They all look the same to me
Time to go all consparicy theory. Now california in the last election baned gay mariage. But in flordia in the same voting cycle, gay mariage was baned along with all other institutions resembling mariage. No civial unions. No domestic partnerships. No common law mariage. Nothing. So if the flordia law is more opresive to gay rights than the california law, why is the california law getting all the attention?
Well, to understand whats going on, you have to understand prepayment regulations on home morgages.
Or to be more spicific, the court case National City Bank of Indiana et al. v. Turnbaugh. To summarize, the home loans that National City were backing had a prepayment peneality clause in them. A rather standard practice. But someone in the Maryland state government got the idea that this wasent ~fair~. Those mean ol nasty banks were exploiting poor helpless homeowners. Beautifuyl loving soothing government steped in to wipe away every tear and sooth every brow. They pased a law putting a cap on what prepayment fees could be.
Now think about this for a second. National City is headquarted in Indiana. The law was passed in Maryland. What we have going on here is a kind of backward violation of the tenth adnment. The federal government, aside from spicificly numerasted powers, cant override state law. Thats what the tenth adnment is. But here it wasent the federal government telling Indiana what they could do. It was some other state government telling Indiana what they could do. This is nothing new. I have writen before about one state trying to enforce their laws over the top of some other state. The court however found that since National City had a federal charter through the National Banking Act of 1863, only federal level laws applied to it. State law cant overturn some other state law.
Anyway. States rights. Got it? Good. We will be comming back to that in a moment.
So back to the california same sex mariage ban. Political activists say this is totaly unacceptable because gays should have ~equal rights~. But the thing to remember is that california already DOES have equal protection under the law for gay couples. Its the The California Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act of 2003. It gay all the rights of mariage to gay couples (and some straight coupls too) as the ability to regester as a domestic partner. Not some rights. Not most rights. ALL rights. Every last one of them.
So why the much quoted stastic that civial unions only grant 140 rights but marriage grants 1049 rights? Or was that 300 for civial unions and 1138 for mariage? Well whatever the numbers are, everyone ~knows~ that civial unions are only a scaled down bastardized subset of mariage rights and theirfore the only way to gain ‘equality’ is to push for gay mariage.
Well no so fast there. Those thousand or so missing rights are all federal level laws. To take just one example, visitation rights for prisioners. For state prisions, either gay spouces or straight spouces are permited visitation. But for mederal prisions, visitation rights are a federal law controled at a national level and no amopunt of state law can impact it. As far as STATE law goes, mariage and civial unions are identical. Theirfore, california with its domestic partnerships has pushed as far as they are able to as a state and all others have to be aproched on a federal level.
In fact, the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 (damn this evil bush dictatorship) spicificly blocked state law from overriding federal law and/or laws in difrent states. Just like the court case againt national city, one state does not have the power to rule over another state.
But wait! There is a loophole. Instead of going after equal protection under the law by creating something LIKE mariage, instead do it so that it IS mariage. Like Dr Seasues star belly sneeches, if you paint a star on everyones belly then nobody will know how to tell the two apart. That way it wouldent matter if federal law dosent recognize gay mariage. You could still force federal law to apply by claiming that whats going on isnt ‘gay mariage’ but simply just ‘mariage’.
And thats why flordia law dosent matter either. Flordia can ban gay mariages and gay civial unions and gay domestic partnerships and everything else that even remotly blocks extending rights to gays and it woudent matter. As long as flordia accepts ANY marige licens from another state, you can use that as an pathway to captlize on their laws. Flordia lawmakers can go fuck themselves. California gets to write the law for flordia.