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Jul. 7th, 2006 05:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogSo. About the latest gay marriage decision, this one from our own New York Court of Appeals:
God help me for what I am about to say, but as much as my heart wanted the court to do the right thing, my Machiavellian little brain is glad they didn't.
If the highest court in this shrinking but still-influential state had found a state-constitutional right to marry, several things would have happened politically, most of them bad.
One, we'd be subjected to busloads of freaked-out Fundies for the remainder of time, all of them using this decision in the short term to stir their prejudiced little pot and rile up red-staters all over the country to come out from under their rocks and re-elect their incumbent Republicans. This is not the time for that. We're too close.
Two, in the weird but totally predictable world that is Ynabla ("Albany" backwards), every state official in our capital- from the Governor to the lowliest Democratic state senator to the third cousin of Erastus Corning II who runs the city dog pound- would be doing nothing for the next six months but having to deal with the pressure to "fix" this "horrid" decision. With all due respect to Adam and Steve, this state has far more to worry about right now than the two of you. Go to Boston for the weekend. It's a nicer place than this hellpit, anyway. Instead, the court decision, by not taking action on its own and putting out a specific call for the Legislature to deal with the problem, made absolutely certain that our chicken little Legislature will do no such thing for the remainder of this year's session.
About the only thing I regret is that, if the court had found a fundamental right of marriage in our state constitution, we might finally have a serious discussion about rewriting the whole gorram thing. The New York State Constitution is no Jeffersonian paragon of virtue, in either substance or writing style, but a bucket of special-interest guarantees that's been inassailable since 1938, despite a requirement that voters re-ratify it at least once every 20 years. Here's an example of what it says, from Article XIII, the Public Officers article:9-12. There are no sections 9-12.
God help me for what I am about to say, but as much as my heart wanted the court to do the right thing, my Machiavellian little brain is glad they didn't.
If the highest court in this shrinking but still-influential state had found a state-constitutional right to marry, several things would have happened politically, most of them bad.
One, we'd be subjected to busloads of freaked-out Fundies for the remainder of time, all of them using this decision in the short term to stir their prejudiced little pot and rile up red-staters all over the country to come out from under their rocks and re-elect their incumbent Republicans. This is not the time for that. We're too close.
Two, in the weird but totally predictable world that is Ynabla ("Albany" backwards), every state official in our capital- from the Governor to the lowliest Democratic state senator to the third cousin of Erastus Corning II who runs the city dog pound- would be doing nothing for the next six months but having to deal with the pressure to "fix" this "horrid" decision. With all due respect to Adam and Steve, this state has far more to worry about right now than the two of you. Go to Boston for the weekend. It's a nicer place than this hellpit, anyway. Instead, the court decision, by not taking action on its own and putting out a specific call for the Legislature to deal with the problem, made absolutely certain that our chicken little Legislature will do no such thing for the remainder of this year's session.
About the only thing I regret is that, if the court had found a fundamental right of marriage in our state constitution, we might finally have a serious discussion about rewriting the whole gorram thing. The New York State Constitution is no Jeffersonian paragon of virtue, in either substance or writing style, but a bucket of special-interest guarantees that's been inassailable since 1938, despite a requirement that voters re-ratify it at least once every 20 years. Here's an example of what it says, from Article XIII, the Public Officers article:9-12. There are no sections 9-12.
(So is it any surprise that the court went on in Rule 7 to say, "No pooftahs"?)
I would have supported an explicit right of any two people, not otherwise disqualified by current marital or imprisonment status, to marry, divorce or even root for the Yankees, however morally reprehensible THAT would be. It would have been far more satisfying than the court somehow cobbling such a right out of the state constitutional prohibition on imposing tolls on state canals. Now the chances of a reconsideration of the whole shebang is off until 2017. To parahprase Radar O'Reilly: I'll be 58 years old. That's practically dead!