Chris Christie’s Legal Position on Gay Marriage Is Pure Nonsense

[DonViejo]

The New Jersey governor’s court brief reads like a bad student paper.

By Nathaniel Frank|Posted Monday, Aug. 5, 2013, at 2:59 PM

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration filed a brief last week defending the state’s 2006 Civil Union Act, which grants gay couples all the benefits of marriage yet bars them from actually getting married. The brief is Christie’s first official legal statement on same-sex marriage. Given his apparent aspiration to be the next Republican nominee for president, it is especially too bad that the brief also may be the most incoherent defense of heterosexual supremacy yet. That’s saying something in an era in which lawyers have tied themselves in logical pretzels to defend indefensible anti-gay laws. Even by that low standard, the brief reads like a student paper written during an all-nighter. You’d think an aspiring president would take the task more seriously.

The Christie brief was filed in state Superior Court, in a suit brought by six couples who sued New Jersey for the right to marry in 2011. After the Supreme Court’s June ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act—the 1996 law that denied federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples—the New Jersey plaintiffs asked the superior court to allow gay marriage in the state to begin right away. They argue that civil unions are inherently unequal now that the Supreme Court has tossed the key component of DOMA. The feds are now granting benefits to gay spouses, but New Jersey’s civil union law prevents gay partners from receiving those benefits.

Christie’s brief defends civil unions in three ways. First, it argues that the state can rationally restrict the label “marriage” to heterosexual unions because it is “preserving” the definition of the word. Second, it contends that it’s actually the feds who are now blocking gay equality by withholding benefits to civil union partners. And third, it claims that the state courts should move very cautiously when contemplating a major change in social institutions—all fine and well except that, as the state itself admits, calling a gay union a marriage isn't much of a change anymore. In fact, throughout the brief, what’s most striking is that every last argument Christie’s administration makes, it then proceeds to blatantly contradict.

The brief starts by arguing that the state’s 2006 Civil Union Act—passed in response to a state court ruling in the same year that New Jersey had to either let gays wed or grant them all the attendant benefits of marriage—has a rational relationship to a compelling state interest, and is therefore constitutional. “To reserve the name of marriage for heterosexual couples,” says the brief, makes sense because “altering the meaning of marriage” would, in the words of the 2006 ruling, “render a profound change in the public consciousness of a social institution of ancient origin.” The definition of marriage has “far-reaching social implications.”

full article:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/08/chris_christie_s_legal_brief_on_gay_marriage_pure_nonsense.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content

[blkmusclmachine]

1. .

.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. It is nonsense, but not pure nonsense as it has bigoted bits and a swril of slobbering

prejudice.

[yellowcanine]

3. In 20 years students will read about this debate in history class and say WTF?

Seriously, they will not understand what the fuss was about.

[malthaussen]

4. I think you are overly optimistic.

Racism is alive and well after over a half-century of very visible protest and legal action. And it does not appear that all of the racists are ancient holdovers from the Jim Crow days.

Since homosexual union (and gay rights in general) are much newer creatures than racism, one would expect it to take more than 50+ years before homosexuality is generally well-accepted enough for the uproar of today to seem quaint. And that is predicated on the American Taliban not organizing a counter-revolutionary cultural coup that sets us back a century or more.

But it's a nice thought.

on edit -- supposed to be a response to the post above, not the OP. Hit the wrong button.

-- Mal