I don’t know. Certainly the happy couples are not, by getting licenses and then marrying, breaking the law. They know that the licenses, and the marriages, will almost certainly be invalidated; they are in some measure doing it as a political act. On the other hand, they aren’t disobeying anything or anybody (with appropriate jurisdiction).\n
Digression: If the happy couple goes home and files federal and state tax returns as a married couple—today, before the judges rule again—can they be held guilty of fraud if the licenses are revoked before April 15? Presumably, it’s a felony to file as married when you are not legally married; I haven’t checked that, but it stands to reason. Are they legally married? Yes? No? Temporarily? I wouldn’t do it; I savor the vote too much, but I expect somebody will, and I’d be curious to hear how it plays out.\n
Anyway, it’s a strange thing. The demonstration is made powerful by the couples actually marrying; they do so knowing that they are defying state and federal law (as currently defined by precedent). They aren’t breaking that law (can people break the law in that sense? Without engaging in fraud, which is a different law?). Mayor Newsom has allowed them to defy the law without breaking it; from his direction, he clearly isn’t breaking any laws either. If the courts are allowed to decide, and their decisions stand, one way or the other, the defiance will have been made public without any lawbreaking at all. Federalism is weird.\n
It’s also not clear, at the moment, how effective the whole thing is as political theater. I know, it’s not only political theater, but political theater it certainly is. I believe it will fire up the base; I’m willing at the moment to donate plenty of time and money to fighting some federal constitutional amendment that would prevent those sweet pictures. Would those pictures convince, say, Bill Clinton, who favored civil union but not ‘marriage’, that he should fight such an amendment, or at least vote against it? We’ll see. I suspect this will act as a nice balance to the ‘judicial activism’ in Massachusetts to remind people that what’s at stake is, on the one hand, the happiness of a few hundred thousand people, and on the other, well, nothing.\n
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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