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I think the US Supreme Court will rule 5 to 4, or even 6 to 3 (since they would want to be on the right side of history) that the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, passed when the Republican Party stood up for what was right instead of being a vehicle for crazed Fundies, applies to gays as well as everyone else.
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Amendment XIV
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
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The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution was passed by both houses on 8th June and the 13th June, 1866. The amendment was designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves. It did this by prohibiting states from denying or abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Most Southern states refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore Radical Republicans such as Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Benjamin Wade, Henry Winter Davies and Benjamin Butler urged the passing of further legislation to impose these measures on the former Confederacy. The result was the 1867 Reconstruction Acts that divided the South into five military districts controlled by martial law, proclaimed universal manhood suffrage and required the new state constitutions to be drawn up.
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The Fundies know that equality is a constitutionally protected right, and that's why they are pushing for this constitutional amendment that would also ban civil unions as well as "marriage."
Gay "marriage" is what many people object to, even though I think most would probably be tolerant about giving "rights." I think some people are also afraid of the “slippery slope” theory, in which people eventually end up walking down the aisle with a horse.
I don’t really think that fear is justified though in the slightest, and it’s completely irrational.
This whole mess is caused by not having true separation of church and state when it comes to marriage in the first place.
I say we pass a Constitutional Amendment barring Elvis from performing weddings to drunken pop stars in Vegas if we really want to protect the "sanctity" (religious word) of marriage.
Read this and then tell me you're going to take their marriage license away from them:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...-2004Feb12.html
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San Francisco Opens Marriage to Gay Couples
By Joe Dignan and Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A01
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 12 -- The ceremony, arranged in great haste, was brief and held behind the closed doors of a dreary municipal office. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, a lesbian couple together for 50 years, stood facing each other and beamed when a city official pronounced them not husband and wife but "spouses for life.''
They had not become domestic partners, or joined in a civil union. The couple, both pioneering activists in the gay rights movement, had signed full-fledged marriage licenses and been wed with San Francisco's official blessing, a momentous step that city leaders said has no precedent.
Gay activists vowed to defend San Francisco's action. "This is a civil rights movement from coast to coast that touches real people and will not stop until equality is achieved," said Evan Wolfson, executive director of the group Freedom to Marry.
As couples arrived to get married and other lined up for marriage license papers, Martin, 83, and Lyon, 79, avoided the celebrations around City Hall and went home after their private ceremony. Afterward, Lyon said that she was sure the ceremonies would be challenged in court and was uncertain if they would be upheld. "God knows what's going to happen,'' she said.
But she said that she and Martin, who will celebrate their 51st anniversary together on Valentine's Day, were proud -- and amazed -- by what they had been at last allowed to do.
"Things are happening that we never dreamed of,'' Lyon said.
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I don't think most any court would be that heartless.
The only other people I actually know who have been together for over 50 years are my grandparents, and they've been together since middle school. Why should they be allowed to marry to express their love for each other while Martin and Lyon are not?
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