Friday, March 30, 2012

Amendment 1 & the Law of Unintended Consequences

The people who justify legal discrimination against a minority of our state's citizens (via Amendment 1) scream hysterically about "activist judges" (who supposedly are poised just off-shore waiting for the perfect surprise moment to force everyone into gay unions). But the unleashing of activist judges is exactly what the passage of Amendment 1 promises to achieve.

So says a prominent Charlotte attorney, Russell M. Robinson II, the founding partner of Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, P.A. He wrote in the Charlotte Observer yesterday, "The proposed amendment is so poorly worded and so unnecessary that its adoption would actually increase the probability of a federal court invalidating its ban on same-sex marriage."

Mr. Robinson also emphasizes what many others have warned about, the broad, vague, undefined language of the amendment which will invite many lawsuits and hence the arrival of all those activist judges, wading ashore with their opinions locked and loaded:
...the proposed constitutional amendment widely prohibits any “domestic union” that is not a marriage between a man and a woman, with an exception added later saying that it “does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party” (apparently even including same-sex parties). All of that language is so absurdly broad and unclear that it threatens to disrupt a wide range of domestic and family relationships, together with benefits dependent on those relationships. It will undoubtedly provoke multiple lawsuits to determine what it means, and it can also deter businesses from moving to North Carolina because of the uncertainty of our law in this important area....
Robinson also tucks in a neat little lesson in Biblical truth that the Deborah Greenes of this world might want to read and heed:
Writing religious beliefs into law to enforce them against everybody has created terrible problems down through history, and is still doing so in some parts of the world. It is also condemned by the Bible in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans (4:14-15), which says that such beliefs are matters of faith, not law, “because law brings wrath.” This attempt to put a religious belief into our state constitution is thus contrary to a clear New Testament command and is already bringing wrath to us all.

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