Can you smell the desperation in the air?

[Bill]

Antigay Group Wants Two Liberal Justices Off Marriage Case

When the U.S. Supreme Court takes up marriage equality, many court watchers are predicting a split decision, with the court’s four liberal justices ruling for equal marriage rights, the four conservatives against, and Justice Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote who’ll make the difference. But now one of the nation’s leading antigay hate groups wants two of the liberals to take themselves out of the mix.

The American Family Association says Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan should recuse themselves from hearing the marriage case the court has accepted because both have officiated same-sex marriage ceremonies.

“Both of these justices’ personal and private actions that actively endorse gay marriage clearly indicate how they would vote on same-sex marriage cases before the Supreme Court,” said AFA president Tim Wildmon in a press release issued Friday. “Congress has directed that federal judicial officers must disqualify themselves from hearing cases in specified circumstances. Both Kagan and Ginsburg have not only been partial to same-sex marriage but they have also proven themselves to be activists in favor of it. In order to ensure the Court’s integrity and impartiality, both should recuse themselves from same-sex marriage cases. Congress has an obligation to Americans to see that members of the Supreme Court are held to the highest standards of integrity. The law demands it, and the people deserve it.” The organization is urging its supporters to write their members of Congress, demanding that the elected officials demand the justices’ recusal.

http://www.advocate.com/politics/ma...roup-wants-two-liberal-justices-marriage-case

I do have to admit they are winning the war on one front... BEING REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING!

 

[tampa24]

Agreed Bill. They're grasping at straws. lol

I don't see how they can uphold gay marriage bans in some states and not others. They are either legal and constitutional in all states of the Union or they are illegal and unconstitutional in all the states. Given that the S.C. has refused to hear any last minute appeals from state attorneys general to uphold gay marriage bans, it strongly leads one to believe the Supremes know that the lower courts made the right call. And that's true whether the most conservative of the judges on the court like it or not. If by some remote chance the S.C. rules that gay marriage bans are legal and constitutional, they will disenfranchise thousands and thousands of U.S. citizens all over the country who are already married or wanting to get married. Then you would have to get into the thorny question of whether these previously performed gay marriages are nationally now null and void. It would be a social equivalent of telling black U.S. citizens that they had to return to riding in the back of the bus.

The I.R.S. already allows gay married couples to file joint tax returns even if gay marriage is not yet legal in the states in which they currently reside. Would the Supreme Court dare to tell the Feds to stop doing that? To stop legally recognizing all of these married couples nationwide? They're just not going to be able to tell a majority of now 36 states that they have it all wrong and the remaining 14 have it right.

We've already reached the point of critical mass with the number of states where gay marriage is legal. We are fortunate that this case did reach the S.C. when only 1-5 sates had legalized gay marriage. Then it would have been a real cliffhanger. But not now. The current legal and constitutional question before us now, has a class of taxpaying U.S. citizens being treated as separate and unequal in the eyes of the law. It doesn't take a renowned legal scholar with decades of experience and a near fluency in Latin, to be able to comprehend that.

We will watch this Supreme Court decision play out with great interest because the stakes are so high. But I'm not terribly worried. I don't see how they can play Solomon and try to split the baby in half with some weak compromise between the two sides. They will have to say definitively that gay marriage (or the denial thereof) is either constitutional everywhere or it's constitutional nowhere. I'm confident they will reach the right conclusion.

 

[Bill]

You wrote pretty much how I feel tampa24. The Supremes have one of two choices, Make Marriage equality the law of the land or ban marriage equality altogether. If they ban marriage equality altogether, then what would happen to all the thousands of marriages that have already been performed? Yes there is marriage equality in 36 States, but in 26 of those States (ours included (Florida), are all on appeals).

In the heat of our political moment, we sometimes don’t see how our future connects deeply to our past. But the Christian Right does — and they do not like what they see.

The Christian Right has made religious freedom the ideological phalanx of its current campaigns in the culture wars. Religious freedom is now invoked as a way of seeking to derail access to reproductive health services as well as equality for LGBTQ people, most prominently regarding marriage equality.

But history provides little comfort for the theocratic visions of the Christian Right. And that is where our story begins.

For all of the shouting about religious liberty — from the landmark Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, to the passage of the anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Mississippi, and more — there is barely any mention, let alone any observance, of the official national Religious Freedom Day, enacted by Congress in 1992 and recognized every January 16 by an annual presidential proclamation.

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2014/12/the-christian-right-does-not-want-you-to-know-about-this-day/

The above article is why I believe that when the Supreme Court does rule, it will be a 6-3 decision based solely on our constitution & our founding fathers.

The U.S. Constitution is for expanding and protecting personal rights of a person, not limiting them.

Peace
Bill

 

[juanjo]

Scalia once sat on a case where his son was the attorney who had represented one of the sides and where Thomas' wife was a lobbyist for the business whose case it was. Neither of them recused themselves.