No doubt anticipating desperate spinning action by proponents of Ballot Question #1, The Commonwealth Coaliiton released the following statement in response to the New Jersey Supreme Court decision. Do we really need to be reminded that Virginia is unaffected by the laws of other states? Probably. I was quite recently reminded of this excellent George Orwell quote:
We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
New Jersey Decision Is A Decision for New Jersey That Reflects New Jersey’s History and Policy Decisions; Virginia Law Unaffected
The Commonwealth Coalition issued the following statement today in response to the decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court in Lewis, et al v. Harris:
The decision in New Jersey is a decision for New Jersey made by a New Jersey court under the New Jersey Constitution and in light of that state’s history and well-established public policy of being in the “forefront of combating sexual orientation discrimination and advancing equality of treatment toward gays and lesbians.” New Jersey’s legislature outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1992 and discrimination based on domestic partner status in 2004. The legislature passed a domestic partnership act in 2004, the same year that Virginia passed the Affirmation of Marriage Act banning same sex civil unions and domestic partnerships.
Virginia’s sovereignty in our federal system ensures that neither the New Jersey Constitution nor the state’s marriage licensing and domestic partnership laws (like their professional and gun licensing laws) have any effect in Virginia. Virginia has had a law on the books banning gay marriage since 1975 — a law that was strengthened in 1997 to prohibit any recognition for marriages entered into in other states that violate this ban and in 2004 to prohibit recognition of other state’s civil unions and domestic partnerships.
The decision of the New Jersey court does not in any way threaten Virginia law. Moreover, it is just silly to say that the actions of New Jersey judges tell us anything about how Virginia judges will interpret Virginia’s constitution. For one thing, Virginia is the only state in the nation where the legislature has the exclusive authority to nominate and elect all judges. As the former chair of the House Courts of Justice Committee which interviews and determines the qualification of all judges up for appointment or reappointment in Virginia, Attorney General Bob McDonnell well knows that the legislature has not been afraid to fail to appoint or reappoint any person who the legislature deemed “activist.”
Finally, and perhaps, most importantly, the decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court, like the opinions in other recent court decisions in New York and Washington, underscores the important role that the legislature plays in determining public policy as the “popularly elected representatives of the people.” It is, indeed, ironic that a principle effect of the proposed amendment to Virginia’s constitution is that it would take away from the legislature any future role in the process of determining Virginia’s public policy regarding marriage and its benefits, rights, obligations, qualities, significance, design or effects and place those decisions in the hands of judges.
Thus demonstrating that the Commonwealth Coalition is, in fact, a bunch of straight people who only care about boring, non-design oriented things like our Bill of Rights. Even Greg Letiecq
Where was homeland security?
Apparently during the night, New Jersey, despite sharing no common border with us, has somehow managed to annex Virginia. How else to explain the sky-is-falling silliness emanating from the pro-Marshall/Newman crowd?
Here’s a little quiz: Is there a risk that the District of Columbia’s gun statute will be suddenly transported across the Potomac, and start governing the issuance of gun licenses to Virginians?
I don’t think so, either.
So how is it that otherwise intelligent people would forget all about state sovereignty and fall for the idea that a ruling by the Supreme Court of another state, that draws on the legislative history of that state, is a reflection of the public policy and public opinion of that state, and only applies to the residents of that state, could possibly have any bearing on what happens in Virginia?
The answer is that a campaign to convince Virginians to vote for something they don’t really agree with is losing steam, and its leaders think they can use the tired “activist judges!” meme to revive it. The problem is the same one they’ve had from the beginning: That their entire argument is baseless.
Here’s another quiz: How many lies are contained in this single sentence, from the Focus on the Family website?
The only sense in which this might be true is that the “true decision makers” in New Jersey favor full marriage equality for same sex couples. An “activist” court might have bent to the will of the people and found a fundamental right to marriage in the New Jersey constitution, but this court made it quite clear that they couldn’t find one. This is in spite of a strong legislative history of advances toward equality for GLBT people in New Jersey, which is very much the opposite of what we have in Virginia. The court has explicitly stated that amending New Jersey’s marriage law is “a matter left to the democratic process,” and further, that
Is there really a serious argument to be made against this by those who claim the mantle of conservatism?
It requires genuine moral bankruptcy to pervert this ruling to the purpose of campaigning for Ballot Question #1, but some of our fellow travelers have managed to do it.
Courts in New Jersey, or in any other state, have no influence on judges in Viriginia – which, by the way, is the only state in the union in which the legislature is wholly responsible for both nominating and electing judges.
Even more importantly, everything that was wrong with Ballot Question #1 yesterday is still wrong with it today.