Secret revealed! » « Now I’m beginning to wonder if Bigfoot actually exists

Wisconsin!

A judge has declared Wisconsin’s prohibition of gay marriage unconstitutional. The gays are lined up to destroy the Biblical foundations of American life right now!

I consider that a good thing, if you’re at all confused.

Secret revealed! » « Now I’m beginning to wonder if Bigfoot actually exists

Comments

  1. tbtabby says

    Will conservatives be resurrecting the “activist judges” talking point now?

  2. Artor says

    Nice! That’s what, 15 cases in a row? It sounds like the 100th monkey has finally gotten that draft of Shakespeare finished!

  4. says

    @tbtabby # 1 – Ask and ye shall receive.

    “We are deeply disappointed but not surprised at Judge Crabb’s ruling. All over the country federal judges have replaced ‘We, the people’ with ‘I, the judge’ when ruling on state constitutional amendments that define and protect marriage as one man and one woman.” – Julaine Appling, head of Wisconsin Family Action

  6. twas brillig (stevem) says

    Julaine Appling, read the Federalist Papers, please. Note Madison’s argument against majority rule, that he coined the term “mob rule”. That the whole point of the Constitution was to protect minorities from the majority. etc. etc. This judge, you defame, was acting to protect the Constitution and not only interpret it as the majority wants him to. [oh dear, I know Appling ain’t reading this, so all this screed I’m typing is just futile…]

  7. Akira MacKenzie says

    Gregory in Seattle @ 4

    All over the country federal judges have replaced ‘We, the people’ with ‘I,

    Funny, conservatives are usually the ones who constantly insist that America “is not a democracy, but a republic!” So which is it? Are we supposed to defer of the will of the people (which according to most polls, ISN’T on your side) or the fiat of the government that you supposedly hate so much?

  8. Sili says

    I guess we have to thank the bigots for making the laws in the first place. It would be a lot harder to get courts to look at what is just social ostracisation.

  11. says

    @twas brillig #6 – Her ignorance is amusing, especially in light of this quote by that notoriously liberal commentator, George Will, regarding the courts overturning Arizona’s “papers, please” law in 2010:

    “Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy – judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes – because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.”

  12. Zeppelin says

    Nice to see some good news out of the US for a change!

    Maybe when Our Transatlantic Friends (please imagine me miming vomiting when I type that) have legalised marriage for everyone across the country, German neoconservatives’ emulation of American policies will result in something positive for once.

  13. crookedshoes says

    When you couple this news to the story out of Colorado (a bigoted business owner would not serve a gay couple and has been court ordered to do so… his beliefs do not trump the law), perhaps the needle is moving in the right direction.

  15. Snoof says

    Akira MacKenzie @ 7

    Funny, conservatives are usually the ones who constantly insist that America “is not a democracy, but a republic!” So which is it? Are we supposed to defer of the will of the people (which according to most polls, ISN’T on your side) or the fiat of the government that you supposedly hate so much?

    Look, it’s very simple:

    It’s whichever one means gay people can’t get married. And it may change back and forth, as is appropriate.

  16. says

    I spent four hours at the Dane County Clerk’s office yesterday evening, soaking in the sights and watching the scene unfold. I have pictures from the day here.

    In case anyone needs a reminder, the Wisconsin stance on same-sex marriage is quadruply punitive: There’s an anti-gay statute (passed in 1979), an anti-gay constitutional amendment (rammed through the legislature by Republicans two sessions in a row and passed by voters in 2006), an ancient “marriage evasion” statue from 1915 that spells out penalties of $10,000 fines and 9-month prison sentences for any gay couple having the audacity to marry out-of-state, and a Christian-nationalist government that supports all of this and is busily trying to whittle away the sporadic LGBT rights and protections that do exist. It’s shameful that a meaningful court challenge to all this BS didn’t come even sooner than this!

  17. Bojac6 says

    @Andrew T.

    To be fair to Wisconsin, the “marriage evasion” statute originally had nothing to do with same sex marriage. It was passed when Wisconsin raised the age of marriage to 18, because people were running off with 14 year olds and marrying them in Iowa.

    That said, I did not think Wisconsin would legalize same sex marriage for some time, so good on them.

  18. canonicalkoi says

    I love hearing good news for once. I’m going to go find a backhoe now and drive it to Wisconsin. Maybe I can help taking a few of those foundations out.

    “And the cheese! To die for.” (random Skyrim quote for any fellow players.)

  20. Trebuchet says

    WisconSIN!

    All of these cases could yet be overturned by SCOTUS, of course. But the preponderance of them may make it more difficult.

  22. eeyore says

    I don’t understand the raw, vicious hatred that makes conservatives not just despise gays, but willing to spend millions of dollars passing laws to do it. There are plenty of groups I don’t care for. I don’t spend my time and money trying to pass laws to keep them from getting married.

  23. Ichthyic says

    That said, I did not think Wisconsin would legalize same sex marriage for some time, so good on them.

    um. they didn’t. the whole point is that the voting majority of Wisconsin are actually AGAINST equal rights. so much so, it took a federal judge to slap some sense into them.

    it’s gonna take some time before I would say “Good on Wisconsin”.

  25. chrislawson says

    I also love the logic that states that dozens of different judges, in many different states, all independently assessing the constitutional status of these laws came to the same conclusion…and yet this is somehow rampant individualism.

  26. randay says

    This is Wisconsin, I would think it is the cheese-head beer drinkers who “are lined up to destroy the Biblical foundations of American life right now!”

  29. says

    I thought that the concept of “checks and balances” was pretty common knowledge, taught to every school child in America. If the courts can’t strike down a law as unconstitutional, how exactly are they going to act as a check on the legislative branch?

    Seems oddly childish; like someone arguing that you must have been cheating somehow because they can’t stand the fact that they’ve lost.

  30. ck says

    LykeX wrote:

    If the courts can’t strike down a law as unconstitutional, how exactly are they going to act as a check on the legislative branch?

    The courts are supposed to act as a check on the laws they don’t like (like the ACA, aka Obamacare), and ignore the ones they do like. Whenever the courts stray outside of this and strike down a conservative law, or uphold a liberal one, it’s “judicial activism.”

  31. David Marjanović says

    Seems oddly childish; like someone arguing that you must have been cheating somehow because they can’t stand the fact that they’ve lost.

    Wwwelll, you’re on to something.