The Feds, the Supremes, Same-Sex Marriage and Utah

[aGameOfThrones]

In "Utah's Marriage Battles and the Ghost of Brigham Young" (Cross Country, Jan. 18), Seth Lipsky remarks on the irony of the Dec. 20 decision of a U.S. district judge in overturning Utah's ban on same-sex marriage, while another federal judge struck down an essential part of its ban on polygamy—this done to a state that had to outlaw polygamy to enter the union. If same-sex marriage is OK, what could be wrong with polygamy?

This is taking place in the backwash of June's Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Windsor, which found the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional because it defined marriage for federal purposes as one man and one woman. Justice Anthony Kennedy objected that DOMA served "no legitimate purpose" but only had the "purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those" in same-sex marriages.

It is a shame Justice Kennedy had not read, or perhaps understood, the Court's 1885 Murphy v. Ramsey decision, which upheld the ban against polygamy in the Utah territory, because it eloquently explained the "legitimate purpose" of marriage. Murphy stated that "certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth . . . than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement."

Perhaps Justice Kennedy could explain why this is no longer a "legitimate purpose."

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802904579335080624933644

 

[Brett85]

I hope the Supreme Court will simply rule one way or the other on this issue and get it over with, so that all of this money isn't wasted in all these different legal challenges to the state marriage laws.

 

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

The Supremes? WTF? I thought this was a thread about Diana Ross.

 

[aGameOfThrones]

The Supremes? WTF? I thought this was a thread about Diana Ross.

I had The Temptations to make a references about that.

 

[Occam's Banana]

It is a shame Justice Kennedy had not read, or perhaps understood, the Court's 1885 Murphy v. Ramsey decision, which upheld the ban against polygamy in the Utah territory, because it eloquently explained the "legitimate purpose" of marriage. Murphy stated that "certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth . . . than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement."

Perhaps Justice Kennedy could explain why this is no longer a "legitimate purpose."

Perhaps someone could also explain why we need State-appointed black-robed personages pontificating at us about "all that is stable and noble in our civilization" and "the source of all beneficent progress" - as if no one else would be able to suss out such things without the aid of bureaucrats armed with gavels ...

 

[Origanalist]

Perhaps someone could also explain why we need State-appointed black-robed personages pontificating at us about "all that is stable and noble in our civilization" and "the source of all beneficent progress" - as if no one else would be able to suss out such things without the aid of bureaucrats armed with gavels ...

 

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

I had The Temptations to make a references about that.

Heh heh.