6th Circuit Federal Appeals Court Gives Thumb's Up to States' Choice on Gay Marriage

[eagle1462010]

The bottom line the 6th Court has given a verdict that States have the right to adopt legislation to ban same sex marriage and it is the law until someone overturns it from the States who won the appeal.............

That is the law................until otherwise rejected in a higher court.

It conflicts with other court decisions.............

Which forces an ultimate battle at SCOTUS..............no matter how many fairy tales are presented in this thread.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

Proposition 8
Eliminates Rights of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment
Results Yes or no Votes Percentage Yes 7,001,084 52.24% No 6,401,482 47.76% Valid votes 13,402,566 97.52% Invalid or blank votes 340,611 2.48% Total votes 13,743,177 100.00% Voter turnout 79.42% Electorate 17,304,428 [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Wonderful, the results of a vote the courts decided was Unconstitutional.

and again another Federal Court disagreed with this court....................

Which is exactly why the SCOTUS has to make a final ruling...........Dumb ass................

Which part of that equation don't you understand.

Stop saying "has to" when they don't "have" to do anything. If they wish to let things stand just as they are, that is their prerogative.

 

[eagle1462010]

No need. I won that round. You cannot cherry pick results to suit you.

I had no need to cherry-pick, you've lost all recent votes. As I said, next time be more careful.

States have passed bans on gay marriage................

Period.....................

That's not a poll but a FACT...............

Your argument is lost.

They did pass bans, but now they don't, and most of those bans have been tossed by the courts, and most of the country now has legal gay marriage. Who's losing again?

And a Court has held these bans are legal.....................

So, given your illogical conclusion..............I must accept the courts that said same sex bans are illegal.................

Nah, I will choose the new ruling........................and discard the old rulings............................

Is that how it works in your fairy tale world.

Fairytale is believing that gay marriage isn't coming to all of the US, very soon.

All right whatever.............I'm done with this thread and your BS posting.

You are the weakest link.........GOODBYE..................I'm not wasting any more time with you.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

The bottom line the 6th Court has given a verdict that States have the right to adopt legislation to ban same sex marriage and it is the law until someone overturns it from the States who won the appeal.............

That is the law................until otherwise rejected in a higher court.

It conflicts with other court decisions.............

Which forces an ultimate battle at SCOTUS..............no matter how many fairy tales are presented in this thread.

It doesn't force anything. The SC makes its own calls.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

I had no need to cherry-pick, you've lost all recent votes. As I said, next time be more careful.

States have passed bans on gay marriage................

Period.....................

That's not a poll but a FACT...............

Your argument is lost.

They did pass bans, but now they don't, and most of those bans have been tossed by the courts, and most of the country now has legal gay marriage. Who's losing again?

And a Court has held these bans are legal.....................

So, given your illogical conclusion..............I must accept the courts that said same sex bans are illegal.................

Nah, I will choose the new ruling........................and discard the old rulings............................

Is that how it works in your fairy tale world.

Fairytale is believing that gay marriage isn't coming to all of the US, very soon.

All right whatever.............I'm done with this thread and your BS posting.

You are the weakest link.........GOODBYE..................I'm not wasting any more time with you.

You lost so that's no surprise that you would run. See ya.

 

[The Rabbi]

The only polls that count are the actual referenda. And gay marriage has largely been a loser.

Not anymore. If that's your criteria then you've lost in all recent cases.

What an absurdity.

You picked the criteria. Next time be more careful.

No need. I won that round. You cannot cherry pick results to suit you.

I had no need to cherry-pick, you've lost all recent votes. As I said, next time be more careful.

Gay marriage has been a loser. That is simply historical fact.
Facts suck, dont they?

 

[The Rabbi]

States have passed bans on gay marriage................

Period.....................

That's not a poll but a FACT...............

Your argument is lost.

They did pass bans, but now they don't, and most of those bans have been tossed by the courts, and most of the country now has legal gay marriage. Who's losing again?

And a Court has held these bans are legal.....................

So, given your illogical conclusion..............I must accept the courts that said same sex bans are illegal.................

Nah, I will choose the new ruling........................and discard the old rulings............................

Is that how it works in your fairy tale world.

Fairytale is believing that gay marriage isn't coming to all of the US, very soon.

All right whatever.............I'm done with this thread and your BS posting.

You are the weakest link.........GOODBYE..................I'm not wasting any more time with you.

You lost so that's no surprise that you would run. See ya.

He lost his patience with your stupidity. Me too.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

They did pass bans, but now they don't, and most of those bans have been tossed by the courts, and most of the country now has legal gay marriage. Who's losing again?

And a Court has held these bans are legal.....................

So, given your illogical conclusion..............I must accept the courts that said same sex bans are illegal.................

Nah, I will choose the new ruling........................and discard the old rulings............................

Is that how it works in your fairy tale world.

Fairytale is believing that gay marriage isn't coming to all of the US, very soon.

All right whatever.............I'm done with this thread and your BS posting.

You are the weakest link.........GOODBYE..................I'm not wasting any more time with you.

You lost so that's no surprise that you would run. See ya.

He lost his patience with your stupidity. Me too.

He lost period, just as you have.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

Not anymore. If that's your criteria then you've lost in all recent cases.

What an absurdity.

You picked the criteria. Next time be more careful.

No need. I won that round. You cannot cherry pick results to suit you.

I had no need to cherry-pick, you've lost all recent votes. As I said, next time be more careful.

Gay marriage has been a loser. That is simply historical fact.
Facts suck, dont they?

Nope, they are just facts, like the fact that gay marriage is now legal in most of the US, just not the flyover zones yet.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Proposition 8
Eliminates Rights of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment
Results Yes or no Votes Percentage Yes 7,001,084 52.24% No 6,401,482 47.76% Valid votes 13,402,566 97.52% Invalid or blank votes 340,611 2.48% Total votes 13,743,177 100.00% Voter turnout 79.42% Electorate 17,304,428 [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Wonderful, the results of a vote the courts decided was Unconstitutional.

And doesn't include any vote since then either.

Nope, but according to the polling if the vote was held today, you'd lose.

I'd lose? Why's that?

 

[Silhouette]

Sutton's reasoning directly reflects my own. In the interim while their is a challenge to the mechanics of marriage itself [man/woman, father/mother], that have NOTHING to do with race, lower inferior federal courts do not have a right to overrule SCOTUS. The interim status is only law enacted within the states...only to be overturned later, if it should so be, by SCOTUS itself....AND ITSELF ALONE.

14-1341 184 6th Circuit Decision in Marriage Cases

*page 8 on..) "SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

This is a case about change—and how best to handle it under the United States Constitution. From the vantage point of 2014, it would now seem, the question is not whether American law will allow gay couples to marry; it is when and how that will happen. That would not have seemed likely as recently as a dozen years ago. For better, for worse, or for more of the same, marriage has long been a social institution defined by relationships between men and women. So long defined, the tradition is measured in millennia, not centuries or decades. So widely shared, the tradition until recently had been adopted by all governments and major religions of the world.

But things change, sometimes quickly. Since 2003,
nineteen States and the District of Columbia have expanded the definition of marriage to include gay couples, some through state legislation, some through initiatives of the people, some through state court decisions, and some through the actions of state governors and attorneys general who opted not to appeal adverse court decisions. Nor does this momentum show any signs of slowing. Twelve of the nineteen States that now recognize gay marriage did so in the last couple of years. On top of that, four federal courts of appeals have compelled several other States to permit same-sex marriages under the Fourteenth Amendment.

What remains is a debate about whether to allow the democratic processes begun in the States to continue in the four States of the Sixth Circuit or to end them now by requiring all States in the Circuit to extend the definition of marriage to encompass gay couples. Process and structure matter greatly in American government. Indeed, they may be the most reliable, liberty-assuring guarantees of our system of government, requiring us to take seriously the route the United States Constitution contemplates for making such a fundamental change to such a fundamental social institution. Of all the ways to resolve this question, one option is not available: a poll of the three judges on this panel, or for that matter all federal judges, about whether gay marriage is a good idea. Our judicial commissions did not come with such a sweeping grant of authority, one that would allow just three of us—just two of us in truth—to make such a vital policy call for the thirty-two million citizens who live within the four States of the Sixth Circuit: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. What we have authority to decide instead is a legal question: Does the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibit a State from defining marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman?...

...Does the Due Process Clause or the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment require States to expand the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples? The Michigan appeal (DeBoer )presents this threshold question, and so does one of the Kentucky appeals (Love). Caselaw offers many ways to think about the issue. A.

Perspective of an intermediate court.
Start with a recognition of our place in the hierarchy of the federal courts. As an “inferior” court (the Constitution’s preferred term, not ours), a federal court of appeals begins by asking what the Supreme Court’s precedents require on the topic at hand. Just such a precedent confronts us.

...Baker v. Nelson
, 191 N.W.2d 185, 186 (Minn. 1971)....

Minnesota Supreme Court rejected both claims. As for the due process claim, the state court reasoned: “The institution of marriage as a union of man and woman, uniquely involving the procreation and rearing of children within a family, is as old as the book of Genesis. . . . This historic institution manifestly is more deeply founded than the asserted contemporary concept of marriage and societal interests for which petitioners contend. The due process clause . . . is not a charter for restructuring it by judicial legislation.”
Id.
As for the equal protection claim, the court reasoned: “[T]he state’s classification of persons authorized to marry” does not create an “irrational or invidious discrimination. . . . [T]hat the state does not impose upon heterosexual married couples a condition that they have a proved capacity or declared willingness to procreate . . . [creates only a] theoretically imperfect [classification] . . . [and] ‘abstract symmetry’ is not demanded by the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Id.
at 187....

...
The Supreme Court’s decision four years earlier in
Loving v. Virginia
, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), which invalidated Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages, did not change this conclusion. “n commonsense and in a constitutional sense,” the state court explained, “there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex.”
Baker
, 191 N.W.2d at 187...

..
Baker and McConnell appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The Court rejected their challenge, issuing a one-line order stating that the appeal did not raise “a substantial federal question.”
Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810, 810 (1972). This type of summary decision, it is true, does not bind the Supreme Court in later cases. But it does confine lower federal courts in later cases. It matters not whether we think the decision was right in its time, remains right today, or will be followed by the Court in the future. Only the Supreme Court may overrule its own precedents, and we remain bound even by its summary decisions “until such time as the Court informs [us] that [we] are not.”
Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 345 (1975) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court has yet to inform us that we are not, and we have no license to engage in a guessing game about whether the Court will change its mind or, more aggressively, to assume authority to overrule Baker ourselves..

..
now, claimants insist, must account for United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013), which invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, a law that refused for purposes of federal statutory benefits to respect gay marriages authorized by state law. Yet Windsor does not answer today’s question. The decision never mentions Baker, much less overrules it. And the outcomes of the cases do not clash. Windsor invalidated a federal law that refused to respect state laws permitting gay marriage, while Baker upheld the right of the people of a State to define marriage as they see it. To respect one decision does not slight the other. Nor does Windsor ’s reasoning clash with Baker. Windsor hinges on the Defense of Marriage Act’s unprecedented intrusion into the States’ authority over domestic relations. Id. at 2691–92.
.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

Proposition 8
Eliminates Rights of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment
Results Yes or no Votes Percentage Yes 7,001,084 52.24% No 6,401,482 47.76% Valid votes 13,402,566 97.52% Invalid or blank votes 340,611 2.48% Total votes 13,743,177 100.00% Voter turnout 79.42% Electorate 17,304,428 [TBODY] [/TBODY]

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Wonderful, the results of a vote the courts decided was Unconstitutional.

And doesn't include any vote since then either.

Nope, but according to the polling if the vote was held today, you'd lose.

I'd lose? Why's that?

You'd lose because they wouldn't vote to ban gay marriage again.

 

[Silhouette]

This is interesting...

Page 15 on--
"Bringing the matter to a close, the Court held minutes after releasing Windsor that procedural obstacles in Hollingsworth v. Perry
, 133 S. Ct. 2652 (2013), prevented it from considering the validity of state marriage laws. Saying that the Court declined in Hollingsworth
to overrule Baker openly but decided in Windsor to overrule it by stealth makes an unflattering and unfair estimate of the Justices’ candor. ..

That is the hinge of the activist courts in the other circuits saying that the High Court was giving them the nod to overrule Baker from underneath. Which of course is illegal.. That Sutton is really giving a left hook to those other circuit courts here!

Even if Windsor did not overrule Baker by name, the claimants point out, lower courts still may rely on “doctrinal developments” in the aftermath of a summary disposition as a ground for not following the decision. Hicks, 422 U.S. at 344. And Windsor, they say, together with Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), and Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), permit us to cast Baker aside. But this reading of “doctrinal developments” would be a groundbreaking development of its own. From the perspective of a lower court, summary dispositions remain “controlling precedent, unless and until re-examined by [the Supreme] Court.”...the Court has told us to treat the two types of decisions, whether summary dispositions or full-merits decisions, the same, “prevent[ing] lower courts” in both settings “from coming to opposite conclusions on the precise issues presented and necessarily decided by those actions.”

As I suspected....pressure from the LGBT cult was causing these activist (and very poor) judges to rewrite their constitutional powers from underneath the People and SCOTUS! Sock it to them Sutton!

Though the Sutton Opinion was not rendered in the 9th District, his logic is so sound as to cause reverberations there. A plaintiff in California may now come forward to sue for the right of their vote to count: citing violation of civil rights.

The study of this type of law doesn't have to be very complicated at all at its core. If SCOTUS tells you that you cannot overturn its decisions from underneath, no matter how clever/stealthy you think you may be doing so, you cannot do so. None of these other circuits ever had the constitutional power to override Baker's summary decision.

And as I suspected all along, the LAW OF THE LAND TODAY is that gay marriage is not legal in states that defined marriage to exclude it. These states have a right to disincentivize a home where 100% of the time one of the natural blood parents of any children there will be missing/absent...as will an adult representation of one of the two genders for the best interest of the child[ren] growing up with a miniature reflection of soceity at large to learn to adapt to and interact with.

 

[Silhouette]

This line alone here proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that any states currently feeling forced to apply "gay marriage" against their will, are free to deny it legally once again, immediately, and retroactive to Baker, 1971:

Page 15

Lest doubt remain, the Court has also told us not to ignore its decisions even when they are in tension with a new line of cases. “If a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.”

THE DECISIONS OF LOWER COURTS IN THE INTERIM MUST BE IN LINE WITH BAKER'S SCOTUS JUDGMENT: THAT CHOICE ON THE MECHANICS OF THE DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE ARE UP TO THE STATES AND THE STATES ALONE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE BY SCOTUS AND SCOTUS ALONE.

Ergo, gay marriage is illegal in all but the states who enacted, via their respective constitutional processes that it would be otherwise.

TODAY. Not off in the future at some theoretical date. RIGHT NOW.

 

[Silhouette]

He continues...explaining in excruciating detail how Proposition 8 is still the law in California. Watch out Governor Brown and AG Harris, ignorance of the law and your own state's constitution is no excuse. And in fact, you two cannot claim ignorance from your positions of employment. Ergo, the only thing left for you to claim is sedition. Ordering court clerks to defy constitutional law in your state is what prosecutors call "exacerbating circumstances"...or "forced conspiracy". County clerks in California have grounds for lawsuits against both Governor Brown, AG Harris and any other seditious official currently offending their electors. That goes for other states that pulled the same stunt hoping nobody like judge Sutton would notice.

With the change in command of Congress this week, I'd say that Governor Brown, AG Harris and their counterparts in other states would be prudent to VERY QUICKLY restore their state's laws in light of this new decision. Judge Sutton has put the entire country on notice that nobody has business removing power from the states outside of SCOTUS on this question. If I were Brown or Harris, I'd immediately issue a press release apologizing to the voters and restoring proposition 8. They could even blame it "on the republicans who will surely punish us if we don't" [for they surely will, the war drums are just starting to beat at Fox News with Brown's name being dropped].

Or they could wait and see if Congress will take moves to discipline them in the various forms and remedies available to Congress to do so when it comes to officials knowingly, unrepentently, and openly practicing sedition at the expense of the People's Will..

Sutton explains further:

Just two scenarios, then, permit us to ignore a Supreme Court decision, whatever its form: when the Court has overruled the decision by name (if, say, Windsor had directly overruled Baker ) or when the Court has overruled the decision by outcome (if, say, Hollingsworth had invalidated the California law without mentioning Baker). Any other approach returns us to a world in which the lower courts may anticipatorily overrule all manner of Supreme Court decisions based on counting-to-five predictions, perceived trajectories in the caselaw, or, worst of all, new appointments to the Court. In the end, neither of the two preconditions for ignoring Supreme Court precedent applies here.

Dont' worry judge Sutton, hand-picked judges from the LGBT cult would NEVER think of creating a new system where they could in one,two or three person panels define controversial law from the bench outside the People's Input and underneath SCOTUS' authority! Oh, wait....that already happened in the case of California and judge Walker..AG Harris and Governor Brown...

 

[Silhouette]

On October 6, 2014, the Supreme Court “denied” the “petitions for writs of certiorari” in 1,575 cases, seven of which arose from challenges to decisions of the Fourth, Seventh, and Tenth Circuits that recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. But this kind of action (or inaction) “imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case...A decision not to decide is a decision not to decide...

...
But don’t these denials of certiorari signal that, from the Court’s perspective, the right to same-sex marriage is inevitable? Maybe; maybe not. Even if we grant the premise and assume that same-sex marriage will be recognized one day in all fifty States, that does not tell us how— whether through the courts or through democracy. And, if through the courts, that does not tell us why—whether through one theory of constitutional invalidity or another. Four courts of appeals thus far have recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. They agree on one thing: the result. But they reach that outcome in many ways, often more than one way in the same decision. The Court’s certiorari denials tell us nothing about the democracy-versus-litigation path to same-sex marriage, and they tell us nothing about the validity of any of these theories. If a federal court denies the people suffrage over an issue long thought to be within their power, they deserve an explanation. We, for our part, cannot find one, as several other judges have concluded as well....

...
There are many ways, as these lower court decisions confirm, to look at this question: originalism; rational basis review; animus; fundamental rights; suspect classifications; evolving meaning. The parties in one way or another have invoked them all. Not one of the plaintiffs’ theories, however, makes the case for constitutionalizing the definition of marriage and for removing the issue from the place it has been since the founding: in the hands of state voters....

...

 

[Silhouette]

Sutton is BRILLIANT!

He explains how the Constitution works with respect to this or any other massive change in such precise and historical detail.

When two individuals sign a contract to sell a house, no one thinks that, years down the road, one party to the contract may change the terms of the deal. That is why the parties put the agreement in writing and signed it publicly—to prevent changed perceptions and needs from changing the guarantees in the agreement. So it normally goes with the Constitution: The written charter cements the limitations on government into an unbending bulwark, not a vane alterable whenever alterations occur—unless and until the people, like contracting parties, choose to change the contract through the agreed-upon mechanisms for doing so....If American lawyers in all manner of settings still invoke the original meaning of Magna Carta, a Charter for England in 1215, surely it is not too much to ask that they (and we) take seriously the original meaning of the United States Constitution, a Charter for this country in 1789. Any other approach, too lightly followed, converts federal judges from interpreters of the document into newly commissioned authors of it....

...In trying to figure out the original meaning of a provision, it is fair to say, the line between interpretation and evolution blurs from time to time. That is an occupational hazard for judges when it comes to old or generally worded provisions. Yet that knotty problem does not confront us. Yes, the Fourteenth Amendment is old; the people ratified it in 1868. And yes, it is generally worded; it says: “[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Nobody in this case, however, argues that the people who adopted the Fourteenth Amendment understood it to require the States to change the definition of marriage. ..

..From the founding of the Republic to 2003, every State defined marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman, meaning that the Fourteenth Amendment permits, though it does not require, States to define marriage in that way...

 

[Syriusly]

In answer to the poll, of course not.

Marriage is not the business of government, local or national.

If its between consenting adults and harms no one, MYOB.

So why do those same consenting adults suddenly need a piece of paper from government to be legitimate?
?

Because that is how a married couple becomes legally legitimately married- that is how my wife and my marriage became legitimate.

Without that piece of paper you are, in the words of that famous harlot- just shacking up.

It makes no sense to complain that gov't should stay out of marriage while clamoring for gov't recognition of marriage.
My marriage was legitimate when I completed the Jewish marriage ceremony. The state license was a formality.

I don't argue that the government should stay out of marriage.

I point out that without a marriage licence, legally you and your wife would just be shacking up.

Because that is how a married couple becomes legally legitimately married- that is how my wife and my marriage became legitimate.

If you want to end government involvement in marriage, well then you can argue for that- but as long as there is a marriage license, then that is the legal way to establish a marriage.

 

[Silhouette]

Enter....THE CHILDREN....(and veiled references to precedent/polygamy etc. on deck)

"One starts from the premise that governments got into the business of defining marriage, and remain in the business of defining marriage, not to regulate love but to regulate sex, most especially the intended and unintended effects of male-female intercourse. Imagine a society without marriage. It does not take long to envision problems that might result from an absence of rules about how to handle the natural effects of male-female intercourse: children. May men and women follow their procreative urges wherever they take them? Who is responsible for the children that result? How many mates may an individual have? How does one decide which set of mates is responsible for which set of children? That we rarely think about these questions nowadays shows only how far we have come and how relatively stable our society is, not that States have no explanation for creating such rules in the first place....

..Once one accepts a need to establish such ground rules, and most especially a need to create stable family units for the planned and unplanned creation of children, one can well appreciate why the citizenry would think that a reasonable first concern of any society is the need to regulate male-female relationships and the unique procreative possibilities of them. One way to pursue this objective is to encourage couples to enter lasting relationships through subsidies and other benefits and to discourage them from ending such relationships through these and other means. People may not need the government’s encouragement to have sex. And they may not need the government’s encouragement to propagate the species. But they may well need the government’s encouragement to create and maintain stable relationships within which children may flourish. It is not society’s laws or for that matter any one religion’s laws, but nature’s laws (that men and women complement each other biologically), that created the policy imperative. And governments typically are not second-guessed under the Constitution for prioritizing how they tackle such issues. Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 486–87 (1970)....

...
(page 21) To take another rational explanation for the decision of many States not to expand the definition of marriage, a State might wish to wait and see before changing a norm that our society (like all others) has accepted for centuries. That is not preserving tradition for its own sake. No one here claims that the States’ original definition of marriage was unconstitutional when enacted. The plaintiffs’ claim is that the States have acted irrationally in standing by the traditional definition in the face of changing social mores. Yet one of the key insights of federalism is that it permits laboratories of experimentation—accent on the plural—allowing one State to innovate one way, another State another, and a third State to assess the trial and error over time. As a matter of state law, the possibility of gay marriage became real in 2003 with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in Goodridge. Eleven years later, the clock has not run on assessing the benefits and burdens of expanding the definition of marriage. Eleven years indeed is not even the right timeline. The fair question is whether in 2004, one year after Goodridge,
Michigan voters could stand by the traditional definition of marriage. How can we say that the voters acted irrationally for sticking with the seen benefits of thousands of years of adherence to the traditional definition of marriage in the face of one year of experience with a new definition of marriage? A State still assessing how this has worked, whether in 2004 or 2014, is not showing irrationality, just a sense of stability and an interest in seeing how the new definition has worked elsewhere. Even today, the only thing anyone knows for sure about the long-term impact of redefining marriage is that they do not know. A Burkean sense of caution does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, least of all when measured by a timeline less than a dozen years long and when assessed by a system of government designed to foster step-by-step, not sudden winner-take-all, innovations to policy problems....

...

 

[Syriusly]

Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe I mistook the headline. It said that the 6th upheld the bans on so-called "gay marriage" in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee

When the SC rules against you Sil, and they will, what then?

To late they already spoke on this issue Remember last month?

Last month they "said" the lower courts got it right. Now they have an issue, a lower court got it wrong.

Actually most of the lower courts got it wrong. They should have listened to the Supreme COurt in Windsor, which ruled states have the power to decide these things.

Virtually all of the courts looked to Windsor for guidance- and as Windsor very clearly states:

Subject to certain constitutional guarantees, see, e.g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, “regulation of domestic relations” is “an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States,” Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393. The significance of state responsibilities for the definition and regulation of marriage dates to the Nation’s beginning; for “when the Constitution was adopted the common understanding was that the domestic relations of husband and wife and parent and child were matters reserved to the States,” Ohio ex rel. Popovici v. Agler, 280 U. S. 379–384. Marriage laws may vary from State to State, but they are consistent within each State.

The courts all made their rulings based upon constitutional guarantees