Obama Won't Fight For Gay Marriage His Second Term

[C_Clayton_Jones]

So you would rather have 9 people decide what is a right than an entire coutry via the amendment process? How oligarchical of you.

Just remember any "right" you win via the courts can be taken away just as easily. With a amendment, not so much.

How does the 14th apply to the federal government if it specifically calls out the states to provide equal protection?

Man, if liberals were this interpretive of the 2nd amendment, we would all be required to have howitzers in our backyards.

‘Nine people’ aren’t deciding anything.

If states and local jurisdiction simply followed Constitutional case law and refrained from violating their residents’ civil liberties, there wouldn’t be anything for judges and justices to ‘decide.’

You make the same mistake as most conservatives: creating this myth of a ‘tyrannical’ Federal government unilaterally ‘attacking’ helpless, innocent states; when in fact it’s residents of those states who are merely seeking relief from the tyranny of the states in Federal court.

The Supreme Court has always had interpretive authority as to what the Constitution means in the context of the doctrine of judicial review; and the courts don’t ‘make up’ rights, they simply acknowledge existing rights and exact greater limitations on governments to restrict those rights.

The 14th Amendment, among other things, requires the states to afford all persons within a state equal protection of the law, absent a compelling, legitimate reason.

“A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws.” Romer v. Evans (1996).

Thus a state cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its marriage law.

The right to privacy, the right to marry, substantive due process, and incorporation doctrine are all tenets of Constitutional jurisprudence explored and acknowledged as settled law by conservative judges and justices – both liberal and conservative jurists of good faith are in agreement. It is only conservative ideologues who object to this accepted and accurate understanding of the Founding Document.

First of all, an amendment is not part of the "founding document", it is an amendment. And second, again, you may feel marriage by gays is a right, but it is nowhere in the consitution as a right. Its the same as abortion, merely a created "right" thought up by a judge who wished he was a legislator.

Keep quoting case law until you are blue in the face. to me the judiciary has overstepped its bounds ever since it corrected the mistake of plessy v. ferguson. It took a correct action, nullifying laws that were contrary to the intent of the reconstruction amendment writers, and took that as a mandate to fix all the wrongs it saw with the system, superseeding legislatures and the amendment process.

This has nothing to do with ‘feeling.’

This has only to do with accepted and settled case law.

And no one is saying ‘marriage by gays is a right,’ equal protection of the law is a right, as expressed by the 14th Amendment; the state may not single-out a particular class of persons and exclude them from a given law absent a compelling governmental interest supported by documented evidence, and may not be motivated by animus toward that class of persons alone.

This applies to all laws, including marriage law.