Is not allowing gay marriage a violation of civil rights
Law Professor Defends Marriage in Same-Sex Marriage Battle
By Karen Snow
In congressional hearings last year, J. Reuben Clark Law University professor Lynn Wardle gave key testimony supporting the Defense of Marriage Operate (DOMA), a bill passed in September that denies federal recognition of lgbtq+ marriages and allows states to oppose sanctioning such unions licensed in other states.
Lawmakers supporting DOMA called the marriage bill a common-sense response to a lawsuit in Hawaii, which sought to legalize same-sex marriage. Advocates of queer marriage have used the case to threaten to make other states to recognize such unions under the Occupied Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution, a clause requiring states to recognize the legal contracts of other states.
Lynn Wardle argues that same-sex unions do not provide enough benefits to society to warrant the status of marriage.
The Hawaii suit, brought by three same-sex couples searching marriage licenses, caught Wardle’s attention in 1993 when the case progressed to the Hawaii Supreme Court. A family law expert, Wardle realized that if the couples succeeded, a deficiency in Utah’s laws might require the articulate t
Four Cases That Paved The Way for Marriage Equality and a Reminder of the Work Ahead
Post submitted by Brian McBride, former HRC Digital Strategist
Today marks the two-year anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made marriage equality the law of the ground and changed the lives of millions of people who can now commit the person they cherish. As people across the U.S. celebrate this momentous day, today also serves as an important reminder of the work that still lies ahead in achieving full federal protections for the LGBTQ community.
Just today, the Supreme Court dictated that Arkansas officials must list the names of both married same-sex parents on their child’s birth certificate. The nation’s utmost court also agreed to hear a case involving a Colorado baker who refused to provide services for a same-sex couple planning their marriage ceremony. Elected leaders across the country are seeking to ensure that LGBTQ people are not discriminated against in housing,employment, public accommodations and education, while federal courts are determining how sexual orientation and gender identity are covered by our natio
July 4, 2015
Gay marriages should be legal and legally endorsed. But the recent United States Supreme Court ruling (Obergefell v. Hodges) is the wrong way to get there. The right way would involve a Court and a Constitution that recognize organic human rights, civil rights, and the difference.
Natural Human Rights and Civil Rights
People are born with rights. Governments are instituted to protect those rights—at least in advanced cultures. In less advanced ones, people have to rely on family members, security squads, or their own resources.
To protect inborn natural human rights, governments establish another kind of rights—civil rights. Civil rights are granted by governments; natural rights are not. For someone to have civil rights, there needs to be a government; not so for natural rights.
By [Creative Commons], via Wikimedia Commons
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted”
The proper justification for civil rights is the protection of natural rights. If a government grants rights for some other reason, or if it grants civil rights that violate organic rights, then it’s not doing its job. It’s misbehaving.
(“Inborn” and “natural” indicate the
A Right to Marry? Same-Sex Marriage and Constitutional Law
A Right to Marry? Same-Sex Marriage and Constitutional Law
Martha Nussbaum ▪ Summer 2009Marriage is both ubiquitous and central. All across our country, in every region, every social class, every race and ethnicity, every religion or non-religion, people get married. For many if not most people, moreover, marriage is not a trivial matter. It is a key to the pursuit of happiness, something people aspire to—and keep aspiring to, again and again, even when their experience has been far from happy. To be told “You cannot get married” is thus to be excluded from one of the defining rituals of the American life cycle.
The keys to the kingdom of the married might have been held only by secret citizens—religious bodies and their leaders, families, other parts of civil society. So it has been in many societies throughout history. In the United States, however, as in most modern nations, government holds those keys. Even if people have been married by their church or religious group, they are not married in the sense that really counts for social and political purposes unless they possess been granted a marriage lice
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