Polk County Judge Robert Hanson has freed the citizens of Iowa from the confines of silly things like laws and has issued his imperial decree allowing homosexuals to claim they have "married" one another.
From the Des Moines Register:
Johnson argued that Iowa has a long history of aggressively protecting civil rights in cases of race and gender. He said the Defense of Marriage Act, which the Legislature passed in 1998, contradicts previous court rulings regarding civil rights and should be struck down.
Johnson called the Defense of Marriage law "mean spirited" and said it was designed only to prohibit gays from marrying. He said it violates t he state constitution's equal protection and due-process clauses.
Since this judge didn't cite anything specific making the DOMA unconstitutional, it pretty much amounts to "It's unconstitutional because I say it is."
The decision is being appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, but in the meantime, two homosexuals and an apostate "minister" couldn't wait to muddy the waters even further, claiming to have taken part in a "marriage" as reported by KOTA.
This is why it was so important for South Dakota last year to go beyond our DOMA and pass an amendment to our state constitution, spelling out what everyone used to have the good sense to recognize on their own: that marriage can only take place between a man and a woman.
2 comments:
"Since this judge didn't cite anything specific making the DOMA unconstitutional"
Uh, yes he did. This is what happens when you read news reports of a decision, rather than the decision.
Here's a copy from a law prof's website
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~stevesan/varnumruling.pdf
Specifically, the court cited (starting at page 43) with at least the following
-Iowa Constitution's Due Process clause
-1976 Iowa Supreme Court decision striking down of their sodomy statue
-various other Iowa Supreme Court decisions
-the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia
-the Iowa Constitution's Equal Protection clause
-Iowa Supreme Court decisions related to the applicabiltiy of the Iowa Equal Protection clause,
-the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas
-numerous Iowa Supreme Court decisions on marriage
Now, you being an expert in Iowa law and all will certainly have every right to disagree with the judge. But the suggestion "this judge didn't cite anything specific making the DOMA unconstitutional" is rubbish.
Anonymous, you're right. I figured that surely he had made up some justification for his outrageous ruling, but the news reports didn't mention it; probably irrelevant to them.
I would like to point out, however, that none of those justify overturning marriage and Iowa's law specifically defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.
Homosexuals have access to the same due process and equal protection as anyone else: they have the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex as heterosexuals do.
Loving v. Virginia dealt with racial matters, matters of innate physical characteristics. This judge is trying to equate someone's skin color with a behavior, which conjures up the old adage about apples and oranges.
Lawrence v. Texas only made sodomy legal; it didn't authorize the counterfeiting of marriage.
None of his so-called justification is valid or applicable, so it still amounts to a decree of "The DOMA is unconstitutional because I say it is."
This is a textbook example of what is called "judicial activism." A judge with an ideological axe to grind twists laws and precedent to fit his particular ideological bent, and because citizens no longer have the will to demand impeachment, their ideological decrees then become accepted as law.
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