U.S. Senior District Judge Terence Kern ruled Tuesday that Oklahoma’s ban on marriage equality is unconstitutional.
The ruling is stayed pending appeal, meaning marriages will not occur immediately in Oklahoma.
In striking down Oklahoma's ban on same-sex marriage, U.S. District Judge Terrence Kern described it as "an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit."
"Equal protection is at the very heart of our legal system and central to our consent to be governed," Kern's 68-page decision says. "It is not a scarce commodity to be meted out begrudgingly or in short portions. Therefore, the majority view in Oklahoma must give way to individual constitutional rights.”
Proponents of the ban have argued that it passed with 74% support in 2004.
Of course it should also be noted that Oklahoma also forbid the marriage of "any person of African descent...to any person not of African descent" until the 1967 case of Loving V Virginia overturned all anti-miscegenation laws.
So sometimes the will of a certain group of people is less important than the rights of all American citizens.
Sorry, no one's rights get to be decided upon by votes.
ReplyDeleteBut I have to say I love the fact that Utah ( yes, I know there is now another court case)and now in Oklahoma that gays can marry.
I am SO looking forward to the day when this whole discussion is considered absurd and an embarrassing remnant of the past.
ReplyDeleteWhy should my friends be forbidden to marry just because they love someone with the same anatomical construction? What gives these right wing idiots the right to decide that their love is less worthy than anyone else's? I have a friend who just married her partner of several years and they are as happy, committed to each other and in love as any straight couple. I am looking forward to meeting her wife this coming summer and telling her how grateful I am that she has brought so much happiness into my friend's life.
The states are beginning to fall faster and faster, and the momentum will NOT be stopped. Get used to it, wingnuts!
Like!!
DeleteI'd like to see straight couples turned away from the marriage license bureaus, and told they can't get married, but they can form "civil unions" Make them wait a lifetime for legal marriage recognition. Then see the uproar and outrage. Poo Poo their anger and call it "part of the straight agenda". Because we straight people really got the whole "marriage" thing down to a science.
ReplyDeleteSeems fair after how we've treated the LGBT community for ages.
"Proponents of the ban have argued that it passed with 74% support in 2004. "
ReplyDeleteThat is why we have a Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and all the Amendments. A person's rights can not be voted away. Otherwise, we could have a vote on whether or not to re-institute slavery. Except maybe this time we'll say that all Southern baptists are slaves.
It's all part of being a republic.
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