Wisconsin law: Gay couples can be imprisoned, fined $10,000

[PageOneQ]

by Nick Langewis

Can a marriage certificate also serve as an arrest warrant?

California, the second state to recognize same-sex couples' right to civil marriage, became the first to extend that right to couples residing outside the state when its landmark Supreme Court ruling took effect in mid June. Most out-of-state couples, with the exception of those residing in Massachusetts and New York, know that their marriages will not be recognized when they return home.

For couples in Wisconsin, however, second-class citizenship may simply be the appetizer to the main course: Jail time.

http://pageoneq.com/news/2008/cnn_gaymarriage_jail071108.html

[midnight]

1. This might change when the November election happens.

We're hoping to win a Majority of Democratic Representatives-we need three more seats. Sorry we are not more open minded at this time.

[undergroundpanther]

2. When will the right wing bullies

GET IT that everyone else is NOT obligated to make the world become like their christianized fantasy?

I am really pissed off with the right wing theocracy and nazi christians telling everyone else HOW they must live, WHO they must be, and WHOM they can love.

I wish that it was open season on bully right winger psychopath pigs. I hate them all.The right wing should be seen as criminals in a free country,because of what they believe in.It is INCOMPATIBLE with democracy or a free country that recognizes inalienable human rights,and the right to pursue happiness..The right winger version of that horrible book the bible is not part of america's founding principles, it NEVER was,The founders were running AWAY from bible based bullies. If that book of lies(bible) was the basis for our Government we'd be dominated under a king, All us queers we'd all be stoned to death,and women would be prisoners of men who owned them.And that shit is NOT democratic at all.

Aaargh,Why are so many people so TOLERANT of right wing psychopaths,authoritarian fuck heads, bullies and the fucking deluded bible thumping follower assholes?
You cannot reason with bullies or true believers,because they are
playing with half a deck and they've managed to stack it against us now.
WTF??

Why? Why do we tolerate these emotionally retarded,intellectually mediocre, mentally stunted fools speaking their shit-talk anywhere,on TV, radio, print, in public spacers,pulpit or GAY PRIDE?? WE tolerate the intolerable,too much, without rising up with a challenge to their self serving rhetoric? Even if it means storming the radio stations and busting in on talk shows these monsters yammer on to justify domination,in these one-way 'discussions' about us ,without us??

Why do we not pummel them right back? 100 times harder?
Beat them all back into the tiny backwater churches in the middle of nowhere they came from. Why not fight them until they all shut up,go away and LEAVE US ALONE!!!or Die.

[closeupready]

6. Too bad I can't K&R your post, because you are so right.

:hi:

[and-justice-for-all]

8. I call the reich-wing domestic terrorist..nt

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. This law is almost certainly invalid

I am fairly certain that one state cannot arrest and convict someone for engaging in an action in another state where such action is legal. Imagine the chaos if Utah passed a law saying that any Utah resident who went to Nevada to gamble faced arrest on gambling charges if they ever returned to Utah?

[renaissanceguy]

4. I'd like to see them try and

enforce this law. Can you imagine that all over cable news -- an older couple, for instance, arrested for getting MARRIED? I think that will shed light on how ridiculous these anti-gay laws are, and how they really hurt PEOPLE.


http://www.cafepress.com/liberalissues/5640246

[TechBear_Seattle]

5. The Wisconsin law is racist, not anti-gay

A hundred and fifty years ago, most states had a law which prohibited interracial marriage. States that did not, or which did but then repealed them, felt compelled to placate their neighbors. The result was laws similar to the one in Massachussetts, which holds that out-of-state couples could not get married in that state if their marriage would be illegal in their state of residence.

As more and more states repealed their antimiscegenation laws, states that wanted to keep theirs felt themselves forced into taking a different tact: residents who got married in another state faced criminal charges if they ever returned to their state of residence. This was the situation in Loving v. Virginia, in which the US Supreme Court struck down the last remaining antimiscegenation laws in 1968. In that case, Mildred Jeter (who was black) and Richard Loving (who was white) left their home state of Virgina, where interracial marriage was illegal, to get married in the District of Columbia. When they returned and took up residence as husband and wife, they were arrested, found guilty of a felony and sentenced to one year in jail. The sentence was suspended for 25 years provided that they left the state and never returned during that 25 years.

The Wisconsin law in question is very similar to the Virginia law, except that it is not explicitly racist. Rather than criminalizing interracial marriage directly, it criminalizes the situation where Wisonsin residents leave the state to enter into a marriage that is illegal in Wisconsin. When statute 765.04(1) became law, this meant interracial marriage. Thanks to the Wisconsin constitution being amended in 2006, today it means same-sex marriage. Heterosexual residents of Wisconsin who are married out of state are not liable to criminal prosecution, as they (most likely) could have gotten legally married in their home state. It is currently an anti-gay law, but it is incorrect say that it was designed as such; it was meant to be racist.

[sui generis]

7. it's a truly weird attempt at law

You may live in any state in the union.

Each state has laws that govern the conduct of its citizens

Laws of conduct usually center around not depriving another individual of their civil rights.

This law makes the absurd claim that not only will it deny recognition, it is a criminal offense to partake of recognition granted legally in another state.

It's absurd - and the backlash is obvious: by recognizing that two individuals were married AT ALL, they have tacitly recognized the legality of the marriage and recharacterized it. If they don't recognize that it's a valid marriage in another state, they can't criminalize it.

I think they'll get their asscracks handed to them AND a ruling on it will actually backfire on the state, either way.

:popcorn:

[Q3JR4]

9. If I lived in Wisconsin

I'd head on over to California or Massachusetts and get gay married (if I wasn't in a relationship I'd find a friendly straight male friend and convince him to help me out) and then I'd come back home announcing what I'd done at the top of my lungs.

I'd use the brief publicity (and grass roots efforts before I left) to mobilize AS MANY couples who were willing to break the law and we'd DARE the state to enforce it's provisions. If I had my way the first day the state decided to start arresting people for this "crime," they'd have to go after a million Wisconsins.

Totally and completely unenforceable, and if they tried I can only imagine the shit storm the whole fiasco would generate. I would even contemplate going to Wisconsin just so I could be part of it all.

Q3JR4.
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”-Henry David Thoreau

“If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
-Martin Luther King, JR.

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”
-Paulo Freire

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
-Elie Wiesel