It seems like the Dems will be taking both houses of Congress.

[chequita guevara]

I assume Congress is immune to whistleblower laws.

[DinoDoc]

Do you ever stop pwning yourself Oerdin? Unless of course you'd like to tell me how these guys are an arm of either the Republican party or Congress. I'd be interested.

[Dinner]

It seems the court ruling in New Jersey which said the state had to allow gay couples to have the same legal and economic rights as straight couples has had an impact on the state's senate race. The Democrat was 9 points ahead in the polls but is now only 2-3 points ahead. Bush is supposedly campaigning nonstop using his same tired speech about "liberal judges trying to destroy marriage".

It's garbage but stupid people buy it and right now the Republicans are trying to drum up a few more stupid people.

[Drake Tungsten]

Bush is supposedly campaigning nonstop using his same tired speech about "liberal judges trying to destroy marriage".

They aren't?

At any rate, you can't blame Bush for the New Jersey State Supreme Court being too stupid to wait until after the elections to approve gay marriage...

[Imran Siddiqui]

... but they didn't approve gay 'marriage'.

[Drake Tungsten]

No, but the wording of the opinion leaves the door open for further litigation if the New Jersey state legislature allows gays the benefits of marriage under some arrangement other than "marriage". The opinion also gives little reason to think that the Supreme Court would find in favor of the state should someone object that civil unions or the like really aren't equal to marriage. It's pretty clearly a victory for supporters of gay marriage.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Only under a very tortured reading of the opinion. They said you just have to have the same rights and it is up to the legislature to decide if it is marriage or civil unions. I think it is incredibly, incredibly unlikely for the Court to rule that civil unions aren't equal to marriage... if they thought that they could have just made that ruling instead of making the legislature choose.

The ruling was 4-3, and I'm sure that saying gay marriage should be allowed would not have garnered the majority number of votes.

[Ramo]

It's basically the same decision that the Vermont Supreme Court had in '99. And after their legislature passed a civil unions bill, that was the end of the story.

[Drake Tungsten]

I think it is incredibly, incredibly unlikely for the Court to rule that civil unions aren't equal to marriage...

Why?

The question then is, having closed the gap with respect to all rights in marriage, what basis could there possibly be not to close the remaining gap with respect to equal status in marriage?

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_10_22-2006_10_28.shtml#1161826380

There doesn't seem to be any basis and the court can't just ignore that like a legislature can. Civil unions in New Jersey will most likely last as long as it takes for the legal challenge to them to make it to the NJ Supreme Court...

if they thought that they could have just made that ruling instead of making the legislature choose.

They could have made that ruling. They just didn't have the balls (or as you say, the votes) to do so.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

I think it is incredibly, incredibly unlikely for the Court to rule that civil unions aren't equal to marriage...

Why?

The question then is, having closed the gap with respect to all rights in marriage, what basis could there possibly be not to close the remaining gap with respect to equal status in marriage?

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_10_22-2006_10_28.shtml#1161826380

There doesn't seem to be any basis and the court can't just ignore that like a legislature can. Civil unions in New Jersey will most likely last as long as it takes for the legal challenge to them to make it to the NJ Supreme Court...

The fact that the Court didn't just say gays can now get married, like they did in Massachusetts. If the NJ Supreme Court thought civil unions were not equal to gay marriage then they could have JUST ALLOWED GAY MARRIAGE! The fact that they said the legislature can choose between gay marriage and civil unions indicates that they feel civil unions are adequate to satisfy the equal protection demands of the state Constitution...

And precedent would demand that if a challenge was brought up that civil unions and gay marriage aren't the same, that it refer to this opinion where it says for equal protection they ARE the same, as long as the benefits are equal.

They could have made that ruling. They just didn't have the balls (or as you say, the votes) to do so.

And what in the world makes you think they'll have the votes when/if a challenge comes up? Magical change in heart?

And as Ramo said, this opinion is basically Vermont's and after the legislature passed civil unions that has been the end of it. No overturning of civil unions because they aren't equal to marriage. If Vermont hasn't done it, why would New Jersey? Sounds like blatant scaremongering to me to think they would rule in such a way in another case.

[Drake Tungsten]

And precedent would demand that if a challenge was brought up that civil unions and gay marriage aren't the same, that it refer to this opinion where it says for equal protection they ARE the same, as long as the benefits are equal.

The opinion doesn't say that. It says...

We will not presume that a separate statutory scheme, which uses a title other than marriage, contravenes equal protection principles, so long as the rights and benefits of civil marriage are made equally available to same-sex couples.

Basically, the court leaves the question of whether or not civil unions (or whatever New Jersey decides to call them) are equal to marriage for another day. They punted on the issue.

Here's another example of the court avoiding the question...

Raised here is the perplexing question – “what’s in a name?� – and is a name itself of constitutional magnitude after the State is required to provide full statutory rights and benefits to same-sex couples? We are mindful that in the cultural clash over same-sex marriage, the word marriage itself – independent of the rights and benefits of marriage – has an evocative and important meaning to both parties. Under our equal protection jurisprudence, however, plaintiffs’ claimed right to the name of marriage is surely not the same now that equal rights and benefits must be conferred on same-sex couples.

In the words of someone better aquainted with the issue than myself...

The court has not shut the door to a claim for the status of marriage. It suggests that the legislature may be able to come up with a reason to restrict the status of marriage to opposite-sex couples, even though it has failed to come up with a sufficient reason to restrict the rights of marriage to opposite-sex couples. The court doesn’t tell us what this reason might be, but says that “marriage� has a “shared societal meaning� passed down through the ages as the union of one man and one woman. “To alter that meaning would render a profound change in the public consciousness of a social institution of ancient origin,� says the court. Having been hard-headed positivists about legal rights for most of the opinion, here the judges become mystics in their reverence for “marriage.� Perhaps the legislature can cite the unknown consequences of changing the “shared societal meaning� of an ancient social institution as reason enough to choose a parallel system for gay couples, but it is hard to see how this would be different from the tradition-based rationale the state offered and the court rejected for denying rights to gay couples.

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_10_22-2006_10_28.shtml#1161872580

And what in the world makes you think they'll have the votes when/if a challenge comes up? Magical change in heart?

They won't be able to ignore the issue and their own legal logic when the status of marriage is the sole issue at hand.

[Drake Tungsten]

They won't be able to ignore the issue and their own legal logic when the status of marriage is the sole issue at hand.

Actually, this isn't quite correct. They could argue that the status of gay marriage isn't a constitutional issue, as a court in Conneticut recently did. That decision may be appealed, though...

[Dinner]

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

They won't be able to ignore the issue and their own legal logic when the status of marriage is the sole issue at hand.

Actually, this isn't quite correct. They could argue that the status of gay marriage isn't a constitutional issue, as a court in Conneticut recently did. That decision may be appealed, though...

When married couples are granted privlages by the state then how can it not be discriminatory to not great equal privlages to same sex couples?

[Drake Tungsten]

What are you talking about?