posted on February 3, 2004 09:59:45 PM newIowa Supreme Court to Review Case of Two Women Seeking to End Their Civil Union
By David Pitt Associated Press Writer
Published: Feb 3, 2004
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The Iowa Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to review a divorce agreement granted to two lesbians who wanted to end the civil union they obtained in Vermont.
U.S. Rep. Steve King, six state lawmakers and the Church of Christ of Le Mars and its pastor sought the review. They hope to block the divorce, saying Iowa law does not recognize a marriage between two women.
The court's action effectively halts the divorce of Kimberly Jean Brown and Jennifer Sue Perez. The two women from Sioux City were granted a divorce by Woodbury County District Court Judge Jeffrey Neary on Nov. 14.
Neary said he didn't immediately notice the gender of the couple involved, but decided to let the decision stand because the U.S. Constitution requires states to recognize each others' laws. He later amended the decree to eliminate any reference to marriage and changed the wording to civil union.
The two women went to Vermont in March 2002 to take advantage of the state's civil union laws.
Iowa "recognizes only a man and a woman in a marriage, and that would also mean that a judge could not dissolve a marriage between a same-sex couple," said state Sen. Neil Schuerer, one of the lawmakers challenging the divorce.
posted on February 4, 2004 07:32:54 AM new
These civil unions are going to create many kinds of problems, similar to this one, in the future IF more states approve them.
From what I've read....something clinton passed during his administration, states DO NOT have to recognize the laws of other states in the matter of civil unions.
So...this problem could easily be fixed by this couple returning to the state that did approve of this union and seek a divorce there. Then the states that don't recognize these unions won't have these problems.
many states have passed Laws not recognizing unions or otherwise of same sex couples... only a Suprene Court decision overturing them would that be invalid...
posted on February 4, 2004 08:32:59 AM newOhio House Approves Defense Of Marriage Act
2/3/04 5:42:38 PM
With just four letters Ohio lawmakers have redefined marriage in the state.
It will have a widespread impact on same-sex couples and businesses in a city already seen by some as intolerant.
The law is known as "DOMA" the Defense of Marriage Act.
It passed the Ohio house Tuesday and is waiting for Governor Taft's signature.
This comes on the heels of a Massachusetts court ruling that recognized same sex marriages.
Ohio becomes the 38th state to pass such a law.
"We now insure that Ohio's public policy will be determined by the Ohio Legislature and not by activist courts from other states or countries who are trying to work their radical redefinition of the term spouse or marriage across the country," Seitz said.
posted on February 4, 2004 09:13:54 AM new
Lets see....Ohio becomes the 38th state to pass such a law. Appears to me YOUR opinion is in the minority. lol
posted on February 4, 2004 10:19:45 AM new
38 STATES!
That is great Linda, it does seem that the people really do not want same sex marriages or unions for that matter...
someone brought up sometime ago about Ohio passing some "show" for queers but it had no substance... just show...
If I remember right it was not enforcibile on any type of entity... LOL
People are waking up from this PC stupor they have been in...
posted on February 4, 2004 03:39:27 PM newQuotes Reacting to Massachusetts Court's Opinion on Gay Marriage
The Associated Press
Published: Feb 4, 2004
"For no rational reason the marriage laws of the Commonwealth discriminate against a defined class; no amount of tinkering with language will eradicate that stain. The bill would have the effect of maintaining and fostering a stigma of exclusion that the Constitution prohibits." - SJC opinion.
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"The dissimilitude between the terms 'civil marriage' and 'civil union' is not innocuous; it is a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status." - SJC opinion.
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"We've heard from the court, but not from the people. The people of Massachusetts should not be excluded from a decision as fundamental to our society as the definition of marriage. This issue is too important to leave to a one-vote majority of the SJC. This is why it's imperative that we proceed with the legitimate process of amending our state Constitution." - Gov. Mitt Romney.
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"It's wonderful news. The court said separate but equal is not equal. It's now crystal clear, if it wasn't before, that the court meant marriage. The word itself has power and benefits that are intangible. It's a very brave and historic decision." - Mark Carmien, owner of the Pride & Joy bookstore in Northampton.
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"I want to have everyone stay in an objective and calm state as we plan and define what's the appropriate way to proceed. There is a lot of anxiety out there obviously surrounding the issue but I don't want to have it cloud or distort the discussion." - Senate President Robert Travaglini.
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"There's nothing new here. The court spoke last November. On May 17, all families will be treated equally in the commonwealth unless or until the voters choose to write discrimination into our constitution." - Sen. Jarrett Barrios.
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"There's no doubt that the radical right is going to run with the decision and try and stir up as much outrage as they can, but it's really going to be an orchestrated stirring up and an orchestrated outrage." - Arline Isaacson, Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.
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"The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal." - SJC opinion.
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"Activist judges continue to seek to redefine marriage by court order without regard for the will of the people." White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
Edited to add: Here's a link to the Opinions of Justices to the Senate
posted on February 4, 2004 04:34:23 PM new
If 'same sex' marriages should be allowed, why not allow 'same family' marriages? Do liberals think that a father and daughter should be able to marry? How about a mother and son getting married? A brother and sister marriage?
------------------------------
posted on February 5, 2004 12:18:03 PM new
All civil marriage should be termed a civil union. The state gives no religeous approval and to talk of the sanctity of a civil marriage is silly. If the people getting wed want sanctified they will seek a church wedding.
Just because it is common for the minister to be licensed by the state does not mean there are not two actions here. There is the church wedding and the state wedding. One can stand without the other. They are NOT in the same business. The often have different goals and when the state or the church dissolves the marriage the other does not automatically honor that either.
The church may impose things like the partners being of the same faith - and the state may impose that both be free of certain diseases.
If you go to court for some things you will have to prove you had a valid marriage in the eyes of the state.
For other things like child support the state does not even care if you were married they just look at paternity.
Now if the church you go to approves of homosexuality how can the state make a judgement about a religeous matter and say their wedding is any less than any other religeous marriage? We are not supposed to make judgements about which church is valid or not in this country.
Obviously they ARE using what is considered religeous orthodoxy here to guide the rules of civil marriage.
The fact the Mormons were not permitted to have polygamy when the main line churches disapprove of it is an example. There are lots of BIG religions that allow it in the world and it is pure predjudice to make it the law of the land. You can say that of almost any law based on custom instead of physical fact.
It was only recently that it was the law in many states that blacks and whites or orientals and whites could not marry legally.
There is no consistant religeous or physical basis for that either- just shear hatred.
Perhaps the government should get out of the marriage business completely and allow people to run their own lives and if they go to hell in a hand basket that is their choice.
They can have a religeous wedding if they choose and if they want a civil contract they can write up anything they both find acceptable.
posted on February 5, 2004 12:23:44 PM new
EAG, there are plenty of gay conservatives.
Here's an article (from 2002) about incest laws. It's a fascinating read, if you've got the time...
Jerry Lee Lewis is notorious for having married his cousin. So are Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. All three suffered for having violated a widely held social norm against "incestuous" unions. Yet there may be less reason for this norm, and for the laws enforcing it, than was once believed.
A panoply of state laws say cousin marriages are taboo. But a new report in the Journal of Genetic Counseling, described in the New York Times last week, might send state lawmakers back to work revising their incest laws.
The report concludes that cousins can have children together without running much greater risk than a "normal" couple of their children having genetic abnormalities. Accordingly, the report potentially undermines the primary justification for laws that prevent first cousins from marrying or engaging in sexual relations with one another.
The laws regulating incest in different states
Incest in this country is regulated through two parallel sets of laws: marriage regulations and criminal prohibitions. Marriage laws prohibit unions of parties within certain relationships of consanguinity (by blood) or affinity (by marriage). They declare such marriages void from the start.
Criminal laws prohibit marriage and sexual relationships based on the same ties (with the necessary consanguinity and affinity usually defined the same way as in the marriage laws). They penalize those who disobey with fines or imprisonment.
Every state today has a statute defining eligibility for marriage, and each and every one prohibits marriages between parents and children, sisters and brothers, uncles and nieces, and aunts and nephews. Some prohibit all ancestor/descendant marriages, regardless of degree. Four states extend the prohibition to marriages between parents and their adopted children.
Twenty-four states prohibit marriages between first cousins, and another seven permit them only under special circumstances. Utah, for example, permits first cousins to marry only provided both spouses are over age 65, or at least 55 with evidence of sterility. North Carolina permits first cousins to marry unless they are "double first cousins" (cousins through more than one line). Maine permits first cousins to marry only upon presentation of a certificate of genetic counseling. The remaining nineteen states and the District of Columbia permit first-cousin marriages without restriction.
The origins of incest laws
Incest laws in this country have largely religious origins. In England, incest was punishable only in ecclesiastical courts, which ostensibly applied the law of Leviticus prohibiting persons more closely related than fourth cousins to marry. This ban applied equally to relations by blood and by marriage, based on the canonical maxim that husband and wife were one, and therefore equally related to each other's kin.
American jurisdictions departed from English law by declaring incest a crime, as well as a basis for invalidating marriage. However, many states only punished relationships between first cousins and closer, and others only punished relationships of consanguinity, but not affinity.
The modern justifications for incest laws
Today, the justifications given for retaining statutory prohibitions on cousin marriage (and even debating the passage of new ones) are largely based on the fear that such unions will cause genetic problems for the children they produce.
The states that permit cousin marriage only under certain circumstances make this underlying justification clear - since a common thread runs through all their laws. Each requires a showing that the couple will not reproduce (because of age or sterility) or, at the very least, that they have undergone counseling to understand the risks of reproduction.
There are other justifications for incest laws that might be more compelling. Anthropologists Margaret Mead and Claude Levi-Strauss both wrote convincingly in defense of the "incest taboo." Mead characterized the widely held belief that incest is wrong as "among the essential mechanisms of human society."
According to Mead, the taboo has strong benefits: Because certain sexual and marital relationships are categorically forbidden, and the categorical ban is instilled early on in children's minds, children can grow and develop affectionate, close bonds with a wide span of relatives, without the intrusion of "inappropriate sexuality." Children can "wander freely, sitting on laps, pulling beards, and nestling their heads against comforting breasts-neither tempting nor being tempted beyond their years."
Levi-Strauss focused on the benefits of the incest taboo to society at large. The ban on intrafamily marriage forces families to reach outward and connect with other families -- and it is those connections between many different families that make society function.
Possible constitutional challenges to incest laws
Will the new data -- which strongly suggest, for cousins, that the genetic justification does not hold water -- mean that state prohibitions on cousin-marriages are vulnerable to constitutional attack? Certainly, the new data dramatically strengthen the basis for such an attack.
The Supreme Court, in a long line of due process cases establishing the right to make important decisions about family life, has treated the right to marry as fundamental. State laws that significantly interfere with the right to marry have, therefore, been subjected to heightened scrutiny. In other words, states must show that they have a compelling reason for restricting the right to marriage, and that they have chosen means that are closely related to their stated goals.
What will the states assert as the "compelling interests" that justify banning cousin marriage? One might be the desire to discourage reproduction when the children are likely to have significant birth defects. Another might be the desire to preserve intrafamily harmony. (The desire to replicate Levitical law would, of course, not be a legitimate interest for a state, given the Constitution's ban on state establishment of religion). These ends are probably sufficiently compelling under a constitutional analysis.
The problem comes in another component of the constitutional analysis -- the "narrow tailoring" requirement, which tests the closeness of the relationship between the state's chosen means and its desired ends. According to the recent report, children of unrelated parents have a 3 percent to 4 percent chance of being born with a serious birth defect. Children of first cousins have only a slighter higher risk--roughly a 4 percent to 7 percent chance. Thus, the ban on cousin marriages will not go very far toward the general problem of preventing birth defects.
Likewise, the concerns about intrafamily harmony are most compelling with respect to members of the same household, and thus seldom implicated in our culture, where it is fairly unusual for first cousins to grow up in close confines. The potential for family disruption is limited where cousins grow up in separate households and then marry as adults. A few courts have applied this reasoning to invalidate incest laws with respect to couples with no blood relation, like a step-sister and step-brother who became related only as adults when their parents married.
The prohibition of cousin marriages suffers from problems of both under- and over-inclusiveness--flaws that are usually fatal to a statute under heightened scrutiny. These bans are underinclusive in that they do not prohibit marriage in other cases where the risk of producing children with birth defects is significant. Carriers of diseases like cystic fibrosis, for example, are permitted to marry and reproduce with other carriers, even though resulting children have a one in four chance of developing the disease. For most individuals, the decision whether to marry and reproduce in the face of known risks to resulting children is left to their discretion.
The bans are over-inclusive to they extent they prevent marriage for the 93 percent of cousin-couples who will not have children with birth defects. Genetic testing may even allow those couples to prove that they do not carry any of the recessive genes known to become dangerous when doubled. Nonetheless, the broad-sweeping bans on cousin-marriage would still prevent them from marrying (except in North Carolina, which creates an exception for cousin couples that have undergone genetic counseling).
More generally, scientific advances that enable doctors to screen for many potentially harmful genes may render general presumptions about genetic risks, like those embodied in marriage bans, inappropriate. When a particular individual can know his or her specific risk of passing on dangerous genes to children, how can a presumption as to the average person's general risk of doing so constitutionally be applied?
Will cousins be allowed to marry?
Prohibitions on cousin marriage are unique to the United States. Most other countries permit first-cousin marriages without restriction, and the rate of cousin marriages in some countries is as high as 60 percent of all marriages. But that has always been the case, and being unique has rarely motivated Americans to change their ways.
A constitutional challenge to a state's ban on cousin marriage may well be successful, and studies like this recent one will be important to such a case. But even if legal barriers to cousin marriage are removed, the cultural taboo (the so-called "ick" factor) will be harder to remove.
The term "incest" -- which conjures an image of a sexually exploitative relationship between an older male relative and a young girl -- is one barrier to cultural change. Cousin marriages between two adults are not, of course, incestuous in this sense.
Just as the term "bastard" gave way first to "illegitimate child" and later to "nonmarital child" in the literature on unwed parenting, perhaps "incest" could be replaced with more palatable terms like "kinship marriage" or "distant consanguineous relationships."
Beyond nomenclature, cousin marriage faces other barriers. Regardless of widely reported scientific advances, many will continue to believe that cousin couples are destined to produce genetically inferior offspring. Just two years ago, one Maryland legislator spoke in favor of a proposed bill to prohibit cousin marriage, claiming that one in 32 children born to cousins has a birth defect, compared to one in 100,000 born to unrelated parents. Correcting such misperceptions will be important to the success of those advocating for cousin marriage.
By Joanna Grossman, a FindLaw columnist, and associate professor of law at Hofstra University.
posted on February 5, 2004 12:29:17 PM newIf 'same sex' marriages should be allowed, why not allow 'same family' marriages? Do liberals think that a father and daughter should be able to marry? How about a mother and son getting married? A brother and sister marriage?
Won't surprise me one bit when those issues actually start happening. Let 15 people marry one another...who cares...they all have 'rights'. It mocks the word 'marriage' imo.
Some have even stated that what goes on in the privacy of one's home should not have government involvement... Guess when children are being abused sexually the government should stay out of it...after all...it's in the privacy of their own home.
posted on February 5, 2004 12:46:19 PM new
Linda, a licence isn't going to change a person's behaviour or sexual preference. You make it sound like giving equal rights to homosexuals is some kind of perversion. If a person doesn't break the law with their lifestyle, what do you care?
posted on February 5, 2004 12:59:26 PM new
Very good point Linda, Same people supporting this deviancy are probably the same ones who don't care about child abuse or anything else.
AIN'T LIFE GRAND...
posted on February 5, 2004 01:06:21 PM new
Wrong again, Twelve. Love between 2 people has nothing to do with child abuse or screwing animals, like you seem to think. Most of the time, deviant behaviour, like you talk about, is caused by a person being sexually abused as a child, and/or alcohol and/or drugs.
posted on February 5, 2004 01:45:41 PM new
If you are going to stop gays from getting married, then I want to support a ban on heterosexuals from getting a divorce.
After all divorce is not right within the church so therefore any straight couple that wants to get a divorce is a deviant.
posted on February 5, 2004 01:56:51 PM new
KD - It is morally against my personal religious beliefs. It is against Nature. Civil unions are something I could more accept. Marriage is one man and one woman....always has been....I hope it always will be. I will fully support the Federal Marriage law passing.
These types of law changes should be voted on by the voters of each state....not decided by the [usually liberal] state courts. The judges are not supposed to 'make' laws....but they appear to be doing so a lot lately. One case going before a state SC does NOT reflect the views/moral values of the citizens of that state.
Re-elect President Bush!!
[ edited by Linda_K on Feb 5, 2004 01:59 PM ]
posted on February 5, 2004 02:09:54 PM new
That does seem to be the case more and more Linda...
I think things will turn around and deviants will not be accepted as they should not be.
AIN'T LIFE GRAND...
posted on February 5, 2004 02:35:35 PM new
Pat, to hear Twelve's views... priceless. (Notice how he will only address Linda, to make it sound like we are all on Ignore?)
Linda, I understand about your religious convictions and I'm not trying to say they're right or wrong. Nor are mine. To me, you are mixing up God and religion and they're 2 separate things.
What is natural is the progression and evolution of life, not stagnation. Just because something has always been done a certain way, doesn't mean it's right for everyone. If you believe in God, He said that we aren't supposed to judge others. By the sounds of things, that's ALL we do, and in the name of God, to boot. How shallow (not you, but that way of thinking).
Guess when children are being abused sexually the government should stay out of it...after all...it's in the privacy of their own home. 