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Originally Posted by catzmeow";p="
I'd certainly love to see you justify this claim with actual evidence. Catz
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No problem. I am going to do this in sketch form because I have done far too much typing today. If you have any specific questions, I will be happy to answer them tomorrow.
Marbury v. Madison: It is the Supreme Court that interprets the Constitution: "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."
The critical importance of Marbury is the assumption of several powers by the Supreme Court. One was the authority to declare acts of Congress, and by implication acts of the president, unconstitutional if they exceeded the powers granted by the Constitution. But even more important, the Court became the arbiter of the Constitution, the final authority on what the document meant. As such, the Supreme Court became in fact as well as in theory an equal partner in government, and it has played that role ever since.
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/...democrac/9.htm
The Court then held that marriage was a fundamental right in Loving v. Virginia:
"These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942).
Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. "
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...ol=388&invol=1
And then Zablocki v. Redhail expounded further:
"Although Loving [v. Virginia] arose in the context of racial discrimination, prior and subsequent decisions of this Court confirm that the right to marry is of fundamental importance for all individuals.... "
"More recent decisions have established that the right to marry is part of the fundamental "right of privacy" implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. [Cases not included]"
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/proj.../zablocki.html
Obviously, the Court has never held that same sex marriage is a fundamental right, but after replacing Bowers v. Hardwick with Lawrence v. Texas, I believe that the Court will recognize the right in the near future. This is why the far right wing is trying to get a Constitutional Amendment in place.
It is very interesting to note that the road to legal gay marriage has, so far, tracked the road to legal interracial marriage. History has a way of repeating itself.
