bill passed overwhelmingly by the state legislature last night includes several provisions addressing concerns of religious-liberty advocates. Among them are these:
Sec. 501. (NEW) (Effective from passage) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a religious organization, association or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association or society, shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges to an individual if the request for such services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges is related to the solemnization of a marriage or celebration of a marriage and such solemnization or celebration is in violation of their religious beliefs and faith. Any refusal to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges in accordance with this section shall not create any civil claim or cause of action, or result in any state action to penalize or withhold benefits from such religious organization, association or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association or society.
Sec. 502. (NEW) (Effective from passage) The marriage laws of this state shall not be construed to affect the ability of a fraternal benefit society to determine the admission of members as provided in section 38a-598 of the general statutes or to determine the scope of beneficiaries in accordance with section 38a-636 of the general statutes, and shall not require a fraternal benefit society that has been established and is operating for charitable and educational purposes and which is operated, supervised or controlled by or in connection with a religious organization to provide insurance benefits to any person if to do so would violate the fraternal benefit society's free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States and section 3 of article first of the Constitution of the state.
Sec. 503. (NEW) (Effective from passage) Nothing in this act shall be deemed or construed to affect the manner in which a religious organization may provide adoption, foster care or social services if such religious organization does not receive state or federal funds for that specific program or purpose.
(HT: Robin Wilson.)
It looks like the bill will also reaffirm the principle, which has never been contested, that no religious official will be required to officiate at or solemnize a same-sex marriage. And, as in similar laws around the country, it looks like the bill will allow parents to opt out of any marriage instruction for their children in the public schools.
The bill obviously draws on the proposal made by the five academics whose ideas I discussed earlier today. It does omit some of the more problematic aspects of the proposal, such as providing an exemption to "any individual" and its specific reference to the "sincerity" of religious belief.
Lots of practical questions remain about proposals like this, but if enacting a same-sex marriage law comes down to a negotiation over how broadly to draft a religious-liberty exemption then the problem becomes soluble — not much different from any legislative matter. Over the past decade, the political fulcrum has shifted from no recognition (pre-2000) to civil unions (2000-09) to same-sex marriage with protection for religious dissenters (2009- ). That's a healthy shift, and should help address the kinds of concerns that sank gay marriage in California.
Related Posts (on one page):
I'm glad to see that this phrase from an earlier thread didn't make it into the bill. That would have been trouble.
That said, a religious organization that disagreed with interracial marriage, cross-religious marriage or remarriage shouldn't be forced to perform such ceremonies either or be penalized in any way by the government for such refusal.
If a couple wanted a marriage recognized by the state, it would obtain a marriage license and have vows administered by a public official. If a couple wanted a marriage to be recognize by a church, it would conduct an additional ceremony in that church.
The government wouldn't interfere with religious beliefs, church doctrine or church operations. The church would be uninvolved in government functions, from issuing drivers' licenses or dog licenses to admninistering wedding vows or deciding who should be married.
Can religious adoption agencies refuse to assist gay couples?
Can a photographer refuse to photograph a gay marriage on grounds of conscience?
The latter two infringements on freedom of conscience have already occurred, and I see nothing in the conscience provisions here that would protect against them.
Seems like a rather thin diet for the conscientious objectors to gay marriage to me.
Nice job to the CT legislature, that could have been bad.
Is this a redundant dead letter, at least under federal precedent?
Of course it is trivially true that Free Exercise rights trump the marriage statute (so the clause is redundant). And, under Employment Division, a law requiring insurance benefits that only incidentally impacts religious belief does not violate Free Exercise (so the clause is a dead letter).
SSM may or may not be different in kind in a way that justifies the government refusing to recognize it. But once it is legal, I'm not sure what is different about it in a way that justifies carving out exemptions for "conscience" as to SSM but not as to other instances of "conscience."
I don't think anyone is advocating forcing religious organizations to preform any sort of ceremonies whatsoever, SSM or otherwise. What's at issue is applying anti-discrimination law to the provision of goods and services. Why should the law protect people who don't want to rent the hall to SSM couples, not but protect people who don't want to rent the hall to, for instance, interracial couples? In what way is that principled?
Any Constitutional mandate on marriage applies only to government actors. It is entirely within a legislature's perogative to determine the extent private actors must comply (assuming the private actors' Constitutional rights aren't impermissibly infringed).
Why should the law do either of those things?
You are begging the question. If the legislature decides that there is a substantial difference between SSM and interracial marriage then it's not unreasonable to treat them differently under the law.
That's the point. They want to punish people who disagree, but who aren't actually solemnizing a so-called homosexual "marriage."
Disagreement remains protected. Disagreement which leads to the performance of certain acts is prohibited. That's how the law works. If a white man thinks he should be allowed to kill black men for looking at a white woman the wrong way, he remains free to say so (as long as he stays away from true threats). If he then kills a black man for looking at a white woman the wrong way, he's guilty of Murder One.
Cheers,
Really? What, exactly, makes a religious person's conscience-based belief about gays more worthy of protection than a religious person's conscience-based belief about interracial couples, or inter-faith marriages? For that matter, what makes it more worthy of protection than a libertarian's conscience-based belief that the state should not dictate to whom he should sell services?
And is there any other instance in which the state generally prohibits discrimination, but carves out one type of discrimination based on one subset of religious beliefs and protects it?
Oh really? So if it's your religious belief that homosexuality is a sin, and you're fired because your employer learned of that religious belief and doesn't want people working for it that hold such beliefs, do you seriously think that a court is going to rule that you were unfairly terminated in violation of the religious protections of the civil rights acts?
Disagreement is not protected. The entire purpose behind the homosexual rights movement is to normalize their acts and punish people who disagree. It has the effect of criminalizing Christianity.
And excuse me if I don't think that the Black Robed Elite are going to uphold religious freedom in the face of gay rights, which they are substantially more in favor of than religious freedom.
I know it's still early in the season, but I nominate this statement for an award in the category of "Best Over-the-Top Hyperbole" of 2009.
And they'd get to wear those fabulous vestments!
I specifically referenced Employment Division in my post.
Assume, for the moment, that I accept your premise. If it is true, then how is the gay issue different than any other issue? In other words, wouldn't the same court let an employer fire me for thinking that gay marriage is not a sin, or for any other belief? If so, why is it suddenly so much more terrible to be eligible for being fired over this one additional subject?
But I don't accept your premise, in point of fact. Judges routinely allow wrongful termination cases to proceed to trial, and juries routinely award damages, when people are fired based on religious beliefs not material to their jobs. Google it. It took me roughly three seconds to find the first one. Hey, and a few seconds later, I found a black-robed tyrant awarding a guy money because AT&T fired him for refusing to sign a diversity policy which, by implying acceptance of homosexuals, violated his religious beliefs. I could Google this all day and find more and more, you know.
Unless, of course, you are suggesting that courts previously protected people from religion-based termination, but the acceptance of gay marriage will now somehow weaken the fabric of the rule of law, as it has weakened the fabric of marriage, and allow employers to fire Christians at will. In which case I must respectfully, if not without rolling my eyes, disagree.
The legislature need not provide a reason when it decides which types of private-actor discrimination are prohibited.
That being said, legislatures are carving out this exception because there are enough voters who either believe homosexuality is "what you do" not "who you are", or are tolerant of that belief.
Of course you can find prior instances of court action protecting religious people. You are correct, however, in suggesting that I do not think that judges will do so in the future. I do think judges will permit employers to fire Christians at will, particularly because of their personal bias in favor of gay rights. It will be upheld as promoting public policy, or some other lib excuse.
Remember, Obama wants to appoint judges who sympathize with particular parties before the Court. That's why he voted against Roberts. Obama's not alone in this regards. The entire point behind modern liberalism's approach to judicial philosophy is to put a thumb on the scales of justice: to favor the poor over the rich, racial and sexual minorities over majorities, the "oppressed" over the "powerful", etc.
You're basically saying that you have so much faith in the judicial system, notwithstanding that liberals and basically the entire Democratic party support outcome-based judging, and notwithstanding that in survey after survery judges overwhelmingly favor gay rights over religious freedom, that you think Christians will continue to be protected in America. I don't think that you should roll your eyes at the possibility that such protection might not continue.
I understand the fear, though I do not find it credible. But here's what I find particularly incredible -- what sign is there that the growing acceptance of gay marriage will provoke judicial lawlessness more than general acceptance of gays? In other words, if there is to be a flood of judges defying the law and abandoning their oaths to persecute Christians in favor of gays, why hasn't it happened yet? Where are the cases where judges dismissed complaints on the grounds of "public policy," as you suggest? Where's the evidence?
My approach is based less on faith than on evidence -- the evidence of how judges have acted to date, and the lack of evidence that they will suddenly stop acting that way. Add to that the lack of logic supporting the proposition that gay marriage will suddenly push them over the edge into lawlessness, where widespread acceptance of gays did not.
Gay marriage is a red herring for generalized hostility to anti-discrimination principles.
If a couple wanted a marriage recognized by the state, it would obtain a marriage license and have vows administered by a public official. If a couple wanted a marriage to be recognize by a church, it would conduct an additional ceremony in that church.
That's what Mexico does actually (my wife and I were married there and the religious ceremony is only symbolic and carries no legal status -- you must have a state official do that), and I think is what Doug Kmiec has advocated as well. I think it's a good solution.
In Mexico, they basically combined the ceremonies for us, having the legal stuff first (which is fairly dry) and then following with the religious ceremony.
A potential problem with these provisions is the question of their long-term stability. By passing this language, Connecticut is creating special exceptions to general law. Absent a broad social consensus that sees these exceptions as part of our individual rights structure, I doubt that they are likely to endure. The Civil Rights Act provides a relatively narrow ministerial exception to general anti-discrimination prohibitions. This exception seems to be stable. But it is primarily a common sense provision that prevents the law from being an ass - as it would be if, in the name of ending discrimination on the basis of creed, it compelled Jewish seminaries to accept believing Christians as students and forbade synagogues from denying them installation as rabbis. What Connecticut has done is far broader, and hence likely less stable.
An earlier commenter suggested a fundamental equivalence between the respect the state owes gays (who, by and large, do not chose their orientation) and the respect the state owes those of religious conscience (who, by and large, do not choose their religious upbringing). I doubt such an equivalence would be socially stable, since the issue is so polarized now, and since the country undertook to eradicate just such inherited and traditional preconceptions concerning the equality of blacks. True, this issue is different insofar as it involves far more directly questions of religious doctrine, but if the asserted justification for the conscience exception is the unchosen near-immutability of religious upbringing, emphasis on the immutability rather than on the religion per se, then I don't think the country will buy it.
I'd like to know what Dale Carpenter, the conspirators, and commenters would think of a different proposal.
(1) Guarantee all non-profits broad free association rights - not merely as to membership, but also as to hiring and provision of services. Allow the government to require that these free-association privileges be relinquished if the government funds the non-profit directly, but not as a condition of tax exemptions. This would mean a modest roll-back of current anti-discrimination law, but would have the effect of protecting the overwhelming majority of religious institutions without giving them a special exception that no one else gets.
(2) Broaden free speech guarantees. Clarify that mere belief, and the non-hostile statement of such belief, does not constitute discrimination. Perhaps even create a cause of action in employment law to offset the tendency of companies to terminate unnecessarily as a lawsuit-avoidance strategy. Prohibit gate-keeper institutions such as professional societies, where no crime has been committed, from denying or revoking certification on the basis of tests of mere belief or of "speech extraneous to the positive minimum necessary in professional practice." (We might have to deal specially with classroom contexts in education and therapeutic contexts in the mental health professions.)
(3) Prohibit to states and professional societies the authority to revoke certification or licensure if an individual, not acting as an agent of the state, refers away a job, client, or patient. Do not deny the ability of employers to terminate at-will in such cases.
None of this would protect our wedding photographer, but these proposals would have the effect of protecting most of the places where religious conscience would run afoul of anti-discrimination law and the sensibilities of bureaucratic officialdom - but without giving religious conscience a special (and therefore probably unstable) exemption from general law.
It has happened:
Your post is evidence in support of Ex-Fed's claim that "[g]ay marriage is a red herring for generalized hostility to anti-discrimination principles."
Oh, you mean "punishment" in the form of private discrimination. It should get the same treatment as belief in the racist Christian theology of the South or belief in Mormon theology as it existed on June 5, 1978: it should be treated as absolutely verboten as a matter of social norm. It should be treated the same way under laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion as well.
Normalize gay sex? Sounds good to me. Punish people who disagree (through social sanction and private discrimination)? Sounds good to me as well. Most of us in the gay rights movement would agree with me.
How either of those things amounts to "criminalizing Christianity" is entirely beyond me. Neither of them involves any criminal sanctions, for one thing. There are also plenty of pro-marriage, pro-family Christians, though I suppose you will tell me that True Christians (tm) are anti-marriage and anti-family.
Personally, I would go for the reverse route and allow any adult to solemnize a legal marriage, or get rid of the officiant requirement entirely and allow self-uniting marriages in every state. No need to involve the state in anything more than filing the paperwork.
Chai Feldblum, professor at Georgetown, has been influential in crafting pro-homosexual laws.
This is what she has to say about the conflicts between religious beliefs and homosexual rights:
Don't you mean "Go Huskies"? This is Connecticut we're talking about here, not Iowa.
Last I checked, religious discrimination was prohibited by law via the Civil Rights Act. If an employer learns of a religious belief of an employee and fires him because of that belief, that is illegal. Do you or do you not support the law permitting people to be fired on the basis of a religious belief that homosexuality is a sin?
Do not. The treatment should be the same as the treatment given to believers in the Southern Christian or the pre-6/6/1978 Mormon theology of black inferiority.
Losing your job isn't "private discrimination" under anti-discriminatory statutes in public accommodations.
In no particular order:
1. The William Patterson University incident does not support the notion that judges will ignore settled law. The case resolved, as your own quote demonstrates, when the university retreated -- probably because FIRE's advocacy convincingly demonstrated that they were in legal jeopardy.
2. I fail to see how the personal opinion of a Georgetown professor regarding how rights should be balanced -- however influential that professor has been in "crafting pro-homosexual laws" -- is evidence that the judiciary will abandon settled legal principles en masse in pursuit of the dreaded Gay Agenda.
3. The now-circulated-everywhere Washington Post article you cite does not support your position either. None of those cases involve a Christian being refused the protection of the law after being fired for expressing a view about gays. The list mostly consists of anti-discrimination laws being applied to people offering goods and services to the public. And as much as I like Jonathan Turley, his conclusion is hysteric. Also, please note that most of those cases involved relating to gays in general, not to gay marriage -- further highlighting, as jrose suggests, that your quarrel is with antidiscrimination principles in general, not with gay marriage in particular.
Also, I'm still very interested in a citation to the studies you referenced showing that judges overwhelmingly favored "gay rights over religious freedom."
I was responding to the use of the term "punish" to describe what most of us in the pro-gay movement want to do to the homophobic. I was attempting to distinguish government prohibitions from discrimination by private (i.e., non-government) parties. I agree that public accommodations are (and should be) subject to antidiscrimination laws. My position continues to be that the antidiscrimination laws should offer the same degree of protection to believers in anti-gay theology that they offer to believers in racist theology.
Your original dismissive reply was that the hypothetical was justified "punishment" in the form of private discrimination. But, the hypothetical was about losing your job. And I take it, you don't believe the homophobe or racist should lose his job.
On your William Patterson University case, doesn't it occur to you that the school backed down when threatened with a lawsuit? That doesn't sound like evidence of judicial lawlessness to me. In fact, it sounds like the exact opposite.
Where do you get the idea that just because the public shuns a position that it censorship will become the result sought by the judiciary?
I can think of a long line of cases, including DeAngelis v. El Paso Mun. Police Officers’ Ass’n which lays out specific criteria for harassment claims which are not anywhere near what you seem to think they are. I would think furthermore that a single email in no way would be considered "pervasive" enough to constitute harassment. In reality, there is a requirement that the unwelcome comments be sufficiently pervasive to affect the ability of someone to do his/her job productively. Furthermore, my reading of the cases would be that they would be limited to specific environments, so hiring David Duke as a division manager wouldn't be sufficient for Catholics, Jews, or black folk who report to him to claim harassment despite the fact that the hostility of the KKK to to these groups is well known. In fact, even if Duke were then to advocate genocide at KKK rallies, this would still likely be outside the scope of Title VII.
What makes you think that this is going to change?
After a cursory read, your proposal sounds reasonable. I do have a couple of questions on interpretation, however.
For (1), what qualifies as, "funds the non-profit directly?" Does that mean an actual grant to the organization, or does it include assistance for participation in activities supported by government for more general reasons (i.e.- operating homeless shelters, providing adoption services (the Catholic Charities case), etc.)? What about government funding to individuals (i.e.- PELL grants) that attend non-profit institutions?
For (3), if the law should prohibit states and professional associations from revoking licenses, why not just allow individuals to refer away a job, client, or patient, provided that service is generally available. Revocation of a license seems a far less likely danger than legal action by a client. That would cover our wedding photographer, but not corporations, which I don't believe (IANAL) have a right of consciencious objection anyway. Besides, I honestly don't understand why someone would want to contract a service (be it wedding photography or psychological counseling) from someone who doesn't find their lifestyle moral. Ever hear of the concept: if you want it real bad, you'll get it real bad.
The can believe anything they want, the line would be crossed if they called someone else a sinner. They have a right to their religion, they don't have a right to involve others in a public fantasy that other employees or customers or whatever share their religion or its tenets.
But a question:
"…shall not be required to provide… …and such solemnization or celebration is in violation of their religious beliefs and faith."
How does this clause NOT also include remarriage for the divorced, interracial couples, those who think Jews are servants of Satan, etc? Seems pretty broad to me.
Generally, the modern left is at war with traditional values and specifically at war with organizations that promote them like traditional Christian churches. I think the trend is clearly in favor of persecution of those traditional churches. Religious freedom has been narrowed in many ways via an imperial judiciary or bigoted legislators that are hostage to the latest left-wing trends. For instance, Catholic Charities is deemed not to be a "religious employer" and hence is forced to provide contraception coverage, in violation of its religious beliefs. Catholic adoption services are forced to end adoptions because they could not, as the state license required them to, provide adoptions to homosexuals. Libs are attacking privately-run pharmacists who refuse to distribute birth control, in violation of their religious beliefs. Now religious groups and actors are being forced to cater to gay marriages in various ways.
I find it troubling that one of the most recognized academics who is known for creating homosexual rights laws cannot fathom a single situation where religious freedom should prevail. I find it extremely troubling that the NJ State Attorney General believes that speech that violates nondiscrimination policy isn't protected.
These trends aren't going away and are increasing. As I mentioned, the left is wholly committed towards outcome-based judging and has entire constituencies devoted to it. Left-wing judges have no shame in writing opinions that have nothing to do with the law and everything to do with those outcomes. The left's demand for their outcomes in the face of narrowing religious rights could create serious problems.
For instance, I think it's only a matter of time before Catholic hospitals are forced to provide abortion and contraceptive services, and Catholic doctors forced - at the cost of losing their license - to perform abortions. Additionally, I think that Catholic pharmacists who refuse to provide contraception could face punishment and loss of their licenses as well. That's only the beginning. Civil penalties, jail, etc are all next.
Offering "goods and services to the public" becomes an open-ended tool to destroy religious freedom and force religious people and organizations out of the public sphere. That is the criminalization of Christianity currently being undertaken by the left-wing in America.
Firing a purported "sinner" is discrimination. Thinking and saying they are a sinner without acting on it is not (unless it rises to the level of a "hostile work environment"). If your boss thinks gays are inferior, he's stupid. Even if he says so on rare occasions, he's just being discourteous (but you may want to make sure that these opinions of his are well-known). If he refuses health coverage to same-sex spouses he should be tried in the public court first, and (as long as there are anti-discrimination laws) in the actual Court second.
How is calling a someone else a "sinner" any different that calling them a "whore" or a "moron" or a "fag"?
Yes, if you can proscribe the last 3 you can the first.
And given that hostile workplace doesn't even have to be related to behavior directed at the victim....
However, my reading of hostile workplace cases is that it must be quite pervasive. I can't imagine a court entertaining that one person calling another any of those names on a one-off basis during an argument would constitute hostile workplace harassment. However if, for example the individual saw a note on his desk every day saying "fags are sinners" that would almost certainly be pervasive enough. IANAL, though.
If someone is suing for damages yes. But for them to be fired the bar is much lower, all they have to do is be a disruptive influence at work. Single episode, no - but continued behavior after being told to stop? Of course they can be fired. It might be someone's deeply held belief that people who believe in an afterlife are morons - but they would have no exception of keeping a job if they shared that opinion repeatedly with coworkers or customers.
First, part of the problem is that pure free exercise is pretty much a dead right as applied to the states. To the extent that it is protected, it is usually tied into some other right (see Smith v. Employment Division). Basically, religious free exercise protections are so weak that they are effectively subsumed in substantive due process protections.
So on a pure level, I can't think of any case on the state level where the current understanding of free exercise would trump just about anything else because ANY rational basis currently trumps it provided that the law is generally applicable.
However, that sort of analysis is quite misleading. There are a great many composite rights where free exercise comes into play along with some other right. In these cases, the protection is quite a bit stronger. So for example, administering communion would affect freedoms of speech, free exercise of religion, and association. The same would be said about religious folk solemnizing weddings.
While I can't see any reason why the state under current undertandings couldn't, say, criminalize giving children alcoholic substances as part of communion, this would run into fewer problems than saying "the church may not refuse to give communion to persons who are divorced and remarried."
Similarly, in cases where one worries about discrimination on the basis of religious belief and practice, there are many rights which are so much stronger as to effectively subsume religious freedom. Freedom of speech and association are good examples.
Thanks for the reply. For (1) the government would be able to require broader association on the part of a non-profit in cases of direct funding for any purpose (your example of providing homeless shelters would be a possibility). But it would have to be actual funding, not tax exemptions, and not any other public benefits like licensure (the Catholic Charities case), recognition of accreditation, or use of public spaces, etc. I would, however, add the caveat that "disparate demands shall not be made on differently-associating non-profits funded to provide substantially similar services."
Individuals are not non-profits, so they don't come directly within my #1. I think your concern (with Pell grants) is more about schools. Currently the government regards educational grants as given to individuals, not to the schools they attend. I would not change this. So, under my proposal, Pell grants would not give the government cause to impose restrictions on non-profit schools, although funding for research would.
Schools are a difficult case because many are at least partially reliant on public funds they receive indirectly through the students that enroll, and only a constitutional amendment could really guarantee restrictively-associating schools continued access to this student aid. But if gay rights becomes a less rancorous issue because gays gain fuller social and legal equality, there is unlikely to be a legislative push to do this - both sides can live and let live. I think the greatest danger to schools concerning student aid is not legislative but bureaucratic. Accrediting boards could become more ideological; the Department of Education could encourage or go along with such a move, making restrictively-associating schools de facto ineligible. By forbidding the government from denying non-profits any public benefit on the basis of its associative choices (other than direct funding) we shut down the bureaucrats and leave it to the legislators.
Your re-casting of my (3) as an individual right to "refer away a job, client, or patient, provided that the service is generally available" works conceptually, but I need help seeing how it could work legally. After all, photographers incorporate to limit their liability, so would the incorporated photographic business have the right?
I agree that a restriction on government licensing agencies is meaningless if the act of referring away is itself subject to legal sanction. My concentration on licensing bureaucrats and professional societies stems from my perception that they are more likely than legislatures to come to believe it their moral duty to cleanse a profession of discriminators. The risk with legislatures is often ham-handedness - they are frequently open to reasonable compromise so long as they actually realize that they're treading on someone's feet. Not so with bureaucrats.
I should note that professional societies and other gatekeeping organizations are usually non-profits, and so also could avail themselves of my suggested protections under (1). The gist of my (2) and (3) as concerns such organizations would have to be to bar the state from denying benefits by exclusive delegation to organizations pursuing tests otherwise prescribed to the state. I am quite certain that, faced with the prospect of the state recognizing or creating another rival gatekeeper, the gatekeepers would back off such tests.
Finally, the biggest objection I expect to my proposal item (1) would be that racists could exploit it. I have some ways to deal with that, but this comment is already too long and I'll save them for later.
The Connecticut legislature is passing a SSM law because the Connecticut supreme court forced it to. This is not a "shift of the political fulcrum." It is, however, doubleplus ungood. 2 + 2 = 5.
Sk
I live in an at-will state. You can be fired for no reason whatsoever. So I don't see a problem.
Second
Forced?
I suppose you're right. See some cases in Canada, however.
I know there's a border there and all, but a number of speech-control types think Canada's the model.
"The Connecticut legislature is passing a SSM law because the Connecticut Supreme Court forced it to.
Forced?"
Below is a quote from one of Dale's earlier posts, linked to in the original post.
"Likewise, the Connecticut legislature is considering a bill to bring the state's marriage statute in line with the state supreme court's decision last year in Kerrigan v. Comm'r of Pub. Health, which mandated that the state allow same-sex couples to marry."
"forced," I suppose, doesn't mean the same as 'mandated?'
(black is white, up is down, work is freedom).
Sk
Are you saying there were no other choices available to the Connecticut legislature? Like, say, get rid of state recognition of marriages altogether?
Can they even do that, given that marriage is a fundamental right under the federal constitution? Turner and Zablocki can be distinguished, but the issue is far from open and shut.
No, I'm not saying it. I'm saying Dale said it.
I'll repeat the relevant sentence from my post (three times) in the hopes that you will read it this time.
"..the state supreme court's decision last year in Kerrigan v. Comm'r of Pub. Health, which mandated that the state allow same-sex couples to marry"
"...the state supreme court's decision ...which mandated that the state allow same-sex couples to marry"
"...the state supreme court...mandated that the state allow same-sex couples to marry..."
Still confused?
Sk
On a political level, the point is that the State Reps and Senators took the pulse of their constituencies and came to the group decision of "yea, we're cool with that" and passed the bill. And Jodi Relle, bless her little pea-picking heart, said, "yeah, I'm cool with it too" and signed it. So it's a fact that the Legislature and Governor freely signed on to SSM when they could have been tied up in Constitutional Amendments, and/or crafting some other sort of anti-SSM legislation that would have thrown it back in the courts.
In our three-branch system of government, leadership can come from different places. The fact that it was the SG that took the first step in the case in no way diminishes the fact that all three branches of government had their say, and said the same thing.
If you have a comment about spelling, typos, or format errors, please e-mail the poster directly rather than posting a comment.
Comment Policy: We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we'd rather you went elsewhere. We're happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.
We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can't possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don't read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.
And remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.