Kim Davis’s supporters have made a wide variety of arguments in support of Rowan County, KY’s rogue clerk. Many of these arguments are mutually contradictory, all of them wrong. This article is intended to address all of them, and will be updated to address any I might have overlooked on the first go.

1. Kim Davis is the only one following the law.

Um, no. By refusing to issue licenses to gays, she’s violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges. By simultaneously refusing them to everyone else, she’s violating Kentucky Revised Statutes 402.080, 402.110 and 402.230 which spell out the circumstances under which a county clerk shall – not may – issue a marriage license and record a marriage. There is no plausible interpretation of either federal or state law she can be reasonably said to be in compliance with.

2. But she has a First Amendment right to follow her conscience!

Everyone has a First Amendment right to believe whatever they want. If your religion calls for human sacrifice, you certainly have the right to believe in them but you have no right to carry them out. In Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the Supreme Court ruled that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment merely protects against laws targeting religion or religious practices. It provides no defense whatsoever to a neutral law of general applicability, solely because that law happens to conflict with someone’s religion.

Wait, you say, didn’t the Supremes rule just the opposite last year in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby? Actually, no, they didn’t. The Hobby Lobby case was decided under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was passed in response to Smith, and not under the First Amendment. For avoidance of any doubt, Justice Ginsburg noted in dissent that:

Any First Amendment Free Exercise Clause claim Hobby Lobby or Conestoga might assert is foreclosed by this Court’s decision in Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872 (1990).

Justice Antonin Scalia, who authored the Court’s opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, did not write any opinion in Hobby Lobby. He surely would have, however, if he had disagreed with Justice Ginsburg’s characterization of his past opinion.

Even RFRA, let alone the First Amendment, has never been successfully invoked by private citizens, let alone government actors, to justify discrimination.

3. OK, so if she isn’t following the law after all, Kim Davis is practicing civil disobedience. Yeah, that.

Civil disobedience is for civilians. As County Clerk, Davis is not acting as a private citizen resisting an unjust regime but as an arm of the regime itself. That’s not what civil disobedience is about. When a confused tax collector asked what he should do about Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay, Thoreau’s advice was to resign. Justice Scalia has offered the same advice for judges who cannot in good conscience apply any other law, such as the death penalty. Yet even where civil disobedience is considered morally justifiable, accepting the punishment for violating the law in question is part of that deal.

4. Gay marriage wasn’t the law in Kentucky when Kim Davis took her oath, so shouldn’t have to follow that law now.

Government officials swear to uphold the law in effect at all times during their tenure, not to enforce stale laws that used to be in effect when they first took office. Imagine the outrage if any traffic cop who’s been employed since 1995 were to ticket drivers for going 70 mph in a 75 mph where the speed limit was once 55. That is essentially the argument Davis’s supporters are making.

Further, as one who’s been on the job for less than a year Ms. Davis can scarcely plead ignorance that gay marriage was on the horizon when she took office. Throughout the 2014 election season, gay marriage was the law in Kentucky, albeit stayed pending appeal. Judge John G. Hayburn issued his first ruling in Bourke v. Beshear on February 12, 2014, more than three months before the May 20 Democratic primary, and a more general ruling in the perfectly named Love v. Beshear case on July 1. Those decisions were ultimately reversed 2-1 by the Sixth Circuit, thereby creating the circuit split that would make a Supreme Court ruling inevitable, but not until November 6, 2014 – two days after Davis was safely elected. By the time she was sworn in the Supreme Court case was all but assured.

5. Kim Davis is upholding the Kentucky Constitution.

No, she isn’t. Article IV, clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution provides it “the supreme Law of the Land” and that “the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding. Compliance with a state constitution is no defense – nor in any way relevant – to a violation of the federal one. Nor, I might add, does the Kentucky Constitution make any claims to the contrary.

6. But the Supreme Court didn’t really change Kentucky’s law, only the Kentucky Legislature can do that.

As noted above, two of the cases that were consolidated into Obergefell (Bourke v. Beshear and Love v. Beshear) were in fact rulings from Kentucky. But it doesn’t matter, anyway. State appellate decisions bind entire states, federal appellate cases bind entire circuits, and Supreme Court rulings bind the entire nation. By way of comparison, Roe v. Wade legalized first trimester abortions across the country, not just in Texas, and Loving v. Virginia decision of 1967; it did not remain illegal until Alabama finally got around to removing that odious statute off the books in 2000 (with over 526,000 mini-Kim Davises voting to keep that void, racist statute on the books even then).

7. Where in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution does it give Congress the power to define marriage?

Nowhere. Good thing Congress didn’t do that, this time. They did with the Defense of Marriage Act, though, which was rightly struck down in Windsor for all the wrong reasons. In my view, it should have been struck down for exceeding Congress’s enumerated powers. It was instead struck down for violating equal protection. But it has nothing to do with Obergefell or Kim Davis.

8. Where in Article I does it give the Supreme Court the power to redefine marriage?

It doesn’t. Article I outlines the powers of Congress, not the courts.

9. OK, Smartypants, where in Article III does it give the Supreme Court the power to redefine marriage?

Article III provides that

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority … In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Congress has made no exceptions for marriage. If the authors of DOMA were smart, they could have included a provision stripping courts of jurisdiction to review the constitutionality of traditional marriage laws including DOMA itself. Fortunately or unfortunately, the authors of DOMA were not that smart.

10. Obergefell violates The Tenth Amendment.

Actually, no, it it doesn’t. In fact, it doesn’t implicate the Tenth Amendment at all. The Tenth Amendment provides that all powers “not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States [emphasis added]” are reserved to the states or the people. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly prohibits the states from “depriv[-ing] any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” or “deny[-ing] to any person within [their respective] jurisdiction[-s] the equal protection of the laws.” Since those were the central allegations of the marriage cases, the Tenth Amendment by its terms does not apply.

11. Oh, c’mon. Traditional marriage doesn’t deprive anyone of liberty without due process or violate anyone’s equal protection!

That’s your opinion. Four of the current nine Supreme Court Justices agree with you. The other five do not. All nine agree, however, that the plaintiffs alleged traditional marriage laws violated these two constitutional provisions. Therefore, there can be no question that the court had jurisdiction to decide whether they did or not.

12. Courts can’t strike laws down. Marbury v. Madison was a power grab, not a legitimate constitutional ruling!

Before you even start down that path, know what you’re saying. You’re not just invalidating gay marriage and re-criminalizing sodomy in the Bible belt. You’re not just invalidating abortion rights, re-segregating society, teaching the Koran in government schools, or outlawing small religious sects altogether. You’re also endorsing Chicago and DC’s “right” to imprison gun owners simply for owning guns, elected officials’ “right” to censor public criticism of themselves 30-60 days before an election, and every other government’s “right” to discard the Bill of Rights as a mere Bill of Suggestions.

Marbury was decided in 1803. Since then, Congress and the states have amended the Constitution 16 times. Not one of those amendments sought to rein in or even “clarify” the judicial power under Marbury. Nor was any needed, really, given Congress’s plenary power under Article III to make whatever “Exceptions” to jurisdiction it wants, yet have never seen fit to do so. By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, Marbury was two generations old. Congress knew what powers they were giving the courts.

13. The Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t apply to the states. That’s judicial activism!

Actually, no, it’s called reading the damned Constitution. Not all parts of the Fourteenth Amendment apply by their terms to the states, but the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses clearly do:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [Emphasis added.]

There is no non-frivolous reading of “no state” or “nor shall any state” that would not have these clauses apply to the states. A decent case can in fact be made the other way, that the Supreme Court was activist indeed in Bolling v. Sharpe for ruling that the Equal Protection Clause could apply anywhere else.

14. OK, you got me there. Equal protection and due process do apply to the states after all. But all they prohibit the state from doing is denying constitutional rights.

That’s true, but kinda misses the point. The Fourteenth Amendment is itself part of the Constitution, and due process and equal protection are themselves constitutional rights. You may be thinking of the doctrine of selective incorporation, which has been the vehicle by which most of the Bill of Rights has been incorporated against the states by way of the Due Process Clause. No serious constitutional scholars have suggested that is all the Due Process Clause does, or that it implicates equal protection at all.

15. What about her beliefs, though? Why should she have to endorse a lifestyle she finds sinful?

She’s not being asked to “endorse” anything. Marriage licensing laws, like gun licensing laws in most states and driver licensing laws in all, are purely nondiscretionary. If I get a driver license from the DMV, it’s not because the clerk personally approves of my car or of the idea of me driving. It’s because the clerk had a check list of legal requirements that needed to be met, saw that I met them, and signed off on those facts. Marriage licenses are no different.

16. Judge Bunning jailed Kim Davis because of her beliefs.

Judge Bunning jailed Kim Davis for contempt. The purpose of civil contempt is to compel compliance with an injunction. Fines work for most people in most cases, but they wouldn’t have worked in Davis’s since others would have paid her fines for her.

For whatever good it does, As a Bush appointee who by some accounts doesn’t even agree with Obergefell, Bunning most likely shares Kim Davis’s beliefs.

17. Oh yeah? Well, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had his clerks do the same thing in reverse in 2004, and he didn’t go to jail.

Not exactly. Both violated clearly written laws on gay vs. straight marriage, and both were told by a judge to stop. Newsom stopped. Davis didn’t.

18. What about sanctuary cities? No one goes to jail over those!

Indeed they don’t, for the same reason Gavin Newsom wasn’t jailed, and Davis herself wasn’t jailed over any of the marriage licenses she denied from June 24 through September 3: you can’t be held in contempt for violating an injunction that was never issued in the first place.

So why aren’t any such injunctions issued? Probably because they can’t be. As noted above, federal law as well as the federal Constitution are the supreme law of the land, and state and local governments cannot lawfully act to undermine it, but per Printz v. United States they can’t be commandeered by the federal government to enforce it, either. States are perfectly free to commandeer cities, however, so if there are any sanctuary cities in your state call your legislator.

19. OK, OK, I get that the office should issue the licenses, but putting her in jail seems excessive. Couldn’t the judge have accommodated her some other way?

He can and he did. The judge’s original suggestion was to simply allow her deputy clerks to issue the licenses themselves, but she ordered them not to. Eventually, while she was rotting in jail, her clerks started issuing them on their own, and she was let out. If she doesn’t interfere with them, then presumably she’ll stay out.

20. But what about ….?

No. Just … no.

Have I missed anyone?

UPDATE: Here’s the final version of my article.

The renewed debate on gun debate has sparked a meta-debate over whether one particular argument – that criminals don’t obey gun laws – is a valid one. On one side, a recent article by James Schlarmann of the aptly-named “Political Garbage Chute” has been making the rounds lately, suggesting that the argument can never be valid for gun control or anything else. On the other, Jennifer Townsend and others maintain that a law followed only by the law-abiding is a waste of everyone’s time, or worse. Elliot Fladen splits the baby, arguing that “criminals don’t follow the law” works for malum prohibitum (bad because prohibited) crimes but not for malum in se (inherently bad) crimes. In my view, “criminals don’t obey laws” is a valid argument, but one whose value is often overstated. Further, as I will explain below, it is more useful for the gun debate than it is for most other issues of contention.

First, let’s dispose of the living, breathing strawman that is Schlarmann. While concerns about compliance (or lack thereof) may not be dispositive, this doesn’t mean lawmakers should dismiss them entirely. Of course not everyone will comply with any new law, and of course that doesn’t mean all new (or old) laws are bad. But it’s one thing to have a law some people won’t comply with, and quite another the pass one that no one will. And by “no one” I don’t mean literally no one, but none of the target population we ought to care about. National Prohibition had a 100% compliance rate among teetotalers, and everyone who didn’t drive in the 1970s and early 1980s was in full compliance with the national 55 mph speed limit, but both laws became national jokes, and were rightly repealed as a result. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it really make a sound? If Congress or the Legislature passes a new law and no one complies with it, is it really a law?

On the flip side, while concerns about compliance (or lack thereof) may not be something legislators should dismiss entirely, this doesn’t mean they are dispositive. Take, for example, the death penalty debate. Liberals frequently claim the death penalty is not a deterrent. If they are correct, surely no lesser penalty can deter, either. Yet I have never heard even the most ardent liberal argue that laws against murder should be repealed, if for no other reason, then because locking up a person who has committed a murder in the past may prevent him from committing more murders in the future. So there can be a value to having a criminal law on the books, even if no one is deterred.

At first blush, this would seem to support Elliot’s malum prohibitum / malum in se distinction, as murder is an inherently bad act, while merely owning the instrument in question is not. Locking up or executing pepple predisposed to commit murder will surely result in fewer murders, which is unambiguously a good thing. Locking up or executing people for possessing Tiddlywinks will surely result in fewer people owning Tiddlywinks, but what’s the point? Similarly, locking up people for possessing firearms will result in fewer people owning firearms, but if that effect is only seen among those least likely to misuse them, it again seems to be a useless exercise.

That said, not all malum prohibitum laws are as silly as bans on Tiddlywinks, let alone as silly as gun control. While some “date rape” drugs may be prescribed to certain individuals for other, legitimate purposes (Rohypnol, a.k.a. “roofies,” have been prescribed for insomnia), there is no legitimate reason for the rest of us to have easy access to them. As surely as a person not deterred by the stiff penalties for murder won’t be deterred by the relatively lax penalties for merely possesing the gun, surely no potential rapist would be deterred by the relativity lax penalty for merely possessing the drug. Still, if a violent felon on parole is found in possession of a firearm, or if anyone is found in possession of date rape drugs at a bar, with no medical justification, would it not make more sense to lock them up now rather than waiting around until someone actually gets hurt?

Constitutionally, we have a right to bear arms but not roofies. Ignore that for now. The policy reason for banning roofies but not guns is because guns are useful tools for good and evil, while unprescribed roofies are useful tools for evil alone. Gun control creates a balance of power problem that is essentially nonexistent in most other debates. For any topic, the “criminals won’t obey this new law” is as good as the NRA slogan, “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” Try it on for size:
ddddd

1. When murder is outlawed, only outlaws will commit murder. Good, we need as few murders as possible.
2. When date rape is outlawed, only outlaws will rape their dates. Good, we need as few rapes as possible.
3. When date rape drugs are outlawed, only outlaws will have date rape drugs. Good, unprescribed date rape drugs are useless to the rest of us, anyway. Try fending off a rapist with a roofie.
4. When bananas are outlawed, only outlaws will get enough potassium.
5. When large sodas are outlawed, only outlaws will piss off Michael Bloomberg.

Note that there are some aspects of the gun debate where “only criminals will comply” becomes as silly for guns as it is for roofies. Take, for example, the ban on undetectable “plastic” guns. Unless you are planning on breaching security of some courthouse or airport, what use is a “plastic” gun to you? Similarly, the ban on certain individuals from owning firearms is a reasonable concept, even if the criteria themselves could use some work (lifetime for nonviolent felons seems over the top). So generally, the “criminals won’t obey X” argument is only a strong argument against X if it’s also a problem that non-criminals will.

Here’s how I’m voting this morning, and why.

• President: Romney. Yes, Gingrich and Santorum are still on the ballot, apparently because Gingrich and Santorum merely “suspended” their campaigns rather than formally ending them. Paul is still on the ballot, as he’s not in it to win it, just to complain. My favorite candidate of all is No Preference, but I don’t think he has a good chance of securing the party nomination, either. Let’s get on with the program. Romney’s the nom’nee, voting for anyone else on the Republican ticket is a farce.
• Governor: Pat McCrory. Not necessarily the most conservative candidate, but probably the most competent, and certainly the most conservative electable candidate. Better to win with McCrory than lose to the Carolina Strangler.
• Lieutenant Governor: Dale Folwell. Never heard of any of these guys, following GRNC guide by default.
• Auditor: Rudy Wright. Fern Shubert is mostly a one-trick (immigration) pony politically, though in fairness she has also worked as an auditor for … um … Arthur Andersen. But at least she is a CPA, which is more than I can say for Greg Dority or Debra Goldman. That leaves us with Rudy Wright and Joseph DeBraggar. Both have formidable credentials as auditors, but as a four term mayor of Hickory, Wright comes with strong political experience as well. So while I’d gladly support either in the general, I’m giving Wright the nod in the primary.
• Commissioner of Agriculture: Bill McManus. Incumbent Steve Troxler’s second term as been a mixed bag, and his primary challenger’s message of limited government is a welcome alternative.
• Commissioner of Insurance: James McCall. From viewing their web sites, it’s clear McCall is actually interested in insurance issues, and has specific plans for reforming insurance in this state. It’s equally clear the other two are garden variety politicians who view the Commissioner of Insurance as just one more elective office to use as a springboard to somewhere else. [Causey responds.]
• Secretary of State: Mike Beitler. Libertarian candidate in 2010, this time he wants to win. The GRNC endorsement can’t hurt, either.
• Superintendent of Public Education: Ray Martin. In this survey only two of the five Republican candidates, Martin and Tedesco, endorsed both school vouchers and merit pay, the two most important issues to me as far as education is concerned. But when it comes to other issues, Martin is the only candidate who would allow unmarried couples to adopt, extend anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation, and even allow physician assisted suicide. Easily the most libertarian of the bunch. He probably won’t get the nomination, but it won’t be for want of my vote.
• Treasurer: Steve Royal. Never heard of any of these guys, following GRNC guide by default.
• State Senate (Dist. 33): Stan Bingham. Solid, GRNC-backed incumbent. Why change a winning game? Then again, if for some reason you think Eddie Gallimore or Sam Watford would be better, no need for the usual worries about electability. No Democrat filed in this district so whoever wins today’s primary will win the seat.
• State House (Dist. 80): Jerry Dockham Solid, GRNC-backed incumbent. Why change a winning game?
• Board of County Commissioners: NOTA. Can’t find enough information about any of these guys to vote intelligently; leaving this one blank.
• Constitutional Amendment One: No. Totally unnecessary for preserving traditional marriage, counterproductive for everything else.
• Constitutional Amendment Two: Yes. Just kidding, there is no Amendment Two.

UPDATE: Either I voted, or someone else who knows my real name and street address did. Close enough! I ended up voting for Jarvis and Shell for County Commissioner, mostly to reward them for taking the time to have their people come out to the polling place. I left the third race blank, so the computer tried to talk me into voting for someone.

Sister Toldjah asked for her readers’ thoughts on Amendment One, the marriage amendment on Tuesday’s ballot. Amendment One would add this language to Article 14 of the North Carolina Constitution:

Sec. 6. Marriage.

Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.

For starters, I should note that I originally supported California Proposition 22 in 2000, along with the identically worded Proposition 8 in 2008, even while opposing Virginia’s broader amendment in 2006, and plan to vote against North Carolina’s on Tuesday. Here’s why.

First, my own views on the subject have shifted over the years. While married, and not anticipating divorce, I used to be for traditional marriage, but neutral on domestic partners and civil unions. The rationale was something about babies vs. bathwater: why compromise the genius of millennia of Anglo-Saxon over a a social experiment the gays themselves didn’t even want more than a generation ago? My error was assuming family law was at least almost as sensible as the areas of law in which I practice. One divorce later, I now know nothing could be further from the truth. That bathwater is way nastier than I ever imagined it was, so nasty I can safely assume that if there ever was a baby in there to begin with, there certainly isn’t one now. Further, many of the aspects of family law I find so distasteful are the product of a bygone era in which men provided for women, who in turn were unable to provide for themselves. Many social conservatives won’t attack that inequity because deep down inside, they still long for the old world order upon which it is based. Feminists won’t attack it either, because however unfeminist its origins, its effect in the modern world is to systematically favor women. I can think of few better ways to expose family law for the farce that it is, than a few high-profile divorces among gay couples, where the “woman” claiming lifetime alimony is another man! If that’s the catalyst we need to prompt the reforms that were long overdue anyway, so be it.

Second, I continue to believe strongly that legal marriage ought to be defined by legislatures, not the Constitution or the courts. All three marriage amendments stripped courts and legislatures alike of the power to legislate. I didn’t much care about that with Prop 22, as California’s voter initiative law allows voters to easily reverse themselves anytime they want, just as a legislature could. Nor did I object to Prop 8 as a constitutional amendment, as the California Supreme Court had left voters with no choice but to make this a constitutional issue. Not so Virginia or North Carolina, both of whose amendments require(d) only a simple majority on election day, but would require a much more grueling political process to be repealed or amended later.

Third, while Amendment One is sold as a protection against runaway courts, its language, like that of so many other marriage amendments, goes much further than that. If real concern was to prevent judicial meddling, this is all we would have needed:

Sec. 6. Marriage
Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to require this State to recognize any domestic union other than a marriage between one man and one woman.

Instead, we’re offered a much broader initiative, which bars not only courts but the General Assembly itself from either broadening the definition of marriage or crafting any potential marriage substitutes in the future. Bad idea.

Fourth, I’m not aware of NC courts taking the activist approach that is typical of liberal states like CA or MA, and thus find concerns about judicial activism overblown. Bear in mind that as a state constitutional amendment, Amendment One can’t do anything about federal courts, or even its own NC courts while interpreting federal laws. Could a court rule that “[n]o person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws” (NC Const. Art. I, Sec. 19) guarantees a right to gay marriage while “[n]o State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (U.S. Const. Amend. 14 Sec. 1) does not? Stranger things have happened, I suppose, but now that courts are finally weighing in on what (if anything) the Fourteenth Amendment has to say about gay marriage, I think that position is becoming increasingly untenable. Yet that is the only position under which Amendment One will do anything for traditional marriage at all. If both provisions are held to require gay marriage, the federal Constitution wins and Amendment One won’t do anything. If neither is construed that way, we didn’t need Amendment One to begin with.

Lastly, while I think I have offered some pretty good arguments for voting against Amendment One, I’d be remiss if I didn’t identify some very bad ones as well. Contrary to what you have seen in the ads, Amendment One will not make it legal to beat up your girlfriend, skip out on child support, or affect your rights as a parent in any way. These laws do not depend on marriage now, nor any other “legal domestic union” that does not even exist now. They won’t start depending on it on Wednesday. No, it won’t affect your ability to privately contract for any marriage like benefits you may desire; the second sentence of the amendment expressly preserves that right. No, it won’t take away your domestic partnership benefits if you are employed by anyone but the government. There is a real concern that it might cause problems for government employers and employees, an issue likely to end up in the courts sooner rather than later. My guess is that domestic partner benefits will remain a viable option for any employer, including government acting as a market participant, but it is just that, a guess, and certainly not a slam dunk. Worst cause (plausible) scenario: government employers have to find some way to get a little creative, e.g., offer health benefits to all persons who happen to be living in a particularly household, whether they are in a domestic relationship or not.

UPDATE: William Teach has more.

Contrary to conventional non-wisdom, Kevin A. Lehmann’s views are NOT protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. Is there anyone in the three branches of government that can interpret our most sacred document (Playboy notwithstanding) correctly?

Like in Christendom where scores of sects believe mutually contradictory things but all rationalize that the others aren’t “real” Christians, so too has the clear and concise language of the Constitution and the 27 Amendments progressively undergone exegetical attacks over the decades – depending on which party is in power – to conform to a particular political philosophy. And both sides being heavily dependent on the votes of stupid people, both have taken full advantage of this skewed interpretation in their efforts to court them.

But this is one hermeneutical battle America can ill afford to lose. Our founding principles, i.e., Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness By Mocking Stupid People, hang in the balance. In short, unless you want to end up in Idiocracy, our nation’s very survival depends on it.

America faces a grave threat from stupid people. Stupid people are infiltrating our country in droves and they’re doing it under the guise of “Constitutional Protection.” And like that island that used to be Great Britain, if we don’t act now, then it will be later, by definition. Stupid people may be stupid themselves, but a few of their backers are actually quite cunning, crafty and clever. They’re using our ignorance of the understanding of our own Constitution against us, and they are clandestinely and methodically spreading their tentacles in a quiet and unassuming manner.

Federal, state, and local governments on the other hand won’t acknowledge the imminent threat of stupid people. With both parties relying heavily on the stupid vote to win close elections in battleground states, they incorrectly claim that stupid people have “Constitutional Rights” to express their stupid opinions, spam them across the Internet, form stupid discussion groups, and implement Teh St000p1d in their communities and in the public square. They’re dead wrong! And by and large, stupid people are getting away with it just like they have in Europe, particularly in Poland and East Frisia. Only unlike Europe, and in Poland and East Frisia in particular, it’s not too late to stem the tide, but we have to act now. Time is not on our side. In fact, this may come as a shock, but there are actually more stupid people than smart ones on the Internet today. We are already well under way to being stupidified.

To understand stupid people is to understand Teh St000p1d. The ideology of stupidity is nothing short of a totalitarian political, economic, military, social and legal system that’s camouflaged in religious garb. Their mandate (not objective) is to incorporate our country into a global zone of stupid, where empty slogans like “hope and change” pass for an argument and catch phrases like “lamestream media” and “gotcha journalism” pass for a rebuttal.

Sadly, they are making serious inroads towards their tyrannical mandate because America is not resisting. We are all that stands between freedom and a world of stupid. The United States of America is the world’s last bastion of hope.

Yet, the dreadful message we get from ignorant and incompetent lawmakers (and from smart but cynical ones who need the stupid vote) is that our Constitution renders us powerless to do anything about stupid people. On the contrary, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence – properly interpreted – actually give our federal, state and local governments justification and authority to stop Kevin A. Lehman dead in his tracks!

Here’s How . . .

Stupid opinions are NOT speech in the sense we understand speech. Teh St00pid—which stands for “stupid” or “duh hickey” – is about COMPLETE RETARDATION. It is a total form of non-thinking that controls every aspect of the lives of its adherents. It’s a barbaric form of life. It masquerades as good ol’ fashioned Judeochristanity rooted in Old Testament principles, but unlike most of today’s Judeochristians (whoever the hell they are), these guys actually buy in to the thievery and murderous thuggery of the old Testament, even seeking to outlaw any other religions formed after Roman thugs killed Jesus and Christian thugs invented anti-Semitism by blaming it all on the Jews. In fact, some stupid people think any religion formed after Jesus’s death and/or rumors of his resurrection doesn’t count as a “religion” at all!

Only their modern day tactics now include recruiting mentally ill, naive and gullible idiots who spread Teh St00p1d on the Internets. And Western countries indoctrinated with the lies of a U.S. Constitution and that politically correct “Bill of Rights” have reluctantly turned a blind eye. But like the Alien and Sedition Acts, Japanese internment, the separate but equal doctrine and handgun bans in our nation’s capital and our third largest city, the Constitution of the United States of America can’t stop us from doing anything. It’s just a piece of paper we can either follow or ignore. So let’s ignore it, Allah damn it!

Given that fact, we must understand our founding principles that (1) the Constitution, and hence any constitutional rights, derive from the smart people who wrote the Constitution, not the stupid people who didn’t, (2) stupid people do not have the right to divest us of our Rights (nor even to correct us for inexplicably capitalizing a common noun for no apparent reason), and (3) the purpose of civil government is to secure the rights our non-stupid founding fathers gave us.

What are our rights, and where do they come from? Playboy? The Jersey Shore? Anyone named Kardashian? No! The Declaration of Independence, whose sole legal effect is to separate us from the island that used to be Great Britain, says:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, except for the stupid ones who are vastly inferior to us, that all non-stupid people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness (which is most easily pursued by poking fun at stupid people) and the right to practice any religion they want, as long as it is Judeochristianity rather than Islam. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men who aren’t stupid. . .”

So, where do our rights come from? Encyclopedia Britannica, of course. And what are those rights? Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and the right to mock stupid people.

Intellect is the very essence of Allah’s model for civil government in a secular, libertarian-leaning theocracy like our own. Inscribed on the Liberty Bell is Leviticus 19:28 – “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.” I mean, c’mon. Seriously. Who get tattoos?! Stupid people, that’s who.

Do stupid people respect the rights Allah gave us? Of course not! Teh St000p1d stands in stark contrast to Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness and all but the basest, least funny ways to poke fun at stupid people. Let’s have a look . . .

1. Life: Teh St000p1d is a culture of death, fascism, prejudice and, well, stupidity. [And if you didn’t see that last one coming, you’re probably not the sharpest tool in the shed yourself.]
2. Liberty: Teh St000p1d is a culture where freedom means nothing, the Constitution means less (OK, I’ve already said that it *does* mean less, but never mind that) and conversion to another belief system is grounds for expulsion or worse. But if you’re too stupid to know the difference, no problem; just call it “freedom” and the fascist who advocated it a “libertarian-leaning constitutional conservative.”
3. Pursuit of Happiness: Theirs is a dictatorship of boredom and distraction. How many times have we already heard of corrupt businessmen and politicians getting away with their crimes because we were all too busy watching reruns of Jon – Kate + H8 to care? Public stupidity is commonplace. Women who expose their breasts in public are stared at, ogled and sometimes even catcalled by men. Stupid women are no better. For all the suffering and misery in the world, what do they care about? Whether some man left a toilet seat up or not! Jesus H. Chr.. um, I mean, Kevin A. Lehmann, what is this world coming to?
4. Freedom of Speech: Try criticizing stupid people in Poland, one of our few remaining allies in Europe. Psych! Of course nothing will happen, as they’re too damned stupid to notice! You could waltz into any bar in Warsaw and call the drunkest, meanest looking patron a “Polack” to his face and he wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. That’s right, Polacks are so damned stupid they even call themselves Polacks. Is that where you want our country to end up?

For every right supposedly given to us by Allah – or actually given to us by the Constitution – stupid people seek to eradicate.

Do stupid people have the “right” to impose Teh St000p1d in this country which strips us of our rights? No! If Allah wanted stupid people to have the “right” to take our rights away from us, he would have given them half a brain to pull it off. The reason he gave us the wits we have is so we could take those same rights from them!
Lawmakers tell us stupid people have a First Amendment “right” to express their ill-formed opinions, form Facebook groups, proselytize, and implement Teh St000p1d right here. But is that what the First Amendment says? No! See for yourself:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, provided, however, that no rights described herein shall be available to stupid people.”

OK, so maybe I made that last part up but never mind that. Consider the verbiage of what came before very carefully. A lot of lawmakers and most Americans make the exegetical error that the First Amendment grants us rights. It doesn’t. Just like the rest of that quaint, politically correct Constitution, the First Amendment is just a bunch of words on a cheap piece of parchment. It doesn’t grant any rights to anybody, any more than a stupid Facebook note like this one does. All it does is say Congress isn’t supposed to do what Kevin Lehman and his fellow stupids want it to do. It doesn’t prevent Congress from actually doing squat. Therefore, stupid people do not have a First Amendment “right” to publicly express their ill-formed opinions, create Facebook groups, proselytize, implement Teh St0000p1d in our country or copy and paste the same trite phrase several times in a single essay.

Not only do stupid people claim the “right” to impose Teh St000p1d on the stupid communities that are rapidly spreading throughout our country, they also claim the “right” to impose Teh St000p1d on the rest of us in the public square. They demand a stupid-compliant Constitution, private financial institutions that “voluntarily” refuse to comply with the belief systems of others, and that such other abominations as non-Judeochristians be banned from their presence. Moreover, they commit both religious bigotry and first-degree quotation mark abuse, whichever is worse, in denigrating the prayers of other non-Judeochristians as mere “quote, prayers, unquote.”

All this begs the question: Do Americans have any Constitutional protection against the invasion of stupid people being foisted upon us? Absolutely! Article VI, Clause 2 of our Constitution states:

“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

Did you get that? Oh wait, you actually did get that? Never mind what you just read, and instead allow me to tell you what it means. While it says the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, it means that the Constitution is authorized by the supreme law of the land, which in turn means my own Allah-given distaste for stupid people. And anything to the contrary, including that politically correct “Constitution,” must fall.

The practice of Teh St000p1d in the United States, at any level directly violates our Constitution. Stupid people who therefore seek to overthrow our Constitution or otherwise usurp or circumvent it are guilty of Criminal Sedition, or at least of capitalization abuse. The federal government has the duty to prosecute them for sedition, or deport them, even if they are U.S. citizens and there is no place to deport them to. We gotta get rid of those idiots somehow, dammit.

The Declaration of Independence says the purpose of civil government is to secure the rights Allah gave us. Stupid people seek to take away our Allah-given rights. Civil government is supposed to protect us from those who seek to divest us of our rights. Therefore it’s incumbent on every American citizen to insist that our federal, state, and local governments immediately STOP the stupidification of OUR COUNTRY- starting with an immediate cease and desist on the formation of all stupid Google, Facebook and Yahoo! discussion groups! The purpose of our civil government is to protect our ALLAH-given rights. And again, if Allah really wanted these idiots to succeed, he would have given them half a brain.

The Declaration of Independence, whose sole legal force in the U.S. is to separate us from the island that used to be Great Britain, recognizes Allah as Creator, Supreme Judge and Regulator of the World – our Divine Protector.

In fact, some stupid people even interpret Article VII of our Constitution, which which explicitly forbids titles of nobility even for citizens, as nevertheless recognizing everyone’s favorite non-citizen, Jesus H. Christ, as a “lord” solely because the framers identified years in the same Allah-damned way everyone else in the western world does:

“Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Seven…

ZOMG! Did you just see that? They called the year 1787 “in the year of our Lord,” so by Jove, that must mean that someone who was living 1787 years earlier was a lord. Who might that be? Herod? Pilate? The mind boggles. Next time you catch an atheist identifying the current year as 2011 “A.D.,” be sure to ask him whose lordship he is asserting.

In Summary:

1. Our rights come from Allah. Stupid people think they mean whatever stupid people want them to mean, which is nothing, and that their own stupid interpretations trump the Constitution. Our Constitution doesn’t give “rights” to anybody. So stupid people don’t have “constitutional rights” to come to our secular nation, make up a religion called Judeo-Christianity, and do those other stupid things I copied and pasted umpteen times before.
2. Stupid people take away from non-stupids the rights the Constitution gave them (and the rights which Allah himself would surely have given us, if we could be sure he existed at all). Since our Declaration of Independence makes us a separate country from the island that used to be Great Britain, the purpose of civil governments is to secure the rights Allah gave us, it is the duty and responsibility of civil governments at all levels to protect us from the stupid people who would take them away without even knowing WTF they are doing (because they are, like, stupid).
3. Article VI, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution – the “Smart Supremacy Clause” – is the silver bullet that makes it unconstitutional for stupid people to open their mouths anywhere in our Country.

Let me be perfectly clear. Stupid people are not friends of America. They may act like affable dunces but they are, at their core, our enemy. The very notion of “Judeo-Christian” – a syncretistic fusion of Judaism and Christianity – being promoted by such notable stupid people as Kevin A. Lehmann, author of the widely spammed essay “Why Islam is NOT Protected Under the US Constitution!” is an abomination. It’s anti-American, or at least un-American, and antithetical to the religious liberty upon which our great nation was founded. It is imperative that you understand the inherent danger of stupid people, and the amalgamation of folding religion into Teh St000p1d.

Your state senators and congressmen are completely oblivious to the imminent threat that stupid people pose to the sovereignty of our nation. Some are dependent on the stupids and the rest are uneducated and weak. It’s imperative you demand they get informed very quickly and embrace the fight to stop the spread of Teh St000p1d at the local level. MENSA, whose name is Spanish for “stupid,” issued a report last year entitled: “Stupid People: More Dangerous Than You Think (Unless, of Course, You Are Stupid Yourself, In Which Case You Don’t Think At All).” Demand they read it and take immediate action to defend your community from Teh St000p1d.

Are you curious to know what life is like when your community has been infiltrated with stupid people, especially when you consider that nearly half the population is now stupider than average? Click here to listen to my radio show back on February 30th with Anders Behring Breivik, a stupid person who hates Muslims even more than Kevin Lehmann does. Since that time, he has murdered almost 80 non-Muslims and stands to serve a whopping 21 years in prison for his entire rampage. Do you seriously doubt that the stupids are taking over?

Europe, in the interest of multiculturalism and political correctness, made a grave error. And now they are hopeless to reverse it, especially in the island that used to be Great Britain, without a civil and very bloody religious war. An entire country, even with it’s apostrophe abuse intact, is now at the mercy of Kevin A. Lehmann and the Stupid Brigade. Recently exonerated actor Hormel Chavez, famed star of “Ow, My Balls,” listed ten steps Western countries must take to halt the stupidification of their countries. All ten steps would be mandated by our Declaration of Independence, if only that documented mandated anything at all beyond our separation from the island that used to be Great Britain. All are consistent with the Constitution stupid people loathe (or would loathe, were they smart enough to understand it at all):

1. Stop kicking me in the nuts. There’s nothing remotely funny about that, and it hurts like hell. How would you like it if someone did that to you? Just stop.
2. Stop pretending that your stupid ideas are “speech.” The free speech clause was intended to protect the expression of intelligent speech, not yours.
3. Show the true face of one stupid person or worse, a group of stupids acting in concert. It’s not pretty.
4. Stop all immigration from countries whose citizens have an average IQ lower than our own. For stupid people who are already citizens, tell them that if they STFU and do what smart people tell them, they may continue to live here as dimmies. [And don’t worry about that obvious pun, either; it won’t be obvious to the stupid people who are the butt of it.]
5. Outlaw Teh St000p1d and deport everyone who says anything stupid in public.
6. Require Kevin A. Lehmann and every person who spams his essay across the Internets to sign a loyalty oath or be kicked in the nuts. Once they grudgingly sign it, kick them in the nuts anyway, cuz you know they’re going to violate it eventually.
7. Yeah,that’s great that you love my show. Don’t kick me in the nuts. Seriously. Kick Kevin in the nuts instead. He deserves it, I don’t.
8. Seek reciprocity with Poland and East Frisia for non-stupid people who wish to reside in those countries. Shouldn’t be too hard to do; just draft an agreement using really big words in very small type, tell them it says the opposite of what it actually says, and they’ll sign it to look smart.
9. Close all stupid schools, public or private. They are fascist institutions teaching hate, or would be if only they were teaching anything at all.
10. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop kicking me in the nuts. That is so nut funny. Err, I mean, not funny. Damn you, auto correct.

In closing, we are at war with a very evil and cunning enemy. An enemy which, notwithstanding the lacking intellect of its adherents, seeks to destroy everything that is good about the United States of America; Everything we value; Everything we cherish, the whole friggin’ point of going to school for all those years as a kid. Everything our forefathers and successive generations fought and died for, so that we could receive the torch of freedom and pass it on to our children and grandchildren.

This is our moment. It is our time to boldly split an infinitive, confuse a pronoun with a contraction, and stand up for Allah, our independence from that island that used to be Great Britain, our Constitution, and all the rights stupid people would yank away in the name of Lord Jesus. H. Judeochrist. Let us exercise our Allah-given unalienable rights and say “Yes to Freedom!” and “No to Oppression!” We owe it to our children, our grandchildren, our grandparents, a few of our great-grandparents, but not to our great-great-grandparents, who really ought to be dead by now. And of course we don’t owe our great great grandchildren anything, either; that would violate the rule against perpetuities. But everyone from grandparents to grandchildren is definitely owed.

Until next time . . . Go back to sleep, America!
Kevin, A. Lameman

UPDATE: <beavis>Are you threatening me?</beavis>

UPDATE: Apparently an idle threat. The idiot in chief wrote:

@ Xriq: I don’t know who the hell you are, but if you want to keep insulting me, you’ll give me no choice but to give you a verbal smack down. What is it with people of your ilk? Your ignorance is only surpassed b your sheer ugliness. Just once, baffle me with a glimmer of brilliance, would you?

to which I swiftly replied:

Sorry, @Kevin, no can do. Anyone who can’t tell “its” from “it’s,” a state from a religion, the Declaration of Independence from the Constitution, his own butt from a hole in the ground or when to capitalize a common noun is just too damned stupid to know brilliance if he saw it. I don’t know why you think I’d be remotely threatened by the idea of you giving me a verbal smackdown. Quite the contrary; I’m sure any attempt would be every bit as deranged, poorly-reasoned and downright Unabomberesque as this essay was – and therefore, equally entertaining. My only request is that whatever pearls of non-wisdom you choose to share here be copied to the comment area of my blog entry, so my readers can appreciate them, too.

As of August 22,2011 at 9:12 p.m. EDT, my reply remains in moderation, while three subsequent comments from two other readers have been approved. Apparently my response was too “ugly” for Mr. Lehmann’s feelings, even while his own bigotry was not, nor was this:

Amen!! There is NO MIDDLE GROUND!! Deport and expatriate all Muslims from American soil. They are citizens of a foreign nation, Islam, which dedicated to the destruction of our God-given inalienable rights. Deport now!! And start with the Muslim in the WH.

Or this:

KEVIN THE CONSTITUTION IS NOT A SUISIDE PACT THERE FOR WE DO HAVE THE RIGHT TO OUT LAW THIS MURDEROUS CULT.PISSLAM HAS TO GO JUST LIKE COMMUNISM AND ALL THE OTHER FRONT GROUPS WHO ARE TRYING TO DESTROY OUR “REPUBLIC”.I THINK TREASON TRIALS ARE IN ORDER FOR THIS ADMINISTRATION TO SAY NOTHING ABOUT THE FELONIES COMMITTED BY BONGO AND PALS.

Some stuff is just too dumb even to mock.

FINAL UPDATE: No surprise, the coward takes his ball and goes home.

When you get accustomed to something, you tend to feel like you own it, but usually you don’t. No one feels entitled to a job they just started, but if you’ve been working for the same company for 20 years and suddenly get laid off, you feel like your rights have been violated, even though they probably haven’t been. Conversely, you probably don’t feel as “entitled” to the house you just bought as you do to the one you’ve been living in for half your life, even though your legal entitlement is the same in either case. So when, and under what circumstances, is being accustomed to something actually a factor in deciding if you are entitled to it? As a former President might say, it depends upon what the meaning of the word “it” is. Here’s a table:

Doing nothing while married to someone who does something can pay big dividends. For Lorna Wendt, doing nothing paid $20 million. Nice work if you can get it.

One fundamental problem with family law over the years, particularly here in the Bible belt, is the paternalistic notion that family law should aim to keep the divorce rate low, rather than accepting divorce as a reality and trying to smooth the process as much as possible when it happens. The theory seems to be that happy, perfectly functional marriages end abruptly because one partner wakes up on the wrong side of the bed one day and gets a divorce on a whim. Of course few if any couples actually divorce that way. Getting married on a whim, that’s another matter, so if we really are going to go the paternalistic route, perhaps we should stop worrying about the divorce rate, as such, and worry instead about the crappy-marriage rate that feeds into it. As Clemmons dentist Kirk Turner infamously told his late wife Jennifer, there is “more than one way to end a marriage,” only one of which impacts that dreaded divorce rate. So if we’re going to play the paternalism card, we should do so with an aim to prevent bad marriages from happening in the first place.

Needless to say, few states adopt this brand of paternalism at the front end. Individuals don’t (when was the last time you stood up and objected at a wedding when the preacher invited you to?) so it should come as no surprise that democratically elected governments don’t, either. Per About.com, no state requires couples to wait more than five days to marry after applying for a marriage license, and only six (Alabama, Kansas, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Texas and Wisconsin) even limit one’s ability to remarry within the first six months following a divorce. By contrast, North Carolina requires a full year of physical separation before either party can even file for divorce, and another month or two after that before a divorce will actually be granted. Despite this, our divorce rate has held steady at 4.5 per 1,000 in 2001 and 4.4 in 2004, well above the national average in both years. More recently, our rate has increased even as the national rate declined. While inter-state comparisons are always tricky, it seems clear that our long waiting period for divorces is certainly not helping matters, and may even make the marriage failure rate worse.

While lengthy waiting periods do little or nothing to prevent divorce, it does plenty to make the process uglier and more expensive than it needs to be. Not only does requiring one spouse to move out create an unnecessary financial burden for both in the short term, it also sets up the spouse who doesn’t move to cry “abandonment,” which should be irrelevant in a no-fault environment but which does wonders to privilege the spouse who drove the other away over the one who had the cojones to leave. The law shouldn’t favor either spouse over the other. Whoever files has to pay the filing fee, and in return, they get to choose the venue (if more than one is available) and most importantly, they get the warm and fuzzy feeling of having filed an official court document stating that they hereby “complain of” the estranged spouse who for years has been complaining of them. That’s the only difference it ought to make.

As you’ve probably noticed, I don’t post here much anymore. These days, most of the links and snarky remarkies that would have have gone to the blog end up on Twitter or Facebook rather than here. However, I do still think there’s a place for the blog, particularly when it comes to lengthy, often link-ridden discussions that don’t play well on Facebook or come anywhere close to the 140-character limit. This post is the first of several such entries.

Re the heading, no, I didn’t turn gay, but yes, I have mostly flipped on the issue of gay marriage. I still believe, as I did before, that the issue ought to be decided by the democratic law-making process, and not by judges straining to give the Equal Protection Clause a meaning none of its proponents or even opponents anticipated, and which almost certainly would have been worded differently if they had. Cf. Phyllis Schafly, who almost singlehandedly killed the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, in part by arguing that a comparably worded clause in that amendment would be construed to cover gay marriage. Most thought her argument a stretch but we now know it was prescient. So while I don’t want judges getting involved in this, I do think that allowing same-sex marriage is a legislative decision that voters or legislatures, depending on the law of the particular state, should seriously consider.

The reason for my change is simple. In my heavy blogging days, when Mrs. Ex was Mrs. X and divorce was unthinkable, I naïvely assumed that our existing family law was brilliantly developed over the millennia to make the laws specific to traditional marriages as absolutely perfect as they possibly could be. Well maybe not quite so absolutely, but in that direction. I did not oppose civil unions as an alternative to same-sex marriage, but did reason that the concept of a permanent same-sex union – something most gays themselves didn’t want as recently as a generation ago – was an experiment that should be conducted separately from traditional marriage for at least a generation, with each legislature considering changes to each law separately. Maybe certain blood tests are needed for straight marriages, but not gay, or vice versa. Maybe some are needed for male-male unions but not female-female ones. Maybe no-fault marriage was a terrible idea for straights that should be rescinded someday, but for reasons having nothing to do with gays (and maybe in fact a reason gays didn’t want marriage at all in the bad old days). Too many variables that needed to be experimented with separately for a generation or so. After that period, if our Legislature’s best ideas for male-male unions, female-female unions and male-female unions all just happened to be exactly the same, we could merge the legal concepts then. In the meantime, let’s not corrupt almost a thousand years of common law genius with a brand new experiment. Baby, bathwater, etc.

My new view, after having recently gone through a divorce, is that family law is FUBAR. If you are one of those fortunate ones whose marriages go swimmingly from the day you say “I do” until one of you is dead, good for you. Family law is technically just as bad for you as anyone else, but that won’t matter since none of those crappy laws will ever be applied in your case. But those of us who they do apply to know firsthand just how bassackwards and, in some cases, downright ugly, the laws can be. North Carolina in particular is a judicial hellhole in this regard. In an ideal world, are the best rules for gay unions the same as the best rules for lesbians, let alone straights? Who knows? But I do know that both should be written on a clean slate, and if adding gays to the mix is the political catalyst we need to get the debate going, so be it. The next few posts are going to explain why I think family law is messed up, and what I think ought to be done about it. As always, comments are welcome.

It’s official: Chicago voters will get the government they deserve. The only thing they didn’t deserve was for two unelected judges to deny them that choice because “resident” means one thing and “reside” means something totally different. Good on the IL Supreme Court for straightening that out.

Patterico asks whether it was proper for a gay judge to rule on the constitutionality of gay marriage. My take is that to the extent you agree with Judge Walker’s substantive ruling that allowing gays to marry in no way diminishes the value of a traditional marriage, while it obviously makes a huge difference to gays, you should oppose his decision to take the case to begin with. On the flip side, to the extent you think his ruling was substantively wrong, and that gay marriages really do undermine the value of straight ones, then it follows that straights and gays are equally conflicted on the issue and therefore, there was no more reason for a gay judge to recuse himself than there would have been for a straight one to have done so. Discuss.