Octopus Overlords

GreenGoo wrote: I suspect she'll be at the 5 dollar per autograph table at local fairs in short order.

Travis County Probate Judge Guy Herman has signed a judgment acknowledging that the eight-year relationship between Stella Powell and Sonemaly Phrasavath (soh-NEH'-mah-lee phrah-sah-VAHTH') met the legal requirements of marriage without a license. The Austin American-Statesman ) reported that Herman signed the ruling Monday in Austin but distributed it on Tuesday.

The ruling ended Phrasavath's effort to have official recognition of her relationship with Powell, who died last year. Powell's siblings had asserted in a probate suit that Powell died single and couldn't marry another woman under Texas law.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had opposed the finding, citing that Powell died before the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the right of same-sex partners to marry.

Linda Massey opposes gay marriage. But she was incensed last summer to see that Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, was refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
“If the government says you have to give out those marriage licenses, and you get paid to do it, you do it,” says the 64-year-old retiree from Lewiston, Michigan. “That woman,” she said of Davis, “should be out of a job.”

Americans like Massey are at the heart of a shift in public opinion, an Associated Press-GfK poll has found. For the first time, most Americans expect government officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, even over religious objections.
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Where Davis’s answer was the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom — and she served jail time to back it up — a majority of respondents don’t buy that argument when it comes to public officials issuing marriage licenses. That’s a shift since an AP-GfK survey in July, when Americans were about evenly split. Then, 49 percent said officials with religious objections should be exempt from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples and 47 percent said they should be required to issue them.

Now, just 41 percent favor an exemption and 56 percent think they should be required to issue the licenses.

That shift was especially stark among Republicans. A majority of them —58 percent — still favor religious exemptions for officials issuing marriage licenses, but that’s down 14 points since 72 percent said so in July.

Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis has lost another bid to delay issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Thursday denied her latest request for a reprieve.
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Davis' attorneys have appealed that expanded order several times, arguing that the mandate to issue licenses should apply only to the four couples who filed suit. They received licenses during Davis' five-day stint in jail for defying the court's order.

The appeals court again rejected Davis' request Thursday.

KKentucky’s governor has a series of executive orders in an effort to reshape state government along conservative ideological lines, including one that removes county clerks’ names from marriage licenses, granting the request of Kim Davis, who drew national attention for refusing to grant licenses to same-sex couples.

New Republican Gov. Matt Bevin cited the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act as he removed the names of counties and county clerks, and allowed clerks to designate a third party to sign them.
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The new license, which Bevin ordered the state Department for Libraries and Archives to create, lists at the top of the form only the Commonwealth of Kentucky, not the county or the county clerk. There is a line at the bottom where an “issuing official” may sign, but one of Davis’ lawyers Tuesday said that could be — as Davis has arranged it in Rowan County — a willing deputy clerk who signs only as a notary public.
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Critics, however, said state law establishes the contents of Kentucky marriage licenses, including an authorization statement and a signature by the county clerk, and a governor cannot change state law through an executive order.

If the General Assembly wants to rewrite the law when it meets this winter, it can, but the language on marriage licenses otherwise cannot be altered, they said.

West Virginia couple Samantha Brookover and Amanda Abramovich spoke out last week after going to the Gilmer County clerk’s office to get their official marriage license.

The pair claimed that deputy clerk Debbie Allen ranted to them about how their union was wrong in the eyes of God – and said they were “flabbergasted and hurt and angry like you wouldn’t believe” to be branded an “abomination”.

Allen admitted she told the couple that God would judge them, but says she “talked nicely to them”, and denies using the word “abomination”

hepcat wrote:There are good Christians and there are bad Christians. Hopefully the country will get fed up with the latter soon enough. Although I'm sure they'll do their damndest to force bigotry and small mindedness on everyone around them as they go down.

“Quite frankly, it’s almost disrespectful to the traditional family,” said Republican state Sen. John Schickel of Union. “That’s’ why, wisely, we decided to have two forms. That has nothing to do with bigotry, nothing to do with discrimination. It has to do with the vast majority of Kentuckians that respect traditional marriage.”

Alefroth wrote:It's OK if they are separate, as long as the they are equal, right?

Xmann wrote:

Max Peck wrote:Vatican claims that the Pope did not, in fact, endorse Davis

The brief meeting between Mrs. Kim Davis and Pope Francis at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, DC has continued to provoke comments and discussion. In order to contribute to an objective understanding of what transpired I am able to clarify the following points:

Pope Francis met with several dozen persons who had been invited by the Nunciature to greet him as he prepared to leave Washington for New York City. Such brief greetings occur on all papal visits and are due to the Pope’s characteristic kindness and availability. The only real audience granted by the Pope at the Nunciature was with one of his former students and his family.

The Pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects.

Shocking

Some of the party’s biggest financiers, attempting to transform the GOP’s approach, have been helping to bankroll the American Unity Fund, a group that has launched a well-organized, behind-the-scenes effort to lobby convention delegates who will draw up the platform. It is asking them to adopt language that would accommodate same sex marriage.

Alefroth wrote:The devil fools with the best laid plan

Alabama's Supreme Court Chief Justice was suspended on Friday as he faces possible removal from the bench for ordering state probate judges not to grant marriage licenses to gay couples, despite contrary rulings by a federal court and the U.S. Supreme Court. The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission charged Chief Justice Roy Moore, an outspoken opponent of same-sex unions, with violating the state's judicial ethics laws, an allegation that could potentially remove him from office, according to Alabama.com.

Max Peck wrote:

Alefroth wrote:The devil fools with the best laid plan

Alabama's top judge faces ethics charges over gay-marriage order

Alabama's Supreme Court Chief Justice was suspended on Friday as he faces possible removal from the bench for ordering state probate judges not to grant marriage licenses to gay couples, despite contrary rulings by a federal court and the U.S. Supreme Court. The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission charged Chief Justice Roy Moore, an outspoken opponent of same-sex unions, with violating the state's judicial ethics laws, an allegation that could potentially remove him from office, according to Alabama.com.

A federal judge has ruled that Mississippi clerks cannot cite their own religious beliefs to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves‘ ruling on Monday blocks the state from enforcing part of a religious objections bill that was supposed to become law Friday.

Reeves is extending his previous order that overturned Mississippi’s ban on same-sex marriage. He says circuit clerks are required to provide equal treatment for all couples, gay or straight.

Mississippi’s religious objections measure, House Bill 1523, was filed in response to last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage nationwide.

Reeves has not yet ruled in two other lawsuits seeking to block all of the religious objections law, including provisions that could affect schools’ bathroom policies for transgender students.

Jaymann wrote:New England - the bastion of gay pride. Who knew?

stessier wrote:And Springfield, MA with one of the highest percentages in the nation. Can I use this as an excuse for why I never dated in high school?

Max Peck wrote:

Alefroth wrote:The devil fools with the best laid plan

Alabama's top judge faces ethics charges over gay-marriage order

Alabama's Supreme Court Chief Justice was suspended on Friday as he faces possible removal from the bench for ordering state probate judges not to grant marriage licenses to gay couples, despite contrary rulings by a federal court and the U.S. Supreme Court. The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission charged Chief Justice Roy Moore, an outspoken opponent of same-sex unions, with violating the state's judicial ethics laws, an allegation that could potentially remove him from office, according to Alabama.com.

Saying that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore violated judicial ethics when he ordered judges not to respect the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling on same-sex marriage, Alabama's Court of the Judiciary suspended Moore for the rest of his term in office.

The order also requires the head of Alabama's highest court to pay the costs of the proceedings against him and stipulates that he will not be paid for the remainder of his six-year term. The next election for the state's chief justice post is scheduled for 2018.

The judgment against Moore was unanimous. But the nine-member court also noted that the decision is based on a review of Moore's behavior and decisions, not on the justices' views of the Supreme Court's June 2015 ruling that same-sex couples have the right to marry — contrary to Alabama's law, adopted in 2016, that had reserved marriage for heterosexual couples only.

Saying that "some members of this court did not personally agree with" the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling, the judges wrote, "This court simply does not have the authority to reexamine those issues."
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For Moore, this is the second high-profile dispute that has cut short his term leading the Alabama Supreme Court. In 2003, he was removed from office after refusing a federal court's order to remove a prominent display of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building. Alabama voters elected him to the office again in 2012.

Isgrimnur wrote:Maybe Alabama will avoid electing him a third time.

Fitzy wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:Maybe Alabama will avoid electing him a third time.

Probably they would, but he can't run again. Too old.

There is no specific limitation on the number of terms to which a member may be elected. However, the state constitution under Amendment 328, adopted in 1973, prohibits any member from seeking re-election once they have attained the age of seventy years. This amendment will prohibit Chief Justice Moore from seeking re-election in 2018.

Isgrimnur wrote:

Fitzy wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:Maybe Alabama will avoid electing him a third time.

Probably they would, but he can't run again. Too old.

Wiki

There is no specific limitation on the number of terms to which a member may be elected. However, the state constitution under Amendment 328, adopted in 1973, prohibits any member from seeking re-election once they have attained the age of seventy years. This amendment will prohibit Chief Justice Moore from seeking re-election in 2018.

Isgrimnur wrote:I was confused as to whether it was a political landscape or actual legal restriction, so I went looking for details. As I was recently chastised for not sharing my findings ( ), I showed my work.

Isgrimnur wrote:Where's the fun of that? Occasionally, I like to be validated in my efforts, even if I have to be devious about extracting it.

When gay and lesbian couples have the right to marry one another, teens in that state are less likely to attempt suicide, found an analysis of data collected consistently over 17 years from 47 states. While this relationship might seem odd initially, the findings make sense in light of the fact that the biggest drops in suicide attempts occurred among LGBTQ adolescents.