What are these people *on*?

[kengr]

I keep hearing people on the news, people who should know better, talking about the "intent of the law" when discussing the Multnomah county decision to allow same-sex marriage.

Yes, one item mentioned was that the law doesn't explicitly say that it has to be a man and a woman. And the intent when it was written probably *was* that a marriage involve one of each.

But they are ignoring the point that the county commissioners *prominently* made that said law is *unconstitutional* if interpreted that way, due to the way the "equal rights" clause in the state constitution.

And while I know some of these folks are deliberately slanting their comments, I have trouble when folks like the state governor (who used to be the state attorney general and was on the state supreme court at one time) ignores that sort of thing.

I'm also pissed at all the "refer it to the voters" stuff.

With the sole exception of the initiative petition going around to amend the state constitution, all the rest (there are three other initiatives trying to get signatures) the things that *might* get referred to the voters will be *just* as unconstitutional as the current law, regardless of how strongly worded they are.

Comments

Refer it to the voters

[gentlemaitresse.livejournal.com]

Nobody should be allowed to make laws that abridge the rights of another individual or group. Just because the majority might be opposed to gay marriage (or interracial marriage, or whatever) doesn't give them the right to make such laws.

There are a lot of people in this country who have been taught that "majority rules" is the law of the land. It's not.

Re: Refer it to the voters

[kengr]

Most people think the US is a democracy. And don't know the difference between a democracy and a republic, much less *why* the US was set up as a republic instead of a democracry.

BTW, there are lots of laws that "abridge the rights of another individual or group". Mostly the "right" to chesat, steal, murder, etc.

And yes, I've had that exact sort of comment made by folks arguing either that it's ok to abridge some rights or that laws must be based on their morality.

The proper counter to them is to point out the difference between restricting what someone can do to *others* and what they can do with or to themselves.