The MA gay marriage ruling was brought to the US Supreme court and they DECLINED to take the case.

To the Florida Conservative Group who wasted the US Supreme Court's time...go home and PRAY FOR GOD TO GIVE YOU THE GIFT OF TOLERANCE.


Supreme Court declines Massachusetts same-sex marriage fight
Conservatives had challenged state law allowing unions

Monday, November 29, 2004 Posted: 1:54 PM EST (1854 GMT)


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a dispute over same-sex marriages, rejecting a challenge to the nation's only law sanctioning such unions.

Justices had been asked by conservative groups to overturn the year-old decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage. They declined, without comment.

In the past year, at least 3,000 gay Massachusetts couples have wed, although voters may have a chance next year to change the state constitution to permit civil union benefits to same-sex couples, but not the institution of marriage.

Critics of the November 2003 ruling by the highest court in Massachusetts argue that it violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of a republican form of government in each state. They lost at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

Their attorney, Mathew Staver, said in a Supreme Court filing that the Constitution should "protect the citizens of Massachusetts from their own state supreme court's usurpation of power."

Federal courts, he said, should defend people's right "to live in a republican form of government free from tyranny, whether that comes at the barrel of a gun or by the decree of a court."

Merita Hopkins, a city attorney in Boston, had told justices in court papers that the people who filed the suit have not shown they suffered an injury and could not bring a challenge to the Supreme Court. "Deeply felt interest in the outcome of a case does not constitute an actual injury," she said.

Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly told justices that voters can overrule the Supreme Court by adopting a constitutional amendment.

The lawsuit was filed by the Florida-based Liberty Counsel on behalf of Robert Largess, the vice president of the Catholic Action League, and 11 state lawmakers.

The conservative law group had persuaded the Supreme Court in October to consider another high profile issue, the constitutionality of Ten Commandments displays on government property. The court agreed to look at that church-state issue before Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

He is working from home while receiving chemotherapy and radiation and will miss court sessions for the next two weeks.

State legislators will decide whether to put the issue before Massachusetts voters in November 2006. Voters in 11 states approved constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in November elections. President Bush has promised to make a federal anti-gay marriage amendment a priority of his second term.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court narrowly ruled that gays and lesbians had a right under the state constitution to wed.

The nation's high court had stayed out of the Massachusetts fight on a previous occasion. Last May, justices refused to intervene and block clerks from issuing the first marriage licenses.

The case is Largess v. Supreme Judicial Court of the State of Massachusetts, case no. 04-420.

Did they really waste much of their time in the first place, since they didnt't accept the case?

1. Decision of Massachusetts court was not "upheld". The US Court just denied certiorari, so the lower ruling stands, but it was not affirmed.



2. You bet they did. They had to be prepared that the court would accept cert, so they had done most of teh necessary work already.

--PunkDavid

Isn't this what you and I were just talking about last week?

Are you implying that I should join the threads?

More or less. What I'm waiting to see though is what happens when the challenges to the new ANTI-gay marriage measures make it to the Supreme Court, and when a gay couple from Massachusetts relocates to another state and tries to enforce their rights as a married couple in the new state. That's when things will start to get interesting. We'll see whether judges will be able to separate their personal prejudices from their interpreatations of Constitutional Law.

--PunkDavid

I'm confused. I was referring to "they" as the Supreme Court, not the Florida conservative group (as I clarified in brackets). Surely those Floridians wasted their time.

Okay..so I used "upheld" so that my title of my post would not be too long...

how is this:

"US Supreme Court Declines to review challenge to Massachusetts Gay Marriage Ruling"

and if I can change it, I will...

but you get the point, don't you?

And yes, it was a waste of time...I can only imagine the time and energy (and money) required to prepare a case to be reviewed by the USSC.

Punk David would know...he knows everything...

Given what you said in the past, I'd be interested about this as well. But I have a question (for either you, Chris, or anyone else): Can you give me examples of BOTH when a right of one state is de facto transferred to another state, and when it is not?

Better now????

Punkdavid, do you know where a girl can get some muscle relaxers or something? I have the worst back pain.

Anyway, I'll just never understand the big deal about gay marriage.

No implication here, just bold, straightforward statement . . .

The unfortunate thing is, we probably won't get a ruling from the supremes for at least three years from now. By that time, there's no telling who will be making the decisions.

Sorry, I was being a dick. Legal questions so often turn on using the correct terminology, I just wanted to clarify the actual situation.



Yeah, because of that one time I was ever in a courtroom.

--PunkDavid

Article IV US constitution

Section 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.


Section 2. The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.

Of course this issue is no where close to being settled, and some would argue that the Supreme Court dismissed an oppurtunity to clarify things a bit.

As discussed before on this board, there is a simple solution.

It happens all the time with sales taxes. When you buy a car in Michigan but live in Illinois, Michigan will still charge you 8.5% sales tax, 2.5% above what it charges its residents.

Before the legal drinking age of 21 became the national standard, some states' laws were that you merely had to be 18. If I got caught speeding in Ohio, where the state legal drinking age was 21, when I was a New York resident (where, for example (and argument's sake) the drinking age was 18 ), and had unopened alcohol in the car, I could be charged as a minor in possession. The same is applied today with fireworks. You can buy them in Indiana, where they are legal, but can't transfer them to Illinois, where they are illegal.

I'm well aware of what the Constitution says--I was looking for examples of this being executed, and to what extent.

This may be a poor example, but let me try this: an Idaho driver's license gives one the right to drive not only in Idaho, but in other states as well, as this article would imply. Now, Idaho allows people aged 15 to drive, but Oregon does not. Could a 15 year old therefore be allowed to drive in Oregon since Idaho has given him/her the license to do so?

I'm surprised MA hasn't fallen into a land of anarchy and buttsex. I thought conservatives really had it right with the whole "gay marriage is detrimental to society" thing.

Excellent. This is exactly what I was getting at. How do laws like these work in conjunction with the quoted part of the Constitution?

hilarious!

Legalized pedophilia, interbreed marriages, and people having sex with trees is all on the way...you'll see, and you'll be sorry when civilization is in ruins.

Isn't polygamy legal in Utah? If so, then would those poly-marriages (for want of a better word) be legal in other states? This would be a excellent precedence for MA married gays if it were...

anyone?