We Want 'Em Gone!
There are a few things most people don't know about the new marriage amendment in the Texas constitution. Here's the wording from the state's website:
"The constitutional amendment providing that marriage in this state consists only of the union of one man and one woman and prohibiting this state or a political subdivision of this state from creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage."
This means that common-law marriage is a thing of the past. This means that gays who may have had no desire to get married and spent thousands of dollars on legal documents giving each other certain rights have spent those dollars in vain. This means that companies that grant same-sex partner benefits may now have to stop doing so in order to comply with state law. If you think that's a joke, it's happened in Michigan, one of the 19 states that has passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage. How do I know this? My company is based in Michigan and offers same-sex partner benefits.
It's one thing to take away the rights of gays to call themselves married and realize the legal benefits of such, but to retroactively deny them the right to establish legal methods giving each other the right to make decisions for each other is a travesty of justice. If a gay man paid a lawyer to write up a power of attorney, living will, will, etc, then how the hell can the law make those documents invalid? But that's exactly what's happening with proposition 2 because that would be construed as a "…legal status identical or similar to marriage." So, even the rights gays DID have prior to the amendment, they now no longer have. And those of you who live together and have established common-law marriage? Not anymore! Now, you have no choice. Get married (and eventually divorced) or suffer the consequences of the new law.
Check this out: You've been living with a woman for 14 years and you haven't spoken to your mom in 20 years. You die in a car accident. The house you and your lady bought in only your name because of her bad credit? It now belongs to mom. The girlfriend has to go.
A gay man and his partner purchase a house together. One of them dies of heart disease at an early age. The remaining partner has to now sell the house and split the money with his partner's surviving relatives even if there was a will. Why? Because in probate, a judge could decide that the will itself constituted an arrangement similar to marriage.
A gay man whose partner has recently died calls in to my office to find out how much said partner owes on his car so he can pay it off. We can't give him the info. "It's OK!" he says. "I have a power of attorney." So we give him the info and later, a judge rules that the POA is invalid because it consituted an arrangement similar to marriage. The dead guy's family now has the right to sue us for releasing sensitive info to a third party, thereby providing him with the means to pay the car in full and abscond with it.
Judges in the state of Texas are not required to consider legislative intent when ruling on constitutional law. That means that 100 judges could have 100 different rulings on the same snippet of the constitution. So we should see all kinds of mess from this amendment in the future. It'll be fun.
Yup, this is what Texans wanted. Let's legislate all those sinners the hell out of here. I told a gay friend of mine yesterday to move to Vermont. There's nothing for him here.
"The constitutional amendment providing that marriage in this state consists only of the union of one man and one woman and prohibiting this state or a political subdivision of this state from creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage."
This means that common-law marriage is a thing of the past. This means that gays who may have had no desire to get married and spent thousands of dollars on legal documents giving each other certain rights have spent those dollars in vain. This means that companies that grant same-sex partner benefits may now have to stop doing so in order to comply with state law. If you think that's a joke, it's happened in Michigan, one of the 19 states that has passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage. How do I know this? My company is based in Michigan and offers same-sex partner benefits.
It's one thing to take away the rights of gays to call themselves married and realize the legal benefits of such, but to retroactively deny them the right to establish legal methods giving each other the right to make decisions for each other is a travesty of justice. If a gay man paid a lawyer to write up a power of attorney, living will, will, etc, then how the hell can the law make those documents invalid? But that's exactly what's happening with proposition 2 because that would be construed as a "…legal status identical or similar to marriage." So, even the rights gays DID have prior to the amendment, they now no longer have. And those of you who live together and have established common-law marriage? Not anymore! Now, you have no choice. Get married (and eventually divorced) or suffer the consequences of the new law.
Check this out: You've been living with a woman for 14 years and you haven't spoken to your mom in 20 years. You die in a car accident. The house you and your lady bought in only your name because of her bad credit? It now belongs to mom. The girlfriend has to go.
A gay man and his partner purchase a house together. One of them dies of heart disease at an early age. The remaining partner has to now sell the house and split the money with his partner's surviving relatives even if there was a will. Why? Because in probate, a judge could decide that the will itself constituted an arrangement similar to marriage.
A gay man whose partner has recently died calls in to my office to find out how much said partner owes on his car so he can pay it off. We can't give him the info. "It's OK!" he says. "I have a power of attorney." So we give him the info and later, a judge rules that the POA is invalid because it consituted an arrangement similar to marriage. The dead guy's family now has the right to sue us for releasing sensitive info to a third party, thereby providing him with the means to pay the car in full and abscond with it.
Judges in the state of Texas are not required to consider legislative intent when ruling on constitutional law. That means that 100 judges could have 100 different rulings on the same snippet of the constitution. So we should see all kinds of mess from this amendment in the future. It'll be fun.
Yup, this is what Texans wanted. Let's legislate all those sinners the hell out of here. I told a gay friend of mine yesterday to move to Vermont. There's nothing for him here.
posted by Mitch/Mike at 11/10/2005 07:14:00 PM
1 Comments:
And just think of it. If this really was a country of God fearing, moral people, we wouldn't need any of this to go on because these situations wouldn't exist. I'm not sitting on a high horse or trying to legislate morality because at this point it would be a complete waste of time. That's what this all boils down to. The freedoms and beliefs that this country were founded on have been traded for people's new gods. Themselves. Do you think that gay marriage was even remotely thought of by the framers of the constitution? No. They wanted to worship God without the King telling them how to do it. If they had thought about it, there just might have been a ban on it from the birth of this nation. It kind of staggers the mind about how far down in the toilet this country has gone since it was founded on religious freedom. Call me crazy, racist, homophobe, whatever, I'll never be able to support gay marriage. Maybe that's horrible and I'm a horrible person, but I don't feel that way.
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