Ooops

[geminigirl]

Texas outlaws all marriage...because someone didn't proofread?

Hrm?

(The text of the proposition-"The constitutional amendment providing that marriage in this state consists only of the union of one man and one woman and prohibiting this state or a political subdivision of this state from creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage.")

ETA: I googled the actual text, to make sure that blackthornglade didn't in fact make a typo. And it is in fact correctly copied.

Comments

[sweet-tea79.livejournal.com]

Oh those silly Texans.

I have a great deal of love for your icon.

[geminigirl]

I got it from soaring_phoenix who said it was up for stealing as long as proper credit to the creator was given (I can't remember the creator's lj name, but it should be in my icon comments.)

I couldn't decide if the wedding hell icon or the grammar icon was a better choice.

[zurcherart.livejournal.com]

Check out the Dallas Morning News story to see what mean spirited, sore winners the positions supporters are ... arrogant too. They say that there is no reasonable judge who will read the bill and question the lawmakers' intent to outlaw gay marriage ... but that in fact (my paraphrase) since it outlaws all marriage there's no way the law can be overturned in cout ... and then the reasoning gets all weird and stuff.

heheheheh

[arfur]

nabbed: "If marriage were outlawed, only outlaws would have inlaws!"

[zenmondo.livejournal.com]

That is incredible. I can't wait for the legal challenges. I wonder if some forward thinking county-clerk will make a scene and stop issuing marriage certificates until the constitution is ammeded again to fix this.

[geminigirl]

You should read the Dallas Morning News article that someone linked to further up in the post...interesting how there are people who assert that it's ironclad.

[katishna.livejournal.com]

BAHAHAHAAHAHAH! I love Texas. I'm moving.

[schillerium.livejournal.com]

I'm no expert in American jurisprudence, admittedly, but realistically I think the proponents of this are probably right -- unfortunate though that is, any legal challenge will probably result in one of two things:
(1) a ruling that the law is to be interpreted in accordance with its actual intent rather than its literal wording,
(2) it'll get overturned, but will just come back in a few years with less ambiguous wording.
There's just no way in hell any judge will rule that it bans all marriages and allow that to stand.

[zurcherart.livejournal.com]

Actually, the more I think about this, the more I think the wording is intentional, and mean as snakes clever ... I think the logic goes like this ...

1) we can maybe, probably ban same-sex marriage ... based on "precedent"
2) but if we ban all civil unions and other legal arrangements for just gay people, the law will soon be overturned because it's discriminatory against one group (+ there are probably valid precedents supporting legal alternatives to marriage).
3) therefore we ban all marriage
4) when the gays challenge this in court based on the fact that it singles them out for mistreatment - HA ... this applies to everyone ... not mistreatment against you
5) when this is challenged based on the fact that all marriages in Texas are now verbotten we say - "oh come on, don't be silly now. this law was never intended to apply to heterosexual married couples ... so conservative (therefore "non-activist" yeah right) judge you have a handy out to rule to uphold the ban but exempt hetero's because we all know that the lawmakers didn't intend them when they wrote this amendment to save marriage.
6) Mmm ... this cake is lovely to have and to eat!

Ok. Sooner or later, someone will say enough of the foolishness ... but I bet it takes a good long while for the test cases to line up in the proper alignment to force a conservative court to rule to overturn. Or one day in many years, Texas will have a more liberal court.

The "catch" here is that, if I'm recalling correctly, Texans won relatively progressive rights under common law marriage in the last 20 years. It seems like it will be pretty hard to uphold common law marriages in Texas. The chinks in the armor may appear when the wrong people lose everything in a "common law divorce" based on the fact that there can be no common law marriage.